Wrapping its first season on a stunningly novel journey, chapter eight of Legion demonstrates the Shadow King’s worldly strength for the first time and leaves David in a distressing stasis that will have fans speculating eagerly about where he’s headed in season two.
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As his reappearance at the end of chapter seven foretold, chapter eight of Legion revisits its chapter one events through the window of David’s one-time interrogator, now known by his proper name: Clark.
The alternate perspective makes the stakes of Clark’s surprise recovery more clear. His face reconfigured by the mysterious blast that saved David and flattened Division 3’s aquatic cage, Clark’s rehabilitation had him asking the hardest questions while reflecting in his mirrors and with his family.
When Clark returns ready to work, his mind has already settled on following through with his earlier task — investigating David and the nature of his powers, whatever the cost.
With his manager seeing it from a different point of view, Clark makes the decisive switch to go rogue, tracking David to Summerland where a deadlock forms between Division 3 and David’s allies in how — or if — to coexist when the slightest discord can turn to sudden war.
His halo still functioning and secure, David is in much better control than his last encounter with interrogation. With full control of psychokinetic forces, David can assure that all meetings occur on his terms. As long as he’s happy, guns have no purpose.
Though the logic is sensible to David himself, it doesn’t take an experienced diplomat to see why peace is not brokered on such premises on the terrestrial plane.
Syd seems to suspiciously value David’s future above the world’s as she urges him to reject his notion of schizophrenia. But David recognizes the global consequences of his awesome power and that some kind of understanding with the divisions must be formed, even though it won’t be easy.
[MORE LEGION: Season 2 Will NOT Follow The Comic Storylines]
Divisions are also unexpectedly evident with the Summerland power structure. The tense split between Cary and Kerry continues, but Melanie and Oliver also remain unable to see eye to eye on a personal level. These stand-offs risk distracting the team from the unique intelligence available to them.
Clark is held captive by a closely orbiting Kerry while David and Division 3 watch with competing motives. The Summerland council takes sides but it’s ultimately the decreasing charge of Cary’s halo that compels them into quick action.
Though the Shadow King has been cast out of David’s dark interior, a resurgence within him would spell irreversible destruction to the humanity within his psyche.
The team’s leading idea is to negotiate peace via Melanie’s thinly veiled threats — which can easily trump Clark’s explicit powers (including the force of the United States military and other government agencies) thanks to David being on Summerland’s side.
When David and Clark meet across a table once again, but with vastly flipped fortunes, their opposing perspectives on the planet’s future are laid bare.
The history of the world, according to David, is people of different nations and languages learning to live together. It’s why he keeps repeating that Clark doesn’t have to be afraid. But according to another great strategist, repetition is a form of change.
In the case of the Shadow King that evidently means its exorcism is further from complete than anyone realized. Lenny is more than a mere echo as Syd now feels the shadow running from itself in that form in her once-sacred White Room.
If Syd is truly bonded with David it means that she must share the same bond he has with Lenny in her own fashion. In the White Room Lenny’s threats take a new edge that cuts Syd closer than before.
Unaware of Syd’s danger, David remains firm in believing he simply needs face-to-face contact with the government’s overlords to negotiate their own demands for future diplomacy. Moments after Syd’s fear of Lenny grips her, David collapses under the surely-related weight.
The pressing need is now to contain David and any of his demons that may be looking to escape. That means that however uncomfortable their present alliance is, Syd and Division 3 ensure that neither party risks his immediate health during their current stalemate — for at least one more hour.
Oliver pens David in Cary’s lab where the elder scientist can create “a kind of vortex” that runs David through his own consciousness while the traces of the Shadow King are hopefully pulled out of his quasi-magnetic field.
When the switch is flipped on, David balances on the biggest wave — his own time — and the flashes of his recent realizations and past horrors sounds overwhelming iron bells that call him to show down with the Shadow King directly.
It’s there that he finally recognizes he and the Shadow King — in the form of Farouk, then Lenny — are elliptically orbiting the same giant rocks.
There will be no true escape from the Shadow King for David. As in the pilot, but in polar opposite circumstances, the only gambit left for him and Syd is a kiss.
Taking the burden of the Shadow King’s possession from David, the yellow-eyed Syd quickly transfers the evil to Kerry (who abandons her post guarding Clark) and her mutant strength.
The instantaneous destruction brings down almost the entire Summerland team, showing that exorcising the Shadow King from David may be no safer than leaving it within him.
Summerland’s structural hallways inevitably filter the possessed (Kerry) into an old-fashioned duel (drawing energy instead of pistols) with David that sends the shadow’s presence fleeing to the next available target… a well-known, yellow-clad follower of fashion.
The nearly-catastrophic battle’s aftermath makes one thing clear for the parties left behind — some kind of alliance will be needed. As long as mutants walk this Earth (or levitate just above its surface), the Shadow King has a means of grasping their power for itself.
With the credits cued up to T. Rex’s stomping “Children of the Revolution”, the first trip for the forthcoming second season is booked. The union of Oliver Bird with a newly rejuvenated Lenny/Shadow King is every bit as dangerous as the demon when it lived in David.
Season one of Legion has a clear goal — to look around and choose its own ground. Its eight chapters form a warped topographical map that leave many roads open for its second season to travel in any direction, cardinal or in between.
Its unique semiotics give the audience a feeling of walking through someone else’s dream, and our expectations are completely ignored just as they might be if you spilled your most recent nightmare to a stranger on the train.
With Lenny and Oliver roaming free, and many of the series’ inciting events still mysterious — from Lenny’s role in the chapter one day room incident to the circumstances surrounding the Shadow King’s conflict with David’s father, wherever he may be — Legion has set the table for a feverish year wait for its second season.
A thoroughly disorienting watch, the face of Legion has one defining grace: its hands are always in motion.
- Introduced through the eyes of Clark, his husband Daniel also appears to figure prominently in the Division 3 power structure. If season two continues adding the two characters’ perspective to David’s it provides an interesting angle to reveal the wider global power structure of the Legion universe. Actor Hamish Linklater previously impressed as the interrogator in chapter one, and Keir O’Donnell as Daniel also brings range and experience with FX’s Fargo (and much more) to the role.
- The mid-credits cliffhanger may set up David for another of Division 3’s elaborate traps. Earlier, the forces seemed set on sending an unexplained “Equinox” to contain David’s situation.
- Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” and “On the Run”, heard when David confronts his past internally, give the band’s defining classic The Dark Side of the Moon its propulsive opening. Legion has nodded towards Pink Floyd heavily, beginning with the name Syd Barrett. Though the departure of founding member Barrett is what allowed Pink Floyd to reach a new level of success, his presence in the band’s thinking and lyrics remained extensive.
— Zach Ellin has provided coverage Legion coverage for ComicBook.com throughout the entire season of the show. Follow him on Twitter for more of his insights.
EPISODE RECAPS: Episode One | Episode Two | Episode Three |Episode Four | Episode Five | Episode Six | Episode Seven
