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Strucker Family
Reed Strucker
Reed Strucker
Portrayed by: Stephen Moyer
"All my life, I’ve been enforcing laws. The way I saw it, society only worked if there were consequences for breaking the rules. Lately, my feelings about society have changed a bit, but... it’s still something I believe in. Maybe in a new way, but I do believe it. It’s about trust."
A lawyer who works in mutant prosecution cases.
- Brought Down to Normal: Reed is a mutant but his father artificially removed his powers (though not his X-Gene) via a special serum. In the second season, however, his powers seem to be reasserting themselves.
- Death Glare: Invoked while threatening to sue the school. He thinks he overdid it, while Caitlin assures him it was "the perfect amount of glare".
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the Season 2 finale, he decides to deliberately let Reeva use her powers on him, so that he loses control and blows them both up. One of the reasons for doing so is that his powers are already spiraling out of control and are bound to kill him eventually.
- Make Them Rot: His mutant power seems to break down the structure of whatever he touches.
- Papa Wolf:
- His first scene shows him threatening the school director with "suing the school into oblivion" if he fails to stop his son's tormentors. Completed with Kubrick Stare. And then dorkily discussing with Caitlin exactly how appropriate that threat was.
- When he realizes the kind of trouble his children are in, he instantly decides to give up his career and everything he has worked for up to this point in his life, since it is the only way he can save them.
- Power Incontinence: He has pretty big issues controlling his powers. Especially after helping the Underground escape, he seems unable to turn them off.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Never shows any personal hatred against mutants. In fact, he sympathizes with Lorna and offers her help. He did what he did to uphold the law without thinking much into the suffering of mutants, but after his children are revealed to be mutants, he doesn't hesitate one second to leave everything behind to protect them from the very system he represented.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The man who prosecuted mutants is one himself, albeit a depowered one. Downplayed as the revelation takes place after he has joined the mutants' side.
Caitlin Strucker
Caitlin Strucker
"This is a burden, yes, but it's also a gift."
Portrayed by: Amy Acker
"A lot of people have been fighting this fight for a long time. And now it's our turn."
A nurse and mother of two children who she is worried are drifting away from her.
- Action Mom: Takes a more active role in season 2, with things becoming more critical between the threat of the Inner Circle and her husband's Power Incontinence.
- Badass Normal: In "eMergence," she takes down the powered mutant Wired despite the presence of his bodyguards, and forces him to give her the information she needs.
- Expy: Of the comics version of Moira MacTaggert. Caitlin is a normal human woman who becomes an ally of the Mutant Underground and uses her medical training to serve as The Medic for them, just as comics Moira is for the X-Men.
- Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Reacts this way at first when she learns that her children are mutants, but is much more supportive than previous parents in the franchise who have reacted in such a fashion. Though it doesn't take long for her to drop this mentality altogether.
- Mama Bear: Will do anything to protect her kids, especially when Lauren's powers are suppressed in the heat of combat.
- The Medic: She is building up as one for the Mutant Underground.
- Naïve Newcomer: To the world of mutant persecution. She hasn't fully realized that laws and rules don't matter much anymore and her children must learn to fight to survive.
- Selective Obliviousness: Despite numerous people bringing up the fact multiple times, she absolutely refuses to believe that Andy went with the Inner Circle willingly.
- Self-Surgery: Grazed by a bullet? She stitches up the wound herself, seemingly without using an anaesthetic to boot.
- Took a Level in Badass: Very early on, she was basically dragged along by circumstances, still shocked by her comfortable suburban life falling apart. However, she quickly gets on her feet, saves Clarice and decides to help the mutant cause after witnessing their abuse, both for her children and out of genuine support. Even more so in the second season, where she has been training with John during the 6 months Time Skip.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Trying to get her son back has made her very ruthless by the time of Season 2, to the point where she is willing to resort to torture.
Lauren Strucker
Lauren Strucker
"You know when you put your hand out of the window of a moving car, you can feel the air, and guide it? I can push the air together. Water, too, other stuff, it's just harder."
Portrayed by: Natalie Alyn Lind
"Remember when we were coming back from that concert at church? And the truck almost hit us? For weeks, you were saying it was a miracle we didn't die. Mom... it wasn't a miracle."
The elder Strucker child, she's known she was a mutant for three years, but hid it from her family.
- Action Girl: Despite her age, she knows how to use her powers efficiently and shows good reflexes and leadership to help her family on the run.
- Barrier Warrior: Her powerset includes the ability to create force fields, which appear to be dozens of translucent discs compressed together. As she describes it, she pushes together the molecules in fluids such as the air to create a harder substance. As the series goes on, she learns to use these force fields as weapons.
