“Chapter 7” isn’t Legion’s strongest episode yet, but half of it definitely is. What the hell am I on about? Read below to find out, but not before watching the episode because I’m about to spoiler the hell out of this thing:
1. Bird is the Word
Though “Chapter 7” had another fantastically frightening (mostly silent) performance from Aubrey Plaza and Dan Stevens got to play two versions of his delightfully quirky David Haller, I came away from the episode feeling like Jemaine Clement and Jean Smart were the MVPs of the episode. Clement’s Oliver Bird made only his second physical appearance on the show, but was tremendously funny and charming as he navigated his way from his ice prison on the astral plane back to the physical realm. He could not quite remember his wife Melanie, but played his scenes with her as a man both oblivious to his past yet with some kind of inkling that there’s something special between them.
Smart, on the other hand, imbued Melanie with a deep melancholy for Oliver, but strength that brought her performance above pure sadness. When she sees him for the first time, all these different emotions clearly rush back to her, but she maintains her composure and understanding of the gravity at hand. Smart does a lot to convey to the viewer what she’s feeling without appearing to do very much at all. It’s the perfect amount of “acting.”
2. Time for Some Game Theory
Despite being a firecracker of an episode, “Chapter 7” attempted one of my least favorite techniques in all of storytelling: delivering exposition through a character writing or talking him or herself through it. In this case, a naturalistic British Dan Stevens helps walk the adopted American Dan Stevens through his past to correct and reckon with all the misinformation he’s been fed over his lifetime by those around him and the parasitic Shadow King in his mind. They accomplish this by having David write and draw things out on a blackboard. Now, they make a few nice aesthetic choices to make this more palatable: the banter between the two David’s is humorous enough, and the story of David’s father (clearly Charles Xavier) battling the Shadow King before David’s birth plays out visually in a very simple but smooth cartoon fashion.
Still, Legion has been rightfully praised for its bold storytelling and its refusal to hold the viewers hand through most of its manic storytelling, so having David slowly tell himself a story that we already mostly know, but also involves a lot of oddly specific leaps in logic on his part is kind of an odd choice. The viewer gets it, so maybe David could have “gotten” it in a less overt fashion.
I was reminded of the ending of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, where Ben Kingsley literally pulls out a blackboard and writes “Fuck You, Audience” to Leonardo DiCaprio’s existential horror. “Chapter 7” gets away with it by having such a stunning second half, but there are so many better ways to get the self-realization part of David’s story across.
3. Slow Motion, We Can Take Our Time Baby
I mentioned that “Chapter 7” had a second half that essentially saved the first half’s bacon, and that’s because it was one of the most carefully constructed, brilliantly orchestrated action sequences I’ve ever seen on a television show. Somehow, the cast and crew sold multiple levels of reality affecting and falling into one another almost has well as Inception did with a fraction of the budget.
This sequence featured David breaking out of the coffin the Shadow King had trapped him in, returning to a physical form to storm the fake Clockworks and defeat the King’s grip on him, while at the same time Cary, Kerry, and Syd all work to return everyone to their actual physical form (frozen in time just as a rifle blast was going off) without also getting Syd shot in the back.
On top of the events themselves, the second half of the episode features shifts in tone, color palette, and sound design that amplify the dramatic effect. By the end, the rescue sequence becomes a slow-motion ticking time bomb of a ballet dance. I won’t bother to explain any more than that, because this wonderfully executed sequence needs to be seen to be believed.
Continued belowLegion is one of the most visually arresting things in television history, but it’s also clear that it doesn’t have a feature film budget. Instead, it actively tries to attempt things that a superhero movie probably wouldn’t. A film doesn’t have time to execute a 25 minute sequence like this and still tell the story they need to tell in, say, 145 minutes. Legion has about 480 minutes (give commercials, of course) to get their story across and still have time to be weird and experimental like this. Legion can afford to have an episode like “Chapter 7” where not much happens, and instead spend its time wowing the audience with spectacle like this. They’ve had 6 episodes to earn this moment.
4. The Shadow Knows…Charles Xavier
Checking in with two of the internet’s most tedious (and yet still covered here by yours truly) theories on Legion.
For one, while it’s been fairly obvious since the beginning that the Devil with Yellow Eyes is The Shadow King, this is the first episode where they are referred to as that, specifically. And then, for good measure, they make sure to also refer to The Shadow King as “Amahl Farouk” too, removing any doubt that this isn’t the exact Shadow King that we know and love from Marvel Comics’ past.
Secondly, there’s confirmation that David Haller’s father is Charles Xavier, though the name is not uttered. The story David concocts on the blackboard of his mind is that of his original father as a powerful (bald) telepathic mutant that fights the Shadow King in the astral realm. More specifically, if you were paying close attention, you could see Xavier’s signature “X” logo on a wheelchair in a quick flash as David is seeing things from his past. It’s one of those “pause the DVR” type things.
5. Next Time on Legion
It feels like we just began this column, and yet next week it comes to an end. Actually, I like North American television’s migration to shorter seasons, and can’t imagine what Legion would have been like if it were stretched out to even a standard cable order of 13-ish episodes. Surely the budget would have been spread thinly as well. Nevertheless, next week’s finale episode looks like shit hitting the fan in a big way. Hamish Linklater’s Division Three interrogator is back for revenge, with a hell of an ugly burn wound on his face, just as the Shadow King is escaping from a coffin much like the one David had been stuck in. It’s a threeway showdown!
