‘The Gifted’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: “eMergence”

The episode opens with a meeting of the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle. Reeva Payge offers to explain what happened in Atlanta. She believes that mutants will only be safe if they have a place of their own and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that dream. The other members of the inner circle aren’t impressed, and they take exception to Reeva’s unilateral decision to recruit Polaris and Andy Strucker. Reeva uses her mutant power, her voice, to subdue the other members of the Inner Circle while the Frost sisters shoot them all.

Six months later, Lorna Dane is till at the Hellfire Club’s base in Washington DC and she’s still pregnant. The baby is due, but this isn’t how Lorna imagined it.

Sentinel Services raid an apartment complex in DC. Reed Stucker is listening in and phones to inform Thunderbird and the rest of the Mutant Underground. Thunderbird calls on Eclipse, Blink and the others to mount a rescue mission. Eclipse finds a group of mutants hiding away and takes them in. Blink and Lauren head to the storm drains looking for another group. Sentinel Services has the mutants cornered, so Blink opens a portal while Lauren uses her power to keep Sentinel Services at bay while they all escape.

At a dingy clinic, Caitlin Strucker tends to one of the young mutants the others rescued. After the lights go out and everyone else has left, she goes through a secret door in a storage closet wall to find Reed’s office where he’s working on falsified IDs and papers for the mutants they saved. They haven’t heard anything from Andy since he left to join the Hellfire Club, but Thunderbird did track Andy and Lorna to DC and they haven’t stopped looking.

The Hellfire Club brings Lorna to a munitions warehouse where she is to give birth. The baby has made Lorna’s more powerful but also made her powers more sporadic and dangerous.

The Mutant Underground holds a meeting. Eclipse is growing desperate to find Lorna since he knows his child is going to be born soon. He reached out to a hacker group for information.

Lorna and Reeva have a little heart-to-heart. Reeva reminds Lorna of what they’re trying to do. Lorna has heard about what happened to the previous Inner Circle. Reeva says she’s willing to sacrifice anything for the future they’re trying to build.

Thunderbird and Blink are taking care of one of the kids they rescued, Christina, from the apartment complex who is still looking for her sister.

Reed returns home from a trip to the Baltimore cell. He hears a ringing in his ears. He tries to encourage Lauren to get a job and meet kids her own age, but Caitlin wants her to stay at the homeless shelter where she’s been working to see if she hears anything about Andy.

Lauren walks up to a rooftop in the city and is surprised to see Andy there, especially as he looks quite different from the last time she saw her. Andy forces Lauren to combine their powers and Lauren wakes up screaming from the dream. Caitlin is desperate for clues from the dream that might lead them to Andy, but Reed and Lauren try to think of it as just a dream.

Caitlin calls Eclipse. She wants to talk to the hacker Eclipse made contact with to see if he has information about Andy.

The Hellfire Club is constructing a chamber for Polaris to give birth in within the munitions warehouse. Polaris has a bad feeling about the labor. She’s worried that if it comes down to it Reeva will choose her life over the child’s life. Lorna makes Andy promise that he’ll choose the child’s life.

Blink disguises her mutant features so that she and Thunderbird can search for Christina’s sister. Blink points out that while she has her eye-color changing contacts in she can’t use her portals.

Eclipse and Caitlin go to meet the hacker, Wire. He’s eccentric, tense, brash, and addicted to kick. He puts Eclipse and Caitlin at gunpoint to renegotiate the terms of their deal. Caitlin surprises him by quickly disarming him and putting the gun on him, even as she’s grazed by a shot in the process. Wire shows them what he found out about the Inner Circle, which was not easy to find. He tells them that Inner Circle disappears anyone who goes up against them. He puts the information on a drive and gives it to them.

Blink, Thunderbird, and Lauren tell Christina that her sister got picked up at a bus stop, but they do know by who. That’s when Eclipse shows up with Caitlin bleeding out of her side.

Thunderbird calls Reed and tells him to bring a suture kit for Caitlin. His ears start to ring and he writhes in pain. Something starts creeping up his arm from under his skin. It eventually fades.

At the Inner Circle headquarters, Polaris begins going into labor. She’s taken to the warehouse but her contractions are already beginning.

Caitlin mends her own wound and argues with Reed at the same time. She says their son was taken. Lauren says he wasn’t kidnapped, he left with Lorna.

The lights flicker in Eclipse’s apartment. He sees the same effect happening in neighboring buildings. Even from within her special chamber, Lorna’s powers are affecting her surroundings. Eclipse calls Caitlin and Reed up to the roof. He shows them how the electricity is behaving. He knows it’s because of Lorna. Caitlin figures out that she must be in labor.

The doctor says there’s something wrong. It’s a mental block preventing Lorna from dilating. Her blood pressure is too high and she’s at risk of dying.

The Mutant Underground tries to track the electrical surges to find Lorna.

The Frost sisters telepathically show Lorna a vision of the future where the Inner Circle’s plans have succeeded, a vision of the “dawn of the mutant age” with Lorna’s daughter standing behind her. Lorna gives another big push that nearly brings the building down. The entire electrical grid goes out. Without the electricity, the Underground can’t keep tracking Lorna.

Back at the warehouse, Polaris holds her daughter and names her Dawn.