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Review by An Honest Fangirl
Was it just me or was this episode a little boring?
Maybe convenient would be the right word. A lot of convenient things happened here while not moving the plot forward in the slightest. Legion got an increased episode order compared to last season, and I think that that is starting to hurt it. It feels like we've been spinning our wheels in mud for awhile now. Did we really need an episode where a lot of the scenes were David aimlessly wandering a desert?
The episode began with reminding us that the monk is dead. But is he? Is Ptonomy? I have no idea what's going on with them. The Mainframe appears to be the Admiral's mind. He's a mutant that was recruited at a young age to "protect the secrets," whatever that means. So now Ptonomy has access to his memories, and to the Vermillion. It was weird seeing him speaking through one of them, but I'm guessing that was the point. This show is often weird. It delights in being unsettling.
A key example of this was the conversation between Clark and Syd. It started off as just "girl talk," but even the beginning of the scene had an undercurrent of tension. Clark isn't one of the gang. He still very much feels like an antagonistic outsider, and it was a little uncomfortable to see Syd spilling her insecurities over her relationship with David to him.
Syd does have valid worries, though. She's right. Her relationship with David has changed since last season. There's a weirdness to it now. It's not the same magical, bright-eyed experience that it was before. There are trust issues. There's jealousy. There's genuine fear over the changes in David's personality. We, the audience have noticed it, and it looks like Syd noticed it too.
But the scene didn't become truly uncomfortable until Clark told Syd that she essentially had to stay with David and keep him happy forever so that the world doesn't explode. Seriously, what the hell! That immediately recontextualizes their relationship – which was my favorite part of last season – into an abusive light. How many times have we heard that a woman should just be nice and kind to the men in their lives, that it was their fault for setting them off, and therefore, it's the woman's fault that the man hurt her. That's the same thing that's happening here, only on a global scale. It's awful to think about.
It's significant, too, that Clark leaned over and touched Syd as he told her this. No one ever touches Syd, not even on her gloves, not even David when they're in the real world. We know that it makes Syd deeply uncomfortable, so to see that unspoken barrier crossed so casual is deeply upsetting. It can be read as a comforting gesture, but because we know Syd and her boundaries, it comes off as invasive instead.
Besides this scene, I think that the brief one between David and Lenny was the most interesting. There was a very weird dynamic going on there. It almost felt romantic due to the blocking and framing. Which is weird. Lenny is in Amy's body and is displaying habits that Amy had. But that entire scene was just so intimate that I almost felt like David was cheating on Syd. How did everyone else read that scene? Am I looking too far into it?
David was pulling a lot of strings in this episode, and I don't think that we have all of the pieces just yet in order to fully see what he was doing. I think that he was priming people in Division Three to carry out specific tasks for him while he was gone? Except that now David's plans are interrupted by Farouk in the form of Melanie. Melanie (and let's be honest, most of the cast) hasn't really gotten a lot to do this season, so I'm curious and cautiously excited to see what happens now with her mind control. Oliver seemed to fluctuate between calling Melanie "mine" and "ours." I still think that she's going to be the key for him breaking Farouk's control over his body, but I'm honestly not sure.
I thought that I had a general sense of where this season was going, and maybe I still do, but the path that Legion is taking to get there is simply bizarre. Are they really going to stretch out the search for Farouk's body all season? I expected that plot point to be wrapped up by now, and so I can't help but see the twists and turns in the plot as stalling tactics more than anything else. David and Syd are currently trapped in some kind of time loop in the middle of the desert, but all I can muster is a lukewarm reception to it.
I'm sorry if this review isn't as long or as detailed as some of my others for Legion. I honestly kept checking my phone throughout the episode simply because I was bored watching it, so maybe I'm missing some deeper meaning here. Here's hoping that next episode will be better.
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, who is apparently just a normal man. Well, as normal as someone who wears a basket over their head can be.
Admiral Fukuyama is a mutant who was recruited to be the basket head and "leader" of the Vermillion while he was in college.
David now fully intends to destroy Farouk's body and simply deal with the end of the world later. Syd does not look like she thinks that this is a good idea.
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. Regaining his real body will greatly increase Farouk's power. He is on his way there now.
David and Syd are also technically on their way there, but they cannot reach their destination until David finds "the secret." It looks like they're stuck in a time loop or a "geographical disturbance."
Oliver and Farouk used Amy's body in order to bring Lenny back to life, presumably killing the former. Although it is unclear now if Amy is actually dead or if Lenny is actually Lenny.
Lenny has escaped Division Three, riding off on a motorcycle to go... somewhere.
Kerry and Cary are having issues with their mutant ability.
The Creepy Ink Bird of Delusion has been defeated by David, but not without causalities. Ptonomy is dead, but his mind has been uploaded into the Mainframe, where there is also an old woman in a rocking chair.
Ptonomy can now briefly control the Vermillion from inside the Mainframe.
I think that this might be the worst episode of Legion yet. I guess it had to happen sometime, right?
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An Honest Fangirl loves superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and really bad horror movies.
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