‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves’
We need to talk about ‘Legion.’
FX’s new superhero series, Legion, is a bit like if someone had Wes Anderson direct a grownup Stranger Things by telling him the plot of X-Men but only showing him the first Hellboy movie. And it’s brilliant.
I’ve written before about how much of the joy of that comes with watching Stranger Things is simply a product of knowing that you’re witnessing such high quality television, a notion which holds true for Legion. This is one of those shows where I wish I could see the series’ bible; not to find out what happens, but just to see how this whole little world is mapped out. It’s a new level of detail oriented for the superhero TV genre, which often has shows entering their first season with a bang but flopping in the long run.
Describing the plot of Legion isn’t really a feasible option, as the show meditates heavily on the idea that much of what happens might not even be real. The main players are David Haller (Dan Stevens), the “Legion” character in the comics and Charles Xavier’s son; Sydney “Syd” Barrett (Rachel Keller), whose power involves switching bodies with anybody she touches; Lenny “Cornflakes” Busker (Aubrey Plaza), David’s dead junkie friend, who is now one of his split personalities (we’ve gathered that he’s a telepath who happens to also be schizophrenic); and Melanie Bird (Jean Smart), the doctor who brings the group of mutants together and tries to help them hone their skills for both personal and public reasons; among a few other featured players.
“What was real?” Syd asks. “That was the mission.” She’s referring to the group’s attempts to sift through David’s subconscious and figure out which moments are memory and which are dream (“astral plane, the invented space”), but it certainly also begs a question of the entire series: is anything real? And, perhaps more importantly: does it matter? Dr. Bird’s husband, who is caught in this astral plane, shared similar sentiments with lines like “what’s real in this space is whatever you want it to be” and “it’s not real unless you make it real.”
The astral plane is best described as the Upside Down from Stranger Things meets Inception’s limbo. I don’t mean to keep referencing other works, but the show draws on so many cultural influences while still maintaining its own novelty. Recent superhero television series that have worked tend to lean towards the darker, often morally gray side of these comic book characters that audiences automatically expect to love. Netflix’s Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and soon Iron Fist (the superhero squad known as The Defenders) are all slightly off-kilter people dealing with moral injury, and perhaps the most successful crop of superhero shows to make it to TV. Each character brings their own jaded past to whatever storyline they exist on, cynics in a world that bites back. The innovation lies in the fact that they’re superheroes trying to do the right thing, the notoriously “good” members of civilization, and flips the script on the traditional narrative usually thrust on the characters.
[Legion] is instead grappling with subjects that are much bigger, and ultimately much more important, than the archaic concept of good vs. evil.
Legion is based on the Marvel comic of the same name and brought to life by Fargo’s Noah Hawley, which explains the high quality of the show. Another important factor, I believe, is Andy Greenwald. A former TV focused staff writer for the now defunct Grantland, Greenwald brings his special brand of expertise as a co-producer on the show. His role on the creative team adds the kind of perspective so often missing from shows that tank after betraying viewers in one way or another. Arguably, Greenwald was (is?) one of the greatest TV critics to date, with a passion and talent for understanding television much like The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, whose TV criticism won her the 2016 Pulitzer for, in the words of editor David Remnick, “her wit and her ability to convey why you should love a show as much as she does.”
While I miss Greenwald’s journalistic criticism and commentary, people who truly adore television are necessary components in any successful series. Back before ESPN closed down Grantland, Greenwald wrote an article, “Exiled in Smallville,” on why superhero stories are so successful in the form of movies but tank when it comes to television. He describes the unfortunate truth that TV is often “where superheroes go to die.”
In the piece Greenwald says, “Historically the best television never comes from settling for the stories other mediums won’t tell; it occurs when TV champions the stories that other places can’t.” This is the epitome of David Haller’s character, who Nussbaum reported was originally called “too disturbing” to include in the 1991 X-Men comics. This “disturbing” label is something that Syd struggles with as she learns more about the past of the man she’s in love with, but therein lies the pulp appeal of Legion. The show isn’t trying to make David a hero, or even really an antihero, and is instead grappling with subjects that are much bigger, and ultimately much more important, than the archaic concept of good vs. evil.
Legion considers the fact that the great appeal of being in the “real world” comes in the form of the things that we love. For example, I might love being a journalist, but the profession only works if there are facts to report on within a certain concrete plane. Or maybe I might love a girl, but this passion is mainly contingent on our ability to be together. These are all hypotheticals, of course, but they all rely on a certain sense of reality. In the show these people, the Summerland crew, are tethered by their relationships and by the love that they have for each other.
“Who are we if not the stories we tell ourselves?” Syd asks, the omnipresent voiceover narrator of the series. In the final moments of the most recent episode, “Chapter 5,” Syd “comes to” in what appears to be a group therapy session, with each of the other characters stuck in this alternate (or perhaps real) reality. This is the first instance in pop culture where I don’t mind not knowing if the series is taking place in the “real world” and am instead content, and faithful enough in the Legion creative team, with just going along for the ride.
