Legion (Series)

 Legion is not a television show for the casual viewer, devoted fans will slowly become aware of the structure that Showrunner and creator Noah Hawley built. As the title suggests to us a character created by former X-men writer Chris Claremont but delivers a vague perception or opinion of things to come. By the time you reached the series finale, fans will have found a rewarding and engaging closure across the board, Or/while casual viewers will have dwindled from its once massive audience.

Legion is a story of a man David Hailler (Dan Stevens) who happens to be a powerful mutant whose abilities appear to be limitless. Creator Noah Hawley designed a 3-season series which was composed of a three sectional arc. Season one was the ‘beginning’ we establish and get to know all the characters of the show, let them all meet and interact as we the audience gets to know them. Season two was the ‘middle’ they are let loose to play, characters begin to develop and change, there exists an unseen narrator (Jon Hamm) who educates or enlightens us on the developmental stages of a Delusion and the erosion of rational ideas that gives way to psychosis. The first line “A delusion starts like any other idea, as an egg. Identical of the outside, perfectly formed. From the shell, you’d never know anything was wrong. It’s what’s inside that matters.” The series moves away from season one’s theme of mental health, to social behavior and how symptoms and disease act and react in similar ways as with social behavior. Season three is an ‘ending’ and uses time itself to conclude the series journey with the hope the writers provided a satisfying ending to all main characters. On the series finale we are provided a cryptic set of graphics at the open. “This is the end. The beginning. The end. What it all means is not for us to know. It is for history to decide. All we can do is play the parts as written. All we can know is ourselves.” As passive or dismissive as this line is, or maybe how we are to take away from the finale; there is wisdom in the cipher which gets revealed.

This series is intelligent, season 2 maybe argued as overly ambitious, but by the end all things, even minor details are called back upon at some point in the show. An example, there is a 30 - 40 second elaborate Bollywood dance number in the 1st season, besides an interrogation scene, it never gets revisited or explained in either season one or two, we see David again for the first time in the opening of the 3rd season wearing the clothes from that dance number as he leads his own harem. From Chapter One after the first montage of David growing up in trouble with the law, to the climatic final battle in Chapter 27, the story is delivered non-linear. Which for some individuals who expect direct answers over tangential answers, could be dismissive of the displaced framework of this series. The easiest comparison would be reading the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the opening chapters is difficult to fully comprehend, but as soon as you completed the reading of the novel. Go back and read the first few chapters, and you’ll find the beginning tells you the future of characters once you completed the novel. In the opening episode of the 3rd season, we get various quotes... one in particular is “The past is the Future”, as the first episode introduces us to time travel, which is entirely coincidental to Avengers Endgame as the final season aired only a few months after the debut of Endgame.

Legion predates the concept of 'time variants or the multiverse'; its atmosphere is neither Kafka nor Lovecraftian though at times the atmosphere feels to skirt around in that hemisphere. But Legion as we learn to know stems from scripture Mark 5:9 as Jesus came across a man possessed by a demon. The passage is a metaphor as it points to the realism of everyday life, that we are not a unity, but a multiplicity. Having multiple sides to our personality all vying to take control of our Ego <the part of the brain that acts as the executive integrator of the outer/inner worlds>. As such this battle to take control causes our own madness, our disease within… and with our own self.

On the biblical page it’s a metaphor that serves a message of what we all could become. Don’t be a Christian in name, but to be Christ-like, as the sermon would end. Peace be with you…. And Peace BE you.

David Hallier is a man suffering from schizophrenia, he hears voices, is distracted, unable to concentrate, experience mood swings, experiences blackouts in time. As the show develops, the voices in his head are his own thoughts but materialized as other versions of himself a kind of splintering of his psyche. The villain throughout the series, is the shadow king, a being who found a place within the schism of his mind. The series Legion acknowledges this schism in the final season. Like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ the show goes back to revisit the early chapters as it too writes its own future. The complex nature of the story will lose the casual viewer, the design will either compel you to journey forward or view an episode as diminished returns. The series began with a viewership of around 1.8 million households, its series finale had just over 288,000 viewers. Legion could possibly obtain a cult following, that can sustain outside the influence of Disney, the company that bought Marvel Television and all rights. Noah Hawley who also was the showrunner for the series Fargo (season 4) and was set to debut his second directed motion picture film at the time ‘Lucy in the Sky’. Knew he was ending Legion at 3 seasons and had enough foresight to give the audience who beloved the characters and their story a satisfying conclusion.