The first season of Gifted SUCKED. The series suffered from excessive focus on the struckers. Had the focus truly been on the Underground that would have been different.
Often series in fantasy/superhero genre will introduce a new character (new to being a hero) that helps in order to make the series make sense to those not so familiar. For example when Xena explained things about her past to Gabrielle, she was also explaining to the audience. Gifted chose to insert FOUR new characters in this role, and this helped kill the series.
Had the series had top ratings and it been good Disney would have renewed it after purchasing Fox's assets.
If you look at the female characters that Marvel is now pushing out of the X-Men.
Emma Frost was always a known business woman. So she is the CEO of the Hellfire company and Krakoa's top diplomat. Interesting usage of her history as White Queen, which she is.
Elizabeth Braddock had her other world ties/ties to mysticism like King Arthur, Morgan Le Fay, and Roma. A lot can be done with that, which is why she is now Captain Britain.
Kwannon/Psylocke has her history with the hand and as an assassin in Japan.
Jean Grey: Basically as her true power surpasses Xavier, she's immediately the one who has to resurrect Xavier and those recently killed. Her cosmic destiny always comes to her (she's the Phoenix) and always returns from the dead (three times out of an egg structure).
Illyana is a hell lord/ruler of Limbo.
Lorna is just Magneto's daughter. She's certainly powerful enough, but has nothing to her character beyond that. No interesting life beyond the X-Men to generate stories.
Actually, there's another problem with Lorna.
She's a geophysicist. She's intelligent, smart, and educated. But one of the most definitive periods of X-Men history, the Claremont era saw her written out of the picture or briefly possessed. By the time Claremont used it, he wrote the X-Men before he got kicked off as on the run basically before that got to Xavier in space. So nothing was made of her intelligence or what she could be doing for the X-Men with it.
Anyone with a physics degree would also obviously have technical skills, if they chose to.
Gifted showed that Lorna can hack electronic systems and change electronic records. She technically has the ability to do far greater.
But the bad thing was Gifted Lorna was just a crazy rebellious girl. Comics Lorna has had mental breakdowns, but she wasn't the rebellious type and she is an educated woman.
So why cannot she be some sort of tech genius? It works for a lot of male characters who are prominent. She has an unique edge they don't.
The focus on the von Struckers was amazing in terms of a long build to a payoff. The problem is they seem to have chickened out of that payoff (turning Andy and Lauren into a new version of Fenris). Totally agreed their parents were obnoxious buzzkills for big chunk of the audience though.
The whole point of The Gifted was "society without the famous X-Men, how do more ordinary mutants make by". It was a more sociologically-based approach. Characters that are related to the more prominent ones, or looked up to them (or despised them) etc, were making their own way through a world that was getting ever-more-discriminatory. If you bought into that premise it made perfect sense how they did it. Now, could/should they have cameo'd or used flashbacks to certain more famous characters? Probably.
We know the ratings of season 2 were bad, that's why it wasn't renewed. It wasn't about Disney. Although possibly the folks writing the show were trying preemptively to appeal to Disney by dumbing it down from their original more stark vision.
I have no problem with them using Emma Frost, I love Emma Frost precisely because she straddles the hero/villain line.
They're only promoting Betsy and Kwannon because of the need to "explain" and distinguish due to the cluster they've unleashed by bowing to social media pressure campaigns regarding the character. Don't really love Captain Britain as Betsy, Kwannon is more appealing but shouldn't be made to seem exactly like the old Psylocke, that robs her identity.
Wow, Marvel is using Jean Grey. How amazing. That tells us so much information about Lorna. (??????????????????????)
Ilyanna is a cool character as well, no problem with her getting used but her role in New Mutants so far is hard to pin down. Seems to have lost a bit of her edge from before but we'll see maybe not. Just hope they don't make her lean too much into the sorcery/magic stuff but that's another topic for another thread.
Lorna has indeed been rebellious in the comics. Check my avatar or signature.
As for "just Magneto's daughter" well that can be considered a problem to a degree, but again it's a question of "living up to legacies" and "making her own way". The issue is the older gen never truly leaves, it's the same reason Cannonball never was allowed to really take off the way many wanted. Magneto himself largely occupies the position Lorna should be in, as sort of one of the philosophies of mutantkind in the modern age. Also, the fact Lorna only learned Magneto was her dad more recently after a long period of heroics and civilian life (trying to assimilate into human dominated society) is a way to help spark within her new ideas or thoughts about her place and so on. It creates a dynamism for her.
