Originally written September 25, 2017

Legion is a superhero show that almost went under my radar this year. The thing is, the superhero genre really became popular in film when Iron Man came out in 2008, and over these past 9 years the genre has just exploded. Many people have experienced “superhero fatigue” by this point, and I can’t really blame them. While I’m not personally fatigued by the genre, with the increasing number of movies and shows out there, I just kind of find it hard to see everything. Outside of all of the movies, there’s well over 10 superhero shows currently on the air right now, with more on the horizon. So, understandably some people are going to have to be picky about which ones they watch and don’t. My job in a review like this is to tell you whether Legion is generally worth your time, and how it sets itself apart from all of the other shows in the genre.

One thing that I’ve found interesting about the superhero genre in the past decade is that now we’ve moved on from just adapting the most famous characters to the screen. You’ve obviously seen plenty of Batman or Spider-Man properties, but what is Legion? We’re now at the point where we’re adapting characters that I and many people aren’t familiar with at all. Well, after doing some background research, I found that Legion is a show connected to the X-Men universe. The easiest connection to be made is that the comic book character of Legion is Professor X’s son. Since Professor X is one of the most famous X-Men, this is what intrigued me the most.

So then, outside of familial connections, who is Legion? In this show, we enter the life of David Haller, a schizophrenic patient in a mental hospital who is always hearing voices. In the first episode, he meets a girl named Syd Barrett, who winds up opening his world to new possibilities. She challenges the idea that David’s symptoms are actually powers. As a comic book character, Legion has multiple personalities that each give him different powers. This angle isn’t quite explored in the show (although I feel like there’s room for it in future seasons), but we do wind up following David’s journey as he struggles to learn the extent of his abilities over the course of the 8 episode season. While he’s trying to harness his power through the aid of a group of mutants, they’re being hunted by a government organization called Division 3, who are bent on destroying mutants.

Before I talk about what makes this show special, talking about the story actually leads me to my main gripe about the show. I only felt like I was invested in it about half the time. Considering how much I like the superhero genre, it’s interesting for me to note that the aspects of the show that I liked the least are its ties to the X-Men universe. While I’ve never been an X-Men fan at all, the point still stands that the story of David and his mutant friends being hunted for being mutants isn’t that engaging, and so I did find certain points of the show to be uninteresting. In terms of story, I found the most interesting parts to be when we delve into the stories of the characters involved, especially of David. It’s interesting to watch these characters progress along their individual journeys, it’s just when the show is focused on mutants as a group that it isn’t as exciting.

So then, if the story isn’t always that great, what sets Legion apart from its contemporaries? This sometimes feels like a weird reason to recommend a show, but honestly Legion’s biggest strength is its style and presentation. I’ve never seen a show filmed in such a way. Since the show’s subject matter deals with mental illness, the show is presented in a rather distorted and unsettling kind of way. As someone that was watching the show on my computer with headphones in, one of the earliest examples I felt of this is when David hearing voices is first presented. The audio was mixed in such a way that it made me feel like I was hearing the voices in my own head, which was an interesting sensation.

Aside from that, the show uses a presentation device that is known as the “unreliable narrator.” Basically, sometimes the show’s events aren’t shown in order, and it’s also not always clear if what’s happening on screen is real or in David’s mind. This is very effective in portraying the schizophrenic nature of the character, and so it’s an interesting device for this kind of show. The only real downside to this is that it can sometimes be confusing, so while I won’t say that it will be or won’t be for everybody, it’s something to consider. However, the real upside to presenting the show in this kind of nature is that it allows a lot of the scenes to be really diverse and unique. The show is really just eye candy, in the best possible way.

So I feel like the best I can say about Legion is that in a time where movies and TV are very populated with superhero properties, Legion does have a style all its own so that it very much stands out from the rest. It almost even has a horror nature to it a lot of the time. However, is it worth your time? This might be a bad answer, but that’s up to you. As a personal recommendation, I find the show to be kind of in the middle for superhero shows. There have definitely been both better and worse shows. I think it’s a great show, but I just didn’t find the story captivating enough to call it a must watch. It’s a show that I’d recommend if you want something different, especially if you’re interested in the mental illness angle. I feel like it doesn’t necessarily succeed as a superhero show, but that’s it’s very interesting in other ways, especially its style.

4/5