‘The Gifted’ Confirms the Existence of the Hellfire Club

The most recent episode of The Gifted confirmed the existence of yet another villainous organization in the X-Men television series’ universe.

The Gifted has previously acknowledged the existence of the Brotherhood of Mutants and the Mutant Liberation Front, two mutant terrorist organizations, but the episode “outfoX” confirmed the existence of a much less obvious organization of mutant power-brokers, the infamous Hellfire Club.

The reveal came as Lauren and Andy Strucker were looking into their late grandfather’s scrapbook about Fenris, the powerful twin mutant terrorists Andrea and Andreas von Strucker who had identical powers to Andy and Lauren, their descendants.

In looking through old newspaper clipping, it was discovered that Andrea and Andreas were members of the Hellfire Club until the X-Men’s pursuit forced the villains into hiding.

The Hellfire Club in the Marvel Universe is a high society organization that is run by a secretive and exclusive Inner Circle. That Inner Circle is not particularly interested in furthering mutant rights, though it has counted many mutants like Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost among its members. Instead, it is all about accruing power and wealth to serve its own self-interest. The Hellfire Club served as the villains of X-Men: First Class, with Kevin Bacon playing Sebastian Shaw and January Jones playing Emma Frost.

Those who have been following the development of Fox’s X-Men television plans may remember that a Hellfire Club television series, titled simply Hellfire, was in development but that those plans were scrapped and The Gifted was put into development instead. The reason given for scrapping Hellfire was that the series felt too much like it wanted to be a movie rather than a television series.

“It was too many characters and not enough depth of character,” X-Men producer Lauren Schuler Donner said of the project.

Instead, Fox went with The Gifted, which focuses on a tight-knight group of mutant outcasts working as the Mutant Underground.

The Gifted airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.