#this could be before or after Charles killed Farouk

[class-wom]

Another Legion Chapter 22 Spoiler Discussion:  Charles Xavier and the Butterfly Effect

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 SPOILER TERRITORY

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So here’s the thing (yes, there’s a thing):  On my initial “Morning After”-post, I made an ob about Charles Xavier’s one decision and his head-scratching priorities (mutant-hunting versus child-rearing/wife-supporting) and what I thought of them.  Did and didn’t think much of it at the time (in other words, I thought it was “just me”)...and then went online later and noted that I was hardly alone in my ob!  As a matter of fact, I read one quote by Harry Lloyd himself noting that this one moment was the one that, at least where this characterization is concerned, revealed that Xavier was hardly a hero.

Now that isn’t to say that this makes Xavier a villain by default per se.  For that matter, Farouk’s simplistic Chapter 15 declaration that the “non-hero” by default was a villain and vice-versa does not make him a hero if Xavier is not one himself imo.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that, had Charles made a completely different decision and put his family ahead of his obsession over whether or not he was the only mutant in the world, the “present day scenario” in which we find ourselves as an audience -- potential Apocalypse, David Haller literally versus the world, Farouk slyly and quietly pulling the strings on all sides, etc. -- could have been completely avoided.  (Not sure about whether or not David would have “psychotic mutant issues” per se; I kind of think he would have, but they would be milder and more manageable than what we see now, and he would hopefully be in a more supportive and understanding environment than he is at present.  Also, that Syd-thing probably wouldn’t have happened either, I’m thinking, because Farouk wouldn’t have messed with the Birds and Syd!)  Prevention is indeed less costly than cure, and Charles Xavier could have prevented the world from having to be saved in the first place had he not hunted down a Moroccan mutant that plunged his entire family straight down to Hell both literally and figuratively!  The point has repeatedly been made that David’s attempts at time travel and prevention have potentially exacerbated an already bad situation and all but sealed his fate as Farouk’s property, and while I acknowledge and note that on the one hand, on the other, had Charles stayed, we would be looking at a completely different present in which David may feel no need to go to such extremes in the first place!  Everything hinges not on Farouk’s actual possession (as David believes) but Charles exposing himself to Farouk in the first place.  To me it’s like teasing a poisonous rattlesnake:  Sure, the inevitable venomous bites have tragic consequences, but common sense could easily prevent them.

Lest this turn into a complete “Xavier Attack,” lol, we saw this to a lesser extent last week in Clark’s obsession with using Squirrel to track down Lenny in pursuit of David, if not landing David himself.  Sure, he launched a seemingly successful strategy on the “Tea Party Gang,” but it was that one little detail he neglected -- properly arming an expensive vehicle containing expensive vehicles and the literal brains of the operation in the form of Cary -- that proved D3′s downfall.  It was only too easy for Lenny the Target to hop in and whizz away with Cary in tow due to his neglect of the safety of all of the participants in the mission.  It’s always that one tiny little detail slipping one’s mind in a moment of focus that sometimes leads to boneheaded mishaps at the least and occasional tragedies at the worst, sadly but truthfully, and it’s the realization of how preventable the consequences were in retrospect that oftentimes lead to self-torture and regret.  But there are too many folks so focused on their own “priorities,” whether it be the determination of Clark and Syd to kill David and/or “save the world,” David’s determination to “fix things” (again, might not have been necessary in the first place, as we now know), or Charles’ determination to confirm his desire to “find others,” that the tunnel vision eclipses the ability to foresee the potential consequences of the actions in question.

Now this is how things look at present, as is the nature of this show; much to my relief, by all accounts this is hardly the last of “Chuck’nGabby” that we will see before the curtain call, and I’m eager to see Charles’s retrospective take on all of this.  Will he reflect on this with extreme regret?  How will that effect David’s wildly desperate attempts at grasping the situation for all of his internal and external struggles?  Now maybe there’s more to this:  Maybe Farouk did pose an immediate threat, and maybe Xavier was “called to attention” over it, being a soldier and all.  Now that would make more sense if that proves to be the case, but the way Chapter 22 presented it, it just appears that Xavier got a wild hair, booked a trip to Morocco, and kissed Gabs and Little Davey goodbye before their happy lives were forever changed for the worse.  I’ll hold my fire until or unless more info becomes available, but for now I’d say my biggest among many facepalms lies with Xavier.  In fact, I would call it the root ultimate facepalm:  The literal fate of the world lies with this one core decision, and it wasn’t necessarily David’s.  But we have seen enough of David’s psyche to compare it to that of his father’s now and say, “Oh, that’s where you get it!”

On that note, it puts David in Chapters 9 to Chapter 13 in a whole new light:  Distracted by conflicting missions, debating whether to destroy Farouk’s body via the D3-mission or to save it via FutureSyd’s insistence, grappling over the notion of having lost a year of his life as all others have moved on for better or worse, the last thing on his mind was the safety of Amy and Ben, which he clearly took for granted until he realized the truth too late.  Similarly, Farouk took advantage of his father’s distraction with his own mission by whatever motivation -- orders, self-imposed curiosity, who knows right now? -- and destroyed what he loved in a similar fashion with an equally twisted motivation.

Again, at least that’s how it looks to me.

[mypralaya]

@theprofesscr There was great loveliness in the city of Cairo. The Church of St. George within the ancient Babylon Fortress on the Nile Delta where felucca boats drifted past, the great Giza Pyramids on the outskirts, the art galleries and embassies of the Zamalek neighborhood, the charming and peaceful Wust El Balad where the Talat Harb Square and Abdeen Palace could be found, the Khan El Khalili street market bursting with s, perfume oils, gold artifacts, spices, silver, glass-stained lamps to beautiful handmade rugs like something out of Arabian Nights. It was the wealthiest city in Egypt, and it showed... ...but not in places like this. Much like Mumbai, the wealthiest city in India, where Haven had been born to one of the richest of rich families, the have-nots mirrored the haves in abundance and then some. As much as there was wealth, there was poverty, deep and putrid and brutal. For every upscale neighborhood or beautiful ancient architecture maintained into the modern era, there were a dozen crumbling slums where people lived like rats in the dark, packed tightly in unclean nests and scavenging to survive. Indeed, a nest was what this slum was called---the Sudan Nest, so-named because its first residents were Sudanese refugees, though it was now quite inclusive and cosmopolitan. Poverty was not half so discriminatory as its upper-class opposite. Its proper name was Deir El Nahya, found near the al-Dokki neighborhood, a district of Giza in the southwest of central Cairo. Amidst the shoddy and substandard shanties that passed themselves off as buildings, was one actual house, recently constructed and clean. In that house was the woman who had paid for its creation, alongside a great many of the Nest's most ailing residents, the elderly and the disabled and even a few lepers who had been coaxed from Cairo's Abu Zaabal colony to come here for care. And of course, children. So many children. So few parents. The baby that Haven had on her knee, thankfully, did have a mother, but she was in the hospital right now. Haven was taking care of that. She was also taking care of this little one, Nabila, for the time being. But it was not Nabila that she was discussing now with this fellow foreigner, an American called Charles Xavier. It was children that were, for the moment, entirely out of her reach, an evasive little gang dedicated to thievery and petty crime. "I believe they're reporting to someone, " she said, bouncing Nabila with ever-so-gentle care, "An adult. It's hardly an uncommon phenomena, for an adult to take leadership over a group of orphans. And sadly, sometimes it's in fact the best thing for them, compared to the available alternatives, or lack thereof. Sometimes. But I don't believe it is in this case. I believe they're being exploited, perhaps even abused. That is...also not uncommon. Have you any idea who this might lead back to?" She didn't expect him to have any more idea than her. Both of them were strangers in this land, and secrets were not given up easily here, let alone to well-meaning outsiders who would just make trouble. She had no idea how much trouble this man had already made.

[iamghostwriter]

SHADOWKING...the history

Looking back at some of the greatest nightmares the telepathic threat has caused through the years.

You can’t have a great hero without a great villain and for the main character in FX’s “Legion,” David Haller, that is none other than the powerful, complex and often terrifying menace known as the Shadow King. With Season 2 of the series airing right now, David and the Shadow King’s conflict has only escalated, with the villain unleashed on the world in a bigger way.

Of course the Shadow King, like David himself, originated in Marvel’s X-MEN family of comics, with the Shadow King actually debuting first, in the pages of UNCANNY X-MEN, before David’s eventual debut in NEW MUTANTS #25.

Let’s look back at some of the most important and memorable moments in the history of Shadow King, otherwise known as Amahl Farouk, from his many comic book appearances…

CHARLES VS. AMAHL

The mutant who would become known as the Shadow King, Amahl Farouk, was first seen in UNCANNY X-MEN #117. At that point, Professor X thought that his team of X-Men had perished and felt both depressed and reflective. He recalled a time in his youth after Moira MacTaggert broke off their engagement when he traveled the world to blow off some psionic steam. While in Egypt, a young Ororo Munroe picked his pocket and when Charles went to use his mental powers to stop the tiny thief, he felt a strong psychic attack that lead him to a nearby pub.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #117

That’s where he first met Amahl Farouk and the two began communicating through their minds. Xavier compared being in psychic contact with Farouk to “swimming in a sea of maggots.” Farouk said Charles should join forces with him, but Xavier saw him as a criminal who should be punished, which lead to a battle between the two on the psychic plane. As the more experienced telepath, Farouk used some of Charles’ worst memories against him and easily recognized Xavier as a novice during their battle. However, the less experienced party decided to focus on pure power over mental parlor tricks and blasted Amahl in the astral plane so fully that it killed the man in the real world, ending his threat.

Or so Xavier thought…

CORRUPTING KARMA

In fact, the villain survived as a psychic entity — and indeed, we’d eventually learn Farouk was only the latest among other forms he’d used going back much further — and he went on to sense the powerful mutant Karma in NEW MUTANTS #6, taking over her body when she was caught in an explosion. He then stealthily used her body and their combined powers to fortify himself on the physical plane once more. The New Mutants at first only saw their manipulator as Karma, and thought she had betrayed them. Eventually, her body came to look more like Farouk’s corpulent appearance.

New Mutants (1983) #34

In NEW MUTANTS #34, the Farouk-possessed Karma was now running a club that offered its patrons a taste of darkness. They assumed they could go back into the light, but the Shadow King claimed that his powers included corrupting their souls more fully. He showed part of that power by keeping most of the New Mutants, along with Storm, in his thrall. Thanks to a clever plan concocted by Magik and Warlock, the mutants were freed and the truth discovered about Karma’s possessor. Once Farouk jumped out of Karma and into her fellow New Mutant, Doug Ramsey, she battled the Shadow King on the psychic plane. The evil one once again gained the upper hand early, but Karma persevered. She attempted to capture his psychic form and deliver him to Professor X, but the slippery villain escaped once more into the astral plane.

Muir Island Showdown

He didn’t stay away for too long, though. He eventually made his presence felt in UNCANNY X-MEN #253 when he met Forge on a vision quest. Describing himself as “A ghost. A demon. A nightmare,” Farouk challenged Forge for a caged image of Storm. Forge just barely managed to escape being taken over by his foe, but walked away knowing Storm was both alive and in danger.

X-Factor (1986) #69

At that point, the Shadow King – who would finally become known by that fearsome moniker in UNCANNY X-MEN #265 – took over FBI agent Jacob Reisz, who had taken Storm to a hospital. Farouk managed to pull a number of strings and make moves behind the scenes, all of which culminated in the Muir Island Saga, which was set into motion in UNCANNY X-MEN #277, and then took center stage in UNCANNY X-MEN #278, UNCANNY X-MEN #279, X-FACTOR #69, UNCANNY X-MEN #280 and X-FACTOR #70. During this period, Charles Xavier came back from being the prisoner of Warskrulls to take on the Shadow King, who had effectively taken control of Muir Island. One of the many mutants the Shadow King used to keep the X-Men at bay was Xavier’s own powerful son, David Haller, AKA Legion, but ultimately, with some help from X-Factor, Professor X and the X-Men managed to stop the Shadow King again – though Charles once more lost the use of his legs in the battle against his longtime foe.

FORCEFUL FOES

The Shadow King would return to give the X-Men nightmares in the Psi-War crossover, beginning in X-MEN #77, and then go on to take over an alternate reality version of Charles Xavier in NEW EXCALIBUR #8. He’d even give Wakanda trouble in X-MEN: WORLD’S APART #1, #2, #3 and #4, as he possessed the Black Panther and faced off with Storm once more.

Uncanny X-Force (2010) #The Shadow King would then show up to torment X-Force in UNCANNY X-FORCE #10. He even joined together with other villains to become part of Daken’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in several issues, culminating in UNCANNY X-FORCE #34. Alongside his compatriots, Shadow King tried to manipulate Evan, a clone of Apocalypse, into becoming his full self, but with Farouk in control.

AN ASTONISHING KING

Most recently, Shadow King plied his nefarious trade in ASTONISHING X-MEN. When the Shadow King attempted to take over Psylocke, she sent out a distress call that brought Bishop, Angel, Gambit, Fantomex, Old Man Logan, Rogue and Beast in for help. After they saved her, Psylocke explained that the Shadow King intended to build a web out of those with psi powers. “He wants to fill the world with poison and watch us rot from the inside out,” Psylocke elaborated.

Psylocke sent Logan, Rogue, Gambit, Fantomex and Mystique (posing as Beast) to face the Shadow King on the astral plane, while Bishop and Angel remained behind to defend their corporeal bodies. At first, they had no idea that this conflagration actually existed as a competition of sorts between the Shadow King and Charles Xavier. When Cyclops killed Professor X, Farouk snatched his spirit and began challenging him to a variety of contests.

Astonishing X-Men by Charles Soule Vol. 1: Life of X (Trade Paperback)

The Shadow King had all the advantages. He chained Professor X up while taking control of Logan and Gambit in the real world and sent them against their friends and comrades. He even managed to start spreading his corruption throughout London. However, Charles had his own trump cards in the form of Rogue, Fantomex and Mystique, three fluid warriors who could help distract the Shadow King long enough for Xavier to finally break free and use the full measure of his power to seemingly destroy his longtime adversary. Making matters worse for the Shadow King, he didn’t just lose, but he also facilitated the return of Charles Xavier to the land of the living by way of Fantomex.

The Shadow King might be down for now in the pages of the comics, but that purveyor of corruption never seems to stay away for too long. So keep your eyes open — and your mind guarded! — while reading the X-books and also be sure to tune into FX’s “Legion” Tuesdays at 10:00pm ET/PT on FX to see what kind of trouble the TV incarnation of the villain is making for David Haller and that show’s group of mutant heroes!

