Don’t expect Jean Grey or Cyclops to show up to help out the superpowered teens on Fox’s upcoming X-Men adaptation The Gifted. As revealed at the show’s Comic-Con panel today, the Amy Acker-starring series takes place in a universe where Professor X’s mutant heroes (and their counterparts in Magneto’s evil Brotherhood) have both gone missing, taking the potential for big-budget crossovers with them. (There’s no Legion, either, with executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner telling a fan, “I’m sorry to break your heart. No, but thank you for wanting it.”)
The show’s producers pointed to the time-smashing shenanigans of X-Men: Days Of Future Past as a possible reason for the series’ isolation, suggesting it takes place in an off-shoot of one of the movie’s alternate universes. (They also all but admitted that bringing in a bunch of movie stars would be too damn expensive for a show looking to do mutant action on the cheap.) At least the absence of the X-Men will serve as a plot point, according to an extended trailer that was also released today, showing off the show’s full roster of would-be mutant heroes: