Title: Legion Season 2 Episode 6: “Chapter 14”
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Superhero
Platform: TV – FX
Director: John Cameron
Writer: Noah Hawley
Rating: TV-MA
Release: May 8, 2018
Cast: Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jean Smart, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, Jemaine Clement, Hamish Linklater, Navid Negahban
Feature image: Source
[Spoilers]
“Do it bitch. Take the bait.” Don Eichmann – Legion
In an alley, we see an elderly homeless David Haller (Dan Stevens). A young beautiful woman is in a pool at a modern designed mansion. A wealthy elderly David stands on the balcony lording over his fiefdom. An elderly woman [I believe it’s Amy] is serving soup to another elderly David, except this one isn’t rich. He is an invalid and appears to be senile. The elderly woman brushes his teeth and puts him to bed. At a bus stop a vagrant and possibly schizophrenic David is sitting on bench decorated with an Amy Haller (Katie Aselton) real estate agency ad. A car passes by with a mustachioed David on the passenger side with Amy. A clean-shaven David in a suit is carrying an armload of coffees to a meeting. David is talking to himself quietly. He can hear other people’s thoughts. He enters a meeting where the people he works for are trying to merge with another company before the other company finds out their product is defective. Don Eichmann (Seamus Dever) is trying to force a female executive, Laura Mercer (Molly Hagan) to sign the papers. Don: “Do it bitch. Take the bait.” David reads their minds and sees that they are trying to swindle Laura. David: “Wait. Can I talk to you for a minute?” After one of Don’s assistants throws David out of the meeting, Laura slips out to talk to him. “I’m a psychic. [Hears her ask if he is stupid or crazy] I’m not crazy. I can’t help it, I hear people’s thoughts.” He reads her mind to prove it. He warns her about faulty relays that causes fires. She goes back in and springs her new knowledge on Don. He tries to minimize the problem, but Laura has had enough and calls the merger off. She looks at David and mentally says to him, “Come with me.”
“In another timeline, I’m like a billionaire or homeless or married in the suburbs with like 2.3 kids.” Meth Head David – Legion
The elderly homeless David is eating out of a garbage can, he’s yelling at passersby’s and talking to himself. The mustachioed David works at the Mary’s Sunshine Dairy warehouse stacking boxes. He is completely numb to the world. He hears his phone, it’s Amy, “Consider this your friendly little alarm clock reminding you it’s time to take your afternoon pill.” He dutifully takes it. His boss tells him he isn’t paying him to talk on the phone. Meth Head David is in a diner with another meth head explaining multiple timelines with cold French fries. Meth Head David: “There’s this thing, this multiple worlds theory from like quantum mechanics, right? And everything we do, there’s like a million possible outcomes, choices. And each outcome actually happens, like a tree growing branches. … In another timeline, I’m like a billionaire or homeless or married in the suburbs with like 2.3 kids…That’s a lot of branches.” We go to a timeline where David is happily married with two kids. The next timeline is our timeline with David. This is David before he goes to Clockworks. Amy is talking to David, but he is zoned out. Amy is thinking about getting married. Amy points out that he is with Philly and they might consider it one day too. David shakes off the possibility. Amy: “Why can’t you have what everyone else has? A nice home…a family.” David: “Because I’m sick.” Another David is working in a file room. A mouse who is on David’s desk begins singing “Slave to Love”.
“Oh look at him there my lovelies, sleeping the sleep of forgotten men.” Droog – Legion
Schizo David sees a shopping cart, we see a flashback of Benny pushing David in one. Schizo David sees Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller) in the back of a car, she looks at him like she can’t quite place where she knows him from. The elderly homeless David is pushing his loaded shopping cart. He goes under an overpass to sleep. Droogs [from the film “A Clockwork Orange”] come upon David. Droog: “Oh look at him there my lovelies, sleeping the sleep of forgotten men. Wakey, wakey, grandpa.” David: “Did he send you? Is he here?” They don’t know who he is talking about, but they say God sent them because he stinks. David: “Piss off… [He gets hit with a cane] or just finish me off. I have no use for this world anymore. Man, on the moon, men spinning around the Earth. There’s no attention paid to earthly law and order no more.” They converge on him like hyenas, but David lights up and evaporates the droogs. There are only shadows of them left. David staggers off into the night.
“You’re wearing two bathrobes and you’re listening to jungle sounds.” Amy Haller – Legion
Mustachioed David is sitting in the living room with his headphones on. Amy walks in from a hard day at work. She asks to listen to what he’s listening to, it’s jungle sounds. Amy tells him they will have a potpie for dinner and he can take his pills with it. David: “No more pills. I’m better now. No more pills.” Amy: “You’re wearing two bathrobes and you’re listening to jungle sounds.” David: “I can’t think when I take them.” Amy: “I know you don’t want to go back to the hospital, you don’t want to hurt anyone. Me.” David: “No.” We see a flashback of teen David from the first episode of the series shaking a pill bottle. As a treat, they are going to have ice cream with cookies. David can’t turn that down.
“God blessed me with a gift, do you understand? I am his chosen vessel.” Rich David – Legion
Rich David is with Laura, the executive he helped when he was a coffee boy. He tells Laura he knows she asks herself how she ended up working for the coffee boy. Laura denies it, but David reminds her he can read minds. David: “God blessed me with a gift, do you understand? I am his chosen vessel. In the ancient days mankind built a tower so high that it threatened to touch heaven. God cursed us with foreign language, misunderstanding, the inability to communicate. But I know what’s in the heart of every man, woman, and child on Earth. Gone is the confusion, the division. I am the great uniter.” An assistant tells David that Amy is there to see him. Amy wants a new house; her husband is sleeping with the masseuse. David reminds her that she is sleeping with her too. Amy asks was that Laura she saw, she snidely says “she’s so ancient”. Why does he keep her? David: “She resents me, I like that.” When Amy tries to bring up the house again he makes her nose bleed. David tells her no house and she fearfully agrees with him. Later that evening David is in the bathroom, two women wait for him in the shower. He looks in the mirror and sees a reflection of Farouk (Navid Negahban).
