Legion: Chapter 5

“You know, they say the brain is the largest erogenous zone.”

More glorious conceptual weirdness this week, but as ever you have to pay attention. And as ever the cinematography is glorious, visually signalling this as art telly if the script wasn’t already making that clear. It’s weird, it’s non-linear, it’s magnificent.

So last episode Cary and Kerry weren’t killed; she was just badly hurt and it affected him. They’re fine. So is David, seemingly much more confident and together after his sojourn in the astral plane, even using his new abilities to find a way for he and Syd to touch each other and make love in some genuinely lovely, if surreal, scenes in a white room that must surely be meant to evoke the video for John Lennon’s Imagine. And yet, as the couple make love, the camera pans to some strawberries being crawled over by wood lice, a canker in paradise..

There’s some discussion of Oliver; he’s Melanie’s husband, trapped in the astral plane for 21 years because, essentially, he became addicted to being a god in his own world- both a mind-blowing concept and a cautionary tale for David, as well as an explanation for Melanie’s possible partial ulterior motive for helping him.

Then things start to get scary. A hugely powerful and scary David goes on an unstoppable mission to rescue Amy, killing all his enemies without a passing thought. And this leads Cary to theorise; is he genuinely schizophrenic as well as being a mutant of the mind? And is there some kind of malign parasitic presence within his conscious, editing his memories to hide itself? This is at one a brilliant concept and, well, this series clearly isn’t much interested in Marvel continuity and characters but... it’s the Shadow King, innit?

Then we get weirdness, disturbing things with Lennie/Benny, and David not responding well to being told by Amy that he’s adopted. Stuff happens in the astral plane, and then suddenly they’re all in a mental institution. This is absolutely brilliant.