‘Legion’ Season 1, Episode 8 Recap: “Chapter 8”

It’s the Summerland group versus both Division 3 and The Shadow King in the season finale of ‘Legion’.

Last week, Legion finally revealed just who The Monster/Lenny is: X-Men comics terrifying mutant, Amahl Farouk, AKA. We get to learn the history of the character which pretty much is a page-to-screen transition for the character as we are treated to a brilliant animation montage in which David and “Rational” David talk about the terrifying character. This also means that eventually, we’ll get to meet Charles Xavier on the small screen. Hopefully, Sir Patrick Stewart will be willing to once again sit in the chair. Toward the end of the episode, the Summerland group escapes the Astral Plane and David manages to silence The Shadow King. All is well right? Nope! We still have the mutant-hunting Division 3 who make a triumphant return.

LEGION — “Chapter 8” – Season 1, Episode 8 (Airs Wednesday, March 29, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Hamish Linklater as The Interrogator. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

The episode opens up focusing on The Interrogator from the first episode, one of the first people we met when the show began. He finally gets a name, Clark. We are treated to learn about exactly what happened to him in the aftermath of the pyrokinetic explosion during David’s escape and rescue by the Summerland mutants at the first episode. We get to see the aftermath of his survival of the explosion. He’s bedridden recuperating from half of his body being charred by the fire. It’s not pretty. Kudos to the makeup crew who gave us all the gory details of his burnt flesh. The beginning also helped humanize his character in an effective manner. Even though he was first an unnamed “evil secret government” type of character, he is also married with a dedicated husband and child the two adopted. The montage of him just resting at home while his husband watches over him and their son lays in the bed with him, just happy that he survived. The show does a good job and not making his sexuality a big deal, but rather just showing that it’s his normal life. He’s not a “gay character,” instead, he’s a “character who happens to be gay.”

Much like the troupe of a cop who was injured on the job, Clark is maintained to desk duty. And just like any other police procedural, he’s not riding a desk. He even gives a nice speech saying that the desk better be a folding one, so he can take it with him when he goes back out into the field. Now that he’s back in the field, we fast-forward to when he leads a “legion” of soldiers to Summerland where they confront David and the rest of the mutants. His intention is to bring David into custody. However, the rest of the Summerland mutants are expendable. As soon as he issues their kill order, David springs into action and pretty much takes them all down. Using his telekinetic powers, he basically makes all the soldiers into a giant totem pole. With no choice, Clark surrenders himself to Summerland’s custody. Now, he’ll be interrogated.

LEGION — “Chapter 8” – Season 1, Episode 8 (Airs Wednesday, March 29, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Dan Stevens as David Haller. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

While they have this Division 3 problem, they still have a Lenny/Shadow King problem. While David’s headband is able to lock her/it out, it’s pretty much a band-aid on a gunshot wound. At any moment, Cary’s makeshift headband/Shadow King blocker will run out of power, and David will no longer be in control, so they have to figure out a way of removing him. Even as they are attempting to interrogate Clark, David is losing his control. While Syd is watching everything from the sidelines, she is pulled into the White Room, the place on the Astral Plane that she and David shared to “bond” with each other by The Shadow King. Because Syd has a strong psychic connection with David, she also has that same connection with The Shadow King. Lenny reveals that she/it will not go quietly and will only leave David when good and ready. The Shadow King gives a great parable of trying to “unmake soup” as an example of how it will not leave David, and requires Syd’s assistance.

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While this is all going on, Clark’s false eye is recording all his interactions with the Summerland mutants. Even Clark explains that his organization is vast in scope and scale. For the first time, the audience gets to see them beyond just the Stormtroopers we have seen most of the season. Syd also sharing that David is infected by The Shadow King allows them to learn even more about how dangerous David could be. Division 3 also has contingencies in place to put a more permanent stop to David. They opt to delay their failsafe so they can gather more intelligence.

Cary enacts his plan to get rid of The Shadow King from David’s mind and as they all begin to use the treatment to separate the two and kill Lenny. At first, it appears to be working, but just like Lenny said, she’s not going anywhere. While David is suffering through the process in the real world, on the Astral Plane, he’s talking with Lenny recounting on the fact that the two have been together since he was a baby. We get a nice visual mosaic of the entire season, up to when he was just a baby. It’s like he’s saying goodbye to an old friend. David is just as scared as Lenny as he’s unsure how he will function or who he will be without her. Lenny fights back and starts to struggle with David on the Astral Plane, probably similar to how his father did before the events of the show. David seems to have the upper hand, but in the real world Syd can no longer stand to see David suffering and jumps in.

