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LEGION Recap: Chapter 3

LEGION Recap: Chapter 3

Spoilers for Legion follow. Don’t read on if you’re not caught up! Shall we begin?

I don’t know about you, but I’m still reeling from the end of this latest Legion episode. But enough preamble. Let’s get into it.

Chapter 3 starts with Dr. Melanie Bird, who owns a very strange robotic coffee maker that tells her the story of the poor woodcutter and his wife while she’s waiting for her brew. Roughly half of all folk tales start out that way, so let’s be more specific: after rescuing a crane from a trap, they’re visited by a young woman in white who offers to make clothes that they can sell in exchange for room and board, so long as they never watch her work. Naturally they break that promise, and discover that their new tenant was actually the crane the whole time. Hmmm, what an interesting allegory about birds that I’m sure won’t be metaphorically relevant to the plot of Legion in future episodes!

LEGION -- "Chapter 3" – Season 1, Episode 3 (Airs Wednesday, February 22, 10:00 pm/ep) -- Pictured: Jean Smart as Melanie Bird. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

Bird and Ptonomy have returned to their memory work with David, and they’re pretty insistent on seeing that time David made a giant telekinetic mess out of his kitchen. He and his girlfriend Philly fought a lot, and we learn that the fight that triggered this incident began when Philly walked in on David and Lenny smoking their blue vapor in his living room.

But the memory stops again; this time it’s absolutely Maybe-Mojo causing problems, and what’s more, nobody except David can see him. Oh good! It’s so good that David and the gang wake up in a different room 600 feet away from the “Memory Cube,” having phased through two solid walls. That’s totally a normal thing that happens to people. Cool, cool.

In the breaks between treatment sessions, David and Syd hang out and bond over their shared experience of being in Syd’s body. Not that Syd is willing to take ownership of it. “It’s not my body,” she says. “That’s how I’ve come to think of it. If anyone can just come and go.” This is the single most devastating thing I’ve ever heard someone say in a superhero story, but at least here’s a silver lining for Syd — she might not have firm control over her physical form, but her very existence outside of herself is proof that the soul is real. Guys, being a mutant sucks.

LEGION -- "Chapter 2" (Airs Wednesday, February 15, 10:00 pm/ep) -- Pictured: (l-r) Dan Stevens as David Haller, Rachel Keller as Syd Barrett. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

Speaking of things that suck, another trip to the MRI spells disaster for David; while asked to think of a stressful memory, he thinks of the time he and Amy lost their dog during Halloween and starts hallucinating a giant paper maché version of the World’s Angriest Boy from his traumatizing children’s book. Man, and I thought The Monster at the End of This Book was a head trip.

Despite that abject horror, things seem okay at first, until Head Lenny shows up (triggering speech activity in David’s brain, according to Cary) and starts guilt-tripping David for leaving Amy behind and trusting Bird (“That bitch’s secrets have secrets!”). The stress awakens his powers, and, with Syd along for the ride, he projects himself into the room where Amy is being interrogated by members of Division Three, juuuust as she’s admitting that she would totally give him up if she could. It gets even worse when the Eye spots their astral forms and they have to make a quick getaway back to Summerland.

LEGION -- "Chapter 3" – Season 1, Episode 3 (Airs Wednesday, February 22, 10:00 pm/ep) -- Pictured: Aubrey Plaza as Lenny "Cornflakes" Busker. CR: Michelle Faye/FX

With Division Three still out there, Dr. Bird doesn’t want to waste any more time: she suggests sedating David just enough to lower his defenses, and going back into his memories again. Syd wants to go too, and she promises David that no matter what she sees, she’ll still love him. Aw!

Inside David’s brain, things get real Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind real fast: the sedated version David manifests as a child, and that makes it all the more terrifying for him when the walls begin to crumble around them and both Mojo and the World’s Angriest Boy start to make their way through. Luckily Syd can see what’s happening, too, and she takes off after David through a series of vents to protect him from the monsters in his mind.

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While separated in David’s mind, the Summerland gang starts to wake up one by one, except for Dr. Bird — she follows a whimpering noise into David’s childhood closet, where his copy of The World’s Angriest Boy in the World TRIES TO EAT HER HAND OH MY GOD THIS SHOW IS HORRIFYING. I mean, her hand is fine when she wakes up but gah. “I’m not so sure there are memories,” Syd says ominously, just as the episode comes to a close.

Bleh. Bleeeeeh. Did that ending give you the heebie jeebies, too? Tell us about it in the comments!

Images: FX Networks

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