Mutant or monster?
Spoilers follow for this episode and the comics on which Legion is based.
As the third episode of Legion begins, we meet Melanie’s talking cappuccino machine -- which, by the way, how much do you want one of those right about now? -- as it relays a folk tale to Melanie. It’s the story of a poor woodcutter and his wife who find a crane caught in a trap and free it. Later they meet a girl and she moves in with the couple. They come to love the girl as a daughter, and her talents as a weaver bring them great wealth, but when they betray her trust she is revealed to actually be a crane -- and she flies off, never to be seen again.
As Melanie asks to hear the tale once more, it’s not hard to discern that this could also be the story of David. David and his powers have the potential of bringing much to Melanie’s cause, but as she attempts to understand and control his abilities she also risks peering too closely, looking too deeply into who -- or what -- David really is. And judging by what we’ve seen so far from David, it seems a crane flying off in the end would be the least of it.
“Chapter 3” continues the memory work that began last week, with Melanie, Ptonomy and now Syd too probing David’s past. As Melanie explains, each instance of his illness erupting over the years was actually his power manifesting. But was it just that? David says to Syd later, “Everyone in here keeps saying that I’m sane. What if they’re wrong?”
Indeed, the David of the comics isn’t of sound mind -- not usually, anyway. And as the team continues to probe David’s past, and as they keep coming back to a few specific instances -- his telekinetic outburst in the kitchen, the scary storybook reading in his childhood bedroom -- the question again and again is why can’t they truly see what happened in these moments? David insists he’s not blocking them, but they also can’t see the “Devil with Yellow Eyes” that haunts him. And which he seems to forget seeing. Kinda, uh, crazy, right?
Of course, by the end Syd points out that those might not even be actual memories. And indeed, just when “Chapter 3” felt like it was going into rehash territory after last week’s memory dissection, it turned into a horror story in its final act. That Yellow Eyed sucker is getting freakier and freakier, and Syd and lil’ David’s run-in with him as he chased them through the air duct only added to that fright factor, as did Yellow’s sudden ability to grow rather large and get all hand-smashey when Melanie encountered him. And then that creepy kid from the book The World’s Angriest Boy in the World comes to life too, which… wow.
So thankfully that tonal shift kept this episode fresh, but the show does run the risk -- particularly after its stellar first episode -- of getting samey if it’s just going to keep focusing on the memory work. Also, as Dream Lenny (Hallucination Lenny?) points out, David isn’t terribly stressed over his poor sister Amy, nor her, ahem, cornhole, despite Amy’s currently being held captive by the Eye (and his leeches). He needs to tend to that.
Some notes:
- The story of the woodcutter and the crane comes from the Japanese folktale Tsuru no Ongaeshi.
- Add teleportation to David’s growing list of powers. Anyone worrying that this version of the character wouldn’t be super-powerful must be pretty pleased so far.
- So we know Syd has done the body swap thing at least several times before, including with a Chinese man, a 300-pound woman, and a five-year old girl.
- Speaking of which, that weird pee story about David and Syd’s body swap kept getting weirder and weirder… before turning hilarious.
- The Eye, by the way, is Walter, and he knew Melanie’s husband and Bill Irwin’s tech guy Cary Loudermilk back when they first built Summerland.
- “It felt like you grew up in a haunted house.”
The Verdict
Legion continues to be stylistically impressive, and its central story involving what’s really going on with David remains intriguing. But the show will need to get out of Summerland and the memory work sessions soon in order to avoid getting repetitive.
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