[class-wom]

[This story contains spoilers for the series finale of FX's Legion.]

Noah Hawley's Legion is officially over, and the FX superhero series (which is based on the Marvel Comics X-Men character of the same name) ended in the most Legion way possible: not with a knock-down drag-out battle, but with music, beers, intellectual and emotional discourse, and more than a few changed hearts and minds — not to mention a changed timeline.

Entering the Legion series finale, the stakes were high: David Haller (Dan Stevens) stood at the precipice of changing the past and therefore preventing his own monstrous future. Of course, his ambitions involved some truly monstrous means, including outright killing the Shadow King Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban), twice over, with an assist from his all-powerful (and world-famous) father Charles Xavier (Harry Lloyd). But instead of slugging it out on the astral plane, Xavier chugs beers with the Farouk who spent decades inhabiting David's body. Given that experience, Farouk is fully aware of the damage done by his time with David, and he genuinely wants to stop it from ever happening.

For his part, David spends most of the finale beating up on the young version of Farouk and subsequently singing Pink Floyd's "Mother" opposite his actual mother Gabrielle (Stephanie Corneliussen). When it comes to actually changing his own future for the better, however, David does very little. Instead, he allows his father to step in and broker a peace deal to change the future with his once sworn enemy. The Shadow King convinces his younger self to avoid battling Xavier, therefore preventing the ensuing decades of pain and suffering for so many people, not the least of whom is David. In the final scene, David and ex-girlfriend Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller) both fade away from existence, as the infant version of David earns a new shot at a better life.

It's a fairly peaceful ending for Legion, which reliably zigs where most series would zag. (See: the final season's sixth episode, which contains a rap battle between two opponents where a fist fight would have normally done the trick.) It's little wonder Hawley's finale didn't break from the series' own past, even as it paved the way for altered futures for surviving cast members such as the Loudermilk siblings Cary (Bill Irwin) and Kerry (Amber Midthunder). Ahead, The Hollywood Reporter speaks about the Legion series finale with Hawley, who ends his Marvel drama with mere months left before FX's Fargo begins production on a fourth season.

How much does the Legion finale fit your original vision of the series' eventual ending?

On a literal basis, the Switch (Lauren Tsai) character didn't really come into being until we sat down to talk about season three, so, a lot of it [changed]. The emphasis on time, and of course time being what gives stories meaning and what gives people regrets, all of that was discovered along the way. But the idea that the story of David and Syd would reach this point, and that David would be on this precipice of is he going to be good or is he going to be bad, and that would have to resolve itself — I think that that was always there in the makeup of it. And obviously the conversation that started about Charles and Gabrielle, and about his parents, and about childhood and raising kids and all that, I think that was really unraveled as I went through, as I realized while I was writing it what the story was really about.

With the finale now out in the wild, what can you say about what you imagined for the totality of Legion, now that you can speak freely about the ending?

I think the original idea was let's take the genre out of it and think about it as a story. And if it works as a great drama, then when you add the genre back into it, it'll only be more exciting because you'll be able to play with all those tools that you don't have in a traditional dramatic story. And as I explored it in those opening weeks of figuring out what the show wanted to be, I was very adamant that if we were going to tell a mental illness story, we were going to tell it. We weren't going to use it as a launching pad into like, "Oh, he's not crazy. It's a superhero show." But the layers of that are what was really interesting. David says it at the end of the first season. He tells Syd that the most dangerous thing about having a mental illness is that your mental illness convinces you that you don't have it, and that if you relax, and you accept it, and you go, "I have these abilities, and this girl loves me, and everything's great," how do you know that that's not just because you've gone off your meds, and you're feeling great about things? It's the insidious nature of the disease: it convinces you you don't have it.

But again, he did accept that he didn't have it, and then, of course, was confronted with the fact that in the end of season two, he both had these abilities and there was something profoundly disturbed about him, and yet he couldn't really face that head on. And so season three became this narcissistic battle against reality for David saying, "No, no, this is my time. These time eaters who are coming to destroy the universe, they can't come because this is my time." The level of "I'm the most important being in the universe" was ... I mean his mother says "If you can go back in time, then stop the Holocaust." And he was like, "No, I was talking about me." It shows you the kind of self involvement that he was working under. The question [from there] becomes, A, how do you keep the audience from turning on him so much that they now are hate-watching the show, and they don't want any kind of resolution for him that's positive; and, B, how do you get any kind of resolution for him that is positive, but not just for him, for everybody?

Where do you feel we land on David in the end, after he gets the reset and gets to live his life again starting as a baby?

We live in a world where this nature versus nurture question is yet to be resolved. And it's probably both. But my sense of the timeline is that Xavier and Gabrielle are going to remember what happened, and so they'll be able to raise David quite deliberately knowing the path that he ended up on, and wanting to avoid that for him. And that may involve for his mother getting some help for herself in order to be a better role model for him, et cetera. So the great thing about it ending on that kind of loop is that [idea of] "press the button and watch again, maybe something different will happen."

