Legion 2.06.
May. 17th, 2018 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which we get an acting showcase for Dan Stevens, though I suspect it‘s also an explanation as to why our main villain last week did what he did.
Among many other things, last season impressed me with the fact that Cousin Matthew from Downton Abbey can act. This season David started out relatively stable, which made other characters got the acting spot light, so to speak. Until this episode, which presents various versions of David - homeless deranged caveman, medicated-into-numbness childlike guy (think John Steinbeck‘s Lenny, not to be confused with the Legion character who is conspiciously abset in all the scenarios this episode presents), pencil pusher trapped in an office, evil overlord ruling the world, suburban husband and dad living the idyll, helpless old man looking very much like his biological father (bald, apparantly unable to walk), and intermingled with all of these some flashbacks to David‘s actual life - the time leading up to his suicide attempt and then Amy‘s decision to bring him into Cotswold, as well as a Cotswold flashback in which David talks about the multiverse.
Amy is in some, but not all of these various unlived lives - she‘s living with David both in the medicated-into-numbness scenario and the old age in a wheelchair scenario, and she‘s basically Godfather II Connie Corleone in the David-as-evil-overlord scenario, asking her brother for more money but also scared and resentful of him (with reason). Since the episode follows directly the one after the reveal of her death, courtesy of Faroukh, I assumed a connection but didn‘t quite see why the „what if?“ multiverse for David now, until the very last scene when David recalls Faroukh saying „what is real - you decide!“. Methinks I finally have a clue about the Shadow King‘s evil scheme du jour and why, when David was basically cooperating, he suddenly decided to murder Amy in an especially sadistic way (by giving Lenny her body). Oh, and about the point of all the musings on the nature of reality opening the last few episodes (though not this one). In addition to telepathy and a certain amount of telekinesis and pyrokinesis, David as I seem to recall has some unexplored mutations which Melanie couldn‘t define and which he can’t access yet. So, here‘s my new guess: among them is either the shifting of realities or at least the ability to take himself and others into a different branch of the multiverse. What Faroukh did, he did to make this particular reality unbearable by creating the irrevocable fact of Amy‘s death in it, in order to make David choose one of the other realities where she‘s alive. But he‘s either powerless due to medication or has given himself over completely to Faroukh, who looks back from the mirror to the Evil Overlord version of David. (Incidentally, at first I wondered whether the old age version of David and Amy was simply the future of the timeline where David is on meds to the nth degree, but then Steinbeckian David died a Steinbeckian death, so it was a different scenario.)
The actual memories parts of the episode remind the audience that David going into the mental hospital was done for Amy, so Faroukh guilting him into choosing a reality where he‘s that powerless once more but she‘s alive isn‘t completely impossible, as evil overlord plans go. As for Amy, except for the evil overlord scenario one all versions of her are full of affection for David but also unable to come up with a way to keep him and everyone else unharmed that doesn‘t consist of dosing him with meds. And given the flashbacks, it‘s hard to blame her. (Mind you, I seem to remember Amy knew David was adopted and did catch a glimpse of Xavier as a little girl, but in this version of the Marvelverse she can‘t have known about the school in Westchester, because that certainly WOULD have been an alternative.) She tried so hard, and was so out of her depth, and what happened to her is monstrously unfair.
Lastly: kudos to the make-up and GCI department. I mean, sure, crazy homeless David with his Sabretooth looke hair and beard was somewhat over the top, but otherwise, I was impressed how in addition to making David look different, looks wise, for each version, you could also tell when he was younger in both the AUs and the flashbacks. And the man-in-grey-evil-overlord version directly hailing from the coffee boy version was conveyed in costume as well (young coffee boy David already wears a grey suit).
Speaking of the coffee boy/evil overlord timeline, have we seen Laura the business woman whom overlord!David makes into his sidekick in „our“ reality before? Because at first I wondered whether she was supposed to be a version of Melanie, but evidently not.
Among many other things, last season impressed me with the fact that Cousin Matthew from Downton Abbey can act. This season David started out relatively stable, which made other characters got the acting spot light, so to speak. Until this episode, which presents various versions of David - homeless deranged caveman, medicated-into-numbness childlike guy (think John Steinbeck‘s Lenny, not to be confused with the Legion character who is conspiciously abset in all the scenarios this episode presents), pencil pusher trapped in an office, evil overlord ruling the world, suburban husband and dad living the idyll, helpless old man looking very much like his biological father (bald, apparantly unable to walk), and intermingled with all of these some flashbacks to David‘s actual life - the time leading up to his suicide attempt and then Amy‘s decision to bring him into Cotswold, as well as a Cotswold flashback in which David talks about the multiverse.
Amy is in some, but not all of these various unlived lives - she‘s living with David both in the medicated-into-numbness scenario and the old age in a wheelchair scenario, and she‘s basically Godfather II Connie Corleone in the David-as-evil-overlord scenario, asking her brother for more money but also scared and resentful of him (with reason). Since the episode follows directly the one after the reveal of her death, courtesy of Faroukh, I assumed a connection but didn‘t quite see why the „what if?“ multiverse for David now, until the very last scene when David recalls Faroukh saying „what is real - you decide!“. Methinks I finally have a clue about the Shadow King‘s evil scheme du jour and why, when David was basically cooperating, he suddenly decided to murder Amy in an especially sadistic way (by giving Lenny her body). Oh, and about the point of all the musings on the nature of reality opening the last few episodes (though not this one). In addition to telepathy and a certain amount of telekinesis and pyrokinesis, David as I seem to recall has some unexplored mutations which Melanie couldn‘t define and which he can’t access yet. So, here‘s my new guess: among them is either the shifting of realities or at least the ability to take himself and others into a different branch of the multiverse. What Faroukh did, he did to make this particular reality unbearable by creating the irrevocable fact of Amy‘s death in it, in order to make David choose one of the other realities where she‘s alive. But he‘s either powerless due to medication or has given himself over completely to Faroukh, who looks back from the mirror to the Evil Overlord version of David. (Incidentally, at first I wondered whether the old age version of David and Amy was simply the future of the timeline where David is on meds to the nth degree, but then Steinbeckian David died a Steinbeckian death, so it was a different scenario.)
The actual memories parts of the episode remind the audience that David going into the mental hospital was done for Amy, so Faroukh guilting him into choosing a reality where he‘s that powerless once more but she‘s alive isn‘t completely impossible, as evil overlord plans go. As for Amy, except for the evil overlord scenario one all versions of her are full of affection for David but also unable to come up with a way to keep him and everyone else unharmed that doesn‘t consist of dosing him with meds. And given the flashbacks, it‘s hard to blame her. (Mind you, I seem to remember Amy knew David was adopted and did catch a glimpse of Xavier as a little girl, but in this version of the Marvelverse she can‘t have known about the school in Westchester, because that certainly WOULD have been an alternative.) She tried so hard, and was so out of her depth, and what happened to her is monstrously unfair.
Lastly: kudos to the make-up and GCI department. I mean, sure, crazy homeless David with his Sabretooth looke hair and beard was somewhat over the top, but otherwise, I was impressed how in addition to making David look different, looks wise, for each version, you could also tell when he was younger in both the AUs and the flashbacks. And the man-in-grey-evil-overlord version directly hailing from the coffee boy version was conveyed in costume as well (young coffee boy David already wears a grey suit).
Speaking of the coffee boy/evil overlord timeline, have we seen Laura the business woman whom overlord!David makes into his sidekick in „our“ reality before? Because at first I wondered whether she was supposed to be a version of Melanie, but evidently not.
