‘Legion’ Recap: Inmates Running the Asylum
Warning: This recap for the “Chapter 6” episode of Legion contains spoilers.
You’d think an episode composed primarily of people sitting around talking would be dull, but Legion remains as intense as ever. David and his friends are trapped in a delusion and each struggles — in his or her own way — to escape or adapt. Now that The Devil with Yellow Eyes is in control of David’s body and powers, though, expect the last two episodes of the season to be explosive (and gory).
The Plot
David has gone to his safe space on the astral plane and dragged some people with him. There, Lenny assumes the role of doctor in a version of Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital where David, Syd, Melanie, Ptonomy, Cary, Kerry, and The Eye are all patients and their powers are all explained as delusions of their various mental illnesses. Syd notices the subtle things that are wrong and wants to leave, but David wants to stay. She dreams of the moment they are avoiding in the real world — Rudy shooting at David and Syd — while Cary dreams of Oliver’s ice cube hideaway. Cary follows Oliver into astral space, leaving Kerry to be hunted by The Eye. Oliver also leads Melanie into the real world, but she can’t alter the path of the bullets or get Syd and David out of the way. Instead of finding the door, Syd finds a bleeding hole in the wall (possibly a means of escape), but Lennie catches her and puts her back in bed before revealing to David that she is The Devil with Yellow Eyes, and locks his mind away so she can use his body.
The Power of Metaphor
The best things Legion has done as it completely deconstructs the superhero genre is expose the mechanism of superpower as metaphor for the human condition. It takes the comic-book fantasy and presents it as a psychological crutch. Melanie can’t get over the death of her husband, so she constructs a reality in which her husband is frozen and will someday return. Ptonomy is emotionally scarred by the unexpected death of his mother at a young age, so he becomes a “memory artist,” poring over old memories of happier times and keeping them alive. Cary and Kerry find mutual solace in each other’s inability to be alone.
Of course, for those still trying to figure out what’s real in a show that keeps flipping the script, the characters do actually live in the world of superheroes. There’s still an ‘X’ in the Legion logo, so the show won’t end by revealing it was the sad delusion of some patients in a psychiatric hospital all along. But it also makes a good case for why someone experiencing trauma would want to live in that kind of fantasy, and if Legion did nothing else beyond creating empathy for those with mental disorders, that would still be a pretty great thing.
The Shadow King
For a moment as she writhes on David and explains about Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, Lenny becomes The Devil, making their suspected connection explicit. She explains that she knew his father, who tried to hide David from her, but she found him and has been with him since the womb. Ordinarily, she would feed on someone like David, but he’s so powerful that she tried to work with him. Unable to do so, she locks his mind away in a box, presumably controlling his body like he did back at the Division 3 massacre. The James Bond-like interlude of her dancing through the rest of David’s abandoned memories signifies her complete domination of his mind and body.
David also mentions that he doesn’t like dogs, which means that King is not an imaginary friend he created, but another extension of this entity. It’s safe to assume that The Angriest Boy in the World is also part of the Shadow King (not yet named in the show, but so similar to the comic book character that it’s another safe assumption), since those four (The Boy, The Devil, King, and Lenny) are the only people we’ve seen in the Red Room besides David when he visited to talk to Lenny.
Sibling Rivalry
At first, Amy appears to be a sort of malevolent Nurse Ratched. She harasses Syd with an invasive patdown that would make someone who did like to be touched wildly uncomfortable. She also is needlessly cruel to David — taking away his pie and dry heaving to highlight her disgust of him. But David is happy in this Clockworks delusion and, without prodding, might be content to remain there forever like Oliver in his ice cube retreat. Amy is actually helping them by pushing them out of the fantasy. Still, trigger warning for anyone who’s ever had a sibling steal their dessert just to be a jerk.
Music Notes
That Bowie cover (by Lisa Hannigan) seems very appropriate for the final scene — with the lyrics, “Wake up you sleepy head / Put on some clothes, get out of bed,” as Cary rouses Syd from her Lenny-induced slumber. But there’s also the line, “You gotta make way for the Homo superior,” which is basically the catch phrase of Magneto. The song’s second stanza is cut, so it’s no accident that this line — and a later one, “Homo sapiens have outgrown their use” — made it in. Foreshadowing season 2? It would be interesting to see what Noah Hawley makes of the troublingly racist, yet understandable ideology of the X-Men’s greatest foe.
Legion airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
Read more from Yahoo TV:
‘Julie’s Greenroom’: Julie Andrews Previews Her Star-Packed New Kids’ Series
‘Planet Earth II’ Preview: Love and (Near) Death in the Grasslands
Ken Tucker Reviews The Final Season of Comedy Central’s ‘Review’
