Spoilers Legion season 2

[The Nth Doctor]

Now it has happened. David has become the villain. He is now Legion.

What a stellar episode and grand season finale. Most of the pieces fell into place at last, particularly both David's plan of attack against Farouk and Farouk's plan of counterattack. David's placement of the Choke and Lenny. Farouk poisoning Syd's mind. Strike and counterstrike. And in the end, Farouk won by pushing David to do the unforgivable: Suppressing Syd's terrified memories. He drugged her...and raped her.

It's such a casual moment that it's almost easy to miss it. But even in her confused state of mind, I saw the subtle terror and reluctance in her eyes as David made love to her and the moment was confirmed by Syd when David was imprisoned. "You drugged me and had sex with me." She doesn't called it rape but it's rape nonetheless.

And with that moment, it's hard to be sympathetic with David, even as his schizophrenia has taken full control. While I'm happy the show has returned to the idea of David being both mentally ill and a powerful telepathic and telekinetic mutant, I hope the show doesn't shy away from this real ugliness David has become, what he did to Syd.

As for the rest of the episode, I loved the animated (so to speak) mental battle between Farouk and David, one that was probably best realized in this fashion instead of lots of fancy, over-the-top CGI. The animation is in the same style as the Farouk origin story from last season, so its use here doesn't feel as jarring as it could have been and I wouldn't mind seeing it again, in small doses. The singing of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" was an odd, but effective touch, too.

Interesting how we only saw Melanie and Oliver in the old school footage, set three years in the future. I love the idea of them running away to the ice-cube non-corporeal world (I forget what it was called), where they finally achieved happiness with each other. In whatever direction show takes in season 3, I hope we see more of them in this state.

So it seems Ptonomy's death and transfer to the mainframe is a dead end and didn't really serve any purpose. Maybe it's set-up for next season, but as it stands now, it's the one out-of-place oddity of the season. I hope we see more of him next season and resolve this issue.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

You know you've watched too many movies when this pops in your head:
(hit play and it should go right to the time spot)

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It was outstanding.

David is both villain and victim, both confused and clear, both powerful and weak. With Farouk out of his head, he needs to grow up, and stop identifying as a boy. Then, maybe he can grow into the good person he really wants to be, finally defeat Farouk, and save Division 3.

 

[Set Harth]

Don't really know what to make of this.

I wonder if anyone gave Oliver the David lecture. "You killed Division 3 stormtroopers! You are NOT a GOOD PERSON, Oliver!"

I loved the animated (so to speak) mental battle between Farouk and David, one that was probably best realized in this fashion instead of lots of fancy, over-the-top CGI.

Can't afford it!

I'm also wondering exactly what Farouk's plan was where Lenny ( "I'm not not working for him" ) was concerned. Unless it was just to enrage David and trigger their confrontation. In which case... mission accomplished.

Interesting(?) CC tidbit: according to the captions David's main head clone is Divad (the one who has an American accent) and the other is Dvd.

Didn't they all have American accents?

 

[Forbin]

Well that was a hell of an episode to miss the first three minutes of!!
Mind battle to The Who! Fantastic! (caught it on the replay).

There damn well BETTER be another season!

 

[Forbin]

Didn't they all have American accents?

Wonder where his British-accented Id-self was.

 

[Set Harth]

His rational mind... guess it wasn't around.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Was it ever made clear what the delusion was? I mean we see SK whispering things to people but was it ever laid out? I probably should watch the episode again.

Didn't they all have American accents?

Oops, good point, I guess I hear Dan's real voice shine through more than it should. So I guess the main clone is the one I meant, it seemed flatter than the others. Was that one supposed to be the devil on his shoulder one? I think the other one was the nut house version.

 

[Snaploud]

"All right, I feel like I need to say out loud that your boyfriend is an extremely powerful mutant who could potentially destroy the world if he wanted to, or if, say, you hurt his feelings real bad."-Clark, Legion Chapter 16

Good call, Clark.

 

[Christopher]

Was it ever made clear what the delusion was?