LEGION — “Chapter 8” – Season 1, Episode 8 (Airs Wednesday, March 29, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: (l-r) Bill Irwin as Cary Loudermilk, Rachel Keller as Syd Barrett. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

Syd goes into the room where David is and kisses him. Her powers of body switching create a cascade effect and then all hell breaks loose. Lenny is no longer in David and now has taken over Syd. Lenny/Syd starts to leave the room to be stopped by Kerry, and then jumps into Kerry’s body. Kerry/Lenny, the fighter of the group easily dispatches the other Summerland mutants who try to stop her/it. Finally, David confronts the Shadow King. The two run towards each other with psychic shields to engage in battle. The psychic explosion rocks the entire complex and The Shadow King is expelled from Kerry’s body.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean The Shadow King’s dead. They were near the generator room where Oliver was, trying to ensure the machine to expel the Shadow King had the necessary power. While they don’t outright say (at first) that Lenny is now in Oliver’s body, we all know that pretty much is what happened. Oliver/Lenny then gets in a car and leaves Summerland. In the aftermath, the group is relieved that Lenny is not possessing anyone, but the quickly realize that Oliver is missing and therefore, probably possessed by The Shadow King. With a new body, Lenny has Oliver drive “somewhere warm.”

David had helped Clark recuperate in the aftermath of the confrontation with The Shadow King. The two agree that Division 3 has bigger fish to fry than the Summerland mutants. He promises to tell his superiors that the two organizations need to work together to stop Lenny. However, Division 3 had already enacted their contingency plan. And orb shows up to the compound and after scanning David, teleports him inside the machine where he is now their prisoner!

David’s Powers So Far: In the comics, David has more than 100 personalities, each with their own set of powers. This week he did not appear to gain any new powers, he still has these so far:

• Telepathy
• Pyrokinesis
• Telekinesis
• Teleportation
• Levitation
• Astral Projection
• Disintegration
• Alternate Reality Creation
• Sound Manipulation
• Alternate Personality Creation
• Ability To Add And Remove People From The Astral Plane
• Psychic Shielding

It’s good that the show managed to save David finally as Lenny is no longer a part of him. How will “new David” be? His entire life he has existed with The Shadow King being a part of his mind. While finally cured, it’s going to be interesting if there are some personality changes in his character, and perhaps they might not all be for the better.

With The Shadow King outside of David, it’s free to do whatever it wants. It probably still wants to enact some revenge against Charles Xavier. Since it was not able to take over David, it will probably seek him out. Rest assured there will be a second season, and the plot will probably be about trying to find Professor X and save him from The Shadow King. While Oliver’s powers haven’t been clearly identified, rest assured with Lenny, the two will be extremely powerful.

LEGION — “Chapter 8” – Season 1, Episode 8 (Airs Wednesday, March 29, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Jeremie Harris as Ptonomy Wallace. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

The show does need to focus a little on their characters. Once the “mind work” was out of the way, the show struggled for what to do with Ptonomy. He needs more to do on the show than what he did, or he will pretty much a throwaway character. However, the Cary/Kerry arc towards the end proved promising. Kerry, afraid to exist outside of Cary made her resentful when he was unable to help her in the Astral Plane. It was a little annoying that she wouldn’t give him the chance to explain himself to her, in the aftermath, they went back to each other and embraced as the two only can.

Aubrey Plaza once again shines as Lenny/The Shadow King. It’s a no-brainer that she returns for a second season. Once again, she needs some sort of award for her work this season as the primary villain. Even when we don’t see The Shadow King as the gross monstrosity, it’s just as terrifying in the Lenny form.

Now the cliffhanger with David being Division 3’s prisoner will be an interesting development. Clark already told them that he doesn’t have that much clout in the organization, so will his plead to them about the bigger threat of the Shadow King fall on deaf ears? If he can’t get David out, Summerland will need to break David out, and they will be outlaws in the eyes of Division 3. The second season will probably be about freeing David and then stopping The Shadow King.

Speaking of Summerland, it’s good that they finally showed the scale of the group. For the longest, we only got to see the core group of characters. However, in Oliver/Lenny’s escape, we got to see a whole bunch of students. This makes Summerland very similar to the X-Men’s “Xavier School For Gifted Children” of the X-Men comics and movies. Perhaps this means that we will meet more mutants in the second season.

Legion airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET on FX.