- Big Sister Mentor: Works to coach her brother in controlling his powers. Their applications may be different, but she still proves to be exceptional at helping him focus in more ways than one.
- Corrupt the Cutie: The Strucker family music box has a negative effect on her, causing her to become obsessed with her family history, listening to it all the while, and becoming aggressive enough to threaten their landlord for tipping off the police to them.
- Deadly Disc: She eventually learns how to weaponize her shields by making spinning discs that can effortlessly cleave metal.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: When she acquires the Strucker family music box, listening to it gives her dreams of when Andrea Strucker died.
- Generation Xerox: Much is made of the fact that her mutant power is an exact duplicate of her ancestor Andrea Strucker.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: She managed to keep being a mutant a complete secret for three years until her brother's powers activating forced her hand. From then on she's far more comfortable about it.
- Incest Subtext: Lauren and Andy are overtly paralleled with their ancestors, Andreas and Andrea, who it's heavily implied were a couple and had a son together. Their powers are tied to the quasi-shippy act of Holding Hands. There's a sexual metaphor in their powers — awakened at puberty; alluring yet dangerous; something they can do alone but which is much better when they do it together. This is not helped in the slightest by how the scenes are shot
. Heck, even knowing the context, the conversations they have about their powers sound really suggestive:Lauren: No! Andy, don't. We can't do this again!
Andy: You're wrong, Lauren. We're meant to be together. Fenris is our destiny. - Mind over Matter: An alternative application of her powers, she can use her force fields to push objects, like the food in a vending machine, or oncoming traffic. She later uses it to close one of Blink's portals.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The level-headed and protective Blue to Andy's wilder Anti-Hero Red.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: She is the collected, socially integrated Cool Big Sis of her loner, sensitive and awkward little brother. Unlike her brother, she's known about her powers and kept them secret for years, and said powers are mainly about protection compared to his destructive powers.
- Took a Level in Badass: This happens after she touches the music box, learning to use her powers offensively. It allows her to fight back against Andy, who had previously been defeating her in their dream battles and finally give him a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Twin Telepathy: Her and Andy's unusual X-gene allows them to share dreams and feel each other's pain, though this is sporadic.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Downplayed. Three years ago, Lauren's powers activated when she instinctively moved to protect her mother and herself from getting hit by a truck. She doesn't seem too mentally worse for wear afterward and has since adjusted to them despite having to hide the experience and her mutant status from her family.
- Wonder Twin Powers: She can focus Andy's destructive waves by using her power like a nozzle, concentrating them on one spot. If the two hold hands, they can cause untold destruction (their great-grandparents had genocide among their listed crimes).
- Psychic Powers: In "meMento" it's shown her powers have expanded to the point of having premonitory dreams about her great-great-aunt and great-grandfather after getting a music box the former owned.
Andy Strucker
Andrew "Andy" Strucker
"Why should we have to run?"
Click here to see Andy in season 2.
"The X-Men are gone. We're not little kids anymore."Portrayed by: Percy Hynes White
"So, what's the verdict this time? Am I stupid or crazy?"
The younger Strucker child, who is suffering the attention of bullies at school.
- Anti-Hero: Much more quickly angered and prone to using his powers in a violent way than his sister.
- The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest Strucker.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Lorna destroying the private jet carrying Doctor Campbell and Senator Montez convinced him to join the Inner Circle as he reveals in "Monsters". This doesn't sit too well with Lorna, who has been regretting the consequences of joining the Circle, and convinces him to follow her back to the Mutant Underground.
- Face–Heel Turn: Ends up joining the Hellfire Club in the Season 1 finale, due to his own wish to continue fighting the oppression against mutants more aggressively.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He is offended at Rebecca's anti-human prejudice since his mother is a non-mutant.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: He has platinum blond hair in Season 2, reflecting his Face–Heel Turn in the season 1 finale.
- Fantastic Racism: By the end of "eneMy of My eneMy", he begins to hate humans, seeing them all as mutant-hating bigots that will pass their anti-mutant views onto their children.
- Generation Xerox: Much is made of the fact that his mutant power is an exact duplicate of his ancestor Andreas Strucker.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: After spending most of the second season in the Inner Circle, Andy rejoins the Mutant Underground with Lorna at the end of "Monsters".
- How Do I Shot Web?: As a result of being the newest to having powers, he has little understanding of or control over their activation, and a tendency to panic when they don't work exactly how or when he wants.
- I Am a Monster: Says these words to his parents when he reflects on the fear with which they looked upon him after he gruesomely incapacitated Lauren's assailant. Reed tells him he knows how he felt, having just killed a man who threatened him.