The first alt-David claimed it was "I am a good person. I deserve love." The events of the episode seemed to confirm that claim, that David was a villain who deluded himself into thinking he was the hero.

I don't know how I feel about this finale. It had some creative moments, like the animated astral-plane-battle music video. The way the battle played out reminded me of the Xavier-Shadow King astral plane battle from the '90s animated series, and I wonder if that was an inspiration.

But there's an underlying thread here that I dislike a lot, and that's the stigmatization of mental illness -- all this use of archaic, judgmental terms like "insane" and "mad" -- and even more, the stigmatization of mental health treatment as some horrific, dehumanizing fate. Those attitudes do a lot of damage by keeping people from seeking out treatment when they need it.

 

[Snaploud]

I think this episode needs to be balanced against the alternate realities episode for perspective. David was never guaranteed to destroy the world. In large part, both Farouk and Syd broke him. Oliver and Melanie basically said the same at the beginning of this episode.

Note: I am in no way trying to justify what David did to Syd (or what he may do to the world), but Syd and Farouk are hardly the heroes of this story.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

The first alt-David claimed it was "I am a good person. I deserve love." The events of the episode seemed to confirm that claim, that David was a villain who deluded himself into thinking he was the hero.

ahh, thanks...I prob do need to watch this again

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The events of the episode seemed to confirm that claim, that David was a villain who deluded himself into thinking he was the hero.

The events of the episode really didn't confirm that.

Did anybody else notice that Farouk managed to short circuit his electronic crown (the Shadow King got a restraint that looked like a crown, heh) and managed to use a mouse to pass a delusion into Syd, and that Farouk wasn't even wearing the crown at the end? I did. I could be wrong of course, but it really looked like Farouk broke out and took over Division 3.

 

[Forbin]

David was never guaranteed to destroy the world.

I thought Daisy Johnson was going to destroy the world.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I have to say I'm surprised and disappointed by the lack of discussion about what David did to Syd and how that effects the nature of the show and his character. He raped Syd. He robbed her of her agency by suppressing her memories of her terror she felt about him and, as she said, he drugged her and had sex with her. There may have not been any screaming, but there was unequivocally no consent.

The A.V. Club's Alex McLevy best expresses why this is so damaging for the show and the character of David:

If you’re halfway through watching Out Of Africa, you know you’re not going to have a sudden smash cut to a pornographic, throbbing sex scene between Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and another person, because that would violate a basic understanding of the world that’s been established, what a mainstream movie provides, and also how these characters would behave. Similarly, Legion has established that there are many facets to David, but despite the depictions of a malevolent David, or a homeless crazy David, or even the fears of our primary David about the violence he’s capable of inflicting (something that wasn’t even introduced until the last couple of episodes), we had been given a fundamentally good person. Naive, even, in his sincere belief in true love, admirable in his loyalty to his friends, and—above all—steadfast in his refusal to accept evil or unhappiness as the outcome. When Syd brooded over their likely unhappy ending, David was the one to say he believed in a better one. Even when he was torturing Oliver last week, we may not have liked it, but we understood doing something bad to achieve something good. He was trying to save Syd.

Transforming David from a fundamentally decent person with a troubled mind into someone capable of committing sexual assault in the course of a single episode is the needle scratch on the record player. It’s the porn scene in the middle of Out Of Africa. It’s edgy and unpredictable, but that doesn’t make it good. It changes the show on a fundamental level—and more than that, it pulls the rug out from under its viewers, scorning them for thinking they were watching one kind of show when in fact they were watching a very different one. It’s one thing to have a show’s characters lie to us. It’s quite another when a show lies to its audience.
​

Like I said in my own review, I hope the show doesn't shy away what David did to Syd in the next season and properly analysis what happened.

 

[Christopher]

I have to say I'm surprised and disappointed by the lack of discussion about what David did to Syd and how that effects the nature of the show and his character.

Yeah, it makes him pretty much irredeemable now. If they try to walk it back and make him the good guy again, that's a bridge too far. This show's treatment of female characters has been problematical this season, reducing them to either supporters of men or victims of men or both.

