In season 2, FX’s Legion is still using a familiar genre to tell an extraordinary story
In FX’s oddball superhero series Legion, protagonist David Haller (Dan Stevens) spends the first episode of the second season acting as an audience proxy by asking the questions that the rest of the characters aren’t. What happened to Summerland, the woodland retreat for mutants that was the setting for much of the first season? Why are the other main characters now taking orders from a guy with a basket on his head and a trio of singing mustachioed women? What is going on?
After spending the show’s first season answering the question of whether David is insane, superpowered, or both, Legion could have transitioned into a much more conventional superhero show. But while both the real and psychically constructed mental institutions from...