- Incest Subtext: Lauren and Andy are overtly paralleled with their ancestors, Andreas and Andrea, who it's heavily implied were a couple and had a son together. Their powers are tied to the quasi-shippy act of Holding Hands. There's a sexual metaphor in their powers — awakened at puberty; alluring yet dangerous; something they can do alone but which is much better when they do it together. This is not helped in the slightest by how the scenes are shot. Heck, even knowing the context, the conversations they have about their powers sound really suggestive:Lauren: No! Andy, don't. We can't do this again!
Andy: You're wrong, Lauren. We're meant to be together. Fenris is our destiny. - Knight Templar Big Brother: Or rather, little brother. When Lauren is attacked from behind, Andy responds by disfiguring the assailant's legs.
- Mind over Matter: He was able to bend the showers in the locker room and cause a localized earthquake when he first used his powers. As he describes it, he just wanted to push everything away.
- My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction when he accidentally kills Twist, which shocks him into making his Heel–Face Turn.
- Person of Mass Destruction: He can create tremendously destructive vibrations for quite a distance.
- Power Incontinence: Since he's a bullied teen who fuels his powers with rage, he has serious trouble getting his power to stop once he gets it going. He starts to grow out of this as the series continues.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The uncontrolled Red to his sister's level-headed Blue.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: He is the loner, sensitive and awkward little brother compared to his collected, socially integrated Cool Big Sis. He suddenly and very publicly discovers his powers at the beginning of the series, unlike her long-term secret keeping, and those powers are ill-controlled and destructive compared to his sister's well-mastered protective abilities.
- Troubled Teen: Downplayed, but he has anger issues caused by bullying (which are part of what make him originally decide to leave with Lorna).
- Twin Telepathy: His and Lauren's unusual X-gene allows them to share dreams and feel each other's pain, though this is sporadic.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: What kicks off the series. His powers activated when he was being bullied by jerk jocks, causing him to tear his school apart. This goes on to be the cause of his Power Incontinence, since he relives the experience in order to activate his powers.
- Troubled Teen: He was bullied immensely before his powers kicked in, causing his rage issues and unstable power control. He copes the least with having his life uprooted.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Andy can't stop himself from destroying everything in the general vicinity but his powers are strong enough to easily destroy several Sentinel Services robots when Eclipse and Thunderbird were shown to have huge trouble with just one. He overcomes this in the second season via training.
- Was It All a Lie?: Indirectly, as he learns from Lorna that Reeva has been using both mutant and Purifier alike as pawns, meaning that Rebecca died for a lie.
- Wonder Twin Powers: By himself, his powers are unfocused, destroying both his target and everything around it. When Lauren uses her power to focus his, he can hit specific targets. If the two hold hands, they can cause untold destruction (their great-grandparents had genocide among their listed crimes).
Reed's family
Ellen Strucker
Ellen Strucker
Portrayed by: Sharon Gless
Ex-wife of Otto Strucker and Reed's mother. She gets questioned by Agent Weeks following Reed's arrest, and Sentinel Services later pursues her to find out what her ex-husband may have learned.
- Good Parents: As opposed to Otto, she seems very close with her son, defends him even while he is arrested for supposedly supporting terrorists, and has protested for both human and mutant rights in the past. When she learns about how Otto made their adolescent son deathly ill in the attempt to suppress his X-Gene, she feels devastated and guilty that she didn't protect Reed.
- I Will Only Slow You Down: Why she refuses to accompany her family into hiding. Downplayed in that she's not wounded, only aware that her age and general condition would make her a liability. And she doesn't plan to sacrifice herself, but to hide with a friend.
- Satellite Character: Makes three appearances, all of brief duration. She's seen in a flashback during a game of bowling with her family, during an interrogation scene with Agent Weeks, and in her longest appearance (several scenes) as the object of a rescue attempt.
Otto Strucker
Otto Strucker
Portrayed by: Raymond J. Barry
Reed's distant father, who once worked for Trask Industries. Secretly an extremely powerful mutant.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: The phrase "your great-grandfather and his sister" would suggest that Otto's mother was someone other than Andrea. However, no direct mention is ever made of such a woman. The evidence we do have — old family photos — shows Andrea acting as his mother.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: The guilt he felt for using a serum on Reed that nearly killed him made it impossible for him to look Reed in the eye.
- Defector from Decadence: He was raised by terrorists and genocidal maniacs, but when he grew up he became determined to be nothing like them.
- Guinea Pig Family: He used the prototype serum he developed to suppress the X gene on his own son, even though it nearly killed Reed.
