Legion, Season 1 [2017]
[originally reviewed as separate reviews throughout June 2017]
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Legion, Season 1, Episode 1: Chapter 1
I've been putting off reviewing Legion for the longest time, in no small part due to me being rather confused as to how exactly to approach this series. It's not your typical superhero TV series, and I am legitimately pleased that the superhero genre manages to give us so many variations in the types of story that it can tell while still remaining true to the source material. Legion is the first TV series to be produced by 20th Century Fox, a spin-off of their X-Men movie series surrounding a character that's not super well-known to the public (I certainly knew nothing about Legion beyond his parentage), and it's still up in the air whether it's in the same continuity as the movies.
Now I'm going to apologize beforehand if I make some errors as to the specifics of when certain events happened. It's been a couple of months since I watched the show in its entirety as it aired, but back then I was just not entirely sure how to approach reviewing the series. I'm fast-forwarding through the episodes to get the essence of what happened when, but there may be mistakes as to some specifics, so bear with me.
Straight-up, Legion is not for everybody. It is a very... artsy show, one that relies heavily on symbolism, unreliable narrators and the viewpoints of a man with a mental disorder, only because the setting has reality-warping mutants in it, it's extremely ambiguous just how much of what our main character is seeing is real, how much is part of his insanity, and how much is it viewing the real world through lenses of madness. It's not a show that's interested in building huge connections with any pre-established canon, or to tie in with some grand plan, but instead just to tell its story about a single character, the titular Legion. It doesn't quite entirely succeed in being accessible to all viewers, I'm afraid, tone-wise, but while the first episode is a little shaky what it tries to do is still very evident and an interesting mind-fuck to watch.
The episode begins with a wild, fast-paced montage of our main character, one David Haller, going through an intensely fucked-up life which culminates in him being stuck in an asylum, and then interrogated by government officials about an incident in said asylum. We're left confused just how much of the asylum scenes are real and how much is in David's mind. It's a first episode that might be similar, on a brief glance, to Iron Fist's first episode, in that even the main character is confused if he's this superhero or not, when the audience is just antsy because, shit, the only reason I'm watching the episode is because it's the first episode in Iron Fist/Legion, why have the main character doubt a fact whose payoff is set in stone? David Haller believes he's insane, everyone's telling him that, he sees other crazy people seeing things and hearing voices and, hey, if other 'broken' people are like that, why isn't he? The fast-forwarded montage from a happy child to a hopeless, suicidal man in an asylum is pretty effective. Of course, the audience knows better -- he's a mutant. A very powerful one at that.
Yet at the same time, as we see the world through David Haller's eyes, we see random people laughing in corners that other main characters (like David's sister) never interact or even acknowledge. Or that one random dude hiding on the vine walls, dressed in leafy getup. We've got random flashbacks to David screaming and unleashing hell in a kitchen with flying cutlery. We got random visions of green grassfields and whatnot that seemed to mean nothing. Hell, even something as mundane as the very brightly-coloured uniforms and giant halls of Clockworks Hospital might actually be how David's mind perceives, because we see brief moments of things that are definitely not from David's POV, when the scary government people are trying to get him to recall the 'disastrous event' that happened, and we see that the asylum is more dreary than cartoony.
So after six years in Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital, he meets a pretty girl, Sydney Barrett (a.k.a. "Syd"), a girl who refuses to be touched by anyone. Syd just seems to be another among the large amount of crazies in Clockworks, with her own obsession/compulsion... yet at the same time, David finally has something to fight for, something to strive beyond shuffling through the same routine in a mental hospital, because he's in love.
The earlier parts of the Clockworks story is a bit slow-paced, agonizingly so, as we are introduced to David, Syd, and David's best friend, the ever-sarcastic Lenny (who seems to be David's compass as to confirming whether this person or that person is real) and the humdrum of life in Clockworks, as well as Syd and David's budding romance. Of course, things go to hell as Syd is allowed to be discharged, David tries to stop Syd, kisses her... and unleashes chaos. Only near the end of the episode do we really realize that Syd herself is a mutant with her own powers, and it's not David's own mental powers that's fucking shit up.
