Legion Delivers Thrills And A Great Story

01/30/2017 11:47 am EST

The stunning television entry of the X-Men is almost here as the Feb. 8 debut of Legion is fast approaching.

Introduced to audiences with a head-spinning pilot that finally asks the central question of the series in its closing moments, FX and Legion delivers indescribable thrills that will leave fans shorter of breath each week as it depicts the rise of the most unpredictable mutant from one of the greatest series in comic history.

Legion is an unmistakably singular achievement that keeps us hooked not through mythology and resolution, but with uncertainty and possibility.

With the first steps into the world of Legion, fans know nothing about the so-called Mutants that populate X-Men stories -- where they are, who or how many they are, or who knows about them -- and that may still be true by the end of the first three episodes (which were provided by FX for review).

The hour-plus premiere primarily introduces us to David Haller (Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey and the forthcoming Beauty and the Beast).

David is a young man undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital and waiting for someone or something to show him the way. He's been told he's schizophrenic, but no one can be sure. We don't see the series through his eyes, we see it through his mind. Since the nature of his condition is a mystery, his story is presented in cryptic and groundbreaking fashion.

Two of David's most active supporting cast are introduced as fellow patients at the psychiatric hospital. Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) is David's unshakeable old friend who encourages him to strike up a dialogue with new arrival Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller of FX's Fargo).

Syd (yes, named for the Pink Floyd founder) and her radical self-acceptance have a gravitational pull on David. The result is an axis switch in the hospital's day room that's as inexplicable to us as it is to the government interrogation David is subject to during another phase of his understanding. Syd is the key to decrypting the incident for David and his interrogators, but nothing about her is clear to the audience beyond that.

David's sister Amy (Katie Aselton of The League) is also critical early on. She may be the only traveler in David's present orbit who remains unoppressed by the psychiatric hospital. You can already see how David is caught between a few directions. The world is about to get even more complicated. His sun may be sinking, but it's racing around to come up behind him again.

It's only a matter of time -- for the audience at least -- before David links up with a team of specialists led by Dr. Melanie Bird (Jean Smart of 24 and FX's Fargo). Dr. Bird's methods will guide David's superhuman development and disorient him at the same time. His diehard fans who take to Twitter to figure out what the heck just happened may feel just as flipped around. But what the series lacks in plot momentum really just clears room for what makes a story truly compelling on screen.

It's tough to name the last television offering with a setting as enjoyable to inhabit -- David's mindtrips not always included -- as Legion. Compared to the consistently dull and unimagined palette utilized other shows currently on air, Legion is a pure kaleidoscope. This show comes in colors. The earworm soundtrack is seamlessly skittered across eras and oceans by composer Jeff Russo and music supervisor Marguerite Phillips and will keep David in your head all week.

The source for the brilliant contrast between Legion and everything else we've seen is easy to point to and impossible to fully comprehend.

Created for television by Noah Hawley, who brings much of the mastermind team working on FX's Fargo along for the new series, Legion is what happens when purely creative thinkers with shared experience are allowed to defy expectation and explanation in private.

While Legion is exempt from ever-expanding "cinematic universes" that turn movie fandom into something more like a magazine subscription, that doesn't mean X-Men diehards aren't in for an eye-catching treat on February 8th. Something you'll see right in chapter one has ComicBook's editors frothing with curiosity about a possible link to one of David's defining roles in X-Men lore.

Legion may be the hardest show to talk about ever on a major network. As soon as the series premiere ends come right back to ComicBook.com where we'll be unpacking as much of David's mind as we can all season long.

-- Zach Ellin reviewed the first three episodes of Legion, and will provide coverage throughout the entire season of the show for ComicBook.com.