I’ve brought up my issues with The Gifted repeatedly. And almost every time, it’s been through the lens of I love The Gifted, but…Not this time,though. After “afterMath”, I’m out. I can’t defend this anymore.

I’ve been iffy on this season from the beginning. The writing hasn’t been good, the character work has been sloppy at best, and the themes became a mess when they started trying to make the classic X-Men vs Brotherhood conflict work in a setting without either the X-Men or the Brotherhood. I kept watching, though, because I love the X-Men, Emma Dumont was doing an awesome job as Lorna, and the quality of the first season gave me hope that it would improve. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and while I can forgive moments of bad writing, I can’t forgive comparing people fighting against oppression to Nazis.

It’s really fucked up to compare the Inner Circle’s goals of a mutant homeland where members of a persecuted minority aren’t getting murdered on the streets to “Hitler’s big dreams”. Especially when one of the members is Lorna – you know, the half Jewish daughter of a man whose entire family was murdered by Nazis. Under some circumstances, I would probably assume this was intentional – an example of the members of the underground being so caught up in their issues that they got distracted from who the real enemy was – and give the writers the benefit of the doubt for another episode or two. After all, this comparison occurred in the same episode where Purifiers stormed a clinic looking for mutants and threatened the staff. The same episode where a roomful of those Purifiers started chanting “they will not replace us”, a sentiment that was instantly and terrifyingly recognizable. But if this season of The Gifted has proven anything to me, it’s that I shouldn’t give the writers any such benefit.

So much of this season has been about why the Inner Circle is wrong, even though they haven’t done much to be wrong about, or why their methods are evil. And sure, killing people is obviously bad. But that’s one of the biggest Captain Obvious Aesops I’ve ever heard. It’s the smug cowardice of centrists, the idea that “oh, taking a stand against oppression just means we’re sinking to their level!” Every time someone has been uneasy with what the group they’ve allied themselves with is doing this season, it’s been a member of the Inner Circle. The underground is still too busy being self righteous to consider the fact that they aren’t helping. If that weren’t the case, I’d be willing to wait for the season to play out. But it’s not. So I’m not.

We’ve seen this same thing in comics for years. Characters referred to Cyclops as “mutant Hitler” for destroying a toxic gas cloud that was killing mutants. Very obviously not Hitlerian at all, right? You would think so. But the writers, despite obviously recognizing what that whole storyline brought to mind, continued to behave as if Scott was a genocidal terrorist, rather than the guy trying to save lives. I am not even remotely down for watching a similar story play out with Lorna in live action.

It’s disappointing. The Gifted began with a huge amount of potential. And even this episode had a lot going for it – the themes of police brutality, the Purifiers, Jace Turner, the contrast between Rebecca’s desire to see the world burn after gaining her freedom and the other mutant’s forgiveness of the jury that put her in the mental hospital. But that one line, casually comparing the Inner Circle to Nazis, on top of the way there are more PoC as extras in the Sentinel Services and Purifiers than with any mutant group…it just goes to show that the writers don’t really understand the issues they’re trying to represent. And I’m done hoping that’s going to change.