See, Syd is kind of like Rogue, in that she can't have physical skin-to-skin contact not because of a powers-draining thing, but because she'll switch bodies with whoever she touches. And when she switches bodies with David, everything goes crazy because of the sheer amount of power in David's body. It's unclear what happens, purposefully so, but we do know that Syd-in-David basically killed everyone in the hospital, with grotesque scenes such as bodies merged and embedded into the wall (including Lenny) and dead guards everywhere.
Again, it's this uncertainty that drives this episode, as much as the middle part with all the romance stuff might be slow. In addition to David Haller himself being an unreliable narrator, the addition of things like ambiguous timelines, flashbacks, looping times and even whether characters like Lenny are even real, or if they're the little Jiminy Cricket voice in David's mind (note that Lenny never interacts with anyone) and the audience is as confused and bamboozled as David himself at the end of the episode.
The villains of the piece is shown relatively quickly. We've got the government people, as well as the 'devil with the yellow eyes', which David mentions in his rambles (and we see briefly in some well-executed jumpscares as this weird evil gnome-thing with, well, scary-ass yellow eyes). Of course, at this point we have no idea if the devil with yellow eyes is an alternate personality, something David makes up, a symbolic representation of suppressed powers, or an independent entity.
Of course, with this wonderful representation of a chaotic mind, the episode sacrifices a good chunk of exposition-style storytelling, which only really it manages to do in its back end. Which I actually felt was a decent step to take. By the time we return to the interrogation room, David unleashes his powers and breaks any illusion that (most) of his time in Clockworks is simply the product of an insane mind. The scenes where the mysterious, stern men-in-black grounds us in the real reality of the situation as we see scenes outside of David's chaotic perspective. David is held hostage and the men in black advocates for murdering David before he realizes his 'abilities'. Which he, of course, does, with spectacular fashion as pens are sent flying into people's faces and people are knocked back and shit. Of course, the government organization subdues him and is about to execute him with a swimming pool (which is, looking back, a very, very weird thing).
At the end of the episode, the men in black gets wiped out by two people -- Ptonomy and Kerry, who promises to bring David to 'Miss Bird', and are apparently allies of Syd. Again, all these people mean nothing to us at this point, beyond the fact that they were briefly seen when David swapped bodies with Syd. We don't know what the organizations are, we don't know who to root for other than David... and hell, we don't even know if Lenny is real, or if Syd herself is truly an innocent mutant or an ally of Ptonomy/Kerry's group or the men in black. It's weird, it's hard to ascertain what is real and what is not, it's a huge exercise in mindfuck, and it's a great way to show how the world looks through the eyes of madness. Because even if a good chunk of the strange things in David Haller's life can be attributed to him not understanding his powers... he's also slightly insane.
So yeah. It's definitely not I was expecting when I happened upon this series that's supposed to be about "an X-Men mutant with multiple personalities and powers!" but having discovered the sheer madness in this series, I'm going to say that it's a helluva weird show, but it's great at doing that. It's never going to be popular or mainstream, but sometimes these kind of hipster, out-there shows are hidden gems that are waiting to be discovered if you're willing to stop your normal perceptions of what a superhero story should be and take a chance into something more crazy.
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Legion, Season 1, Episode 2: Chapter 2
The first episode of Legion, for lack of a better term, is insanely disorienting, but in a good way. You can't build a good story without laying some foundations, though, and here in this second episode, as David Haller interacts with more people instead of just being interrogated by government agents (revealed here to be called Division Three) and having those oh-so-untrustworthy flashbacks, we get into some good old fashioned superhero battles. The escape from Division Three is chaotic, with gunfire flying everywhere, an a telekinetic mutant among David's allies who does awesome things in the background that attacks soldiers with flying stones and sends people flying Team Rocket style, while the camera is focused on David.
