Chapter 17 picks up exactly where Chapter 16 left off: with Melanie (Jean Smart) taking out Clark (Hamish Linklater), as he was en route to carry out whatever David’s plan is. It then jumps thirteen days backwards (to the events of Chapter 9), when a drugged out Melanie relayed to Syd (Rachel Keller) that she was more or less fed up with waiting for her husband Oliver (Jemaine Clement).
What we didn’t see in Chapter 9: Melanie being visited by Oliver in her sleep, and having a tense but ultimately satisfying reunion with him. She is initially hesitant to accept him back into her life, and a little jaded about the prospect of him only now returning, but after he shows her a glimpse of herself before he left – and assures her that she looks the same, in his eyes – they reconcile quickly, which leads to Melanie being a pawn of Farouk (Navid Negahban), more or less.
I noticed in my review of Chapter 9 that the décor in Melanie’s room leaned heavy on the hexagon imagery, as does Farouk, and I’m a little disappointed that I pointed it out without drawing this very logical conclusion from it. Also of note is the fact that Syd’s room, too, is heavy on hexagons, and we know now that Future-Syd is also in the pocket of The Shadow King.
The heavily-influenced (in more than one way) Melanie begins to lose touch with reality, questioning it and whether or not anything she is experiencing is real. She has a very valid point, despite Kerry’s (Amber Midthunder) skepticism. We can never really be sure that what we’re seeing is real, although I have personally come to assume that just about anything outside of David’s point-of-view is likely to be real.
The show needs an anchor somewhere, and that anchor has always been Melanie. With her off in a land of her (and Oliver and/or Farouk’s) creation, I’m not sure where the truth starts and ends, but I’m still personally holding out hope that the show is leaving out details of Melanie and Oliver’s reunion that could ultimately help them be the heroes of this story.
While Melanie is helping Oliver and getting in the way of David’s plan, Kerry (Midthunder), Cary (Bill Irwin), and Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) are all experiencing the visions that David (Dan Stevens) left in their heads to help carry out his plan. Cary and Kerry set out to do their end of the mission: steal a weapon from Division 3, steal a car, and drive it out to an unknown location and wait for someone to intercept it. That someone is supposed to be Lenny, but she’s initially pretty unmotivated when it comes to her end of the deal. She instead tracks down some of her former junkie friends and goes nuts with her new body.
In addition to David’s implanted memories, she is also haunted by Amy (Katie Asleton). Amy is still being typical Amy: a little bossy and domineering. But she’s also being a little bit more of a badass than she’s been in the past by antagonizing Lenny, mocking her and prodding her into helping David and telling her that she’s the boss in the body that I guess they now share. She also drags a very interesting detail out of Lenny – the fact that she is in love with David.
This is unusual for a few reasons. One is that Lenny has been established as gay, so the fact she might have strong feelings for David was kind of lost on me up until this point. They had a close bond, but I assume it was one strictly born of friendship. The fact that Lenny has feelings for David now makes it a lot more interesting that she was the one and only casualty of David when Syd swapped bodies with him in the very first episode. Was Syd jealous maybe? Did she sense it?
It doesn’t seem like Lenny is too fond of her, so it’s possible. And of course the weirdest thing about Lenny’s affection is the fact that she is currently inhabiting David’s sister’s body, which to me seems like a bit no-no. To me, this reveal leaves the door open for Lenny to sacrifice herself so that Amy can have her body back because she thinks it’ll impress David, and I really want Amy to get her body back, so I guess that’s the outcome I’ll hope for her.
After Amy convinces Lenny to save David, she goes to the location where Kerry and Cary have left the weapon, and when she gets into the car it teleports her to the desert. Whatever the plan is, it’s in motion!
This episode has been the shortest of the season so far, at exactly an hour long. And I don’t think the episode moved slow; it actually moved at a far more regular pace than most episodes. What’s unfortunate about it is that it’s the obligatory “set up before the finale” episode, and so a lot of it felt less fun than it could have been, and it definitely did not heighten the action like you might expect an episode so late in the season to do.
Although something I’m finally coming to terms with is the fact that it’s honestly our fault, as viewers, that we are constantly going in and expecting anything, let alone Legion, to deliver on “action.” It’s got plenty of it, but the fact that anyone feels let down by the fact an episode will backtrack to the very beginning of the season with one or two episodes left instead of move forward is just a testament to how continually unpredictable this show is. We’ve been conditioned to expect the unexpected, and yet the unexpected has proven SO unexpectable that we constantly have to reset just to keep ourselves grounded.
This episode wasn’t everything that the last few weeks were, but it was definitely a nice one. A few moments that I loved: Kerry and Cary about to share a meal, something Kerry is still learning how to do, and bonding. Lenny letting loose and getting messed up, as she is wont to do. And of course, Amy taking charge and being an integral part of the plan at this point, doing more than I’m sure David would have ever expected her to.
I’m not at all deterred or let down at this point, even if the show is coming to a close and we have absolutely zero answers. Even if we don’t get every answer, I get such a headache trying to imagine what could possibly be in store for the finale that I’d rather just let myself be completely surprised, instead of surprised and frustrated that I got it 100% wrong. Whatever happens – and from the preview for next week, something insane is likely to happen – I’m just going to root for the fate of the world and nobody in particular.
