With only a handful of episodes left, I’ve been expecting “Legion” to start to turn into a more conventional narrative at any time now. You may remember that my major criticism of the first season was that the conclusion played out too much like a traditional superhero narrative, while the stylish string of episodes that came before probably deserved something more interesting. So how can I complain that “Legion” remains as elusive and impenetrable as it’s ever been as it approaches its second season finale? I guess either I can’t be pleased or it’s just swung too far in the other direction for its own good. Whatever the case, it’s still an intriguing show and this episode was a fine effort. If given the choice between a straightforward narrative or driving around in the desert reciting Ginsberg, I’ll take the latter, even if I feel a little bit like Homer Simpson watching a tall lanky man dancing with a white horse in the pale moonlight. Let’s unpack the stuff I was S-M-R-T enough to figure out. As always, there will be spoilers.
1. “The Minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth”
In an episode that was full of obfuscating imagery, much of it felt like style over substance and easy enough to be brushed past by the viewer. The most important of the potentially confusing sequences in the episode took place in the very final minutes, so let’s talk about it. This is one of the rare times where I’ll be chronologically explaining a series of events we saw, just to clarify them.
Throughout the episode, David is slowly revealing a plan to “kill the monster” (his words) that involves gradually bringing each member of the team into it without them knowing it until it is their time to act. If he reveals the plan early or explicitly tells the members of the group about it, then Farouk can read their minds and have a better chance of stopping it. At the mid-point of the episode, we see David reach out to Lenny with his mind and “unlock” her part of the plan. She tears off on a motorcycle for god-knows-why, to be caught up with in a future episode. At the very end, Clark is “awoken” to his part of the plan, so he makes his way out of bed (which made me laugh, because he sleeps in his full suit) and into the hallway, where he’s accosted by none other than Melanie Bird, stopping him in his tracks. Time winds backwards, showing us what Melanie was doing just a minute prior. In her room, she hears Oliver calling out to her. We then see Oliver and Farouk driving through the desert in search of Farouk’s body still, as the screen goes black. Before the credits hit, the skeletal Minotaur (whom we’ve seen several quick glimpses of throughout the season) appears over a black background, lowering his head upside down over our screen and drooling menacingly.
To me, it seems pretty clear that Farouk holds sway over Melanie just as he essentially holds Oliver hostage in his car. We saw Melanie overhearing Clark and Syd talking earlier in the episode, and although she couldn’t have learned anything about David’s plan at that point, it did give her insight into Syd and Clark’s frame of mind. With Melanie coming out just at the right time to stop Clark in the hallway, it feels like David and Farouk playing a long-distance chess match using the various players at Division 3. Melanie is susceptible to Farouk through Oliver and a general lethargy, even as Oliver is trying to break through Farouk’s control through his connection to Melanie.
And the Minotaur? Well, we’ve seen him pop up here and there in other episodes as mere flashes. Most intriguingly, he played a role in Melanie’s “mind maze” text adventure game. But when we first saw him, he was rolling in a wheelchair and appeared to be impaired, as Melanie took the vapor drug. Maybe creepy, but far less menacing and formidable than he looks now. I have two theories as to why this is the case and I can’t decide which I like more. Was the Minotaur weakened when Melanie took the drugs because it helped protect her mind from the Shadow King and she was impairing it? Or is the Minotaur the Shadow King’s corruption, growing ever stronger as the show goes on?
Continued below2. iPlato
I thought we were done with the Jon Hamm psych 101 lessons, but he’s back with a new sales pitch. This time it’s “put down the smartphone, ya damn millennial.” Okay, so it’s not that simple. It’s not really about the dangers of technology at all, except to say that tech makes it easier for us to “dehumanize” the people we interact with.
