Legion: Chapter 8

"Are you threatening the entire human race? Do I have that right?"

This season finale feels different, perhaps; relatively functional by the standards of Legion and unfamiliarly neat in how it ties up everything it wishes to tie up in a satisfactory but unexpected manner. Oh, there’s some directorial weirdness, but the whole thing feels almost linear. Heaven forbid.

It’s interesting, then, that the first few minutes are given over to the disfigured baddie who appeared at the cliffhanger- Clark- and takes time to establish how his painful disfigurement has affected his life and relationships, all of which is far more interesting and important than the casual and predictable resolution of the cliffhanger. He isn’t a threat, or so least not now. But, as dialogue later establishes, he represents the institutions and governments of homo sapiens, a seriously long term threat if mutants don’t succeed in getting along with those who fear and probably want to exterminate them. But that’s for the long term.

The episode is mainly about expelling the Shadow King from David, and how this is only possible because of Syd’s love. It’s about reconciliation, such as between Kerry and Cary. And it’s about the possibility of healing old wounds- Oliver may not remember Melanie, but he’s happy to agree to a date.

David gets an interesting few lines to Syd; he’s self-conscious enough to accept the possibility that, although his powers may be real, he can’t be sure that he doesn’t have schizophrenia. And he’s so tired of talking to various shrinks that he’s absolutely sick and tired of talking about himself; he wants all this to not be about him.

The ending is neat and satisfying, except where it chooses not to be; David is free of the Shadow King but it has moved on to Oliver, and then there’s the sequence after the main credits. It’s been a very different but extraordinary series, one with understandably limited appeal but one to which I shall return for the next season, late as I am. First, though, there’s some other unfinished business...

Legion: Chapter 7

"On the chest of a barmaid in Sale
Were tattooed all the prices of ale
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille"

This episode is, of course, hardly linear; there’s an extended silent movie sequence, complete with intertitors and to the sounds of Ravel, in which Lenny tries to kill our heroes; there’s a scene in which David is spoken to by his “rational mind” who is, in a fourth wall-breaking nor to Dan Stevens’ origins, British. Yes, incredibly, we get the exchange “What, you’re British” / “Well, as I said, I’m your rational mind”, and this in a TV programme made after June 2016 when we Brits lost any such claim.

Anyway, after a surreal start, the mental home illusion of last episode is shattered and everyone (although Ptonomy is oddly silent all episode) more or less understands the situation- they are in the astral plane because of the Shadow King (we hear the name from Cary, as well as the name Amal Farouk, but no context yet), suspended in time just before they’re about to be shot. There’s a lovely scene where Cary innocently tries to mansplain all this to Syd but she pre-emotes him, confirming she’s worked it all out because “I’ve been paying attention.”

We also have the still-quite-surreal Oliver finally interacting with everyone- including, tragically, Melanie, whom he no longer recognises. Her resultant distress is not overdone, and all the more effective for it.

David, with help from his rational self, works out that his birth father must have been a powerful psychic mutant who defeated the Shadow King and quickly had David adopted to protect him, but the weakened Shadow King still managed to infect him as a parasite, blighting his whole life and drawing strength from David’s power; at last we begin to get a straightforward explanation as to what has been going on, albeit with gloriously creative visuals based on animated blackboard stick figures.

David ultimately saves the day in the real world, diverting the bullets and seemingly with everyone (including Amy and Oliver) sage- although didn’t Lenny/the Shadow King briefly do something to Oliver?

All this is shattered, though, as the real world baddies arrive and prepare to take David alive- and everyone else dead. And we end with an echo of last episode, with the Shadow King inside that coffin. But there’s a gap...

Legion: Chapter 6

“Deja vu, but not?"

Legion is already pretty damn experimental and avant-garde for prime time network telly, but this is a specifically experimental and avant-grade episode. Gulp.

The whole thing is set during a frozen moment in time as the bullet hurtles towards David and co. David, Sid, both Loudermilks and Ptonomy are in a mental home run by Lenny; it’s uncertain whether this is a shared dream reality or just David’s, but the set-up gives a good opportunity to give a bit of character background for everyone before the focus turns to Syd and David. Incidentally, Ptonomy mentions that his mother died while loading the dishwasher; this is the first inkling that the series is set in a post-60s time frame.