There's a powerful moment when Charles tells David: "I wasn't here for you before, let me be your father now." What does that say about the themes and importance of parenting in this story?

Parenting is such a critical part of who people turn out to be and that so much of the damage of not just David but Syd and some of the other characters can be traced directly back to how they grew up, and the fact that so many of them were ostracized or treated as different. It was really rewarding for me in that sixth hour to be able to explore in a sort of allegorical fairy tale way this idea of a second childhood for Syd, and [explore the idea of] what if you grew up differently? What if you grew up with parents who really taught you the right things at the right time, and they taught you what was healthy and what wasn't healthy, and how to make good choices, and who you could help and who you can't help? And all those things that we all struggle with, then hopefully we would grow up and be people who make better choices. I think to see that allegory in this story allows one to look at the end of the story and go, "Well, maybe next time it'll be more like that."

We know David will get a more attentive second chance, but what about the rest? Syd? The Loudermilks? Are Melanie (Jean Smart) and Oliver (Jemaine Clement) still on the Astral Plane together? How much changes based on David's reset?

There's definitely a rabbit hole you can go down, looking at the timeline and what year this was and how old people were. If Oliver was in the astral plane for 21 years, and David is 32 years old? One could go down that road. I'm not going down that road. (Laughs.) I think a lot changes, and then there are things that probably wouldn't change at all, because people are who they are.

In the finale, Charles prepares to do battle against the "present day" Farouk. But this version of the Shadow King surprises him and us with an alternate offer: a truce, conducted over a couple of beers. It's not the all-out telepathic battle you might expect to find in a superhero series finale.

Well, here's the thing about war, which is what the end of this story was set up to be, the kind of epic final battle that we see in all of these stories: defeat is never change. Only change is change, right? So I suppose there's a scenario in which David and Charles were to defeat Farouk, and change the past. But that Farouk, if he survived, we know that he would just be waiting to get his revenge. And the reality is that the only way to change the future is to change people's minds and their hearts. And that's what was more interesting dramatically, and, for some reason, rarer with that diplomacy ultimately is the only way to solve the problem. Unless I'm going to annihilate you, we're going to wake up tomorrow and have the same problems that we had yesterday.

The finale features another Legion hallmark: a music number, this time featuring Dan Stevens as David singing Pink Floyd's "Mother" with, well, his mother. Why that song, and why place it here in the finale?

What I liked about making it a duet with his mother is that the mother in the song, as performed by Pink Floyd, is a sort of very dark and controlling character, and you never sort of think about [that]. But she's also a human being with a point of view, and the reason that she is the way that she is is because she is who she is. And by making it a duet, I felt like you could see how much love there was behind that. That she wasn't this cold and calculating person. She loved him. She was going to check out all his girlfriends for him and make sure no one dirtied him through. At the same time, it allowed us to really think about the hereditary nature of this mental illness that David has, and to go, "Oh, right. Well, yeah, she is a product of her own mentally ill mother, and grandmother, and her Holocaust experience." And it's going to be hard to raise a child with that.

As you walk away from Legion and move onto Fargo season four and other projects, what do you hope to carry with you from this series?

That it's important to play with this material, and to be open to what the show wants to be. And, obviously, you have to use your skills as a storyteller to make sure you're always telling a dramatic and character driven story. But I wouldn't have made any other story the way that I made Legion, and yet that was exactly the right way to make Legion, which was whimsically, and playfully, and exploring the subjective nature of storytelling, and being able to play with the genre. And you can solve a character through genre filmmaking in a way that you just can't do in a traditional drama. And so I always want to approach every story like no one has ever told a story like this before, and go, "Well, what's the best way to tell it?" Not just asking, "What is the story," but asking, "What's the way to tell the story?

[class-wom]

Pretty good points arising on all sides, although I’m still not as ready to view Farouk with as an objective, sympathetic eye as this writer is.  I guess the implication of David’s intrusion “turning Farouk unfriendly and menacing” is worth noting, but wouldn’t he be exposing his dark side rather than triggering it?  I’ll be fair and admit that the door may swing both ways for David, since his realization of what Farouk did to Amy in Chapter 13 pushed him past the point of no return in the darkness department.  That being said, David had absolutely nothing to do with Farouk’s decision to taken an entire country and king prisoner and trap them in the bodies of orphans and a monkey, the latter of whom is trapped in a physical cage as well for good measure!

How does time work on Legion?

It’s a question I don’t think we’ll be fully able to answer until after the finale next week, and even then I doubt things are going to feel straightforward. But if the claim that time is a jungle from Switch’s time travel tapes struck me as significant before, it does even more so now.

David’s plan of going back to the past to prevent his possession by Farouk failed, so his new plan appears to be to team up with his father to kill Farouk instead of just dispelling him from his body. But this not only causes Switch to lose more teeth—and worse—it brings the time demons back in a big way.

