Legion: It’s Not About a Girl (Oh Yes It Is!)

Legion | Season 3 | Episode 2 : “Chapter 21″

For a quick read, go to Review. For a complete summary, go to Recap.

KBear Recap [Read time: 5-7 min]

“I am but a humble servant who hopes to be useful in some small way to the needs of the collective and the wishes of our master.” Switch

We see Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller) aboard the Division 3 airship. Dan Stevens (David Haller) is in his lair levitating. David’s cultist are smoking his blue smoke in their nests [they are in nests like baby birds] while Switch (Lauren Tsai) is listening to her time travel instructions. The voice on the recording speaks in Chinese: “Lessons In Time Travel Chapter 20 Consequences – When Considering A Trip Backwards In Time Deliberate Your Plan Very Carefully, What Do You Hope To Accomplish In The Past? What Lives Will You Intersect With Either Casually Or Deliberately, Consider The Consequences Of Your Actions. Not All Temporal Interactions Go As Planned.” Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza) walks in and removes Switch’s headset from her head. She tells her David wants to see her. Lenny tries to assert her place in the hierarchy and warns Switch that she is David’s No. 1 even though Switch has the super power [David needs]. She asks if Switch understands. Switch answers in Japanese: “I am but a humble servant who hopes to be useful in some small way to the needs of the collective and the wishes of our master.” I don’t think Switch is that humble.

The voices in David’s head are arguing with David, putting him down when Lenny and Switch show up. David presents himself as benevolent and enlightened. He tells Lenny she can go, she scoffs but David uses his mental powers to persuade her to leave. Once they are alone, David asks Switch how her powers work. She explains that she goes into a hallway, one hallway goes to the past, the other hallway to the future. He asks her to show him. She draws a door and goes in, David tries to follow her but a barrier keeps him out. He tries to use his psychic powers but he still can’t get in. Switch grabs his hand and tries to pull him in but it fails. His inner voices mock him for his failure. Switch asks him not to get mad. David is able to not show his anger. David: “Do you believe in me?” Switch: “What do you mean?” David: “Do you believe I’m a good person? That I deserve love like everybody else?” Switch: “Of course.” David: “Cause we can fix this world, all the bad things. We just got to start over. I do.” He tries to convince Switch, “It’s not about a girl. It’s about saving lives. Starting with mine.” David tells her she has skills but they need to enhance her powers and he knows someone who can.

Cary Loudermilk (Bill Irwin) is in his workshop in the airship watching Clark DeBussy (Hamish Linklater) interrogate Squirrel (Wally Rudolph). Clark asks Squirrel where David is. Squirrel is either trying to protect David, or his brain is too scrambled to understand what Clark is asking him. Clark shows him a picture of David and threatens to push a big red button that will drop him out of the plane. Squirrel begins quoting the lyrics to Kris Kross’ Jump, “Mac daddy will make you jump.” Clark pushes the red button and the floor beneath Squirrel opens, and the chair Squirrel is handcuffed to falls out. Cary watches Squirrel head towards the ground and Clark runs in to remind him to activate the parachute in the chair. Cary does it and the parachute opens just in time. Squirrel lands but hurts his leg. They have a tracking device on him so they are able to follow him. As Squirrel limps down a city street, Lenny pulls up in a van, she uses a vial of the blue liquid to entice him to get in. When the door opens, a van load of David’s young female followers await him with knives in their hands. They pull him in and leave. Aboard the airship, Cary, Clark, two Vermillions and Kerry (Amber Midthunder) watch. Kerry wants to go down there to fight Lenny but Clark wants to follow her so that they can get David.

“Can I…can I just have the drugs now?” Squirrel

Syd is at the site where the big hole is, holding Switch’s tooth. She thinks of David and his astral projection shows up. David tries to explain himself and his cult. He tries to apologize but Syd isn’t having it. Syd: “Have you ever heard the saying ‘Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them’.” David: “That’s awful.” David doesn’t get she is talking about him. Syd tells her he never saw her, so he tries to manipulate her by showing her an image of the first time he saw her. She asks him to stop. Syd tells him if he should turn himself in if he means them no harm. He angrily tells her she killed him twice, he’d be dead if Switch hadn’t saved him. David asks what if he went back in time to change things. Syd tells him it wouldn’t matter, even though it would remove his rape, it still is who he is. David asks why she can’t leave him alone, Syd tells him she can’t because he ends the world. David gets really angry, and the blue liquid in his compound turns red. The cultist who were smoking the blue stuff and blissing out are now smoking the red stuff and turning violent.

The van drives out into the countryside. Squirrel is still alive. Lenny and the girls get out and leave him alone in the van. He gets out to look for them. Squirrel finds them seated at a long table with Lenny dressed like the Mad Hatter. Lenny: “Where have you been little bird? The house went to Oz and you weren’t in it.” Squirrel: “I was in the airplane. The sky.” Lenny: “Oh yeah. You fly first class, did they warm your nuts?” Squirrel: “What?” Lenny: “Focus asshat. I’m asking about the temperature of your nuts.” Squirrel: “Can I…can I just have the drugs now?” She gives him the red liquid to smoke. He smokes it and the whites of his eyes turn red. Division 3 is on the ground watching them. She and Clark lead the troops while Cary stays in their van. The girls stand before them with their knives drawn, ready to fight. Kerry orders the net to drop over them, and a net falls capturing the girls. Squirrel is aggressive now and he attacks Kerry, but the troops drag him off. They wonder where Lenny is; she has sneaked around them and drives off with Cary in the Division 3 van.

Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban) plays the piano for a group of muscular women. Syd enters and tells him about her conversation with David. She tells him that David thinks he’s the victim. Amahl says this shows how dangerous he is. They discuss the added complication of David having a time traveler helping him. They can’t sneak up on him now and Switch can change anything they do. Farouk suggest they will have to get rid of Switch. He continues, “You are the one to reach him. An army cannot sneak up on a man. But a lover can.” Syd: “We’re not that. And I won’t do that.” Farouk: “To save the world?” Syd: “Gross!” Farouk [In French]: “Stubborn.” [Back to English]: “Well the intimacy we need is emotional, not physical. I will teach you to lie so well. When you stab him in the back, David will thank you while you are stabbing him in the back.” Syd doesn’t look thrilled.

“You said, your mind can’t reconcile the person we see with the person you think you are.” David Haller

Cary wakes up in David’s compound. A woman walks in the room with Cary’s meal, he gets right behind her, mimicking her moves and using sounds to distract her so he can sneak out of the room. Cary stealthily walks through the compound watching David’s drugged out followers, and he spots the giant pig. He takes it in stride. He wanders into David’s lair and David materializes behind him. David: “You said something to me at the trial, if that’s what you want to call it.” Cary: “I think we saw that as an intervention.” Cary begs for his life and David assures him he won’t kill him. Cary: “What did I say at the trial?” David: “You said, your mind can’t reconcile the person we see with the person you think you are.” David tells him he wants him to build something to amplify Switch’s powers. Lenny sneaks up behind Cary and gasses him. He wakes up later and looks in the mirror. On the other side is Kerry, they are brushing their hair and saying scientific things. When he gets up and goes to a dresser, Kerry emerges dressed like him while he is dressed like her. They begin to dance, each wanting to lead, David replaces Kerry and says he’ll lead. Cary wakes up for real this time on a kitchen table. Switch pours him a cup of tea and describes her time travel hallways. He is fascinated. She hopes that he can expand it so that she can take David with her. Cary tells her he need his equipment. Lenny is in the next room with it. [I don’t know if they stole his equipment from Division 3 or got him similar equipment.] He’s pleased and Lenny sends Switch out of the room to assert her authority over her. Lenny asks Cary where David is going, what he will be doing. Cary: “Save the world.”

KBear Review [Read time: 1-3 minutes]

David is trying to figure out how Switch’s time travel powers work so that he can use them. She explains them to him and tries to take him through her time hallways. He can’t get through the time portal. He knows someone who can enhance her powers, allowing him to enter, Cary. On the airship, Clark interrogates Squirrel, which is useless since Squirrel’s brain is fried. They drop him out of the plane so that they can track him back to David. Squirrel is picked up by Lenny and some of David’s female cult members. The women are packing knives. Clark had a tracking device placed on Squirrel so they are able to follow him. Clark, Kerry and some Division 3 troops easily subdue the cultist. The main person they wanted to capture, Lenny has slipped past them and kidnapped Cary. She takes him back to David so he can help Switch. After gassing him, Cary seems complacent. Meanwhile Lenny appears threatened by Switch joining their cult. She keeps trying to remind Switch that she is above her and is David’s No 1. I think she better start getting used to being David’s No. 2. Farouk discusses the new complication of David having a time traveler. Farouk’s plan to counter this is to use Syd. He will teach Syd to manipulate David’s emotions against him so well that he will thank her while she is stabbing him in the back.

Outwardly, David is trying to project the image of a chilled, enlightened guru. We get to hear David’s inner voices wail against him. David is still at war with himself. He acts like he wants to use Switch’s power to change time so he can save lives. The only life he’s thinking about is his; he wants to rewrite time so he can get back with Syd. He might be fooling Switch, but he isn’t fooling Syd. Even though he says he’s sorry, it’s obvious he can’t recognize what he did to Syd. His rewriting time is just another attempt to manipulate Syd and have her forget the rape, taking her agency away from her again. Until David can really examine himself and see who he is and really try to atone for his sins and change, he will always be a threat to Syd and everyone else around him.

Another good episode, even though there are many strange visuals, the story itself is pretty straight forward. The show’s writers haven’t let David off the hook for his actions, but they aren’t letting the darkness bog down the show. It wasn’t a light hearted episode, but it was fun. A lot of that had to do with Squirrel. Wally Rudolph was the episode’s comic relief. Watching him try to get out of the predicaments he was in, and still get high cracked me up. The standout performer in the episode was Bill Irwin. The physicality he uses behind the woman who brought him his meal was clever, but the way he and Amber Midthunder mimicked each other’s movements and their [and David’s] dance scene was fantastic.

They made a lot of interesting musical choices this episode. They begin the episode with Oh, Good Grief by Vince Guaraldi. It seems like David is a blockhead like Charlie Brown.