Legion, Season 1, Episode 5: Chapter 5
Welp, this episode. Last episode ended on a huge cliffhanger -- Lenny managed to make David unleash his powers to save his friend, but in doing so she manages to exert her influence on David. And David's arrival to save his friends saved the wrong person. The Summerland Team manages to get back relatively okay (Eye-in-Sydney aside, though since we know from previous displays of Syd's power this is temporary and didn't last very long into this episode) and while Kerry survives by Cary absorbing her, it's clear that the twins aren't going to be super-productive any time soon.
Meanwhile, David, having claimed to have mastered his powers, is suddenly calm and confident, a great contrast to the more fritzy personality he has in the past four episodes. Even without Lenny's influence, exerting that much power, added with the revelation that he's not crazy but instead is a man with godlike abilities, has to be one helluva power trip, and he will break his sister out of Division Three's prison, especially when Lenny convinces David to sneak out and do it on his own.
David's confidence worries Melanie Bird, but doesn't do so for Syd in no small part due to David's increasing control of his psychic powers, allowing him to create this mental room-space where they can finally have sex without any... unfortunate power explosions going off. Doesn't help that David's aura of confidence is definitely soothing and calming. "I'm the magic man!" It's a nice, tender moment before everyone panics the shit out that David's disappeared, thinking that the man has gone half-cocked on a suicide mission and is about to get his ass handed to him by Division Three only to discover that, shit, someone with telekinetic powers? Really, really strong. We don't really see David unleashing his powers per se, but a combination of security recordings and Team Summerland discovering the after-effects amazingly details this, with gruesome bodies clumped together, bodies melded into walls and floors, that creepy-ass tower of limbs... it's body horror in full value. The only person left alive is the Eye who tries to fool our heroes by making himself look like the psychiatrist from Clockworks, but Team Summerland leaves him in his cell.
It doesn't paint David's rescue of Amy and his systematic horrendous slaughtering of every single person in the base as anything but horrifying, and the glimpses of the Devil with Yellow Eyes in security footages make it even creepier. One of the Division Three bosses, Brubaker, dies in front of Ptonomy and Syd, warning them that "it wears a human face", hinting that he might actually know more about the mysterious Devil's identity and nature.
Cary, meanwhile, sitting out the supposed-rescue mission (Rudy, the telekinetic mutant from episode one, takes over for Kerry as the group's main fighter) also finds disturbing findings after looking into records of David's brain scans, and discovers the real truth of the parasite. It's always annoying when different characters in the same show have to race to same conclusions and revelations, but here it's done well. Cary gives us even more information as he reports this information to Doctor Bird, about how this monster isn't part of David, isn't an alternate personality created by David, isn't the mental manifestation of David's dark desires or anything. It's an older, powerful consciousness that, in Cary's words, 'burrowed into David's brain' and has been sitting there for the past 30 years. It explains why David's memories is so hard for Ptonomy to transverse, it's because every single memory where David realizes that the Devil (or, well, Lenny since that's the form that he/she takes most of the time in this episode) exists, it makes him forget. Locks away the memories. Which is pretty cool. This seems to cause Ptonomy in particular (who doesn't view David as a friend per se) to vouch for a more... drastic undertaking, though other members of Team Summerland shut him down pretty quickly.
Syd, meanwhile, connected to David after a brief meeting in their White Room (a.k.a. the psychic sexy times bedroom) realizes that David has taken Amy to their childhood home, where it all begins. At which point, Lenny appears and unleashes his (David's?) power. It's horrifying because we really don't know what David wants to do with poor, poor tortured Amy. I don't think I ever thought that David would ever hurt Amy, but Lenny certainly is erratic and malicious enough to do so. Amy also drops a big bomb -- David's adopted! Which, in the excitement and originality that all of Legion has given us, makes me actually forget that David Haller is an adaptation of an actual character from the Marvel comics. It's always nice when a spinoff is able to do that -- still stay within the rules and works of the franchise, but makes itself stand so strong that revelations like these actually have a bit of a surprise factor to it.
Amy's scene is delightful, isn't she? She didn't have much to do in the series before this beyond being the object to be rescued, and having some brief conversations with the Eye and the psychiatrist (who might not be captured after all and be the Eye all along), but on the other hand her scene about telling David that his being adopted doesn't change anything, she still loves his brother, it's just that she always thought that David was just ill because it was so much more sensible than the alternative. Just like Syd earlier when David shows so much confidence in his powers, both Syd and Amy are so ready to accept that things can be just that simple, ignoring some glaring warning signs here and there that things aren't what they seem. It actually applies to Doctor Bird as well, who, upon the revelation that David met her husband in the Astral Plane, shuts down Ptonomy far quicker than she probably would have had this question been raised to her a couple of episodes ago.
Team Summerland arrives at David's house for some mutant action (Cary pulls out this weird sci-fi headband to separate Lenny the parasite from David), but Lenny uses David's power to cause all sound to disappear in an amazing scene where there is absolutely no sound at all, a suitably creepy, tense and yet simultaneously fun and hilarious scene. The final conflict has the team show up and see Lenny and David, with Lenny making a big show of groping the comatose David in front of Syd -- Lenny's always been absolutely touchy-feely in their mental conversations, but the revelation that Lenny is actually an independent being makes this so much worse. Lenny blames Summerland for putting all the ideas in David's head, and she's taking all this personally, feeling threatened that David can actually be so confident about his powers.
Of course, everything goes absolutely fucking south as the Eye shows up and blasts David with a fucking shotgun.
We get some slow-motion Inception shit as David and Syd hides into the White Room, where they are attacked by the Devil with Yellow Eyes himself, and boy, if Lenny groping David in the real world is creepy, nothing is quite as horrifying as the huge glob of creepy fat and wrongness that is the Devil with Yellow Eyes chasing Syd down and pinning her to the bed. It's also a great symbolic bit to show that David is helpless in the very room which he created with the purposes of being in control and being private, while this parasite in his head chases down the woman he loves. David screams.
And then everything stops. Which is weird because we get yet another mind-fuck. Syd wakes up, and she's back where we started -- Clockworks Mental Institute. Familiar sounds. Calming ping-pong background sounds and hospital muzak instead of the horrifying tense background music or the creepy visuals of David's house. Every single person from Summerland from personality-less Rudy to even the Eye is there as patients, and the doctor? Lenny. Obviously this isn't a "it's a dream after all!" plot twist or I'd be super cross, but it is neat that the audience has no idea what's going on beyond Lenny's in control. Is it an elaborate mental illusion-prison? Is it Lenny warping reality and changed the timeline? Fun stuff, even if the ending is a bit too erratic for my tastes.
There were a couple of weird bits that leaves me more confused than anything, such as why is Lenny-in-control-of-David so intent on knowing David's heritage? Why did they decide to return to David's childhood home, was that David's sentimentality or more Lenny manipulation? A great part of David's actions in this episode is that we're not entirely sure, post-magic-man scene, how much of it is David and how much of it is Lenny. Well, we'll see how we'll get through this as we go into the final act of the story.
Oh, and despite the review being already as long as it is, I still haven't covered so many smaller details in this episode, but let me just point out the absolutely unsettling story of Syd's first sexual experience, where she switches bodies with her mother just to do so. God, that's just so fucked-up, especially since Syd is absolutely right -- who's going to teach one-of-a-kind mutants like her how to live normally?
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