Long story short, though, things quickly calm down as David finds himself in the stand-in of the X-Mansion, the secret facility Summerland, led by doctor Melanie Bird. None of these characters other than David himself have a comic-book counterpart, I don't think, which saves me from research. We quickly get introduced to our band of main allies (of which mr. Telekinesis isn't included, sadly) which is the team's main fighter, Kerry; the older scientist Cary (Cary and Kerry's relationship will be made clearer down the line, but note that they're never in the same room at the same time); and a mutant with 'memory art' capabilities Ptonomy Wallace. Ptonomy is the person who helps David and the audience get oriented with the jumbled mess that is the first episode, because with his powers, he is able to get into David's memories alongside mentor Melanie Bird and David himself. Again, comparisons to Professor X's own mental abilities and mentor role is easy to make, although for obvious reasons for anyone who's done any sort of google search on David Haller, Professor X is off the cards for now.
Ptonomy and Melanie's attempt at unlocking David's powers might be partially driven by their own needs for, well, a human tactical nuke (as a deterrent, but still a nuke nonetheless) but it's framed like a therapy session as they try to figure out the point of time when David's powers began to manifest. It's a nice bit of showing David through the lens of his own memories, showing that, no, he isn't hallucinating things like flying pens and knives, but rather he is the cause of those things, shown with his accidental attempts at mind-reading and the MRI incident in this episode.
However, as we try and go through some of David's memories, things, of course, get wrong and the show makes amazing use of music and tension and the sheer creep factor of the Devil with Yellow Eyes -- whether he's an alter-ego of David's own creation, a demon from hell or some other mutant -- in that scene. Ptonomy's ability stops working and they can't access all of David's memories, and things in David's own memory seem... wrong. People's faces are obscured (his father in particular), we get random flashes of David's therapist's face covered in blood, and Ptonomy isn't flat out able to get themselves out of the kitchen memory when David first had his power outbreak.
Oh, and there's a lot of weird shit we learn from the trip down David's memory lane. There's the absolute fucked-up bedtime story, the World's Angriest Boy in the World, which, jeez, is creepy enough by itself, nevermind the fact that it might not be a real storybook or a real memory. We also see, importantly -- and something that David himself seems to have forgotten -- is that David and Lenny met before being admitted into Clockworks, and were druggie buddies. And they buy ovens together, because, well, why not? Lenny encourages David's acceptance of his craziness, though the fact that she's interned in the same psychiatric ward as David is rather suspect.
Again, it's a nice bit of story and format integration where the audience is as unsure as David as to just what the fuck is real and what is not, except the cast is trying to work through the same information we have and discovering new events in David's past to figure out this poor man's jumbled life story.
Which leads, of course, to the whole mess in the kitchen memory, where it's just full-on tense creepiness as you're just waiting for the scary shit to happen. That moment as the creaky door starts to open, a combination of the amazingly done soundtrack and David's very visible discomfort and Ptonomy losing control over the situation is amazingly done. It's a great representation of fear, of the dread that David has against whatever memory he's suppressing, because despite nothing truly scary happening there it's still pants-shittingly creepy.
An attempt at MRI-ing David causes him to flash into a vision, as he sees his sister Amy (who we glimpsed in other flashbacks as well as that scene in the first episode) who goes looking for her brother, is met with the typical government cover-up 'there has never been that patient in this ward' which is a scary-ass bit in its own when Clockworks' staff ask her if she needs medical attention, but then Amy gets captured by the very people that hurt David. By the same jackass that ordered David's death last episode, in fact, played amazingly by the actor Mackenzie Gray who ramps up the unsettling creep factor up to eleven. We don't see any overt torture, but we do see creepy torture devices and fuckin' leeches. The scrying vision ends because David's freak-out teleports the MRI machine into the Summerland courtyard and causes him to go on a warpath and demands that the Summerland people help him save his sister. Priorities? Mutant rights? Mutant-human war? Fuck that noise, his sister is in trouble, and even if David can't trust his memories, isn't 100% sure that he's a powerful reality warping mutant instead of a crazy schizophrenic patient, can't quite understand what's going on, isn't even sure if Syd's really in love with him, he knows that he loves his sister, and he's going to save her.
