I’m going to start with the good news: Legion was picked up for a third season as of last week, and so no matter what happens in next week’s season finale, we can all rest easy knowing that there will be more to the story. I’ve got my fingers crossed that the season won’t end up any super huge cliffhangers, since Noah Hawley seems to enjoy putting a (neat enough) bow on his season finales, but no matter what happens, there will be more.
Now onto the most exciting thing that has happened in eighteen episodes.
We finally saw Legion.
Like, full-potential-realized, high-top-hairstyle, World-Killer Legion. Before the series began, Noah Hawley said that the iconic character that is Legion would be something the show slowly built to. I’ll admit that at first I was a little shocked that he showed up so relatively soon, but when you consider how slowly the show has moved in 18 episodes, and yet how much the characters have grown and the situation they’re in escalated, it really doesn’t feel like we’re seeing anything too soon. I’m absolutely ecstatic that this version of David is finally emerging, because this is the show gearing up to do the absolute most for the season finale and beyond.
This season has definitely been playing with our perception of reality and our understanding of morality, and specifically how it is that a character who is either perceived as good, or aligned with good, can be evil or do things that are bad. David as a human being seems like a good person. He loves his girlfriend, he passionately defends his friends. He wants to rid the world of the monster that is The Shadow King.
But David has also had a difficult life, compounded by the fact that he was being half-possessed by an evil parasite who tried to use David for evil. I’m almost sympathetic to the fact that David has a complicated response to these things – it’s not hard to believe that someone who is on a joy ride in their own body would grow accustomed to the bad things they’re getting away with, and maybe even enjoy it. It doesn’t make David bad, but it does blur the lines in his concept of reality – which, now that he’s making all of his decisions on his own now, opens the door for him to make a lot of bad ones. Â
Legion, the character, is a bit separate from David (Dan Stevens) in that Legion is secure in his badness. The pretense of trying to do the right thing completely slips away for Legion. We see this happen at the end of the episode, and we get a glimpse of the whole multiple-personality, shattered-perception aspect from the original comics in the preview for next week. How they choose to utilize Legion – as an alter-ego that comes out from time-to-time or a fully fleshed out character – is going to be the thing to look forward to.
One of my favorite things about the series, which I mention just about every week, is how the show is stylized like a comic book from the same era in which Legion flourished. This episode, in particular, feels like it could be translated seamlessly and breathtakingly into panel format and lose very little of the charm. Scenes like the aerial shot of the giant drain stopper in the middle of the desert, or Kerry (Amber Midthunder) climbing down the pit, for example, stuck out to me as being very comic book-ish in their execution.  It’s truly astounding that the visual team behind the show, and Noah Hawley in particular, have such an understanding of how to translate a comic book to the small screen.
I might be misleading you if you haven’t watched the episode yet, though, because although we get a glimpse of the iconic comic book version of Legion (Stevens), we’re only seeing him in what appears to be a flash-forward. He is in the same tent in the desert we saw him and Syd (Keller) retreat to two episodes ago, only now he’s sitting on a throne atop a pile of skeletons and bones, with Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) lying at his feet. He’s in his full evil Baphomet/David Bowie in Labyrinth glory, holding up a big crystal ball that seems to show an image of Syd, flashing between our Syd and Future-Syd.
Speaking of labyrinths, the one that Melanie (Jean Smart) created in her mind and trapped everyone in a few episodes back makes a small return here. Syd (Rachel Keller) wanders out of the tent and finds a giant pit near the aforementioned giant drain stopper and ends up getting her hand caught on a hook and dragged down into the pit. Melanie is down there, her eyes “opened” and her mind seemingly clear, and she makes it her mission to convince Syd that David (Stevens) is evil.
She does this by showing Syd a number of scenes from previous episodes, all of which, taken only slightly out of context, portray David as being psychopathic, dishonest, and even unfaithful – she shows Syd not only the moment that David kisses Future-Syd, but the scene from the dance club in the first episode of the season where Lenny kisses David. Syd tries to hold onto her faith that David is a good person, but the scenes of David torturing Oliver (Jemaine Clement) so that he’ll tell him where Syd is begin to lessen her faith. The final straw is when she sees what happens to David after he finishes torturing Oliver. David is becoming Legion, and he has a thirst for revenge that has him fantasizing about, and enjoying, the idea of murdering Farouk (Navid Negahban), who has finally gotten his body back. Syd vows to stop him.
Farouk, by the way, gets his body back by – no surprise here – manipulating Melanie. It seems as though she may be under his control, if not completely possessed by him during the entire scene with Syd. There are elements of this that work to cast some doubt on who is actually in control here. For example, Melanie’s centaur from the maze returns, only after becoming literally empowered to “destroy the weak” by Melanie, he grows in size and is no longer frail.
On the other hand, Melanie also momentarily speaks to the centaur in Farouk’s native language. There’s a moment after her plan works, and Syd is so stunned and defeated that Melanie strokes her hair – a power move that I could see coming from Melanie just as easily as I couldsee it coming from Farouk. Whoever is in control, the plan ends with Melanie kissing Farouk’s body, and falling to the ground as Farouk rises. I’m not sure if Melanie is dead, if she had to end her life to grant Farouk his, but I know one thing for sure: I’m really glad they didn’t do the same body-possession thing that they did to Amy (Katie Asleton), because that upset me immensely to have to watch.
I was wrong about Oliver (Clement) and Melanie (Smart) being rogue agents with the potential to save the day. Actually, I don’t necessarily think I was wrong. I think we were meant to draw that conclusion and try to hold out hope that they would be heroes, to make the fact that they were both in Farouk’s pocket – possibly even on their own violation, at some point – all the more upsetting. Oliver was tortured to the brink of death by David while he was 100% in control of himself. He had the potential to tell David where Syd was, and chose not to. Why he would continue to be defiant after being free doesn’t sit right with me, and if Melanie lives I would like to see their reunion with each other, completely free of The Shadow King.
Oh, and that plan that David set everyone out on? Doesn’t work. Farouk gets his body back and pretty much immediately lays waste to everyone except some of the Vermilion androids, who retreat. He seems pretty unstoppable at this point. Unfortunately, so does David.
Where do I think this is going to go in the final episode? Impossible to say, really. David seems to struggle with reality still, and it seems like this only going to take a step backward. I think we’ll start to see things re-presented in a way that’ll tell the real story, and not a story through the eyes of our protagonists. We’ve been given enough psychology lessons on mass hysteria and group delusion and treated to enough philosophy lectures about how we determine our own reality for me to believe that there’s a lot of the story we’re seeing be interpreted incorrectly. I genuinely just realized after typing that that the show has left so many questions unanswered because they want us to start filling in the blanks ourselves, with our own ideas of what’s happening. What an extremely clever, but ultimately very confusing thing to do.
For the finale, I plan on REALLY examining all the questions that got asked and how many of them received answers. I’m upset to see the season come to a close, and I’m already overwhelmed by it.
Rating: 8 out of 10
