Legion - 'Chapter 5'

"For identification purposes, I am not Iron Man."

I'm starting to think that, when it comes to Legion, the phrase 'and this is where it gets really weird' is going to rapidly lose all meaning.

David and the field team return to Summerland with the injured, but not dead, Kerry, who needs some time to heal before Cary can reabsorb her and so take most of her injuries on himself. Meanwhile, David insists that he's going to go to Division 3 and get his sister back, and Syd that she's going with him. Melanie cautions that he's not ready, but it is apparent that really she wants him to bring her husband back from the astral plane before risking his life. David, however, is a changed man, determined and in control, able to communicate telepathically at will and to create a full-sensory environment in which he and Syd can consummate their relationship.

Influenced by Lenny, David goes to D3 without any backup, even abandoning Syd, despite a promise that if he gets lost, they will get lost together. Melanie leads her troops, such as they are, to support him, fearing what D3 might do with David in their power, only to find that he has torn the building apart, fused the D3 commandos with the ground, taken his sister and left. Syd realises that he would head for his childhood home, and they arrive as David – driven by Lenny – is questioning Amy to learn that he was adopted(1). As the team travel, Cary contacts them to say that he believes that David is schizophrenic, and that the break in his mind is the result of another personality existing alongside his own; a malevolent, parasitical entity using David's own powers to alter his memories and mask its existence.

"Clearly some people got hurt."

As David spirals out of control and one of Melanie's agents opens fire on him, Syd has him move with her to his artificial space. The respite is short lived, however, as the Yellow Eyed Devil manifests, and Syd finds herself back in group therapy at Clockwork, along with David and all of the other members of the Summerlands group, and it is her turn to talk.

There's a scene in 'Chapter 5' that encapsulates a lot of how the series as a whole rolls. David and Syd are in a lift; they exchange suggestive asides and the lift doors open on a close-up of Syd's face, screaming in ecstasy, which is a disconcerting way to introduce your fan service (and I don't think that's an accident.) David asks if this is her first time and she says no, and begins to tell a story. He was one of her mother's boyfriends. She was sixteen. Too much was drunk. The show takes us by the hand and leads us towards a narrative that is grimly familiar, but this is another bait and switch; there is no tale of abuse. Syd, young and curious, switched into her drunk mother's body to experiment, only for them to switch back during the act.

Okay, more pinstripe than Reservoir Dogs, but still, apparently the hair is not
a sign of evil; brain Lenny is just bad news.

"Who teaches us to be normal when we're one of a kind?" Syd asks rhetorically. Their world is weirder than we think and creepy in whole new ways, but also Syd retains her agency in a way she would not if she were a victim; especially not given that her powers give her a contact aversion which we culturally perceive as most likely a result of trauma. Legion plays with our minds, and it doesn't need David's godlike power to do it, but for all that it fucks with its characters, so far it hasn't done it by making an otherwise powerful woman helpless(2).

Legion is dark and weird, and given to performing the kind of 360-degree spin we see here, with the formerly nervous and disoriented David becoming suave and confident, only to end the episode more lost than ever.

(1) She claims not to know who his real parents were, even while being tormented by reservoir Dogs Lenny/Benny/who the hell knows, so we're still open for Professor Xavier.

(2) Another reason to be glad that Kerry survived her brush with the refrigerator.