Of course, Syd and Melanie Bird play the mentor figures and try and get David to calm down, if nothing else to stop him from doing anything more destructive than destroy an MRI machine and Summerland's immaculate garden-work, because Amy is bait and they won't kill her. Still, it's a nice episode that still has the weird trippy feel as the first episode while still deconstructing it and laying a more stable foundation for us to work on. A good chunk of the episode is given to exploring the supporting cast, with Ptonomy and Melanie Bird getting the most screentime. Syd (who, by the way, isn't part of Summerland in a huge conspiracy before Ptonomy and Kerry picks her up post-Clockworks) is no slouch too, and what she represents for David -- someone to strive to be better for, is well done. Syd is a port in the storm that is his mind's chaos, one that helps reorient him and be a better person that while accepting his mutant heritage and the madness of what his powers entail, still tries to make rational decisions.
So yeah. We've got mysteries of David's past, but also the very real threats of Division Three's more physical threat to mutantkind and Amy, as well as whatever the fuck the Devil with the Yellow Eyes is. Again, more great stuff. Also, special kudos to Dan Stevens for managing to portraying David's uncertainty in this episode very, very well.________________________________________________
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.
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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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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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Legion, Season 1, Episode 6: Chapter 6
So yeah, we spend nearly the entire episode in the mental institution. It's the most stupid 'obligatory episode' ever and it never ever really works, not for the least that it's never going to be the big grand revelation for all the fantastical things that has happened in the show. Like, no, no one's going to believe that Smallville or Supernatural will end with the revelation that everything you cared for is just mass schizophreniac minds at work. But Legion? It's a show that has a justification for it, and the fact that it's quickly established to the audience as an illusion in David's headspace is definitely well done.
In a neat twist of one of my most disliked tropes, Lenny, under the guise of the lead psychiatrist, tries to convince everyone present that, yeah, they're all mentally ill. But, of course, as powerful as Lenny is, she can't give a perfect representation of something because it's David's mind after all. Syd feels like she's in a dream but not really, she sees David's bedroom door and weird stuff manifesting at a particular point in the Clockworks hospital (accompanied with eerie music). But Syd -- who gets to be main character of the episode, has trouble convincing David of anything at all because no mutant powers are active in the imagined Clockworks, and David's just wanting to get better and get through his therapy, because he has gotten a balance between his mania and depression. So, uh, he apparently has bipolar disorder in addition to schizophrenia? I'll buy that, he's had some mood swings over the past few episodes. Lenny-induced mood swings, still, but hey, Dream!David doesn't know that. In any case, Syd tries to figure out that they're in an alternate reality while David keeps telling her that, no, don't let the delusions win.
Everyone gets a therapy session with dr. Lenny, which is entertaining but ultimately doesn't go anywhere. Lenny just dismisses all their delusions, and poor Ptonomy doesn't even get to do much in this episode after the interview with Lenny.
Oh, also, after that moment when everyone goes to sleep (including a sad moment where Cary and Kerry are puzzled as to why they literally stick together all the time without any real justification) Lenny pulls off all the stops and goes into an insane dance number. Whyever for? I dunno, but it works in the context of the show. Madness is the name of the game.
Oliver Bird, having spent the past few episodes in the literal periphery of both viewers and characters, apparently can travel into people's dreams with his Scooby Doo scuba suit, and I'm not sure if it's his mutant power (I'll assume it is) or that he's also a psychic like Lenny and David, and manages to successfully spirit Melanie Bird and Cary away to try and help things out in the physical plane -- where they find that everything's frozen in time, but at the same time they can't Quicksilver their way out of this.