It’s a little preachy, sure. And aside from Hamm’s gorgeous baritone, these are starting to wear thin on me. Still, the overall point of the sequence works remarkably well within the context of this very episode. It’s the first time you could draw nice parallels between the lesson and the show’s plot without the show’s writers feeling the need to come right out and say it. Hamm speaks on our tendency to “talk tough” online or through text, and treat people in ways we would never treat them in real life. If they exist only as “shadows in the cave” (overt references to Plato’s cave are made), then we don’t think of them as real. This doesn’t just stop at the way we treat others, but the way we process actual facts. Hawley’s focus is on the interpersonal, but the perception of reality also plays a role. The cave theory ties in nicely to the previous “Legion” explanation of “delusion”, where in this case a person believes that only that which exists in their echo chamber is real.
It seems to me that that’s what both Farouk and consequently David are doing in their race for Farouk’s body. Farouk has been using Oliver as a puppet and effectively “raped” Lenny (her words, from a few episodes ago) for a year in his single-minded effort to regain his body. Hell, the entire purpose of Lenny as a character in season 2 so far has been to demonstrate how someone like Farouk can chew someone up and spit them out, leaving them without even a sense of humanity. David, likewise, has been so embroiled in this battle with Farouk for the future of Future Syd that he has essentially forgotten the Syd that’s right in front of his face. And if you hadn’t figured that out yet, Syd spells it out for you here in “Chapter 16.”
3. Ghost in the Machine
Ptonomy’s role gets a little bit of expansion here, as he explores the “tree of data” that apparently acts as some sort of information “hub” or “backup” for Admiral Fukuyama. In the last episode, we saw the Vermillion work to preserve Ptonomy in some form, stashing him away in the tree. Here, he finds someone referred to as “the driver” (by the closed captioning on the broadcast), who had originally driven Farouk’s body away. He also finds the Monk, who had “hacked” into the tree several weeks ago. It seems that Fukuyama doesn’t know the Monk is there, but because Ptonomy found him, he gains the realization of the location of Farouk’s body. I’m really glad Ptonomy gets to play a major role in the winding down of season 2, as he’s the one character that had really been underplayed by the showrunners across both seasons.
4. “These smiling eyes are just a mirror for…”
For as convoluted as this episode could be, at times, the simple image of Oliver and Farouk driving across a barren, ever-shifting desert was a delight for the eyes. Jemaine Clement plays Oliver as a man on the edge, compliant with Farouk’s wishes but spouting out beat poetry through gritted teeth. While Navid Negahban continues to play Farouk as a grinning, contemplative yet utterly content man. The very makeup of the desert before them shifts and changes as they drive in a deliberate effort to keep Farouk away from his body, but he behaves as if them finding it is only a matter of time. Or even better, he comports himself as if the journey itself is as satisfying as the eventual destination. It’s a fascinating play for Negahban, as everyone else behaves as if a ticking timebomb clock is running down. In a show that overdoes both the visual flair and the toothsome dialogue, at times, it’s refreshing to watch these two guys just drive across the desert with very sparse imagery and very little dialogue. In these moments, a wide Farouk smile out from under his signature shades is all you need.
Continued below5. Status Update: Syd & David
I mentioned earlier that David has been neglecting the current Syd for some future one and that idea really came to concrete head in “Chapter 16.” It’s no coincidence that Future Syd does not appear in this episode at all, and David begins the proceedings by telling the current Syd that he’s not really in a good place with the future her right now. Regardless, Syd gets the sense that he’s not telling her everything either, which is something she oddly confides in Clark later. She expresses doubt about her relationship with David and, something of an unfortunate real life parallel, Clark reminds Syd that David is an unstable and powerful mutant; if she upsets him or leaves him he could potentially end the world (is this how the vision of the future from “Chapter 15” happened? Where David is the villain and Farouk is the hero?)
I could easily be wrong, but I thankfully don’t get the sense that Syd is just sticking with David so that he doesn’t go off the rails. This would remove Syd’s agency and create an even worse coincidental commentary on the current r/incel discourse. The more the episode played out, the more it seemed like she really does love David, and didn’t want a repeat of having lost him for an entire year again. I think if she didn’t love him, she wouldn’t push as hard on him when she parachutes into the desert to find him. At least I hope that’s where our favorite dysfunctional TV couple are at.
