Legion Season 3 Ends The Series Underwhelmingly
After two excellent seasons that pit David Haller (Dan Stevens) against Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban), Legion Season 3 decides “No” and pits David Haller against his own inner demons as he tries to fight Amahl Farouk while using a time-traveller (Lauren Tsai) to prevent his father, Charles Xavier (Harry Lloyd) about the mistakes he made as a dad; to not meet Farouk.
Legion has always excelled at creating trippy sequences and nonsensical entertainment in which you would just soak in the madness and appreciate the show for what it is. Unfortunately, Season 3 just doesn’t deliver in the “trippiness” category. I loved the new character of Switch, until her tooth started to fall off. Lauren Tsai seemed like a great addition to the already star-studded roster, but she stopped impressing me when her “time-travel” power had vulnerabilities. Her tooth falls off, “time-creatures” [if you will] start appearing and mess up with time. It makes for relatively creative action sequences, but the gimmick falls short as they are nearly invincible. The only way to stop (or subdue) them (if you will) is a dog whistle…they are trained. Are you fckg kidding me? We’ve spent 8 episodes building a thrilling climax with these creatures and it only took one simple gesture to defeat them…ugh.
I loved Dan Stevens’ performance as David Haller — he was as fantastic as he ever was, completely unpredictable, never knowing what trick he has in his pocket, and completely nuts. It’s a shame that the series ended with him coming to terms that he can never kill Farouk, after Charles Xavier made a deal with him. Speaking of Xavier, Harry Lloyd is excellent as the character, in my opinion, better than James McAvoy (but not as good as Patrick Stewart). They never say “Charles Xavier”, they only name him by his first name, but there are a few hints here and there in which we know that it is Xavier. It’s a very different take — but a very interesting one and the best part of the show. Every single performance is fantastic, particularly Aubrey Plaza and Rachel Keller as Lenny and Sydney Barrett respectively. The final scene between Barrett and Haller is surprisingly emotional, and ends the series well, but the biggest problem that the show has is the relationship between Farouk and Haller.
In the beginning of the third season, Farouk joins forces with Barrett, Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris who is now a robot of some sorts), Cary (Bill Irwin), Kerry (Amber Midthunder) and Clark (Hamish Linklater) to get to David, until we realize that he’s been manipulating them so he can get to David. It’s cheap and completely unimaginative. Many of the show’s sequences contain repetitive dialogue and situations and ends up being more boring than exciting — and it’s a shame because the last two sequences were creatively fantastic. The worst episode is a filler on Sydney’s origins starring Jemaine Clement and Jean Smart, with a wild cameo from Jason Mantzoukas as the big, bad wolf which serves nothing to the story. It’s their Karen episode, though Sydney is a likeable character compared to Karen Page. I liked Negahban as Amahl Farouk, but it’s his final motivation of moving on with their lives that twisted my expectations and made me sigh. The show has been slowly building up a fight for the ages, and seeing Haller team-up with Xavier made me completely giddy, until they decided to “talk” and not “fight”. It’s my mistake to hyping me up, but it was still extremely disappointing. We’ve been pitting two powerful mutants against each other, and then they completely do the opposite of what the show has been building up. Oh well, at least the conversation between Barrett and Haller + Switch’s transformation was pretty good, but I was still incredibly lukewarm over the finale.
I love Noah Hawley’s style of complete immersivness with aspect ratio shifts à la Christopher Nolan IMAX, and there are some incredibly creative and visually inventive sequences, but it still isn’t enough for a series finale. I was very lukewarm on it, where it should blow my mind like the last two seasons did. Oh well, we’ll always have season 2!
✯✯½