This leaves Kerry alone, and god, in one of the creepiest yet simplest moments of the show, we have the Eye in all his glorious creepiness starting to stalk Kerry. Also, Syd sees this gross-ass weird... organ... thing and this causes the Devil in Yellow Eyes to transform and kidnap Syd and shove her into the bedroom and put her to sleep with earphones, but not before David notices and notes that something is wrong.
Lenny starts giving a monologue to David about how she is a fungus, a parasite, clinging to David, not caring about anything but the power David can grant him. Usually she'll move on from one host to the next, but with David the sheer power he has makes her want to cohabitate, something she's quickly losing patience for. Lenny tells David huge hints about his father, a holier-than-thou type that hides him away to keep him safe, and apparently Lenny's just sick of all this cloak and dagger stuff. She doesn't care anymore about David's self-esteem, his desire for love, his desire for relationships, and in her words, "all I need you for is your body." She shoves David into this strange coffin in the deep recesses of his/their/her mind. With everyone in trouble, the episode leaves at a cliffhanger. It's a bit unclear just who is responsible for this bizarre Summerland bit, whether it's David or Lenny, or a little bit or both -- Lenny's motivations are a bit muddy, which I think is one of the weaker bits of the episode. But more importantly, Lenny has taken the advantage, shoving David down and taking over. I guess the reasons she's not done it before is because it's easier to allow the host to keep doing what it thinks it wants to do? I dunno. It's a bit weaker than previous and upcoming entries in my opinion. So.
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Legion, Season 1, Episode 7: Chapter 7
Hoo! Last episode was a bit of a slight misstep, but this one finally brings us back to speed. If anything, it's actually brilliant in integrating both the exposition and world-building parts of David Haller's backstory in conjunction with the mental image of him literally putting himself back together after the damage that Lenny did to him.
The Clockworks fascimile in David's head has gone rogue. In addition to the Eye stalking poor Kerry, and Lenny interrogating Amy for 'that man' that brought David to her family, the other inmates, basically NPCs in a game, have gone amuck. Syd's still asleep, I'm not sure where Ptonomy is in all this mess, and David's stuck in his personal coffin. Things are dire, and I am struck by how thematic that the final battle is literally a battle in the mind. Of sorts.
Cary and Oliver, meanwhile, are still in that iceberg lounge thing and they have a conversation about the true identity of Lenny, where from a bunch of other clues (including the dog) they figure out the identity of the parasite in David's mind, a powerful mutant called Amahl Farouk. Known to Cary and X-Men fans worldwide as the villain Shadow King. Actually knowing who Shadow King was, it's a nice little bonus -- especially since the dude has never felt or looked as terrifyingly unsettling as he does here. Oliver and Cary are the more pragmatic problem-solvers here. They want to use Cary's weird head-band thing to do two things -- isolate the Shadow King and David, and to stop the bullets from hitting David when time resumes. It's not clear if he stopped time or if it's moving normally and the whole Clockworks stuff is just going at the very very fast speed of thought, and considering David's powers it could go either way. But to do either of that, they need to free David.
That's all a discussion in the brief flashback, because in the present time Cary shows up inside Oliver's scuba suit to rescue Syd, they communicate and Cary gives several pairs of 3D glasses that will help them see through Lenny's illusions? Okay then. That bit didn't quite made a lot of sense, but I suppose so.
Melanie is also running around the Astral Plane, but I'm not sure if she does anything before meeting up with Oliver and Cary, and Oliver has spent so long in the Astral Plane that he doesn't even remember Melanie. (Someone should've given him a quick crash course -- if David isn't aware of Melanie's backstory, Cary certainly damn well does). We also find that in the real-world, Rudy is dead and has been Mystique-replaced by the Eye. Does anyone remember Rudy? I actually forgot he existed at this point of the show. The death isn't dwelt on for too long, and neither is the real-world parts because they still can't do much.
