Legion - S1E2 - Chapter Two

Previously on Legion, “Chapter One”

Okay, I have a better idea of what’s going on this week, and I still love it.

David is taken to Summerland, Melanie’s compound of mutants. It’s like Xavier’s school if it were a hippie/high-tech house in the woods. Their goals are to get David to realize that his gifts (telekinesis) aren’t a mental illness, to figure out what triggers his powers, and to make him whole. Even though Division 3 (one of several government agencies which hunt, capture, and kill mutants) is looking for them, they have time to do this. And thanks to Ptonomy’s power, they have the ability to travel through David’s memories to study his triggers.

His memories include being read a terrifying bedtime story by his father, scoring drugs with Lenny, and being in therapy discussing the breakup with his girlfriend after the kitchen incident. David tries to do the work, but something is blocking him. He doesn’t allow Ptonomy and Melanie to see what happened in the kitchen that day; he won’t talk about the bedtime story (“The Angriest Boy in the World”) in which a little boy decapitated his mother; and he won’t admit that he once looked at Lenny and saw The Yellow-Eyed Devil. And since all signs do indeed point to David being a very powerful mutant (perhaps the most powerful), Ptonomy is unable to push past these mental barriers. David will have to let them in.

Right now, it appears David has several abilities (as a non-book reader, I don’t know what they are, though I was semi-spoiled on one), including being able to see and hear that his sister, Amy, has been asking about him at Clockworks, and they’re claiming they’ve never heard of David. Her questions put in her Division 3’s sights, but Melanie convinces David that if he leaves to save Amy, they’ll all die. For now, David is is going to stay and continue doing the work.

Even though Syd insists they won’t kill Amy because she’s bait, that doesn’t mean she’ll come through unharmed. When we last see Amy, she’s about to be interrogated by The Eye.

X Files

Something about Lenny doesn’t seem right. I was under the impression David met her at Clockworks, but he has memories of doing drugs with her before being admitted. Thanks to the semi-spoiler and the title of the show, which, for some reason, went right over my head, I’m convinced David is split into personalities that take on forms. Lenny is actually there and can interact with people, but she’s not a real person. When David leaves his therapy session and finds her waiting outside, the first thing he does is pull Twizzlers, her candy of choice, out of his pocket. Perhaps he needs to learn to integrate them and create them at will. Melanie mentions several times they want to make David whole.

Did David accidentally kill his mother with his power? The little boy in the story blows up at his mother and her head comes off. David won’t talk about how accurate the memory is or why his father would actually read him such a story. It makes me wonder what we can trust from these memories. Was the kitchen incident actually when David was younger? He gets hit in the face with a knife and then we see him on the floor with the girlfriend walking out. Is this a recreation of his mother getting hurt and then leaving/dying?

We’ve gotten so much in just two episodes, I’m guessing some of my questions may be answered sooner than later.