Creating Legion’s Devil With Yellow Eyes

In the seventh episode of Legion, David Haller finally puts the pieces together as to how the evil, parasitic mutant known as The Shadow King possessed him when he was just a baby. With the help of an animated chalkboard, David concludes that his biological father (Charles Xavier) is a mutant and has psychic abilities like himself, and at some point in the past, his father fought and defeated The Shadow King on the Astral Plane. To keep baby David safe, his father gave him to the Haller family, but The Shadow King still found him and exacted revenge by possessing baby David.

And since the monster has been feeding on and tormenting David’s mind for all these years, showrunner Noah Hawley wanted The Devil With Yellow Eyes — one of several monstrous forms The Shadow King takes within David’s mind — look bloated like a well fed tick.

“It was a conversation that I had with our production designer, Michael Wiley, and he told me that he was obsessed with this reality show, My 600-lb Life, which I hadn’t seen,” Hawley told CBR, when asked about his approach to the character’s design, “but I did respond to the idea that whatever was inside David had been feeding on him all this time, and as a result it was something engorged or tick-like about it, that it was feeding and it was reaching this very corpulent state.”

Check out The Devil With Yellow Eyes concept art in our slideshow!

Legion is the story of a troubled young man who may be more than human. It introduces the story of David Haller, who since he was a teenager, has struggled with mental illness. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.

Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey), Rachel Keller (Fargo), Jean Smart (Fargo), Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), Jeremie Harris (A Walk Among the Tombstones), Amber Midthunder (Hell or High Water), Katie Aselton (The League) and Bill Irwin (Interstellar) star in Legion.

Noah Hawley (Fargo) will serve as an Executive Producer along with Lauren Shuler Donner (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Deadpool), Bryan Singer (X-Men: Apocalypse, Superman Returns), Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Martian), Jeph Loeb (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Jessica Jones), Jim Chory (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Jessica Jones) and John Cameron (Fargo, The Big Lebowski). Legion is the latest project from Hawley and Cameron, two of the Executive Producers of the Emmy and Golden Globe -winning FX limited series Fargo.

LEGION STARS TALK TO COMICBOOK: Dan Stevens Talks Season One | Michael Uppendahl Discusses Season Finale | Jean Smart Owns The Screen As Dr. Bird | Bill Irwin Credits Hawley for Legion-Marvel Marriage

The Devil With Yellow Eyes Concept Art

After reading a Sigmund Freud essay, Hawley was in agreement with the Austrian psychoanalyst that “the thing that really scares us most is when familiar things operate in unfamiliar ways.” So with The Devil With Yellow Eyes, it has an obese face and torso but its legs and arm are long and thin.

“I think there’s something similar with this idea, we just have this sort of visceral human reaction when we see human beings of that size, because that’s not how human beings were designed to be, and it’s against our experience, to be that large,” Hawley explained to CBR. “So, there’s something uncanny about it, and something that we react to physically, I thought was interesting. Then we found this guy who’s six-foot-eight, and the skinniest guy you’ve seen, and we built this suit for him so he’s both hugely corpulent and also very thin in places, and that adds to the unnaturalness of the character. He was sort of designed to have a visceral impact on the viewer.”

The Devil With Yellow Eyes Concept Art

While looking around in a Vancouver comic book store, Hawley came across Quinton Boisclair and just knew his tall and slender frame would be perfect for The Devil With Yellow Eyes.

“One of the things I really liked about him was that he he had these very gentle eyes,” Hawley shared with Nerdist. “I’m always wary of villains being too villainous, and I like the conflict between the fact that he has these very kind eyes but he also is this sort of frightening figure. I think there’s something worse about the idea that he almost looks trapped inside this villainous shell. He was the gentlest guy and I think for the first few episodes, I think this was all very strange to him, and I think by the end he was into the role and the performance and the things that he got to do. It must have been hot in that thing!”

The Devil With Yellow Eyes Concept Art

Working on a comic book-based television series had to be a thrill for Quinton Boisclair, but he also had to endure a nearly 5-hour process to transform into the weirdly shaped and oddly obese character.

“Quinton is 6-foot-8 and he’s very-very slender,” prosthetic makeup artist Sarah Pickersgill says in the featurette. “So he’s actually kind of a monster-makers dream.

“He’s very narrow,” special effects makeup supervisor Todd Master adds. “It gave us almost like a unfettered canvas to paint on.”