The geophysics thing and her education is in my mind a way to help raise her stature beyond " a thug " or " punk ". So yes she is "rebellious" but it's in a more profound or deliberate way, not as easy to dismiss as like "a phase" or whatnot. Much like her father...
We don't need another tech guru really, that would be a waste of her potential , she's too powerful for that role and has too much deep history. She just used like an EMP burst on the show, it wasn't some amazing application of her education (plus on the show I don't think she HAD a geophysics degree or any of that to begin with). Also, her "hacking" on the show was shown to be something of a mistake, and got Sage killed... and it fit into the entire betrayal of her characterization from season 1 anyway.
Forget the old ways - Krakoa is god.
OBEY
I'm actually really enjoying thia more radicalized Lorna from HoX and X-Men I don't feel like Hickman is reducing her to being "just Magneto's daughter" but with only 2 scenes in Hickmans era so far I think he really wanted to re emphasize Polaris's current relationship with Magneto as well her feelings towards humanity and considering her history with Genosha her and Magneto's feelings are similarly aligned.
And with X-Men #1 we got some glimpse into her feelings about Krakoa as well as hints with the summers clan ( there are several bedrooms currently unoccupied in the Summers house after all) and Scott seems to want Lorna to move in which I thought was a lovely moment that Scott thinks of Lorna as family.
In terms of the question if Hickman is just writing Lorna as Magneto's daughter?
Nah. What you say is correct this is a more radicalized Lorna in some ways then at any time since the era of fallout from the Genoshan genocide and only makes sense with the genocide in mind. Hickman deserves a great deal of credit for starting the process of resurrecting a Lorna with much more depth then the one we have seen the past decade and a half. But, a sizable chunk of the audience doesn’t know her history as you or I which is an issue for those who missed the early 00s as these things haven't come up in quite awhile for her.
Last edited by jmc247; 12-05-2019 at 10:37 AM.
YES, in what was arguably the most important DoX offering initially, Polaris was the most prominent female character featured. If that's not a bit of a push (by HiXman himself, no less), even if a bit covert, than I don't know what is. Add in HoX #5, and the evidence only mounts, in support of that theory.
Thank you, loke13, for your objective & encouraging thoughts.
They have been reprinting the early 00s in trade and Lorna to date hasn’t been on one of the covers, but she finally made the X-Men Reload cover including Uncanny X-Men 443.
Last edited by jmc247; 12-05-2019 at 10:22 AM.
I specifically posted those select pages from HoX #5 & XM 132 for a reason. To show a connection between the two regarding Polaris, and that it was likely no accident she appeared in the former when & where she did. HoX 5's first BIG reveal revolved around the Resurrection Protocols, with those who died during the Genoshan genocide given a focus, as to its goals. I saw some reviewers question HOW that could even be possible, due to the logistics of it all. They wanted to know how Xavier could've possibly gotten Cerebro to house those millions of deceased Mutants' "souls" in particular, because to them, it seemed a real stretch. My first thought was OF COURSE, that's why Lorna was there, as a reminder and a... resource, where those imprinted memories, were derived from.
Also, in XM #1, not only was she shown as capable by the way she carried herself, but declared as valuable, per the words of Cyclops himself.
Good news. Havok's team is the Hellions, and its written by Zeb Wells. Meaning we still might get Lorna in X-Corp or some other title!
YES, thank GOD! C'MON VITA!!
Came across this, thought it was interesting & perhaps even relevant, given what we've seen of HoX & DoX Polaris so far:
https://www.xplainthexmen.com/260_101_01/
Storm and Polaris: a study in contrasts. And not just the hair. (X-Factor #101)
My bad, it wasn't JDW, but: C.B. Cebulski on Twitter: "Yes, this has all been planned since ...
… last summer and we're grateful for every creator who has worked on our X-titles since then, from X-Men Blue/Yellow/Red to Disassembled to Age of X to Major X to Uncanny. They have all been putting the pieces of the puzzle in place for HoX/PoX!