Legion - Chapter 8

With the final episode of the show's First Season, Legion wraps up David's (Dan Stevens) internal battle with the Shadow King (Quinton Boisclair) and also returns a familiar face from early in the series. I was more than a little surprised to see how much time was given to Hamish Linklater's character to open this episode. We see his home life, his recovery, his thirst for revenge, and his front-row seat from David's battle for control of his mind. After David takes care of the first wave of their soldiers without breaking a sweat, Division 3 spends spends most of the episode as passive spectators, unsure what exactly is happening. In many ways they are the stand-in for the audience.

While I was surprised that the show extracated the Shadow King from David's mind, the choice of its new host couldn't be more obvious. As for David, the removal of the parasite who had been inside his mind his entire life offers David the chance to explore who and what he is without Lenny's (Aubrey Plaza) influence. The final scene of episode, which all but accounces "Season Two is Coming!," wasn't the coda I was hoping for. I'd have preferred the season to be more open-ended to the multiple possibilities of what comes next rather than looking the character up yet again, this time in a tiny metal sphere (did he piss of Mr. Terrific?).

Despite my quibbles with the episode's final moments, "Chapter 8" closes out the season in the strong and stylish fashion we've become accustomed to seeing. At only 8 episodes, Legion doesn't off the number of peak and valleys which plague many of Marvel's Netflix shows and DC's slate on The CW. Of course that also means we get far less story, so there is a trade off. I don't expect David to spend too long in his new prison (but, hey, I didn't expect him to keep going back to the mental institution in Season One). What I do wonder is if the show will start to give us more recognizable X-Men characters the second time around, one in particular comes to mind, or continue to play on the periphery of the X-Men Universe?