Oh, and we get to see poor Rudy's soul-mind thing in Clockworks, reduced into a comatose drooling man in a wheelchair as Syd and Kerry run around. But that's not where the big revelations are, no. The big revelation is David... who has a conversation with himself. The British, rational, confident version of himself. Rational David reminds David Prime (that's what I'm going to call him) that, hey, they're not trapped in a real coffin, so let's make a big-ass lecture room with huge chalkboards. Then we get one helluva load of introdumps done in hilarious chalk-stick-men animation. It gives a full storyline about what David himself remembers, and while part of me is annoyed that I'm treated like a kid and shown the same information twice, the revelation is more like a summary of what the Shadow King has been doing, which different characters uncover different parts while David is just remembering. We also get some all-but-outright confirmation about Legion's parentage, if the brief glance of a wheelchair with an X-sprocketed wheel isn't enough. This also allows David to flex his 'manipulate the world my mind created' powers, and I do like how the British-accented Rational David is the most hilarious guide ever. Great job, too, to Dan Stevens for selling the various aspects of David Haller not just in this episode but throughout the season. Also the scene, I think, is necessary because of how David has never been sure about many aspects of his life. Earlier in the season Melanie had to tell him that all the strange occurrences are because of mutant powers and not madness. And now, he has to tell himself that Lenny isn't part of his powers, but the parasitic Shadow King.
David breaks out of his prison in a very awesome scene -- which really shouldn't be awesome, because it's just a man screaming and blowing up a CGI coffin, but the fact that David has finally, for-reals-now, taken control of his life and his mind, is well done. I'm not entirely sure just why Lenny killed the Eye first, but kill him he did, and in the real world the Eye's body is crumpled into a disgusting cube of body parts. As Lenny runs around and chases Kerry and Syd in a hilarious voiceless section set up like the old-timey movies, she also realizes what Team Oliver is trying to do, and speeds up time in the real world. Meanwhile David runs through some weird mental shit as he runs around the same series of corridors before he has enough and blows the illusion up with his powers.
Melanie and Cary put the headband on David. Rudy (who's apparently dying, not dead) manages to use his powers to stall mental Lenny a bit longer. In the Astral Realm, David charges Lenny. And when boom everyone returns to their proper bodies in the real world, David is once more in full control of his powers, vaporizes the bullets, and we get a glance of Lenny/Shadow King stuck in the mental coffin. Everything looks to come up sunshines and smiles. David and Amy make up, Rudy isn't dead, Oliver is walking around from his years-long slumber and making breakfast... but then Division Three shows up, lead by the burnt-face dude that David supposedly killed back in episode one. Which... is weird? I really don't buy that these guys are a threat to a Phoenix-tier reality-warping mutant like David, so back when I was watching it was absolutely weird and a bit of a downer. If anything else, the real threat here is Lenny busting a crack in her mental prison-coffin just as Division Three is about to fire.
Regardless, though, episode 7 of Legion is still a huge climax. Yes, what exactly happened -- Lenny dicks around and only manages to kill the one person the audience isn't rooting for is a bit suspect, and then David wakes up after the revelation and just wins -- isn't the most interesting thing in the world. But the battle in the mind, with David going through the themes that has been set up throughout the series, to embrace who he is, embrace the truth amid the lies, learn about his enemy's backstory... I thought that we probably could've intermixed the Oliver/Cary and David/David introdump to make it less repetitive. But the rest of the episode is kind of amazing. Add that to the amazing and insane lighting choices, silent-movie bit that actually worked, and the amazing, amazingly intense score? Yeah, I really like this episode.
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Legion, Season 1, Episode 8: Chapter 8
So, the first season of Legion ends, and it ends pretty amazingly. I don't think anything can really stand up to the trippiness and the masterful, genre-bending bit of the first few episodes, but it's still a pretty bizarre ride.