They, at least, can change time. This was established in my mind by what happened with Lenny and her daughter, amongst other things. However it works exactly (given that time itself is presented as not exactly linear), it would seem that they ate that part of Lenny’s life, and it’s just gone now.

But, then, did it ever really exist? Ostensibly on Legion, it did. Apparently on Legion, David’s attempt to go back in time caused this. Evidently on Legion, time travel can awaken these demons that eat time and alter it.

But it remains possible that this was what always happened.

This is a big question that runs through all time travel narratives. Can attempts to change things actually do so, or will they inevitably lead to the very events they are intended to prevent?

We won’t know where Legion will come down on this until after the finale, but certain elements seem to foreshadow that it will be in line with the latter option.

Farouk seems friendly before David intervenes and alters Charles’ perspective. And though Charles seems a bit skeptical and hesitant in his judgment of Farouk from the get-go, it really does seem to be David that pushes him towards the decision that Farouk needs to be stopped.

David insists that they will have the upper hand because it will be two against one, but then the episode ends with the older Farouk coming out of a painting on the wall to greet his younger self. And so it seems all too likely that we are gearing up for a battle with Charles and David on the one side and two Farouks on the other.

Is this, perhaps, always what happened in Morocco?

Of course, we’ve also got Charles’ assessment of David to grapple with, as he encounters the various versions of self that constitute Legion. It’s hard to imagine him feeling fine and dandy about what he witnessed in his son’s psyche.

That may contribute to a desire to defeat Farouk, along with the fact that he is clearly disturbed by the mind of the “tyrant” being trapped in a monkey, and those of his followers being stored in a little girl.

But if Charles and David succeed in killing Farouk, we’ll have a Grandfather paradox, insofar as it would be the David that resulted from Farouk’s possession that resulted in Farouk’s demise. If they fail, however, we’ll have a Bootstrap paradox, where an event from the future causes an event in the past, which in turn causes the events of the future.

We won’t know how that plays out until next week, but the time demons do strike me as a wrinkle that will be worth thinking about. Of course, their actions could fit into either of those paradoxical structures as well, but they also seem to be so chaotic that it’s hard to predict what will happen.

I don’t really like speculating about what will occur in the finale of a TV show (though I stand behind my Game of Thrones finale prediction as what I wish had happened), so let’s move to discuss some things pertaining to the main characters in Legion.

Kerry

Kerry seems pretty nonchalantly OK with the idea of killing the baby David. It’s humorous, but this is a debate that some have had with a degree of seriousness, usually about Hitler.

If you could travel back to the past and kill baby Hitler, would you? Should you?

The morality here is a bit tough, as the thought of preventing something very bad from happening certainly holds some weight. Though, at the same time, you’d be killing a child that at that point had not yet done the very bad things.

So, is it right to kill someone who is innocent now in order to prevent them from doing something heinous in the future?

Or maybe is it a better plan to work on making Hitler a successful artist?

But it’s pretty clear that Kerry wants to kill the baby.

Syd

Syd seems to be in line with that second thought about trying to change the past in less violent ways. She doesn’t think the adult David can be saved, but she has to believe that the baby one can, and the second childhood we saw her experience seems to be play a role in how she comes to this position.

She devotes herself to trying to help Gabrielle be a better mother, and perhaps not give David up, and so on. If only she can make his childhood better, maybe that’ll do the trick. (Of course this largely ignores the influence of the Shadow King, and some things Syd says indicate that she may be putting more blame on David than is appropriate.)

But it’s not clear that this is going to have any effect. After spending some time chopping wood for some reason and giving Gabrielle advice, the latter asks Syd if she is really there, and all of the wood is suddenly no longer chopped.

The time demons are to blame, it would seem, but we also see Gabrielle’s concerns about her own mental state arising again here. She’s not sure that she is sane, and not sure that it matters. This would seem to explain how unfazed she is when Syd, Kerry, and Cary appear outside of her home.

Charles

We don’t have a lot to work with when it comes to Charles Xavier still, and it’s not clear how much it is appropriate to bring in from other sources.

As he’s been presented here so far, he seems like a decent man, who loves his wife and child. And it seems that he did indeed seek out Farouk in the spirit of friendship.

But this makes it rather unclear how certain scenes are supposed to fit in. Did he see what we did in Episode 3? And what about the scene early on here in Episode 7 in the theater?

Further, his interaction with Legion should make him suspicious of David, but it’s not clear how much it does so. Certainly he realizes that he is dealing with an unstable mind?

Finding a man’s consciousness trapped in a monkey must be disturbing. And discovering multiple other minds within that of a little girl has to be pretty disconcerting. But do we know that this wasn’t a tyrant and his followers?

One question worth asking is whether it matters. After all, even if we buy Farouk’s line on the matter, one could argue that what he has done is considerably worse than just killing the people in question.

But then there is Farouk’s previous characterization of Charles as a colonialist interfering with a culture he didn’t understand how to grapple with.

