'The Gifted' Season 2 Will Introduce the Morlocks

The mutant underground will return to action in September in the second season of Marvel and FOX's X-Men television series The Gifted, and another mutant faction from the Marvel Comics universe will be joining them, the Morlocks.

There will be a six-month time jump between the end of The Gifted's first season and the beginning of its second. The Gifted star Jamie Chung let slip that during that six-month gap her character, Clarice "Blink" Fong, made contact with the sewer-dwelling mutant known as the Morlocks.

"Her love life is the only stable thing in her life," Chung explained, referring to Blink's romantic relationship with Mutant Underground leader John "Thunderbird" Proudstar. "They're still doing their missions. There are still mutants in need of help. She's found her place, with the Morlocks, and she's found her group that she's fascinated by."

Natalie Alyn Lind, who plays Lauren Strucker on The Gifted, noted that the Morlocks are just one more group vying to control the future of mutants in the world.

"We have the Morlocks, we have the Purifiers, we have the Hellfire Club, and we have us," Lind said.

You can get a hint of the Morlocks in The Gifted Season 2 trailer that was released during the panel when one character invites the Mutant Underground to visit the "real underground," likely a kind of pun on the fact that the Morlocks are mutants who literally live underground.

You can read our entire recap of The Gifted's Comic-Con panel here.

The Morlocks were created by Chris Claremont and Paul Smith during Claremont's 17-year long, franchise-defining run on the X-Men comics. The Morlocks are made up mostly of mutants whose mutations have altered them in such a way that they cannot pass for human in the surface world's society, and so they have formed their own community underground.

Some famous Morlock moments from X-Men history include when Caliban, a Morlock with a child's intellect, kidnapping Kitty Pryde to make her his bride, Storm's duel with Morlock leader Callisto for the right to lead the group, and the "Mutant Massacre" crossover story, in which Mister Sinister unleashed his Marauders into the sewers to annihilate the Morlocks.

The Gifted has already borrowed a few Morlock characters. Shatter, Trader, and Dreamer from the show's first season were all taken from the 2002 Morlocks miniseries by Geoff Johns and Shawn Martinbrough.

Are you excited to see the Morlocks on The Gifted? Let us know in the comments!

The Gifted returns for its second season on FOX on September 25th.