While Lauren is reeling from her encounter with Andy, the Underground finds itself with a lot of additional mutants from the mental hospital and nowhere to put them. Clarice has an idea, but Marcos isn’t too happy about it. Meanwhile, the Inner Circle are having trouble reaching their newest member – perhaps Andy can get through to her and help unlock her potential?

One of the reasons I have always liked this show is that it deals with the sort of hard issues that the X-Men franchise was always built around, but it doesn’t ever do it cheaply. Where other comic book properties (indeed other treatments of this particular universe) can often feel blunt and heavy-handed with their messaging, The Gifted has always utilised the talent of its actors to the fullest, enabling a subtlety in the writing that is pleasing to see.

Here, there’s one moment in the opening flashback sequence involving a young Jace Turner on what we gather is an early day on the job as cop some 12 years previously. Witnessing – and then becoming complicit in – the brutal actions of his assigned mentor against a young mutant minding his own business, Jace has a moment to look at his reflection in the window of a car, and everything that you need to know is conveyed in that one look. On the surface, the scene works as an illustration of the man Turner used to be and how far he has fallen since, driven by grief at the loss of his daughter. On other, subtler levels, it’s about the sort of conflict that a person of colour surely has to feel as they become a complicit part of a system oppressing another group of people. Powerful stuff, and not the sort of stuff that comic book TV shows tend to deal with.

If there’s a theme to this episode though, it’s moving on. For Lauren (who to be fair doesn’t get a lot of screen time here) that means moving on from what she thought she understood about her brother, and accepting that maybe he’s more lost than she thought. For Caitlin, it means moving on from the laser focus on retrieving Andy and the horrible things it made her capable of to focus on the more immediate problems facing the Mutant Underground as a whole, being forcibly reminded of her duty within that framework. For John it means being reminded of the brotherhood he took for granted as a marine, and the duty of a soldier to put the big picture of the mission before individual considerations.

Elsewhere, it gets more interesting. Marcos has the opportunity to get to know one of the mutants they rescued from the mental hospital as they wait to see whether Clarice’s proposed solution will work out. The mutant – a young woman who can produce glowing orbs of light – is relentlessly positive, in spite of all that she’s suffered, and there’s immediate and obvious chemistry between the two. Now that it has become obvious that Lorna is lost to him, perhaps this is Marcos realising that there are other women out there. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but there’s a definite sense of Marcos waking up here, of not simply moping endlessly around the place after his ex and child. I’m not saying that he and this new character look like they’re going to walk off into the sunset (because again, this show is a little subtler than that) but certainly there’s a sense that maybe he’s able to start thinking about life beyond his immediate misery.

There’s a similar sense for Andy, who volunteers to try to get the latest recruit for the Inner Circle out of her shell when the others come up against a brick wall. With Reeva away, the Frost triplets worry that this latest ‘weapon’ they have acquired for her is ‘a dud’. Watching Andy connect with her is fascinating. As he explains the mission of the Inner Circle and its many virtues to her, the script and the performance of Percy Hynes White combine to give a distinct impression that he’s trying to convince himself as much as his new friend. When they spend some more time together, she reveals a quite unexpected side of herself. Her powers are extraordinary, but whether she will end up being Andy’s saviour or downfall remains to be seen.

As for Jace? Well, he’s also looking to move on, but the decisions he’s taking are based on impulse rather than reason. Confronted with more personal loss and no apparent sensible way out, he decides that maybe getting involved with the purifiers might not be such a bad idea after all. That’s a decision he may well come to regret, sooner or later.

Verdict: Week after week, this show continues to deliver. It’s becoming genuinely difficult not to have a certain amount of sympathy for pretty much every side presented here, in spite of the terrible things each shows themselves capable of. Compelling stuff. 9/10

Greg D. Smith