Overall, I didn't like this season. The first season was striking and impressive, but its surrealism made sense given the unreliability of David's perceptions, and it told a largely cohesive story overall. This season was just random weirdness and farce for its own sake, and the surrealism wasn't just David's subjective view, it was experienced by everyone in the show. And it didn't really add up to anything. A number of threads were just left dangling, especially whatever the hell happened to Ptonomy (and it's a really bad look for the show to discard its only black lead so cavalierly). There were some very creative set pieces, but without the underlying substance or purpose that season 1 had. And a lot of things just went too far into what would be pure spoof if the surrounding elements weren't so dark.

 

[Set Harth]

The way the battle played out reminded me of the Xavier-Shadow King astral plane battle from the '90s animated series

Not to mention their chalk-animation battle from season 1...

(and it's a really bad look for the show to discard its only black lead so cavalierly).

But that gets balanced out by making the last episode about #metoo.

it pulls the rug out from under its viewers, scorning them for thinking they were watching one kind of show when in fact they were watching a very different one. It’s one thing to have a show’s characters lie to us. It’s quite another when a show lies to its audience.

This might be a bit of an overreaction. I tend to see this as somewhat more in the direction of "Luke ignites his lightsaber over Kylo" territory. It's important that Farouk seems to have played everyone.

 

[Snaploud]

I don't think Syd really understands David's mind. He doesn't have a "true face," and he's not clearly a bad person or a good person. He has dissociative identity disorder, and the personalities are in conflict over who is in charge. Some of those personalities are bad (though, it's debatable whether or not they are bad through nature or nurture), and I assume some are good (beyond the so-called delusion created by saying "I'm a good person. I deserve love.") Syd's actions (with the gun and calling David a bad person) were what gave the worst internal personalities a boost to take charge.

Is David irredeemable? Putting aside time travel (which may or may not be considered a cheap way of getting around the issue): I'm not sure. In comics, for instance, you often have characters who committed horrible crimes but spent the rest of their lives trying to make up for it. Were those characters redeemed? Also, can David as a whole be judged based upon the actions of individual internal personalities, or do each of the personalities deserve judgement separately? Is David really one person or many people from a moral and/or practical perspective?

 

[Xerxes82]

Does David understand, or is he even capable of understanding, that what he's done is wrong? The implication seems to be that David has always been a monster, just hiding under the veneer of naive, good David for the sake of wooing Syd. Now that the romance is over, the real David has emerged. In essence, Farouk gave him a get out of jail free card, via the trauma of possession and exploitation, that has now been revoked. Be interesting to see where the show goes now that David has gone full on villain.

Overall, I didn't like this season. The first season was striking and impressive, but its surrealism made sense given the unreliability of David's perceptions, and it told a largely cohesive story overall. This season was just random weirdness and farce for its own sake, and the surrealism wasn't just David's subjective view, it was experienced by everyone in the show.

I'm going to disagree with your assessment on the grounds of this final episode. Where there was very little surreal. Honestly, the head of the minotaur, and the psyblocker being a giant tuning fork was pretty much it (and Fukiyama, I suppose). Because the cast has finally seen through David. The bizarre and the surreal were a visual metaphor for the characters buying into David's world, accepting what they saw there no matter how off it might be. As the placard brought up in the finale, what is true is merely what is accepted by the masses and what they can enforce on others.

For the bulk of the season, what nine out of ten wise men could agree on was that David was a hero, and the world was increasingly bizarre and weird. But when Syd emerged from the shadows with the head of the last particular bit of weird, "normal" was reestablished. Note that even the giant tuning fork was only visually relevant for Lenny, who is, like David, mentally unstable (and also high). The characters no longer followed David into his world, into his madness. What was "sane" changed. Even the green pointy hands outside the Division 3 headquarters were missing in this episode. David is now an outsider again, and the others don't follow him into his skewed reality.

I think the whole season was surreal because the characters were embracing David and ignoring the indications of his instability.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

By the way, anyone find the new Aubrey Plaza LG ads nicely Legion-esque?
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ddgv/lg-v35-thinq-whats-it-gonna-take-featuring-aubrey-plaza