A few weeks ago I finally got around to watching season 2 of FX's Legion on Hulu. This was actually the season from last year as the third and final season is airing on FX now but since I don't have FX and probably am not going to buy it off Amazon or anything I'll just have to wait until next year.
I really liked the first season but it had been a while since I'd seen it back when Comcast still did "Watchathons" and actually let you watch shows on channels you don't have a subscription to. I probably should have watched the first season again because going into it there was a lot of, "Who's that guy?" and "Oh, right, that's who that is."
A basic recap of the first season is there's a mutant named David Haller who is the son of Professor Xavier (who of course we never see or hear in any form because it would be totally impossible to get Patrick Stewart to do a cameo despite that he's starring in a TV show on CBS All Access and does voice work on American Dad and Family Guy so it's not like he's adverse to doing TV--but I digress) and has spent most of his life drugged up and/or thinking he's crazy. At a mental hospital he meets a girl named Syd who has the power to switch bodies with anyone she touches so like Rogue she can't really touch people and wears gloves all the time. Then he's recruited to go to this place called "Summerland" where he finds out he has an evil entity called "The Shadow King" in his head. He finally drives the Shadow King away and is ready to kick back with Syd when suddenly an orb shows up and beams him up. Got it? No? Whatever.
Season 2 picks up months later when David reappears with no memory of what happened. He's taken in by "Division 3," which is a really weird place that seems like it escaped from a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol comic. The head of the place is an Admiral Fukya who has a basket over his head with which he watches everything going on in the building and uses androgynous android minions to do his bidding. The cafeteria has this little river flowing through it with boats that have plates of food on them that you just take what you want. It's neat but wouldn't the food get cold? And it doesn't seem very sanitary.
Anyway, a bunch of people are infected with some weird plague where they just go catatonic, standing in place with their teeth chattering. Division 3 wants David's help to find the Shadow King, who they think is responsible. To this end they build him sort of a Cerebro thing only it's a sensory-deprivation tank he floats in and focuses his mental powers. By fiddling with some cords they get it so he can traverse time and space and meets Syd in the future who seems to be missing an arm and is wearing ragged clothes and tells him he has to find the Shadow King's original body because they need the Shadow King to help stop some future threat.
When they go out to look for the Shadow King in the desert he attacks Division 3 and kills a bunch of people and turns one into a pig and one into a fish. Still David is trying to play both sides, telling Division 3 he'll help them while also promising the Shadow King to find his body so he can go away and leave everyone alone.
It takes about 2/3 of the season before the big reveal that probably shouldn't be a surprise if you're familiar with the comics on which this ostensibly is based. That big threat in the future? It's David! So future Syd wants him to help the Shadow King stop him.
In some intro segments Jon Hamm tells about various psychological disorders, some of which I'll talk about in a future entry. What they don't talk about is the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's where you think something and then consciously or unconsciously make that happen. Like in school if you think, "I'm never going to pass this test" and then don't study very much and flunk it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Future Syd believes David is the ultimate threat and as we watch the last two episodes play out it is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy because by first getting David to help the Shadow King and then more directly helping the Shadow King, she helps get her past self kidnapped by the Shadow King, which then causes David to torture someone almost to death and seeing this she turns against him. Which then the only solution he can see is to try to erase her memory of the bad things he did. Which you could say is a rape of her mind. When everyone finds out about this they try to imprison him, but he escapes and decides to stop trying to be a hero. So Future Syd is right that he does become a monster, but isn't it really because SHE pushed him into it? If she hadn't abducted him at the end of season 1 (and I never really understood the point of that; was she trying to kill him or use his past self against his future self or use his past self to find the Shadow King's body in the past?) and pushed him to help the Shadow King, maybe he would have found the Shadow King's body and they could have destroyed it and he and Syd could have lived Happily Ever After. Or not. Who really knows?
But with the last two episodes it really did make me think of the second part of The Godfather. In the first one Michael Corleone wants no part of his mob family's business but is thrust into it when his father is shot multiple times and his hot-headed brother Sonny is murdered. At the end he's taken his father's place at the head of the family while promising his wife that he's going to make the Corleones legit.
In the second one he's still trying to do that but is thwarted by rivals and a revolution in Cuba. Meanwhile at one point he asks his mother if by being strong for his family (or Family) a man can lose said family. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies! Because of course that's what happens. His wife finds out all the shit he's been up to and leaves him, taking the kids with her. In the end Michael is famously sitting alone, having no one left except some henchmen.
By the same token, in the last episode once Syd (and everyone else at Division 3) realizes the shit David has been up to, they turn on him. In trying to save Syd and their love he winds up going too far and losing her. And then he says "Screw you guys, if you want a monster, I'll BE the monster."
Besides The Godfather 2 you could also draw parallels to Breaking Bad. Walter White's initial goal in getting into the meth business is to make enough money so his family can survive without him. But once his wife finds out all the shit he's done and that he inadvertently had her brother-in-law murdered, she leaves with their son. So Walter also ends up alone until he dies in the improbable shootout at the end.
In his own fumbling way I think that's what George Lucas was going for in Revenge of the Sith. Anakin tries to protect Padme from being killed but in the end winds up killing her and being alone as Darth Vader. It just wasn't done nearly as well as the other three examples.
Like Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad and a lesser extent Al Pacino in The Godfather, I thought Dan Stevens does a really good job of making David seem relatable and not like a monster. Even when he does torture someone or mentally rapes Syd, you don't feel like he's doing it because he's evil (bwahahahahaha) but out of a misplaced sense of love and loss. At the end when they're trying to cage him, I felt bad for him and was somewhat glad he was able to escape. That's good acting and characterization.
Usually if a show is only 8 episodes I'll complain about it being too short. The second season of Legion was expanded from 8 to 11 episodes and actually I don't think that really helped the show. Instead it wound up with a lot of bits that seemed extraneous, like the five-minute dance-off sequence in the first episode. Or two episodes I mentioned in a previous entry that really didn't have a lot of relevance and just slowed the momentum down. 8 or 9 episodes probably would have been enough to tell the story they wanted to tell without padding it too much.
I have no idea how many episodes are going to be in the third season; maybe I'll find out next year.
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