Elderly homeless David is sitting alone talking to himself, “It’s always blue. No. Nope.” Division III troops advance on him. They try to Taser him, but he has a force field around himself that knocks it away. With a flick of his hand he sends the troops flying. Someone says, “Send in the drone.” The drone makes a high screeching noise that keeps David from concentrating, preventing him from using his powers. A woman in high healed boots is slowly creeping up behind him. David is now prepared to evaporate the troops when Kerry Loudermilk (Amber Midthunder) walks up behind him and slices him in half with a katana. We get a flashback to David in the first episode in the series screaming.
“My sister is picking me up… I work here…I’m sorry…I take medication…I’m sorry.” Mustachioed David – Legion
Another flashback of David trying to hang himself. Now old David being bathed. Mustachioed David is outside the diary waiting for Amy to pick him up. He hears voices and sees the yellow eyed devil. The police roll up and ask for I.D., David shows them his nametag. He sees the yellow eyed devil in the squad car and freaks out. The cops get out of the car. David: “My sister is picking me up… I work here…I’m sorry…I take medication…I’m sorry.” They begin to handcuff David when Amy arrives. She tries to explain the situation to the cops, but they order her to stay out of it. She tries to calm David down and she tells them the handcuffs are too tight, they push her down hard. David loses control and tosses one of the cops away, while he disassembles the other one. Amy is screaming, and more squad cars show up. One of them shoots David in the back. Amy crawls to David after he makes everyone disappear.
“It’s wasn’t supposed to be like this.” David Haller – Legion
We see old feeble David being helped by old Amy. We see little David. David in the filing room is so bored he starts sniffing white out. We see Meth Head David in the diner, family man David playing with his kids in their pool, baby David in his crib. Amy lays flowers at David’s grave. We see baby David once again. Our David is talking to Amy outside of Clockworks. He promises to take his pills, but Amy reminds him he tried to hang himself. She thinks Clockworks will help him. David: “It’s wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Amy: “I know, but it is.” She tries to lift his spirits. Amy: “It’s just for a few week.” David: “Promise?” Amy: “Promise.” David: “Okay.” After a teary goodbye, the Clockworks attendants escort him in. Starting with scenes from the first season, we get a montage of David meeting Syd, him being interrogated by Clark, the Summerland crew breaking him out, their fight with the Shadow King, and it ends with Oliver using the device to turn Amy into Lenny. David cries in Lenny’s arms, and Farouk says, “You decide what is real and what is not. Your will.”
The episode begins with multiple David’s, rich, old, mentally ill, drug addicted, bored and even happy. Meth Head David explains the multiple world’s theory. We saw some of the possible outcomes and timelines of David Haller. Amy was in many of these timelines. She was the one constant in David’s life. No matter what, Amy loved and cared for him. With Farouk cruelly killing Amy, David goes through several different timelines to be with her. Most of the timelines weren’t that great, some worse than the one he is in. One thing we learn is how important having other people who care for him is. In the other timelines, it was just him and Amy, and when we didn’t see Amy, there was no one. The only one he was truly happy in, married with children, didn’t show Amy, but I would bet she was in the background somewhere, a proud aunt. With him introduced to Syd and the Summerland crew, he was able to be free of Farouk, and finally have some peace. It didn’t look like that was the case in the other timelines. Even when David was at his most powerful, Farouk was looking at him in the mirror. Farouk told David in another episode that he decides what is real and what is not. David does that for a while with the other timelines. He finally seems to settle with what Amy said to him outside Clockworks, “but it is.” David accepts that Amy is gone because “it is”. David is able to deal with his grief using the different timelines. We received a sad but beautiful reflection on grief.
Most of the cast had the week off; except from very small cameos from Rachel Keller and Amber Midthunder. Dan Stevens carried the bulk of the story, and he was brilliant. He thoroughly handled all of the different David’s. He gave them distinctive personalities with them still being David. The make-up work was good, some of the make-up jobs better than others, but none being distracting. This was a nice farewell to Katie Aselton, who the show never gave enough to do. She did a great job showing the love Amy had for David and Amy’s depth. This episode clearly showed why her lost is so devastating to David. The effects showing David’s power were well done; it really showed the force of nature David can be. The best effect was the mouse singing on David’s desk. That alone made the episode special.
Even though you don’t know what you’re going to get on Legion most of the time, one constant is the great music. Noah Hawley and Jeff Russo did an exemplary job again. The cover of I’d Love to Change the World by Noah Hawley and Jeff Russo played while Coffee Boy David was looking through the window at the meeting, Homeless David was wondering the streets, and Mustachioed David was numbly stacking boxes. Here is the original version from Ten Year’s After. Here’s a full version of Slave to Love by Bryan Ferry that the mouse sung on David’s desk. The little critter did a great job. Another Noah Hawley and Jeff Russo cover Superman ended the episode. Here is the original version from The Clique.
Grade: A
- Moon Knight: Steven Grant of the Giftshop - April 6, 2022
- Eternals: Through the Ages - April 3, 2022
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Slackers - March 12, 2022