If you tap on links we provide, we may receive compensation.
‘Legion’ debuts Wednesday at 10 p.m.
ET on FX
“Is this the real life?
Chris Large/FX
Is this just fantasy?”
That’s not just a Queen lyric anymore.
While these concerns about how we know what we know roil us, they have made for fantastic television.Mr.
Sooner or later,Legionmay get around to behaving like a superhero show.
A jaundiced, corpulent monster lurks in the corner of his mind’s eye.
A picture book about the world’s angriest boy haunts him.
A Nazi puppet bedevils him.
Within a patch of green space, an inmate hides within the foliage.
I’m obsessed with this man.
Is Clockworks dedicated to mental rehabilitation or is it part of a vast conspiracy of social control?
We are meant to wonder.
They hold hands via a length of cloth, they kiss without making contact via window reflections.
(Romance on TV hasn’t been this fraught sincePushing Daisies.)
She entrances David with her innocence and beauty and she hooks him further with a dangerous pitch.
What if they aren’t mentally ill?
What if insanity is individuality no one understands?
Things get strange from here, but eventually,Legionreveals itself.
The voices in head?
(The show’s title flicks at David’s misdiagnosis.
That’s a classic superhero-story premise and classic paranoid delusion.
In this way, Hawley uses genre conventions to dramatize schizophrenia.
I’m not convinced Bird is everything she says she is or the best representative for the mutant cause.
system), but it’s also a mirror twin to Clockworks.
Which one is the true house of healing?
Bird promises enlightenment and empowerment, but Hawley imbues Summerland a whiff of cultishness that invites doubt.
Is David’s adventure into the unknown a hero’s journey or a descent into deeper madness?
*Legion’s approach to borrowing from X-Men lore remains unclear after three episodes.
To my eyes, Hawley seems to be abstracting characters and elements.
It’s entirely possible thatLegionwill grow frustrating over time.
For now, I’m all in.
I’m captivated by the psychological mystery, I’m touched by David and Syd’s poignant intimacies.
His chemistry with Plaza and Keller is winning.
And the madcap and idiosyncratic storytelling from scene to scene makes each moment thrilling.
“Something new needs to happen!”
David says early in the story a line that functions asLegion’sartistic mission statement.
But much like high-gradeMr.
Robot, Hawley always inspires confidence and knows how to make the WTF?
Are you telling me it’s time to put childish things down and grow up,Legion?)