- The Immune: Is immune to Pulse's Power Nullifier abilities for unexplained reasons.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Dr. Campbell is a through and through Jerkass for the entire season, so Otto scarring his face and putting him in the hospital is completely karmatic.
- Redemption Equals Death: Performs a You Shall Not Pass! on Sentinel Services in order to save his son and John, being shot in the process.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Worked at Trask Industries to right the wrongs of his father and aunt.
- You Are What You Hate: He is a mutant, but he worked for nearly 30 years to eradicate the X gene from the gene pool and in particular considers mutants of his own lineage to be a danger to all humanity.
Andreas and Andrea von Strucker
Andreas and Andrea von Strucker a.k.a. Fenris
Portrayed by: Paul Cooper and Caitlin Mehner
Otto's father and aunt. Mutant terrorists, with the same powers as Andy and Lauren.
- Adaptational Romance Downgrade: Their comics counterparts had a canonically incestuous relationship. The show avoids directly mentioning it, though they still have Incest Subtext. Here the von Struckers appear as Posthumous Characters, parallels to their Generation Xerox descendants Lauren and Andy. Lauren and Andy also have a substantial amount of Incest Subtext — although theirs is possibly unintentional and it doesn't seem the writers intended to go that way. Having Lauren and Andy's OG counterparts be canonically a couple would have highlighted that subtext, so it seems the romance downgrade was done in order to help the show not draw attention to something it would rather not dwell on.
- Age Lift: They were born decades before their comic book counterparts.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Andrea died in Andreas's arms after being fatally shot by authorities.
- Incest Subtext: Exaggerated Trope. They look like a couple in all the photographs of them. Andreas is said to be Otto's father, while his mother is unspecified. Both Andreas and Andrea raised him together, which naturally raises the question of whether Andrea was his mother. Most of the time the show refers to them with the phrase "your great-grandfather and his sister" but occasionally there's a slip-up. Interestingly, these slip-ups are both (1) said by people who are knowledgeable about recent mutant history, and (2) said when Lauren and Andy are not present, suggesting perhaps the story is being specifically whitewashed for them.
- Parental Substitute: The stories and pictures Otto shares of his childhood makes it clear that Andreas and Andrea raised him together. The phrase "your great-grandfather and his sister" suggests that Andreas and Andrea were Platonic Co-Parenting. However, this would mean Otto also had a birth mother who we never hear a word about. Occam's Razor and Incest Subtext suggest that Andrea may have been his biological mother as well.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Together their powers could bring down buildings.
- Posthumous Character: They're dead before the story starts. Their narrative purpose is to provide an example of how Fenris can play out.
- Single-Minded Twins: Together they were known as Fenris. They shared Wonder Twin Powers and — it's suggested — Twin Telepathy.Madeline Garber: The Fenris twins had a connection we still don't understand. Their power fed off each other. It was said they even shared their dreams. It was like they each had half of the same mind.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Otto is ashamed that his father and aunt are a pair of mutant terrorists. Reed is even more shocked once he learned about them since Otto never told him about them before.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Strongly implied, given they were Germans wanted for Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity shortly after WWII.
- Villainous Legacy: Learning about their history motivates Andy into joining the Inner Circle to fight for mutant rights. Even Lauren in Season 2 flirts with the idea despite not openly showing Fantastic Racism towards non-mutants after listening to Andrea's music box.
- Wonder Twin Powers: When they held hands they could access a terribly destructive power.
Caitlin's family
Daniel Reynolds
Daniel "Danny" Reynolds
Portrayed by: Jeffrey Nordling
Caitlin's brother, to whom she and the kids go to for help after Reed gets arrested.
- Beard of Sorrow: During his appearance in Season 2, before finding out that his sister and her family are alive.
- The Bus Came Back: Returns briefly in Season 2 and gives his family information on the Purifiers.
- Conflicting Loyalty: He is initially reluctant to aid his sister and her children beyond letting her stay over night, because of their fugitive status and having to put his son and wife in risk, but after a mob tries to attack his house he tries to fend them off and later provides information on Reed.
- Cool Uncle: Is well liked by Lauren and Andy, and helps his relatives out (after some brief hesitation).
- Shaming the Mob: Tries to do this to his gun-wielding neighbours who try to take Caitlin and her kids by force, but it doesn't work.
Scott Reynolds
Scott Reynolds
Portrayed by: Cooper Roth
Daniel's teenage son, who is quite bad at assessing dangerous situations.
- Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Big time. He texted a friend about his cousins being mutants and sent a picture of a trophy of his being crushed by Andy's powers despite them being wanted fugitives. It almost gets everybody killed after half the neighbourhood comes to the house, armed to the teeth. His excuse? His friend promised not to tell anybody.
