Legion - 'Chapter 2'

Less an institution, more of a retreat.

In the second episode of Fox's not-MCU yet not actually X-Men series, things have not improved much for David Haller. He's still largely confined to an institutional setting, having tests run on him by Melanie Bird and her specialists.

He does 'memory work' with Potonomy – one of the mutants who rescued him – to reconnect the fragments of his past which have become dissociated by years of medical and recreational drug use and abuse, mislabelling as schizophrenic breaks and deliberate repression. He recalls a children's book that his father read him called The World's Angriest Boy in the World, about a child who murders his mother, as well as sessions with his psychiatrist talking about a girlfriend who repeatedly leaves him and returns in a cycle of emotional manipulation. A man named Cary runs him through an MRI to study his brain activity, all in an attempt to discover the means by which he can control his own power.

He also gets to spend time with Syd, who reveals that she does have contact issues on top of the risk of her power swapping her mind with someone else. She explains that she was picked up by Melanie's people because they detected her use of his powers and thought that she was him, while he was taken by Division 3, one of a number of government divisions studying mutants. She also admits that she remembers killing Lenny while she was in his body. Melanie tells him that he is one of the most powerful they have ever come across, and assures him that any time he thought he was mad, that was his powers in action.

 

"Well... You're creepy."

While in the MRI, he has a vision of his sister trying to find out why he is no longer at the Clockworks, and being threatened with committal when she rejects the receptionist's assurance that no David Haller was ever admitted, nor did David's doctor ever work there. As she leaves, rattled by the suggestion that she might suffer paranoid delusions – or that she might be thought to suffer them – she is followed by the man from Division 3 who wasn't incinerated during the rescue. He tries to leave to rescue her, but Syd persuades him to stay, train, and then rescue Amy when he is more capable. Amy will be more or less safe, as she is the bait for him.

Despite a slower pace, Legion continues to be an intense, cerebral, slightly surreal examination of the superhero mythos. The X-Men has always used mutation as a stand in for any and every prejudice, but in its explicit connection of superpower and mental illness, Legion walks territory that is likely to be uncomfortable for a lot of viewers. For myself, I think the most uncomfortable thing is Melanie's blithe and reductive assurance that everything in David's life that he thought was mental illness was actually a sign of his powers; he is a telepath and probable telekinetic, so apparently he can't also be mentally ill. I strongly suspect – or perhaps fervently hope – that the show will confront this assumption, implicitly if not outright.