Legion S02E05 Review: Apparently, On Legion...

Legion, Season 2, Episode 5: Chapter 13

I absolutely love how the recap for this episode starts off with "Apparently, on Legion" instead of previously as many TV show recaps start off as. Considering how liberal Legion plays with unreliable narrators, deception, illusions and reality warping tropes, it's a neat little touch that I absolutely appreciate in the part of an episode that people tend to overlook.

The entire episode revolves on this whole "apparently" thing, as Division Three members take turn to interrogate Lenny, who has mysteriously appeared and been apprehended at the end of the previous episode. Everyone lampshades how Lenny was merely a fragment in the Shadow King/David Haller's mind, and not an actual person with an actual body (anymore, anyway, with the real Lenny's body merged into a wall). Everyone tries to disorient Lenny, with the initial interrogation by the no-nonsense Clark taking place in a weird upside-down room. Lenny tries to paint herself as an escaped hostage who is just confused, repeating anecdotes about her gran-gran and keeps telling everyone that she's the victim and an escaped hostage who just wants to talk to David, but no one is taking any chances, which is neat. Everyone basically acknowledges that Lenny is being used as a pawn by Amahl Farouk in his weird chessmastering against Division Three, but to what degree?

Ptonomy's interrogation starts off with one of Legion's philosophy talks, with Ptomony giving this speech about past, present and future as he tries to figure out whose body has Lenny taken over since she doesn't really have a body to return to per se, especially since Lenny's eyes are different. With Lenny's mind being unreadable, Ptonomy's attempts to read into Lenny's mind ends up causing him to see a lot of weird shit, including the face within Admiral Fukuyama's basket-hat, that of a weird bug-eyed bird demon creature. Is this literal? Is Fukuyama an alien or a mutant of some sort? Is it a delusion planted by the Delusion Chicken (for lack of a better term)? This episode establishes that the weird oil-like Delusion Chicken seen earlier in this season isn't just a metaphorical term for the Catalyst disease, but what appears to be an actual entity that's worming its way into Ptonomy's mind, leading to another plotlines that this episode builds up a little.

Speaking of a different plotline, the B-plot running throughout this episode follows Oliver Bird and Amahl Farouk as they go on a journey through the desert, doing some grave-digging and unleashing a device that they have stolen a couple of episodes back from Division Three. The two of them keep talking about conspiracy, coincidences and patterns, and how humanity tends to look for patterns as a holdover from their days as hunter-gatherers. Their little side-quest ends up tying into the initially seemingly-unrelated Lenny interrogation, because as we follow Oliver and Amahl as they follow a weird submarine-car and discuss the morality of killing other humans (Amahl is fully in the camp of mutantkind being Homo superior), before the story shows Amahl Farouk's end goal just as David himself realizes what's happening. We also get the clear note that Oliver is actually not very happy being used as a pawn by Amahl, and promises to kill him in the future.

The final person to interrogate Lenny before we get answers is, of course, David, and we get some questioning as to just how much of their weird friendship/relationship is real. Lenny acknowledges that, yes, she's being used by a pawn by Amahl Farouk, but she doesn't really mean David any real harm, and is about as confused as David is as to the circumstances behind her resurrection. And, of course, the truth of Lenny's body eventually dawns on David as the episode cuts to the finale of the Oliver/Amahl road tour.

Because Oliver/Amahl arrives onto the house where David's sister Amy Haller is staying, and it genuinely plays out like a goddamn horror show. It's a bit of a shame that we've not actually checked in with Amy at all this whole season, because it does sort of lose a bit of an impact when I go "oh, right, this character exists", but the episode more than makes up for it by playing up some neat serial killer/horror scenes. After a bit of an ominous foreshadowing where Amy talks about how she's dreamed that she's got a mustache and talks about being the "Machine That Bleeds", apparently dreaming that she's part of the Vermilion, we go straight into serial killer territory as Amy's bodyguards, and subsequently her boyfriend, gets killed and turned into dust by Oliver-Amahl, and as Oliver-Amahl calmly washes his hands, it's clear that Amy is very, very much helpless.

Amy gets mentally manipulated onto the table and is sculpted into the body that holds Lenny's consciousness (jury's out if Amy's actually dead, though, or if some part of her psyche remains in the new Lenny body), and Oliver-Amahl sends Lenny-Amy to Division Three as a cruel, cruel distraction. Lenny and David, in Division Three, very appropriately freaks out as they figure this out. It's the possible death of a major supporting character, told through a pretty well-executed horror and mind-fuckery lens. Pretty good stuff here.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Amahl Farouk refers to mutantkind as "Homo superior", the term that is often used by X-Men villain Magneto in describing mutants as the inherently superior evolution of mankind.