‘The Gifted’ Needs to Jump to Hulu and Become the X-Men Show It Was Born to Be

My fellow Marvel Comics fanatics know what’s humming in the back of my brain all day, every day: excitement for Marvel Studios getting the rights to the X-Men back. Okay, I get that there are a million more important things going on in the world, yes–that’s why it’s just humming in the back of my brain all day. But that’s how big of a deal the X-Men coming home is, big enough to warrant me thinking about it off and on while doing literally everything else. After almost 20 years of Marvel’s mutants’ movie rights being sectioned off from the rest of the universe, and after 10 years of every non-mutant Marvel character reaching astronomical heights of popularity (who ever thought Rocket Raccoon would rival Wolverine in ubiquity??), this lifelong X-Men fan is ready to see what the Disney’s acquisition of Fox means for my favorite misfit heroes.

Surprisingly, while I totally want to see a kickass and comic-accurate adaptation of the team on the big screen, the arrival of shows like Umbrella Academy and Doom Patrol have me jonesing for a perfect X-Men TV show. If Netflix and DC Universe can have shows about dysfunctional teams of weirdo superheroes, then there’s room for a third–and Hulu needs to get in on the fun! Fortunately for X-Men fans and fortunately for Hulu, a show already exists that could be the dream X-Men show we’ve all been waiting for: The Gifted. And with the show’s future as a major network superhero show in jeopardy (the ratings aren’t so hot for these sexy mutants), it’s time for Hulu to make a move.

I’m calling for The Gifted to continue on as a Hulu series, and I don’t think you need mutant agility to make that leap. Disney’s acquisition of Fox not only means the X-characters will for the first time have all their rights–comics, movies, and TV–controlled by the same company, it means that Disney will own 2/3rds of Hulu. Disney and Marvel already have a relationship with Hulu, evidenced by the Hulu original Marvel’s Runaways and Hulu’s upcoming slate of adult animated Marvel shows. Those newly-announced animated shows prove that whereas Marvel Studios (the company that makes all the movies) is making shows for Disney+ starring movie characters, Marvel Television (the separate company that makes The Gifted) is collaborating further with Hulu. The Gifted is right there!

The Gifted’s showrunner Matt Nix seems to know this too, as he alluded in an interview with /Film to the show potentially returning for Season 3 in a “creative way.”

“I think that my sense is that the most likely thing is that if we come back, we’ll come back in some sort of creative way,” Nix told /Film in mid-February. “Some partnership, because I think what we’ve discovered is that fans of The Gifted are big fans of The Gifted. We have a solid fan base and it’s a little small for the broadcast networks. But we do well on streaming so there may be, my hope is that there’s something to work out in that realm.”

There’s another reason why The Gifted should continue on Hulu, too, and it’s a big one: Season 3 would most likely be the first season of the show conceptualized and produced with at least partial knowledge of what Disney plans to do with the X-Men franchise. That could mean major, major things for this show. Let’s let our imaginations run wild for a hot sec.

While The Gifted is without a doubt the most faithful adaptation of the X-Men comics tonally, the show’s only had access to a few major X-heroes and has continually introduced brand new characters instead of pulling from comic lore. Polaris, Thunderbird, Blink, and the Cuckoos are fantastic, but they should just be the beginning. Kinda like how Supergirl introduced Superman when it jumped from CBS to The CW, casting and adding in fan favorite characters could give The Gifted the kind of buzz it needs to successfully jump from Fox to Hulu. It also makes sense that The Gifted was restricted from using characters that were used in Fox’s X-Men movies, but the Marvel merger means all of them could–maybe should?–be fair game.

For fun, let’s imagine all the ways The Gifted could get every single X-fan hyped for a Season 3, and how Hulu could ensure that we all get a subscription:

• Give us a major comic book villain, one that hasn’t been touched by the movies yet (even if he’s been hinted at numerous times). I’m talking about Mr. Sinister. Or, you know, give us a comic accurate Hellfire Club and Inner Circle (Harry Leland, Mastermind, Selene). Hell, Runaways has a raptor in it, so why not just go nuts and give us the were-pteranodon Sauron?! Go for it!
• Double down on giving us never-before-seen and popular mutant heroes, like Dazzler, Longshot, Northstar, and Forge. Those are characters right on the level–if not higher!–than Polaris, Thunderbird, and Blink. The show’s done a bang-up job with them, so you know they’d do right by any of these additions.

• But actually, why not bring in some movie characters? Ignore all the bizarre timeline shenanigans and just enlist whoever you want, The Gifted! Throw a bunch of money at Olivia Munn and actually make Psylocke (Psylocke!!) the lead character she deserves to be. If Dafne Keen isn’t available, cast an older actress to play an aged-up version of X-23 , thus giving The Gifted its own Wolverine. Or, you know, Mystique is a shapeshifter. Why couldn’t she be played by someone completely new–maybe someone that doesn’t mind wearing blue makeup? There are ways to incorporate movie characters that aren’t slavish to the overly complex movie canon while still being a very welcome reference to what’s come before.
• If the perpetually delayed New Mutants movie does get sold to Hulu as has been rumored, why not figure out how it works into The Gifted’s continuity and then give us those characters? Maybe some of those actors have other things going on (Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams may be hard to get to commit), but it’d be worth it just to see more of a comics legend like Dani Moonstar.

• This is a longshot (but not Longshot): just go for the gold and give us the X-Men. The Gifted is built on the premise that the X-Men disappeared years ago. Bring. Them. Back! This is a longshot because obviously Disney/Marvel wants to save Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and all the heavy-hitters for the surely killer movie they’re planning. But, there’s a TV DC Universe and a movie DC Universe, and that’s working out fine! Or if they want to reserve them for a movie, then give us all-new versions of characters the movies didn’t get right, like Banshee, Havok, or Multiple Man.

Doing any one of these ideas, or anything even kinda in the spirit of those ideas, would do a lot to make The Gifted even more of a must-watch for X-Men fans. The X-Men comics did a lot to popularize serialized storytelling back in the ’70s. They’re built for television. The perfect X-Men show could already exist, and Hulu needs to keep it alive.

Stream The Gifted on Hulu