The Gifted Canceled After Two Seasons
The Gifted received the worst gift of all this week: a cancellation from Fox.
Variety confirmed on Wednesday, April 17 that 20th Century Fox Television has pulled the plug on the Marvel superhero drama series after just two seasons on air.
Set in Marvel's X-Men universe, The Gifted centered on suburban parents Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) and Caitlin Strucker (Amy Acker), who were forced to run from the government after discovering their children, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White), have mutant superpowers. The Strucker gang ultimately joined an underground network of mutants in order to evade the hostile forces on the surface world.
The Gifted also starred Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Jamie Chung as Clarice Fong (a.k.a. Blink), Blair Redford as John Proudstar (a.k.a. Thunderbird), Emma Dumont as Lorna Dane (a.k.a. Polaris), Grace Byers as Reeva Payge, and Skyler Samuels as the telepathic Frost Sisters — Esme, Sophie, and Phoebe.
The first season premiered in October of 2017, and established the central premise of the series; the second season began airing in September of 2018, and saw conflicts building between the mutants living underground, a society known as the Inner Circle, and various other people following radical ideologies.
As Variety details, The Gifted started off relatively strong, averaging a 1.0 rating in the pivotal demographic of adults aged 18 to 49. Roughly 3.31 million people tuned in to watch the first season of The Gifted, but things took a sharp decline by the time the series debuted its sophomore turn. The demographic rating dropped to 0.59 — almost half of its original score — and the series' average viewership plummeted to 1.95 million. However, The Gifted maintained solid critical reviews throughout its two seasons, with reviewers enjoying the second season even more than the first.
Fox didn't offer an explanation as to why The Gifted has been axed, but we can assume that soft ratings may have played a part in the company's decision. What likely contributed to the choice to cancel The Gifted more than ratings or reviews, though, is the recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox Television (along with the majority of 20th Century Fox's assets) by the Walt Disney Company. The television branch of Fox's production is now owned by the House of Mouse, which paid $71.3 billion in the merger that went through in late March; per the terms of the deal, Disney now has say over what happens to movies and series formerly crafted by Fox. Those two factors combined seem to have made a third-season renewal for The Gifted beyond the bounds of possibility.
This cancellation means that The Gifted has ended on a cliffhanger, so, unfortunately for fans of the show, they may never get to find out whether that certain thought-to-be-dead character truly is gone. There's a small glimmer of hope in the notion that The Gifted could get re-shuffled to Disney's upcoming streaming platform, Disney+ — but unless that actually happens, the series will go down in history as one arguably cancelled too soon and without getting the chance to tie up its loose ends.