Maybe he should have left well enough alone? Perhaps he should never have come?

Farouk

Farouk seems really friendly when Charles arrives, and like he is genuinely happy to have found a compatriot in the world who shares powers similar to his. Maybe it is weird to greet the man with a driver holding a painted portrait of him, but still, Farouk’s exuberance doesn’t seem to me to be feigned.

What a privilege it is to see and be seen!

It’s at least tempting to believe that he was being genuine, until David arrives and disrupts him. He reads David’s mind and keeps getting images of his hippie cult. The Caption Sensible song we previously heard when David broke through to the past gets a recurrence, and it’s hard to say what all exactly Farouk may have intuited. All we know for sure is that it was enough for him to excuse himself.

So, if we put things like the man trapped in a monkey aside, how malicious was Farouk prior to David’s intervention? Was this a trap that he’d laid for Charles, as David suggests, or was he perhaps truly looking for a buddy?

I have to say it struck me as the latter, but given what occurred over the rest of the hour, we’re never going to really know.

Is he the prince of lies, or does the name “Shadow King” merely derive from the way he puts on shadow plays for the children? Is he a force of evil, or did he just go too far, or in a suspect way, when he deposed a man who really was a tyrant?

If we look back to Season 1, the version that has him evil all along makes sense, but those events also occurred after what we’ve seen here in Season 3 Episode 7. And this is not in any way to suggest he should be excused for anything; it is just to note that Farouk’s character has become increasingly complex.

But then again, there are the scenes like the one I mentioned before, where he tells Charles he shouldn’t have come. And we have to ask where and how exactly these fit in.

David

I know there are those who have remained pretty squarely on David’s side throughout the course of this season, but his hubris and narcissism are on full display in this episode.

We can understand it. Convinced that Farouk is a malevolent force (and he probably is) responsible for all his problems, David wants to go back and fix it. He effectively wants to erase his own existence, or get a do-over.

But this is worth thinking about: the David we know would not exist if he succeeds. Not only would all of the death and destruction he has wrought be undone, he himself would be. And this is what he wants.

In this regard, whether or not Farouk was the cause of David’s mental illness becomes a bit irrelevant. You’re not responsible for the illness, but you are for how you deal with it. And to treat it as an excuse is to shirk that responsibility.

Worse, David seems to think that if he can only change the past, it won’t matter what he’s done. And while in the real world we don’t tend to encounter the alteration of past events as a live possibility, this structure of thinking that one is justified in using whatever means necessary to achieve a goal is something we can point to all over the place.

And, so, it is how he treats Switch in this episode that leads me to my deepest condemnation of David yet.

She’s a great character. Her dedication to David might have been a little under-justified in terms of the text of the show (as she does seem to have followed him freely, as opposed to having been psychically swayed to do so), but it’s been there and it hasn’t really felt forced. For whatever reason, our time traveler has decided to be on his side.

She loses teeth to help him go back to the past—more and more teeth—and ultimately collapses from the strain of the whole thing. And yet, when Charles asks about her, David says she is no one: a means to an end.

David’s narcissism and obsession with changing the past have become all-encompassing. And, again, this is somewhat understandable. Legion has done a great job of doing this in a way we can understand where David is coming from, leaving the space open where he might possibly even be right.

But even if he is right about the Shadow King, and even if he is able to change the past, the way he has acted is unjustifiable, and mental illness only goes so far as an excuse.

Presumably on Legion, we’ll see next week how this all pans out.

[class-wom]

When news first broke that Legion’s third season would be its last, it caught fans of the off-beat X-Men–inspired series created by Noah Hawley (Fargo) off guard. But it was pitched to star Dan Stevens as a three-season story.

“Noah’s intention was always to bring it in to land with three. And so, I always knew where the story was headed, I just didn’t know how,” Stevens told Rotten Tomatoes.

He also felt “no amount of time that you could do full justice to something like Legion.” And soon when the final season of the FX series debuts on Monday, fans will see for themselves if the series does indeed land with a modicum of justice.

Set roughly a year after the events of the second season finale, Legion picks up with a new character, played by Lauren Tsai, diving headfirst into Legion-style madness. As is mutant tradition, she adopts the name Switch and quickly becomes key to David Haller’s (Stevens) plans as she can travel in time — an ability realized in the trippiest, coolest way possible. When we met with Tsai, Stevens, and other members of the cast on the set of the series in April, the actor described Switch as someone “searching for her place in the world” and “still trying to figure out her abilities.” But the place she finds David inhabiting will leave viewers wondering about his own state of mind thanks to the dozens of seemingly drugged-out young people in his thrall.

Stevens, who described David as a “love junky,” said the apparent cult sates him with a manic devotion, while he offers them something unavailable in the rest of the world. He even added Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) is “quite happy with this setup,” serving as a Ma Anand Sheela–type character to his Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (fans of Wild Wild Country will get the comparison immediately).

