Legion - 'Chapter 1'

"Were you really in Downton?"

As the MCU's small screen cousins, the excellent New York stories and the somewhat meh Agents of SHIELD continue a pace, a new entry comes to the parallel universe of the X-Men and Deadpool, although apparently this is a parallel version of this parallel to the one with the films in, if that is indeed a singular universe in and of itself by now. If that seems complicated, just wait until we get going on Legion.

Legion comes in with a tough line to sell. David Haller is a patient in the Clockwork Mental Hospital (yes, that's what it's called,) who hears voices in his head and has occasionally believed that he has the power to control matter. A happy childhood is rapidly replaced with a troubled adolescence in one of the world's most tragic and uncomfortable montages. Diagnosed with and treated for paranoid schizophrenia and fearing a malign 'devil with the yellow eyes,' David nonetheless forges a relationship with contact-averse new patient Syd Barrett(1) alongside his friendship with slobbish long-time hospital crony Lenny, and seems to be doing fine until she is sent out into the world, their goodbye kiss somehow swaps their bodies and Lenny ends up fused into a wall and very, very dead. Could it be that David really does have powers, that Syd does as well, and that Lenny died when Syd found herself suddenly trying to control David's abilities?

This is super adorable. And then people die.

Such appears to be the assumption of the enigmatic and sinister government agents who are questioning David. Our protagonist, meanwhile, is off his meds and struggling to understand what is happening now and what is happening then, even before Syd turns up in his dreams and Lenny starts talking to him from beyond the grave. Ultimately he is rescued by Syd and a group of other powered individuals, and taken to meet Melanie, an older woman who may have the answers (although I'm skeptical that even if she does we'll get to them before 'Chapter 4'.)

Written by Noah Hawley, creator of the excellent Fargo TV series, Legion tackles one of Marvel's most difficult characters, one whose power is tied up with mental illness. It's not a topic that mainstream comics have traditionally tackled with a great deal of tact - especially not Legion's particular deal, dissociative personality disorder - so it is perhaps a good thing that this is not what you might call a mainstream comic book adaptation. It is frankly impressive that it has got through the first episode without being rampantly offensive, and that gives me some hope.

Saturated in a seventies colour palette and steeped in the music of the past, it is nonetheless hard to pin down the series to a particular time and place. Not the present day, probably. It mentions mutants, but this only hints at similarities to the X-Men, and only in the final scenes of this opening episode do we get any solid suggestion that David's powers, or those of his rescuers, might be real.

I want to believe Syd when she says this is real, but I could also believe this
scene as an artefact of David's mind.

In fact, the great strength and potentially greatest weakness of the series is that we don't know what, if any, of what we are seeing is real. We see things as David sees them; faces change, memories are flawed, and we can't know if he is talking to the ghost of his dead friend, or a memory, or a psychic construct or whatall else. Did his captors all burst into flames, or has he just slipped into unconsciousness and dreamed that bit? That there is no way to be sure is the USP of the series, although it is also an easy way to alienate the audience if not handled well. If nothing we see is real, after all, then we can't get any sort of handle on the fictional universe and we might as well not bother, so the series is going to have to at least convince us that it's giving us new information, even if it is lying to us sometimes.

Definitely different, certainly interesting, and boasting a strong, if not recognisable cast, Legion has defied the odds and made a powerful opening. Here's hoping it stays the course.

(1) Not that one.