Legion S01E03 Review: The Stuff From Whence Nightmares Come From

Legion, Season 1, Episode 3: Chapter 3

Well, this episode certainly delivers even more mindfuckery. I'm trying to keep these  Legion episode reviews relatively short, but there is so much consistently jammed into Legion episodes that it's honestly a bit hard. We start off with Melanie Bird and her insanely complex coffee making machine who, in addition to looking like it should be able to power a small spaceship, also regales us with a fable about the crane seamstress, which is a folk tale from Japan, I think. Which I guess can be an easy allegory for any number of things that's happening in Legion right now. 

Meanwhile, David's training slash therapy begins anew,  with the threat of time that they gotta save Amy. Ptonomy and Melanie insists on returning back to the moment in David's memories that everything went south last episode, which was when David unleashes that slo-mo telekinetic chaos in the kitchen. Again, we get some more information that puts this flashback in more context. David fought with his girlfriend -googles spelling- Philly which was the trigger for this kitchen explosion. The trigger for the fight with Philly? Another earlier flashback scene that we (and the main characters) visited last episode, which is David and Lenny doing drugs on their living room. 

Of course, the Devil with Yellow Eyes shows up and is as creepy as all hell, showing us that, yes, he is real, and he is the one responsible for fucking up the memory playback. The moment when the claw starts manifesting and opening the door in the kitchen memory, and David's just screaming "you don't see him?" in huge panic while Ptonomy and Bird don't seem to realize what's happening is amazingly done. Again, it's ambiguous at this point if he's one of David's alter-egos (his comic book name is Legion, after all, and he does have multiple personalities) or if it's a villain (Mojo and Shadow King are two popular choices if we're picking from the X-Men pool, the former visually and the latter via modus operandi) but all we know is that the Devil with Yellow Eyes is fucking creepy, and he can take control of David's powers, sending David and his buddies ending in a completely different room from where they were doing the memory exercises. 

Another MRI trip later on in this episode has David thinking about losing his dog as a kid (oh boy that dog) and this time in one of the creepiest bits the show has ever done he now hallucinates a giant man-sized version of the World's Angriest Boy from that fucked-up children's picture book from last episode. The loud sound effects that accompany it doesn't help either, and it also shows that David's memories, from where we have been drawing our conclusions from, might not be the whole story because the World's Angriest Boy seems to have taken up the space of a figure in David's Halloween memory.

Meanwhile, in-between these horror-filled mental exercises David and Syd's relationship continue to grow, and we discuss the elephant in the room for their relationship -- their body switch, and just like the more well-known Rogue (it's downright criminal that she's never been in a movie for a decade now) she views her ability as so much of a curse that doesn't let her have adequate control over her own body.

In-between nightmare fuels (and it's easily ten times scarier than most horror movies due to the simple fact that I wasn't expecting any of these). We also learn that Lenny's actually an independent thing within David Haller's mind. Cary, manning the MRI machine, notes that David's brain has speech activity going on. Lenny is the voice of dissent, telling David off for leaving Amy behind, and for trusting Bird's operation because, shit, she's nice and all, but she's definitely secretive. So yeah, we've got our first real alter-ego and this mental conversation causes David to have another mental trip to the facility that Amy is held in... but arrives just at the point when Amy's breaking down and says lines like how she would've told him where David is if she knew... and the Eye actually sees their forms, hinting that maybe this mutant-hunter might be a mutant himself? Wouldn't be the first, certainly. 

Oh, and Amy herself seems genuinely surprised to learn that David's a powerful mutant, not a crazy madman. Time will tell if she'll be accepting of her brother.

This revelation causes Bird to take a more drastic approach than before, and David agrees. This ends up with sedation, which is enough to lower his defenses in theory. Ptonomy, Bird and now Syd enter David's mind again, seeing the mental projection of David having regressed into that of a child, who is scared shitless as the creepy fabric of space in the mental world of David's house break down and both the World's Angriest Boy and the Devil with Yellow Eyes continue to menace our heroes. One by one, Ptonomy and Syd get booted out of the mind except for Ms. Bird, and in one of the scariest fucking moments is when she's just investigating the room when you know something horrible is about to happen, and it does, where the book with the World's Angriest Boy very nearly kills her and rips her hand apart,  and after a brief flash of the Devil with Yellow Eyes, she wakes up. "I'm not so sure those are memories", she says as the episode draws to a close, though I'm pretty sure that if she's actually secretly evil she's doing a damn fine job at being a supportive mentor, if nothing else because she's upright and honest about why she wants to use David's powers... but also wants to help David's mind be relatively healthy.

Yes, the jumpscares are very annoyingly scary, but shit, it's also thrillingly horrifying. It also shows that, yeah, David's mind isn't alone. There are other... things in there that want to bring harm to at the very least invaders, intent on keeping at least some memories buried underneath. And there's the strange bit that's Lenny, too, and just what the fuck she is. Again, the jury's still out on whether the supposedly 'evil' personalities in David's mind isn't just protective of a particularly horrible secret. The episode is more focused on the tense thriller interlaced with nightmares and bad memories, and despite never being too fond of 'bwaaa gotcha' type of horror, this one manages to make the entire ordeal feel tense yet not assholish. So yeah, another great episode in Legion.