The Gifted isn’t a show I feel the need to go super in-depth with, for multiple reasons. For one thing, I feel like it’s a pretty niche show that already has its target audience. This is a superhero show, and even though superhero shows have become a lot more mainstream, there’s so many of them at this point that I know most people don’t watch all of them. The Gifted is the kind of show that I feel like most of the people that watch it are super into this stuff like me, so chances are that if you’re still with The Gifted in its second season, you’re a dedicated fan. The other side of this coin is that while some people might LOVE this show, for me it’s just another superhero show, and so in comparison to other shows in the genre it’s not my absolute favorite. I don’t feel the need to sell this one to casual audiences. If you’re into it, that’s great, I really enjoy it too. But if this doesn’t interest you, I’m not going to waste my time trying to sell it to you.

With that being said, I mainly want to use my time here to compare season 2 to its first season and see how it stacked up. First let’s talk about the plot. Like I said, I feel like you’re probably only going to read this review if you watched and enjoyed the first season, so I feel comfortable spoiling the end of season 1 in order to talk about this. Basically, the main group is now divided, and so now we have two factions fighting for what they believe is right. We still have our original group with the Mutant Underground, but this only includes some of the original members. The others (aka mainly Lorna and Andy) have gone to another faction called the Inner Circle. This group basically feels that the ends justify the means for their mission to fight for mutant rights, so they feel comfortable resorting to violence to achieve their goal. The crux of the conflict for season 2 revolves around the tensions between these two groups, especially as the Mutant Underground fight desperately to try to get their loved ones to come back to them.

I gave a huge compliment to the first season of The Gifted by saying that it was one of the only stories I’ve ever seen that’s actually made me care about the X-Men universe, with it being one of my least favorite superhero franchises. I just find it to be a repetitive franchise, with the story almost always revolving around “being hated for being a mutant is a metaphor for racism!” Don’t get me wrong, The Gifted still has this theme going for it, but its presentation just resonated with me better than others have. I found myself able to get attached to the characters more easily, and so now going into season 2 I had that connection to work with.

Because of this, I found season 2 to be a step forward for the series. I enjoyed it more than I did its first season (even though season 1 was still pretty good), and I found it worked for the same reason second seasons often do work. The groundwork has been laid, I’m invested in the lives of the characters, and so now you can play with these dynamics and make the conflict more interesting. This is what happened for me with season 2, where I felt as though the conflict between the opposing factions was so interesting because it was hard to watch characters I cared about be at odds with each other. In my opinion it was a better-told story, and because of that the drama was more intriguing.

With that being said, I’m not going to lie to you though. It’s not like season 2 suddenly turned The Gifted into one of my favorite television programs or anything. I really enjoy this series, and I do think season 2 was even better, but at the end of the day it’s not like I’m in love with the show. It brings me enjoyment in that “distracting fluff” sort of way, but it doesn’t do much else to further engage or entertain me on any visceral level. The Gifted’s sophomore season brings us 16 new episodes of the show, and it kept me hooked the entire time, but I didn’t really think about it much in the days between new episodes. I think that fans of the show will definitely still enjoy the show in its second season, and considering that it’s an improvement it’s possible that it will be more enjoyable for people that were initially on the fence about the show. For people that aren’t interested in the show or just plain didn’t like it, though, I don’t think the show will do anything drastic to change your mind here.

4/5