Legion | Season 3 | Episode 5 : “Chapter 24”
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KBear Recap [Read time: 5-7 min]
“No. I held her. And I thought, ‘I am such an asshole.’ Man, all those years, all those shitty, pointless years. My stupid life. Getting high.” Lenny Busker
Two Vermillion on motorcycles lead a Division 3 caravan. Daniel Debussy (Keir O’Donnell) is video chatting with his husband Clark (Hamish Linklater). David Haller (Dan Stevens) is standing in the middle of the road. The Vermillion try to run David down with their motorcycles but they run right through him and disintegrate. The bus tries to run him down but David materializes in the bus and wipes out everyone except Daniel. Daniel: “You can’t make me talk.” David: “Where is she? Switch.” Daniel: “My mind has been trained. I can’t be probed or manipulated.” David: “Oh is that right? Well, I guess training would be in…long-term memory, hmm? So, let’s erase that.” Daniel: “What.” David wipes out his long-term memory and then asks him about Switch again. Daniel tells him she’s on the airship. The bus had been put on autopilot, so it arrives at Division 3. The troops board it and find the carnage David has wrought. Daniel sits at his desk and asks them what his name is.
At David’s compound everyone is happy and partying. Busloads of new recruits arrive. David appears and asks who these new people are. His acolytes tell him it’s the new children. David is calling for Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza) but the crowd surrounds him. David teleports out of the crush of humanity into the house, where more people are partying and playing games. This crowd annoys him so he makes them disappear. David: “Lenny. [Sing songy] We’re going to war.” Acolytes: “What’s happening Daddy? Where did all the children go?” David: “Get everyone together. Lenny!” Acolytes: “You killed them.” David: “Wh…no. I didn’t kill them. They’re just…someplace else.” David keeps calling for Lenny and she appears with a knife in her hand. Lenny: “God, you are such a narcissist.” David: “I found Switch. She’s on an airship moving fast. I think I can…” Lenny: “Blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought I was a narcissist. But then I held my baby.” David: “That wasn’t your baby. That was a trick, just like my mother.” Lenny: “No. I held her. And I thought, ‘I am such an asshole.’ Man, all those years, all those shitty, pointless years. My stupid life. Getting high.” David: “Well you’re still high.” Lenny: “No. I was better. I was good, okay? [Chuckles softly] We had plans. But then you ruined it.” Acolytes: “Leave Daddy alone.” David: “No, it’s okay. She’s making a choice to mope.” Lenny: “Mope? They killed my family!” David: “We are your family. Now get it in gear. We got to go get Switch. [Lenny gives him a dirty look] But, look, if we do this, change the past, then…I don’t know. Maybe you…get her back.” Lenny chuckles as she looks at David finally seeing who he really is. Lenny: “Liar.” David: “Lenny, baby…I need you.” Lenny: “You can’t have me. [Stabs herself in the neck] You blockhead.” David holds her as she fades away. Lenny: “Why is it blue?” David: “It’s always blue.” Lenny takes her last breath. David looks disturbed and sad.
“We’re going to space!” Kerry Loudermilk
Switch (Lauren Tsai) is in a tank on the airship listening to her time travel tape. Recording: “The Plight of the Time Traveler is Heavy Indeed. For When One Exists in All Times One Exists in No Times. For What Comfort Can a Time Traveler Find in the Moment Knowing That Everything That Exists Will End? It is for This Reason That Time Travelers are the Loneliest Creatures in All of Existence.” Switch is dreaming about her sad lonely life, she is at a table eating dinner alone, her father is on TV eating the same dinner and asks her to pass the potatoes. She walks through her house surrounded by toys. She has a wind-up stem in the back of her neck. Inside the lab, Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller), Cary Loudermilk (Bill Irwin), and Kerry (Amber Midthunder) are standing over Switch. The tank is hidden by a black hole so David won’t be able to detect her. He might not be able to detect Switch but he can still detect the airship. They want to avoid David as long as possible. Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris) has come up with a solution, they can go on a low Earth orbit so David can’t find them. Kerry: “We’re going to space!” Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban) walks in and disagrees with this plan. Farouk: “This is wrong. If we are the rabbit, then he is the wolf.” Sydney: “We need a plan we can’t fight him.” Farouk: “I can beat him.” Sydney: “I thought that he was stronger than you.” Farouk: “Maybe, but he’s erratic, impulsive. I’m a strategist.” Syd makes the call to go to space. Ptonomy gets the airship prepared to become a spaceship. They begin to leave our atmosphere. Kerry repeats, “We’re going to space.” Farouk walks out in disgust grumbling, “Army of cowards.”