How does the episode start off? Well, by showing that Clark (a.k.a. mr burn-face) is a loving family man, which is a bit of a weird, cheap way to build up sympathy for Division Three just to make David's decision not to go murderkill everyone more meaningful. Which... okay? It felt a bit unnecessary, but on the other hand Clark does have so much more to do in this episode as a minor character than the Eye did, being a creepy stalker and all. We still see David create this hilariously creepy stuck-together-tower of Division Three goons, helplessly held together with psychic powers. Now, the question is to what to do with them. A nuclear strike is being ordered on the compound, apparently. Ptonomy wants to kill Clark and go to war. Melanie wants to read his mind and steal the secrets. David wants to act like his daddy and reason and try to coexist. Cary, the only sane man in the room, doesn't really give a shit about this missile malarkey, because he really wants to rip the fucking Shadow King out of David's head before he breaks free.
But he already has. Somewhat. Syd gets a mental visit from Lenny (Shadow King, Lenny -- Aubrey Plaza's performance is so strong that I kind of view Lenny as the primary being), who justifies it as their minds being connected after the body-swap thing. Lenny tells Syd about how she's been within David's mind since infancy, and ripping her out is something that will kill or irreparably damage David. Syd doesn't trust Lenny, but talks to Clark about the details in hopes of earning the Division's cooperation.
David is strapped into a machine that will identify all the brain waves in David's head and suck them out. Okay, science mumbo-jumbo stuff! No idea when Cary had the time to build all this, but since he produced the mental headband out of nowhere I guess part of his mutant powers is to create insane-looking sci-fi plot devices? This allows David to relive the opening of the first episode via a trip down the memory lane as the Shadow King's influence is burned away, before meeting Lenny once more. "Who am I without you?" David asks Lenny. Throughout the season Lenny has been compared to a disease, a tumour, a parasite, inner demons and an alternate personality. And, yes, the question remains, and it's something that's chillingly similar to what people with mental problems may have -- will I be the same person after this part of my mind is literally exorcised?
And then Syd does something rather stupid, and gives the Shadow King that way out, by sucking him out with a body-swapping kiss. The Shadow King, now bereft of David's full powers, makes use of his/her own and jumps from Syd to Kerry. Ptonomy shoots the place up, but Kerry's martial arts skills allows Lenny-in-Kerry to whack Ptonomy down. We get an awesome bit when Lenny-in-Kerry and David charge each other, causing David to push Lenny out of Kerry... but the only other host Lenny can jump in? Oliver.
Oliver, who's mucking around the central power chamber helping to fix things, and just to be extra-cruel, he gets possessed just as he regains some memories about his wife Melanie... but possessed he is, and before anyone realizes what's happening, Oliver and Lenny are gone, driving down the road and going to get... something. Again, if there's one thing that I will criticize heavily about this season is that the Shadow King's motivations are never made super-clear when she does something that isn't just a power play for David's body. I guess they're now just hunting down Professor X, driving down the nice mountain roads on a sexy sports car?
Division Three leaves with some talk of possible cooperation (and the threat that shit David strongkt), and if nothing else Clark seems convinced that these dudes aren't completely evil. Besides, they have
a common enemy to hunt in the form of the Shadow King now. The story ends -- the Shadow King escapes with Oliver, but at least he's out of David's mind, he's mostly sane, and Division Three are frenemies instead of outright enemies. In David's awesome ultimatum: "War is over... if you want it."
But this is a Marvel show, and Marvel shows have end-credit teases, and in one of the most bizarre ones ever, we have a giant silver floating Pokeball fly in and quite literally shrink David down and capture him and flying away. Is the villain for Legion's second season going to be Mewtwo? I highly doubt it. Is it going to be Mojo? God, don't let it be Mojo.
Still, despite some bits that feel like they could have been treated a little better, this absolutely bizarre show has quickly grown into one of my favourite stories. Once more, it's not for everyone, but it's definitely one that is worth checking out.
