Posted in: FX, Review, TV | Tagged: aubrey plaza, dan stevens, fx, legion

"Legion" S03, Ep01: Time Travel Done Right (Spoiler Review)

Legion is back to mess with our minds with a brand new third season. Some things have definitely changed since last we saw David (Dan Stevens) and his friends, and writer Noah Hawley throws some chaos into the mix by introducing a new character into the mix.

Switch (Lauren Tsai) is a mutant in her later teens that can create doors that allow her to travel through time. She keeps seeing signs and clues telling her to seek out the Pregnant Virgin, and to beware the mustache. She tracks down a business location by following a Yellow Bus (it's red, though), and the episode breaks out into a full-blown music video, set to Superorganism's "Something For Your M.I.N.D."

With choreography.

Welcome back to Legion.

David has become something of a cult figure now, surrounding himself with young people that follow him without question. There is a blue elixir that comes from David, and appears to keep people in a euphoric state.

"I like your vibe. It's very two days from now"

David has been looking for a time traveler, or at least that's what Switch believes. She gets into the inner sanctum of David's followers, and comes face to face with Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), who seems even more off than ever. She's introduced to Switch by one of David's acolytes:

"S before H, my beloved, the Master of Disaster. Her majesty, the breakfast queen."

Plaza is really creepy here. She doesn't look like she's actually focusing on anything, and seems bored with everything until Switch insists on seeing David. It's unsettling.

David claims to be "The Magic Man". He will take away people's pain, they just need to stick around after. He needs their love, which is something he doesn't have. He tells Switch about Amahl Farouk (David Negahban), the Shadow King, and how he had krept into his mind for 30 years.

"I'm better now."

The mutants of Legion have such an off-kilter pastiche to them. It's all of the weirdness of a sixties comic book aesthetic, filtered through a modern day psychedelic sensibility that skews everything with a sinister bent. There is very little fanfare when powers are used, but it's often creepy.

The best example of that is when David and Switch find themselves in the middle of a firefight between David's followers and the the Forces of Division, Syd's (Rachel Keller) strike-force that is out to kill David. He turns people to dust, or makes them explode, and in one case, turns someone to ash. The camera doesn't linger on any of it, but you really get the sense of power that David is wielding.

Director Andrew Stanton pulls off a time-travel storyline unlike any that I've seen before. It's a very Legion affair, to be sure, but the way in which Switch keeps jumping back to warn David about the incoming attack is pretty amazing.

Switch's powers are really cool. She can open doors into a hallway filled with doorways, each marked with different increments of time. She has to be careful, though. As the voice in her walkman tells her, the farther back she goes, the more likely she'll "Wake the demon". The visual impact of her powers is pretty neat, too, since she can pretty much pull her time doors out of anything, and her escapes are really neatly executed.

Then, the entire episode changes up, and we get to see the attack planned from the perspective of Syd  and the Forces of Division, who are all pretty intent on getting to David and killing him to avoid a future in which he destroys everything.

Syd has made a deal with the devil, too. Her team includes the Shadow King, as well as an army of mustachioed lady robots. Cary (Bill Irwin) has created an android body for Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris), but that body seems to house the mainframe. Kerry (Amber Midthunder) is more lethal than ever, and manages to wrack up quite the body count.

These are apparently the good guys, but they seem pretty blood-thirsty.

Legion somehow manages to be the most comic book adaptation of comic books ever, but it's still very cinematic and engrossing. I can't wait to see where this quirky little story takes us in its final season.

Here's a peek at the next episode of Legion, which airs Monday nights on FX:

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