Surprise, surprise, this week’s episode of Legion was super trippy with action taking place in (what we assume is) the real world and in the astral plane where David has been trapped. He is still asleep since the events in last week’s episode, leaving Melanie to send the other members of the gang off to search for answers. David, as we know, is unreliable. Even his memories cannot be trusted. They therefore must go to the source of the events and ask the real people who were there like Dr. Poole and David’s ex-girlfriend. But are Syd, Melanie, and Ptonomy really out of David’s memories or in an astral plane of their own? With this show, you can never really be sure.
Real or Not Real?
“What was real? That was the mission.” Syd, Ptonomy, and girl Kerry are sent to figure out what David is hiding in his memories, maybe without even knowing he is hiding anything at all. Somehow all the events trace back to Dr. Poole, David’s psychritrist before he was sent to Clockworks. Something he said in a session may be the key to all of this. Oftentimes David spoke of his father who showed him the stars. “What do the stars say?” asks Dr. Poole, a question which Syd desperately wants to know the answer to. A father who showed him stars that spoke to him? Sounds a lot like a Professor we know and a machine he uses to detect other mutants. Is Division 3 after David’s biological father (or his creation) somehow?
The trio’s adventures take them to a lighthouse where Dr. Poole has been living. The doctor still seems to care for David even though the mutant ruined his life. Except it’s not really Dr. Poole (was it ever? Did David kill him in the past with the tape recorder?), but the Eye. He goes after the group and manages to capture them all, but not before Syd touches him and switches their bodies.
Two Hearts Beat As One
David has been trapped inside his own brain, in a simulated reality where nothing is real. While in this “no-place” he meets Oliver Bird (Jemaine Clement), Melanie’s husband who for some reason is being kept frozen Captain America style in an old timey underwater diving suit straight out of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Oliver has made himself comfortable in this reality, but David is still worried about the monster outside the door. Oliver remarks that the monster, while a part of David, is also a parasite, feeding off of him. This idea is expanded on closer to the end of the episode where we learn that David’s friend Lenny wasn’t a girl named Lenny at all, but a man named Benny who encouraged David’s bad behaviors and drug use. Is Lenny/Benny The Man With the Yellow Eyes in disguise, pretending to be a friend, but really out to cause David harm?
The idea of parasites is twofold in this episode as we learn that Kerry and Cary Loudermilk are actually two people who share one body. They are not trapped in their relationship like David and his personalities, but are individual people with an understanding and their own characteristics. She does the fun stuff and he does all of the normal people things. Cary’s concern about what Kerry will do without him foreshadows her eventual death near the end of the episode because he doesn’t even think about a life without her and must therefore face one. It will be interesting to see what effect her loss with have on his own powers in the coming episodes.
Woman in Chains
The theme of imprisonment also continues this episode with Amy. She is locked away in a concrete prison and trying to deal with her torture and her subconscious knowledge that maybe her brother wasn’t crazy after all. She finds out her fellow prisoner is Kissinger, David’s doctor from Clockworks. This can’t be a coincidence. Are they both there to lure in David because we know he wants to go and rescue his sister? Is Kissinger there to mine Amy for information about how and when David’s powers started? Who knows. One thing is for sure: we now know that not even the flashback dog is real and therefore we really can’t take even the slightest thing at face value.
Legion airs Wednesdays at 10 pm PT/ET on FX.