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Legion: Chapter 12

Review by An Honest Fangirl

"Do you think ghosts like living in a haunted house?"

We took a breather this episode to focus on my favorite pairing on this show: David and Syd.

Besides the last second cliffhanger, we really didn't move the plot forward at all. And I'm surprisingly okay with that. So many things have been happening that it's nice to just have an hour to sit and breathe while we do a deep dive into Syd's psyche.

Syd took David through all of her damage, including the time when she swapped places with her mother in order to have sex with her mother's boyfriend. I was wondering if we were ever going to get that scene. It was as heartbreaking and traumatic as Syd described it last season, but I honestly felt worst for the boyfriend. He had no idea what was going on, and he still went to jail and was probably labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life. That's awful.

I still view Syd in a positive light, but this episode did a lot to tarnish that image. Maybe I should reword that. It humanized Syd. So much of this series is told through David's very skewed and unreliable point of view, and in that world, Syd is the amazing woman that he loves. This episode stripped away that perspective, not just for the audience but also for David.

Don't get me wrong. Syd is still the awesome woman that David loves. But now he understands her a lot better. I'm not sure how many loops David went through, but it obviously took him a very long time to realize what it was that Syd was trying to say. The frustration on her face was palpable with each wrong answer. He kept looking for the surface answers: Syd just wants to be able to touch someone, to love someone, to be loved. And while I don't think that these are false statements, the one that she ended up making was a truer one.

I genuinely thought that Syd was going to break up with David. That final scene in the igloo where Syd kept repeating that love made you soft and weak and that it's only the fighters who survive had me bracing for heartbreak, especially since David seems to view their love story in far more rosier terms than Syd does. David called their relationship "true love" and a "fairy tale." Putting aside for a moment how incredibly sweet and precious that is, it almost sounds naive. He sounded like a child next to the more adult and pessimistic Syd.

Instead, we got a reaffirmation of their bond. Syd is going to fight tooth and nail, and David is more than willing to go to a possibly very dark place in order to help her and to be with her. It was a beautiful moment. And a worrying one. We've gotten a lot of hints that David would go full on Dark Side by the end of the season. Him agreeing to be a sinner and "burn" with Syd might be the first step towards that future.

But let's talk about the rest of the episode. Cary was fine. I'm not quite sure why he had a weird vanishing effect last episode, but he just went inside of Kerry. So that was a lot of worry for no reason.

Besides that, we had our cliffhanger. Lenny is back. She's free. Maybe? Did Lenny manage to escape from Farouk, or was she let go? My money is that Farouk let her out for some reason, and considering his reluctance to do so in previous episodes, I'm sure that he as an ulterior motive in play. I'm very curious to see how the whole gang reacts to Lenny's presence. Even completely free from Faoruk, she's still a very volatile personality. She's bound to push some buttons.

I'm going to end this review not with Random Thoughts, but with a title that I stole from Josie's reviews of last season. Legion is a dense, difficult show to get through, especially since it seems like we're not following any recognizable comic book lore. So, I figured that I would have a section where I quickly, succinctly and clearly recap just what the hell is going on. I'll try to stick to just facts and not opinions. If you think that one of my facts are wrong, then tell me! We can try to figure out the truth together.

Without the Meds, It's Really Hard to Keep Things Straight

David and the rest of the Summerland gang are working for Division Three, which includes the paranoid Clark and the bizarre Admiral Fukuyama.

Division Three is search for Farouk/The Shadow King with the intent to kill him. David and Syd are trying to help Farouk due to messages from Future Syd.

According to Future Syd, Farouk is the only one who can stop the cataclysmic event that will destroy the vast majority of the population. Therefore, David cannot bash his head in in the desert like he's supposed to.

Farouk wants to find his real body. Unfortunately, the only person, a monk, who knew the location of the body jumped off a roof last episode. Regain his real body will greatly increase Farouk's power.

Said monk was also responsible for the creepy teeth chattering plague. His death ended that plague.

Farouk has the souls/beings of Lenny and Oliver inside his head. Lenny, apparently, just managed to break free. We can only assume that Oliver is still with Farouk.

Kerry and Cary are having issues with their mutant ability.

There is a Creepy Ink Bird of Delusion crawling around and into people's ears.


I really, really enjoyed this episode. I didn't talk at all about the incredible cinematography, but it was, well, incredible. Still, I'm looking forward to getting back to the main plot.
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An Honest Fangirl loves superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and really bad horror movies. 

1 comment:

  1. I just caught up with this episode a couple of weeks late and it was just so.. extraordinary, even by Legion standards.The opening montage over the Bon Iver song absolutely slayed me; the club scene when her face morphs again and again; the paintings, and the repetition of 'strong in the broken places' and how it looped back round to the final scene in the igloo about love making them soft and pain making them strong... gah. I love how it took its time to walk the loop again and again and let the atmosphere settle in without trying to rush through Syd's trauma (and I wish the Xmen adaptations so far had approached Rogue with a fraction of the cleverness they use for Syd's variation on the same issues.)

    And then Lily Rabe cast as Syd's mother was just so perfect.

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