Legion, Season 1, Episode 4: Chapter 4
So this episode is the halfway mark of Legion's eight-episode long first season, and it's at this point that the show has to start balancing between psychological mindfuckery and all the X-Men mutant superhero stuff. And while most of the previous episodes lean so much more towards the weird mindfuckery, this one balances both sides of the coin beautifully.
This episode gives us the first real appearance of Melanie's missing husband, Oliver, who has made several cryptic appearances last episode as a dude in that old-timey diving armour suit thing. His soul/mental self/spirit is trapped in a huge iceberg room in his mind, however, even as his body is kept alive by Melanie and Cary. Oliver kind of sort of breaks the fourth wall as he gives a monologue into an empty room about the two different kinds of stories that parents teach little children -- those that teach empathy, and those that teach fear, and his performance in this scene immediately tell me that the dude's going to be a personal favourite in no small part due to the amazing actor they found for the role.
So let's talk about Oliver first. He's the main source of David's scenes in this episode, because the rest of the cast go on their own detective hunting for the real facts, while David finds himself stumbling into the Astral Plane, where Oliver has a conversation with him. The 'parasite' (definitely the Devil with Yellow Eyes, but it's unclear if this means Lenny too) can't reach David within Oliver's trippy iceberg room, and while Oliver's borderline insane himself in that 'easily distracted, what are priorities' way, Oliver tells David about a fair amount of things, like the whole parasite thing, and that David is feeding the creature... somehow. And it's kept delightfully ambiguous just how much is real and how much is in David's head. For all we know, "Oliver" could be yet another manifestation of David's fractured personality. But the takeaway from this scene is that David, in part, is responsible for enabling the demons in his own head, which is similar to how many people enable the same psychological demons that plague their daily life. Only, unlike real-life demons such as depression, David's Devil with Yellow Eyes doesn't just fuck up his life, it fucks up the reality around him as well.
This episode also shows us, through various ways (at this point I realize it's futile to recap every single thing that happens in the episode without sounding way too clinical) that David's memories that we've been exploring for the past few episodes is actually unreliable. They're not falsehoods per se, but the Devil has been altering them. Most importantly, the fact that David's druggie buddy Lenny? It's not actually Lenny, but instead a man named Benny, which is absolutely interesting. Did Lenny ever exist? Is Lenny just a personality in David's mind that assigns herself to replace other 'hey, embrace yourself' people in David Haller's life? Lenny herself, in-between creepy mania and vulgar dialogue (the actress they got for the role is pretty phenomenal), is amazingly awesome at being vague as to what her big game plan is, and by the end of the episode she ends up causing David to break out of the comatose state he's in, embrace his mutant powers... at the exact wrong spot. But we'll cover that later.
So yeah, Lenny's definitely acting independently in David's head, which is bad for him, and the jury remains out at this point if she and the yellow-eyed devil are the same being or if they're competitors, or if they are allies. Piecing together the pieces that we know from this episode, the Devil is definitely the parasite, and if he's been appearing to David in the form of the provocative Lenny (the literal angel/devil on your shoulder spurning you on to do things) then it's a clever way to get David to do what she wants to. The shot that juxtaposes Lenny's grinning face and the Devil with Yellow Eyes's own face seems to imply that they're the same being after all.
There are also so many different memories in David's mind that seemed altered. As Amy tells doctor Kissinger... they never had a dog (never has these five words feel so chilling), so that dog that keeps showing up in David's childhood memories, the same dog he chased last episode before the World's Angriest Boy confronts him? Yeah, that's probably Lenny or the Devil in a previous form. And the fact that some evidence like the tapes of David's old interviews have seemingly been destroyed really lends credence to Lenny/the Devil actively doing things to cover his tracks.
And as Syd, Ptonomy and Kerry try and figure out just what parts of David's life is real and what part is not by visiting the people and places in David's mind -- Philly, dr. Kissinger -- the mysterious weirdness of David's memories unspools and it's definitely amazingly done. Moreso than any series, I pity the fact that Legion isn't released in the Netflix format of an entire season at once, because, shit, watching these episodes when I did as they were released weekly, I had to keep loading up previous episodes to see how these scenes were presented in David's mind.
And amazingly so, the episode even works in the whole "what's real what's not" bit for the present day too because halfway through our heroes' talk with dr. Kissinger, they realize that it's actually the Eye and Division Three, which leads to a bit of mindfuckery too. Philly has been telling the trio that 'they're watching', so yeah.
Also, after all that heavy talk on parasites, this episode gives us a larger focus on Cary and Kerry, who previously just seemed to be two bodies in Summerland that are likable enough but didn't have anything special other than a strangely similar name. This episode reveals that they're not necessarily split personalities like David, not per se. They're more like conjoined twins but since this is the X-Men world, they share the same body, in that Cary and Kerry 'flip' around to transform and take control of their body, although this episode also shows that they can actually spend some time apart.
It's a bit of a sad backstory, too, where their parents apparently divorced when a baby that should've been a Native American girl was born as a white boy. This explains their difference in age, too -- whoever is in charge of their shared body ages, which is why Cary, who nominally takes control of their body for all the boring stuff (studying, eating, bathing) is so much older than Kerry, who only goes out for all the kickass action scenes. It's an interesting relationship, and seeing as the Eye shoots Kerry at the end of the episode we'll see if Cary gets the brunt of it as well -- he seems to be in pain, but whether that's just psychic backlash or if the injuries translate to each other remains to be seen. Also great is how even when they're separated, when Kerry beats up Division Three agents, in the Summerland lab Cary ends up mimicking his sister/other half's actions.
Also, in the more superhero-y elements of the episode, Syd ends up switching bodies with the Eye, unfortunately causing David to whack Syd-in-Eye away and rescue Eye-in Syd when he sees, what, to him, was the Eye preparing to shoot Syd (unaware that it's Syd's attempt to kill the Eye's "soul" if at the cost of her own physical body). It's a great final scene that alternates between the, y'know, actual action to the Kerry/Cary stuff to David and Lenny's arguments in their head, a wonderful blend of the trippy themes of the series as well as the mutant-powers-flying-everywhere action scenes... ending with David having unleashed his power, a traditionally 'aw yeaaah badass' moment for any superhero story, but the devilish Lenny creeping out from his back, showing who's in control (even if it's manipulation instead of outright 'assuming direct control') makes it so much more foreboding.
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