Once they’re in space, Farouk psychically contacts David who is levitating in his lair. Farouk: “David. Seeing you like this…what you have become. The sweet boy undone by revenge. It fills my heart with such sorrow. David. Do what you want. Take what you want. Gods make rules. They don’t follow them. And now it’s time for them to pay.” David gets a vision of the airship and says, “Gotcha.”
David teleports his acolytes aboard the airship. They fade out of the compound into the ship. The crew can hear their laughter. The acolytes eject the Division 3 troops into space. [Those red shirts can’t catch a break.] Clark is watching a film of Daniel’s long-term memory. He hears some noise and goes for his gun. David turns the gun into a rubber ducky. David: “Bath time.” Clark: “I should have killed you the first time we met.” David chuckles: “Yeah.” The acolytes eject Clark out into space with his troops. Kerry is sharpening her blade and hears laughter. She walks carefully through the hallway. She comes upon three of the acolytes with knives drawn. Another group of armed acolytes appear. This makes Kerry happy, she’s ready for a fight. Ptonomy and the two Vermillion with him realize they have been boarded, they begin the lock down procedure.
“Well it doesn’t matter. Cause you’re going to change everything. So none of this will happen. We’ll never meet. Or fall in love. Do you think that it hurts? Being erased.” Sydney Barrett
Syd is laying down when she realizes someone is in her quarters, its David of course. He tells her she shouldn’t have trusted Farouk, he told him where they were. She calmly says he didn’t agree with their plan. To David’s surprise, she immediately tells him where Switch is. Sydney: “I’m not mad anymore. I was. But I get it now. You can’t love halfway.” David: “Syd.” Sydney: “David.” David: “I’m gonna change the past. Don’t worry. None of this will happen. Only good. Good things.” Sydney: “Did you kill everyone?” David [cocks head]: “Mm. No one who dies is really dead. You see that, right? The past changes, and the future…disappears. So Clark, Lenny, we all…get a do-over.” Sydney: “What happened to Lenny?” David: “She abandoned me. Like my parents. Like you.” Sydney: “No, no. No, you left me. Remember?” David: “I listened to you. I trusted you.” Sydney: “I know. It’s not fair. I was jealous. Of myself. Isn’t that crazy? I should have trusted you.” They blame Farouk for leading her astray. Syd: “Well it doesn’t matter. Cause you’re going to change everything. So none of this will happen. We’ll never meet. Or fall in love. Do you think that it hurts?” David: “What?” Sydney: “Being erased.” David: “Syd.” Sydney: “It’s okay. I want another chance too. I love you.” David: “I love you.” Sydney touches his cheek, they switch bodies.
Kerry is on the ground, she’s killed some of the acolytes but the other three are still standing ready to pounce. Syd/David drags David/Syd into the hallway and distracts the acolytes, she gives Kerry time to kill them. Kerry is confused until Syd/David tells her she is Syd. She’s switched bodies with David. Syd is in David’s mind when she meets the other David’s. Legion David: “It’s our time now.” Sydney: “Who the hell are you?” Legion David’s: “I am Legion. I am Legion. I am Legion. I am Legion. I am Legion.” Syd tells Kerry she can’t control this for long, Kerry needs to kill David now. Kerry hesitates because she doesn’t want to kill Syd, but Syd tells her she’ll jump back into her own body. [Syd probably doesn’t know if she can do it in time, but she’s willing to make the sacrifice.] The Legion David’s need to regain control of David’s body so they propose that he wipe out Syd’s mind so she can’t pull any other trick to keep his body. They grab Syd and wipe her mind. When Kerry swings her katana at David, he is himself again and he catches her katana between his hands. He sends her flying across the room. He looks down at Syd’s comatose body. David: [softly]: “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. I promise.”
