Which X-Men Movie Timeline Does Gifted Take Place In?

The X-Men franchise is currently on the path of rapid expansion, with successful R-rated film installments (Deadpool, Logan) and a critically-acclaimed TV series (Legion). Next up are a slew of exciting new film projects (New Mutants, X-Men: Supernova), as well as a new TV series – one that (unlike Legion) will be spun directly out of the X-Men movie continuity.

Titled X-Men: Gifted, the show will revolve around parents who discover their children are mutants, and must go on the run from the government to protect them. Along the way, they run into a network of mutant freedom fighters – including a few confirmed X-Men characters (like Jamie Chung’s Blink and Emma Dumont’s Polaris). Hunting them all the while will be government agents, as well as The Sentinel robots first introduced into the movie continuity by Days of Future Past.

As more and more cast and character details for Gifted are revealed, it raises the same question that seems to plague every new project in the live-action X-Men franchise: Which timeline of the X-Men movie continuity does Gifted take place in?

The Sentinel Factor

The biggest piece of evidence about where Gifted fits in the X-Men movie timeline comes from the inclusion of The Sentinels in the show. In X-Men movie continuity The Sentinels were first developed in the ’70s timeline of Days of Future Past, but by the end, the project was decommissioned.

However, the very last scene of X-Men: Apocalypse showed the new X-Men team training in the Danger Room against Bolivar Trask’s early Sentinel models, so presumably the project was eventually reinstated. 

That would place Gifted after the events X-Men: Apocalypse for sure – and with some added character info, we can begin to narrow down Gifted‘s place in the continuity to an even more specific point… 

Future X-Men

X-Men: Days of Future Past also introduced us to a whole new team of X-Men – a future version where only the most powerful team members survived. 

The roster included old fan-favorites (Magneto, Prof. X, Wolverine, Storm), but also a squad of new recruits, who displayed some impressive combat capability against the future Sentinels… before they were ultimately wiped out. 

That squad of future X-Men included characters Blink and Warpath; Gifted has cast Sucker Punch‘s Jamie Chung as Blink, while Blair Redford was the first announced cast member, playing “Sam,” a Native American leader of the mutant underground.

If you don’t see where we’re going with this: Some fans are speculating that “Sam” is a cover for one of the Proudstar brothers from X-Men comics (Warpath or his older brother, Thunderbird). If Blink is also in the mix, it would suggest and exact point for where Gifted fits in the X-Men movie timeline. 

The New Modern Day

X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Logan have now created some big continuity gaps in the X-Men movie universe. The ending of DoFP returns Wolverine to near future (one to two years ahead of us?) timeline where the Original Trilogy timeline has been altered by the events of the First Class timeline, so that characters like Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Prof. X are still alive. There’s then a gap between that time, and the events of Logan, which seemingly take place in this rebooted OT timeline (year 2029), when both Wovlerine and Charles Xavier have reached old age.

There’s then a second gap between the ’80s era beginning of the X-Men at the end of Apocalyspe, and the rebooted OT timeline of the late 2010s that Wolverine wakes up in during DoFP. Either one of those gaps is somewhere that Gifted could fit its story. 

As our own Jamie Lovett breaks it down, “It sounds like the show takes place between the original trilogy and future portions pf DOFP, especially since Blink and Thunderbird’s brother, Warpath, are part of the future X-Men in DOFP.

Bottom Line: Indeed, with the inclusion of characters like Blink, Polaris and Warpath and/or Thunderbird, Gifted will be trying to fill in the story of the new future timeline, now that the events of DoFP have been erased.