Marvel's The Gifted: 7 Reasons To Be Excited

Nobody's certain that the X-Men exist anymore in the timeline of The Gifted. Though there's an unspoken connection to Professor X and his students, Nix seeks to highlight The Gifted's own band of mutants for the length of the series.

The Gifted is loosely based on several comic storylines, namely District X, but it's largely an innovative take with no clear ties to the films. The District X run contains similar elements to The Gifted with mutants forming their own community to avoid discrimination. Nix left District X's characters to the comics but was inspired to create mutants in comparable circumstances.

Additionally, Nix considered how a government employee would react if his children enacted their mutant genes which led to the Strucker plot. The familial take offers a different X-men approach. Often, in previous X-Men renditions, the mutants join together as a family. In contrast, The Gifted explores the inner workings of specific family units.

Though the popular characters of the X-Men films will be referenced in clever ways, fans should prepare themselves for new treatments of Marvel creations. For instance, Nix has yet to reveal whether his Polaris shares a connection to Magneto like she does in the books but she's an important leader in Nix's underground crew of persecuted mutants. The X-Men rescue her from the Sentinels in the comics but they're absent in The Gifted so she must fend for herself.

While memories of the missing X-Men linger, Nix gives viewers a unique vision that doesn't require Cerebro.