“A spider. Not a rabbit. If you think about it, it’s brilliant.”Amahl Farouk
David finds the tank Switch is in. Before he can get her out, Farouk shows up and paralyses David. Farouk: “A spider. Not a rabbit. If you think about it, it’s brilliant. Really. To bring your enemy to a place where he can do no damage.” All the David’s in his head scream, “Kill him!” David tells him how he hates him and how Farouk destroyed his life. He says ‘shit’ and Farouk asks how David became so uncivilized. Instead of doing whatever he planned with David, Farouk spends the time gloating. This gives David time to wake up Switch. She gets behind Farouk and sends him to the time between time. Switch: “I had the worst dream.” David: “I know. But I came to wake you up. Finish what we started.” Switch: “Are they all dead?” David: “Most. Or none. Once we go back.” Switch: “That-that doesn’t bother you?” David doesn’t answer. He begins quoting lyrics from What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding and then switches to singing. Switch joins him, and then the cast of Legion, both living and dead join them. After they get through singing, David convinces Switch to try again even though she is worried about the time demons. She asks are they going back to when he was a baby again, David tells her no; he has a new plan. When they go through the Time Door, we see a quick flash of a time demon. They haven’t forgotten.
KBear Review [Read time: 1-3 minutes]
In the last episode, David declared war, and in this episode he wages it. He wipes out a Division 3 caravan and wipes out the long-term memory of Daniel to find Switch. He goes back to the compound to round up Lenny and his acolytes for the fight ahead. Not before he wipes out most of his followers because they were annoying him. Lenny is mourning the loss of her family and is tired of David’s act. She stands up to David, something he is no longer use to. He doesn’t care about her pain, he just wants her to fall back into line. Lenny won’t and she stabs herself in the neck. Instead of reevaluating his actions, he’s more determined than ever. The crew on the airship wants to avoid David and decides to go into space. Farouk is against it, he believes he can beat David. Syd decides to hide instead of confront David directly. Farouk being a poor loser, and a villain which everyone aboard that airship seems to have forgotten contacts David and tells him to come and get them. He tells David he’s a god, and gods don’t follow rules, they make them. David knows where the airship is so he teleports his acolytes aboard. Those women do some serious damage, tossing the Division 3 troops out into space. David confronts Clark, and he has his acolytes toss Clark into space too. While Kerry fights with the acolytes, David shows up in Syd’s quarters. Syd seems sympathetic to David’s do over plans and admits her past mistakes concerning him. She tells him that she loves him and touches his face, switching bodies with him. Syd pulled off the advice Farouk gave her about how a lover could get close to David to stab him in the back. She meets Legion, the scores of David’s in his mind. Unlike David, they don’t love her. To regain his body, they wipe out her mind. Sydney lays on the floor, an empty vessel. After tossing Kerry into a wall, he goes to the lab to get Switch. Farouk shows up, and like all fictional villains, begins to monologue. This gives David a chance to wake up Switch, and she sends the windbag to the time demons home. Farouk is stuck in stop motion again. David is ready to go back to messing with time again, even though the time demons will be waiting. Switch seems alarmed about the causalities, but David isn’t concerned, once they change the past, everything will be fine. He displays his real emotions when he and the cast sing What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding. He and Switch go off on their new mission with the time demons watching.
David is a complete villain now, whose actions are destroying everyone’s lives. He doesn’t care, he thinks he can make it all right once he’s changed the past. But his actions are brutal, leading to Lenny killing herself and David wiping Syd’s mind. The casualties of David’s war piles up. There appears to be no one who can stop him. The episode had two great scenes, David’s and Lenny’s final confrontation and his final talk with Syd. Aubrey Plaza was outstanding in this scene. She has been outstanding this whole series, and if this was her last scene she went out in style. Rachel Keller was great in her scene with David. Even though she was tricking him so she could switch bodies with him, I believe some of what she said came from her heart. No matter what he’s done, there is still a part of her that loves him. Their relationship is tragic and she illustrated its depths. Dan Stevens keeps finding new layers to David, layers that are more ugly and pathetic as we go along. He doesn’t flinch in showing David’s monstrousness but still retains his lost little boy quality. You still hope that somehow he’ll be redeemed. The best shot was showing the acolytes fading out of the compound into the airship. Their laughter in the hallways was chilling.
Tékitoi by Rachid Taha feat. Christian Oliver played when David commandeered the Davison 3 bus.
Peter Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers played after David’s attack and during the party at his compound. David proves himself to be the ultimate party-pooper when he wipes out the partyers.
What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding by Nick Lowe plays in the background as the cast sings their version. It reminds me of the scene in the movie Magnolia when the cast sings Wise Up.
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