With four episodes to go, The Gifted seems like it’s gearing up for what promises to be an explosive end of the season, with Polaris firmly on the Mutant Underground side and acting as a double agent, Andy desperate to reunite with his family and susceptible to manipulation because of it, and the Frosts doing Reeva’s handiwork and throwing away all the good will they had accrued by being nice to Lorna and Dawn.
But then again, we always knew this was going to happen at the end of the season, and “hoMe,” seems to be, in a way, the beginning of the end. Everyone was going to have to pick sides. And we weren’t always going to like the sides they picked.
That doesn’t necessarily apply to the Frosts, we never really had any delusions they were really going to turn on Reeva, but it does for Clarice, even if I said it time and time again – the person she is, the person she wanted to be, was always going to pick the Morlocks. She was always going to choose to be Blink, because to her, that’s who she’s always been. That’s how she feels safe. And she’s gone out of her comfort zone again and again for John, and she might still be doing it, if it didn’t feel like he was fighting a losing battle and she just didn’t want to be witness to his demise.
Love isn’t always simple, but as we’ve discussed before, love is at the center all the decisions, good or bad, these characters make. It’s why Lorna joined the Inner Circle, and it’s also why Lorna has now seen the way out of the promise the Inner Circle tried to sell. Love, for her daughter, love for Marcos, and love for her friends.
Love.
And it’s love that, finally, seems to be the breaking point for Andy. We forget, especially because he’s been a little shit at times this season, that he’s just a kid, one who made a decision, yes, but one whose decision had a lot to do with fear and with rebellion, and one who desperately loves his family and wants to be with them.
He wants them to love him. He wants them to be proud of him.
Which is why he makes the decision to let the Frosts help him manipulate Lauren into joining the Inner Circle. Deep down, Andy knows this is wrong, Polaris even tells him so when he asks for her advice, but he goes ahead with it anyway, because he misses them so much that he just cannot live without trying something, anything, that might bring them back to his side.
Love, again. The good choices, and the bad ones.
However, one thing Andy (or the Frosts) isn’t really taking into account, mostly because he hasn’t been there and he just doesn’t get it, not really, is that his family isn’t who he thinks they are, not anymore. They’ve all grown stronger because of this fight, and they will all fight for him in the same way he’s fighting for them, but they will do it together.
And that’s why I believe they will ultimately succeed.
The arc of this season was always about the choices we make for love. Lorna has already made the wrong choice, and then the right one. It’s time for Andy’s journey, for Andy to come back, not into the light, because there are many shades of grey to what both groups want – even if there are none to the methods Reeva is willing to use to get there – but to the side of his family, the people who love him.
If he doesn’t, considering he’s already ‘lost’ Lorna, then he’ll be truly alone.
So, buckle up. It seems like we’re in for a hell of a last stretch. Plot wise, I trust the writers. Character wise, I’d love to get just a bit more of emotional investment, in all of them. This episode did a hell of a job in that regard with Thunderblink, and it was one of the first times when I truly felt their love for each other and the tragedy that is that they just don’t agree on methods, just like Marcos and Lorna.
This is the strength of the show. It’s characters. Those dualities. And whatever’s coming, we’re going to feel it so much more if they focus on that.
Here’s to hoping.
