Legion Considered Inviting Patrick Stewart Back for Professor X Role

The final season of Legion is currently airing on FX and, as promised, the Marvel-inspired series connected David back to his roots. As we've known for a while now, David's father is none other than Charles Xavier, better known as X-Men founder and leader Professor X. While the role of Xavier in Legion ultimately went to Game of Thrones alum Harry Lloyd, it appears as though showrunner Noah Hawley actually considered using an actor who had already played Professor X on the big screen.

During an interview with The Wrap, Hawley talked about bringing Xavier to TV, and the approach to casting the popular character. He explained that he thought about casting either James McAvoy or Patrick Stewart, the two actors who played Xavier in Fox's X-Men movies.

"We're going to have to meet [David's] parents eventually. Nobody fought us on it. There was a question obviously about what age is he? What's the model? Is he the McAvoy age? Is he Patrick Stewart age? Should we try to get either of those actors to do it?" Hawley explains. "Ultimately, I felt like we established our own alternate reality here on Legion, where it's both 1964 and the future… I think I felt like the younger Xavier was actually more consistent with the timeline. But there's something about David, if David meets his father and his father is his age, I think there's something interesting about that."

At the end of the day, it feels like Hawley and his team made the right call with casting an all new Professor X. Legion has always stood on its own as a completely different take on the X-Men franchise, so it wouldn't have made a ton of sense to call back to the film series that came before it.

Legion is wholly unique, so it ultimately chose to introduce a wholly unique version of Professor X.

What do you think of Legion's take on Professor X? Let us know in the comments!