At first it’s all played straight, albeit with Lenny coming across like a bit of a Freudian quack, until suddenly the fourth wall smashes into a million pieces as she does a music video dance routine to Nina Simone.

But there are little kinks in this reality- Sid starts to remember things and notice a kind of Schrodinger’s door that is sometimes there, sometimes not. And so things finally collapse until the point where Lenny (briefly appearing as that demonic figure that I’m sure is the Shadow King) Who is sonehow orchestrating all this for the purpose of using David’s power in some way.

We end with David, in a box, falling in the dark, and two episodes to go. This is powerful, non-linear, weird, wonderful telly.

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.

Legion: Chapter 4

"I was a woman who couldn't be touched, in love with a man who wasn't there."

Legion just gets weirder and weirder; among other things, this episode features a girl living in a bloke’s head as his imaginary friend and getting out in to the world, and when she dies, he does.

It’s all very fairytale, which brings me to the opening. We meet the mysterious and stentorian Oliver, player by that bloke from Flight of the Conchords and a splendidly surreal individual with his discordant jazz and pronouncements on literary theory. He lives, it seems, on the astral plane, where David’s consciousness has become stuck from excessive dreaming. That’s the sort of thing that happens on this show.

Through Ptonomy we, and Syd, begin to realise that David’s memories may be partly false and are covering something up, and indeed that he may not be as nice as he seems. Certainly it’s evident, after the two of them make enquiries, that all old memories featuring Lenny reflect the reality of a big man called Benny, a bad influence.

The whole thing is as well directed as ever, which is good, because this sort of telly relies on that. The “real” world still has a stylish ambiguity between ‘60s and modern styles. And motifs recur- Syd keeps seeing the Hitler-like Angry Boy from the storybook while out and about.

I hold my hands up; I have no idea what’s going on at this point. But I’m enjoying the ride.

Legion: Chapter 2

"We're having a romance of the mind."

More non-linear narrative and superb acting this week as Melanie and the mysterious Ptonomy begin to uncover the secrets of David's past through "memory work". It's already clear that something big is being repressed. What isn't clear is what Melanie wants, but she's insistent that David is not mad and that everything that's happening is a manifestation of his mutant powers.

The "memory work" is both fascinating and probably a literal iteration of an unreliable narrator; I hardly think a real small child would be read such a terrifying bedtime story. And it's interesting that David's father, even in memories, always has his face in shadow.

The romance between David and Syd becomes sweeter, despite the tragedy of her being unable to be touched. We see that odd creature again. But most disturbing is what happens to David's sister Amy, the stuff of nightmares; insisting in spite of what she's told that David was indeed held at the institution, she is locked up for "paranoid delusions", bait for an obvious trap. This is good stuff- weird, but good weird.

Legion: Chapter 1

"How does that make you feel?"

I haven't read a lot of Marvel stuff concerning Legion, or David Haller, but I know he's supposed to be the mutant son of Charles Xavier whose many personalities each have a distinct power. But he's a pretty obscure character, and at first glance an odd choice to be lead character for a new TV series.

The premise, while seemingly not hugely faithful to the source material, is intriguing: we begin with David, seemingly  suffering from disassociative personality disorder, in the Karkaesque world of a TV mental institution where trying to prove that you're sane is, as the cliche goes, a paradox. The love interest is, of course, called Syd Barrett, an appropriate nod to the crazy diamond and, with the '60s rock soundtrack, in keeping with the vaguely '60s aesthetic where it is not even clear whether all this is happening now or back in said decade, further disorienting the viewer in this intriguingly non-linear and creatively shot show. I don't know where this is going but it's cleverly done, intriguing, and has more than enough human interest to balance out its somewhat abstract visual and narrative style. David Haller's experience of the world is not straightforward, and writer-director Noah Hawley doesn't seem to see why ours should be either. I like that.

You've got to love Lenny, and although she's literally dead by the end of the episode I'm sure she'll remain a fixture. Things are getting intriguing already, too; it's quite a bombshell when we learn that the authorities know perfectly well that David is not mentally ill but does, in fact, have considerable mutant powers- is this set in the same universe as the X-Men films? What's society's attitude to mutants? Who are Melanie and all of her friends? What's the story with Syd? I'm sure we'll have fun finding out.