Let’s Talk About Legion Season 2 Episode 3, “Chapter 11”

We keep saying it but Legion remains a high point of episodic television.  It’s trippy, very psychedelic, and strangely addictive.

The story of mutants and mental powers being told in the rich visceral era the original Chris Claremont X-Men stories were placed in was a genius move, and one that sets the show appart on FX from any of the other comic book based properties.

If you didn’t see last week’s episode “Chapter 1o”, you can catch up here.

Season 2 episode 3 “Chapter 11” has another simple synopsis:

“David navigates the maze.”

Things That Happened:

• The episode begins with a medical vissage, explaining a placebo effect
• It flows into explaining a convergence disorder, that the tick portion of it can be contageous
• “If the idea of illness can become illness, what else in our reality is actually a disorder?”
• Farouk is being inundated with images, and drops dead in the middle of dinner. He’s loaded into a hermetically sealed coffin and onto a stylish hearse.
• The Buddhist chanting such a disconnect from the scene, but somehow completely appropriate for the mood.
• Farouk’s coffin is lowered into a cavern, and sealed
• Meanwhile back at the institute, the tiny black idea demon is making it’s way into more of the inhabitants, infecting them with doubts and eventually the teeth chatter
• Doctor Loudermilk takes Kerie to the cafe, and they have shumai (omnomnom)
• He’s trying to encourage her to eat, with her being separate from his body, in order to get all the nutrition she needs
• And of course the aftermath of eating- which now Kerie has to learn how to do
• Syd is running around in her cat form
• She and David are carrying on a conversation as she patrols the facility
• One of the teeth chatter illness sufferers has escaped the room, and the Vermillion sound an alarm
• David gets a vision of future Syd, who writes a letter in the air to him, an H
• He goes back into the tank, and finds Lenny poolside playing with chalk
• Farouk tells David the monks that hold his body are impenetrable, “Unless you know the secret”
• They keep talking, David trying to find out what Farouk’s plans are, “No super villain stuff?”
• But Lenny in the background is trying to off herself by hanging from a tree behind them, tries shooting herself in the head but bubbles come out instead
• Farouk tells David it’s really the Monk who’s infecting everyone with the tooth chattering
• David comes back out of the chamber to find the lights flickering in Division 3
• Doctor Loudermilk is the only one not affected, and he tells David the Monk infected everyone
• David transports himself and Loudermilk into The Maze
• Turns out David found a way to bring Ptonomy Wallace out of the teeth chattering
• The cow is still following them
• Melaine’s mind is like the ultimate RP1 fanservice, a Zork playthrough
• The Minotaur starts to walk towards them, and David starts finally using his powers
• He pulls Melaine out, and searches for Syd
• David gets grabbed by the Monk’s goons, and brought into his mind
• Doctor Loudermilk finds Kerie chattering in the hall, and tries to wake her up, and disappears
• Fukuyama and the Vermillion have been taken over by The Monk, and he tells Melaine they will not give up Farouk’s body without the Weapon, which she guesses is David.
• David finds Syd on the roof, teeth chattering.

Not as outright stunning as the previous episodes this season, the show does continues to move right along.

Legion airs on FX on Tuesdays.