Plaza added during a recent phone call: “It’s the closest we get to Lenny’s ideal, aspirational self. When the season starts, she’s kind of right where she wants to be. She’s not being tortured by the Shadow King. She has power and control and a clear idea of what she wants, finally. It was very satisfying.”

The situation in David’s commune might seem beneficial to all involved, but Stevens admitted David is not entirely happy with the way things worked out for him. “He wants to see if he can sort of unpick this unholy mess that he’s created,” the actor explained. It leads – in the most Legion way possible – to David’s fascination with Switch and her abilities. As Stevens put it, “Can he change some of these awful things that he’s done?”

One of the terrible things he did in the second season was change Syd’s (Rachel Keller) memories of events so they could be lovers again. She eventually discovered the violation, and, as Keller told us, it led to the character “kind of crawling back into herself.” But the year between seasons also saw Syd recommitting to her mission; even if it seems like an obsession to some of the other characters.

Then again, her dedication may eventually derail David’s time travel plans. Going back to Stevens’ question about changing the past, he added Syd’s viewpoint: “Yeah you can go back and you can change all these things, but does that really change who you are as a person?” It is the sort of philosophical debate which makes Legion a true X-Men work even as its arresting visuals and unusual pace set it apart.

Another thing setting it apart is the way it re-invents itself each season. The first season saw David trying to figure out if he was ill or if there really was a devil in his mind. In the second season, he sought revenge on that demon — a mutant telepath named Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban) — and destroyed his friendships in the process. The third sees David as the antagonist even as he attempts the heroic thing … or, at least, something he considers heroic.

“[David] feels like his life was ruined in that moment when Farouk came into his head when he was a baby,” Hawley explained. “And what he wants to do is to go back to that moment and protect himself as a baby and keep that from happening.”

The plan might seem heroic to David, but to Syd, Farouk and the others at Division 3, it may finally be the way his prophesied part in the end of the world finally comes to pass. The story idea is a key element of David’s comic book history – his attempts to travel back in time to kill Magento led to Professor X’s death and the Age of Apocalypse storyline – but it also gave Hawley a way to pivot David toward the role of villain. Not that anything on Legion is that simple or binary.

“What’s interesting is to challenge the audience to say ‘Well are you with him now? Are you with him still?’ And if you’re not with him, we have to make sure that you’re with the other characters. That you want Syd to win,” Hawley said.

Subjective reality is still a key element of the series, and while audiences may still end up sympathetic to David’s pain, Hawley hoped viewers “realize over the course of the season how this need for love — that he feels is solely about him — begins to distance us from David a bit [and think,] ‘Oh, he’s a very ill man.’”

But even in that, his illness does not necessary equal villainy in the Golden Age comic book sense. David’s selfishness may, however, lead some to see him that way. “We expect our characters to learn and to be redeemed, but there are some people who aren’t really capable of that,” Hawley said.

Meanwhile, Amahl Farouk is, in fact, trying to redeem himself. Though, as Negahban put it, “it’s more about saving the world and also saving David. He really cares about David.” Despite being the unambiguous evil orbiting David’s life in the first season, Farouk is a changed person when we meet him at the beginning of Season 3. “He’s trying to be a good boy,” the actor said. “There has been a struggle for him to kind of determine whether [that is] right or wrong for him. And he’s trying to discover that through his journey.”

In some ways, the journey, as Negahban relayed it, parallels David’s major internal conflict. “He came from nothing. He became somebody, he had the power. He got lost in his power; he didn’t know what to do with it. And his rage and anger took over,” he explained. “It goes full circle and it gets to the point that he realizes that that rage and anger is what is destroying him. So if he can get rid of that, he can redeem himself. He can redo everything.”

To some extent, Hawley said the conflicts mirror the tension between childhood and adulthood, adding that at least some of David’s issues go back to the moment his birth parents gave him up for adoption. And David’s attempt to stop Farouk in the past means he may run into his father, X-Men founder Charles Xavier (Harry Lloyd).

Lloyd told us not to expect the “straight-laced Charles we know” from the X-Men films or animated television series.

“It’s trippy stuff,” said Stevens, adding there is “a lot of confusion and hurt, obviously” in regards to David’s feelings on Xavier.

“It is nice to finally to have this string that ties our crazy balloon to the main raft of the X-Men stories,” he continued. “And I think that will be satisfying to people who know and love X-Men and Legion.”

He also suspected Legion viewers not well-versed in X-Men lore will become curious about the Professor and his Merry Mutants: “[It] might cause them to go and watch some other X-Men-y type things.”

Of course, it remains to be seen if David will follow in his comic book counterpart’s footsteps and end the world as viewers have known it. That story was ultimately resolved when somewhat familiar mutants from the new timeline learned about David’s actions and prevented Xavier’s death. It is a pretty out-there idea and, yet, fits pretty well into the framework of Legion. No one on set was willing to divulge if the ending resembles David’s most infamous comic book turn, but Stevens said the end gives the whole story “a meaning” not readily apparent before.

“It’s really delicately done, I think. And very beautiful,” he said.