The Gifted EP Addresses the Insidious Threat of the Purifiers

CBR

The Gifted EP Reveals the Insidious Threat of the Purifiers

By Meagan Damore

Published Oct 17, 2018

The Gifted EP Derek Hoffman addressed the threat of the Purifiers and explained why it is perhaps 'the most real thing we have in the show.'

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for "outMatched," the latest episode of The Gifted.

Former Sentinel Services agent Jace Turner has started down a dark path. In "outMatched," the latest episode of The Gifted, the disgraced officer made his first steps towards joining the Purifiers, an anti-mutant hate group. According to executive producer Derek Hoffman, fans -- much like Jace himself -- weren't supposed to realize what was happening until it was already too late.

"Hopefully, you don't see it coming until it's happened, and then you're kind of like, 'Wow,'" he told CBR. "You know, I think it was in 2005 or something, the FBI released a document saying that the biggest danger to the country was not ISIS at the time; it was alt-right hate groups infiltrating law enforcement. And there was this feeling of somebody like him is very useful to them and the idea that where Jace is emotionally leads him to places where suddenly he looks around and isn't quite sure who he is or why he's doing the things that he's doing. It's a very strong theme that we play with."

"I think it would be hard for any of us to accept a character blindly walking in and being that overt. So we tried to make it happen as realistically as we could imagine. It's tough! And it's a hard thing to imagine," he added.

"The Purifiers, again, we try to honor the comic origins, but put them in a modern day place. Oddly enough, bigotry at that level is rather cartoonish, so you need to sort of slide into it slowly and kind of reveal that it's around you before you can be fully in it, so they don't as much have a headquarters or things like that," he explained. "I mean, honestly, it's like that feeling -- you know, Handmaid's Tale does it very well. Our nightly news sometimes feels like it's doing it. But that idea of, 'Wait a minute. How did we get here?' We're trying to explore that more of the thing that like, when people truly reveal their true natures, sometimes you didn't see it coming."

"I don't have them on the set tour because they are so realistic. Actually, a lot of their set, we've converted places in our offices. We converted one place that looks like a conference room that we use all the time and there was a production meeting today, so we couldn't go in today, but that gets converted into a church basement," he shared. "It's very disconcerting to have your office space turned into a hate rally. It's very unnerving, and -- even though you know all the people in the room -- you look around and you go, 'Wow. This is scary.' And I think it's possibly the most real thing we have in the show, for better or worse."

The Gifted Season 2 airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox and stars Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker, Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, Sean Teale as Eclipse/Marcos Diaz, Jamie Chung as Blink/Clarice Fong, Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Emma Dumont as Polaris/Lorna Dane, Blair Redford as Thunderbird/John Proudstar, Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker, Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker and Skyler Samuels as the Frost Sisters.