Between weekly looks at Batman: The Animated Series and the occasional voyage into the realm of Marvel’s
Netflix offerings, I may have to get around to rebranding myself – with all
this television floating about, can I really call myself “The Cinema King”
anymore? Then again, when television is as cinematic as Legion – eight episodes, closer to a miniseries or just a
serialized long film – do those distinctions really matter?Legion stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, a troubled young man who’s either the most powerful mutant in the world or a psychologically troubled lifer at Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital. David’s world is rocked when he meets Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller), a new patient at Clockworks with a pathological aversion to being touched. When things go awry at Clockworks, David starts seeing things that might not be there; his best friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) appears when she shouldn’t, while David is dogged by painful childhood memories, competing agencies who fear his capabilities, and a morbidly obese demon with yellow eyes.
Legion is the sort of show that’s difficult to summarize because it changes tracks so quickly that the boundaries of a spoiler are almost imperceptible. For example, and without spoiling too much, one character dies partway through the first episode but continues to appear regardless, even remarking on the peculiarity of life after death. Legion is riddled with this sort of thing, head-scratchers that turn the screen into an irresistible magnet. Each episode contains at least two moments where everything you thought you knew about the show changes, prompting questions like, “Wait, why is he the coffee machine?” and “Was he always the deep-sea diver?” (Yes, actual questions I asked during the show.)
Legion is among the most visually stylized shows in recent memory, and it exploits that to its full advantage. The temptation now is to watch television with a phone in hand or while doing some menial task, but Legion is a different beast altogether. Long sequences play out with no dialogue, scored by some of the most inventive music on TV, courtesy of composer Jeff Russo – including an impromptu dance number set to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and one very memorable sequence from Episode 7, staged like a silent film, replete with dialogue cards, set to an electronic version of Ravel’s “Boléro.” The music plays into the wild unpredictability of the show, and – along with the nightmares – it’ll stick with you after the show ends.
For as brief as the show is, it’s got an impressively sized cast who get a striking amount of material. Stevens is fascinating as the unreliable protagonist, who’s never quite in control of himself or his rapidly evolving environment. Keller is sweet and mysterious, and she has a genuine chemistry with Stevens. Bill Irwin and Amber Midthunder are ones to watch as Cary & Kerry (about whom I really can’t say anything else), while Jemaine Clement is his quirky compelling self as an icy beat poet with a slipping grasp of the English language.
Far and away, though, it’s Aubrey Plaza who hogties the show, absconds with it, and then brings it back around to show you all the madcap things she’s done with it – and thank God for this, because after the one-two punch of Dirty Grandpa and Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, I had just about given up on the actress who was perennially my second favorite character on Parks & Recreation (though, to be fair, she was the closest thing to a bright spot in those dismal, dismal movies). It’s become the stuff of television legend now to remark upon the fact that the role of Lenny Busker was originally written for a man, though Plaza insisted the role not be altered once she was cast, and yet it is impossible to imagine a man making this part work because Plaza’s offbeat gender-bent presence adds still one more dimension of existential uncertainty to the show. As Lenny, Plaza is Janet Snakehole by way of Inception, a wolf in Beetlejuice’s clothing with a penchant for delivering, baldly straight-faced, immortal lines like, “Unhand the reptile, space captain!” And if we could talk plainly about the show, I’d tell you so many more delightful things about Plaza’s performance, but the real delight of her act is that you’re never quite sure what to expect from her, and as David’s grasp on reality begins to falter (which is to say, within the first few minutes of the pilot), you can’t be certain what – if anything – is real.
Legion is gripping in a way that most television shows struggle to manage; Westworld aside, I can’t remember a show debuting this strongly. (Even Game of Thrones took a few episodes to really get going.) And for those who feel a slight creep of superhero overload, a numbing disappointment that maybe-just-maybe we’ve seen everything the genre has to offer, Legion rejects that premise out of hand and then proceeds to destabilize your faith in the very language in which you proposed that premise. Better still, though, Legion never leaves its audience in the dust (at least, not for very long) and instead patiently unfolds the answers to the mysteries it postulates in a way that never feels compulsory. Aside from a post-credits sequence, this first season of Legion manages to address very nearly all its central questions and wrap things up in a way that feels both satisfying and enticing; put another way, I didn’t need the slightly gimmicky cliffhanger after the credits to guarantee my attendance for a second season.
