I think this is my favorite episode of Legion yet.
It was only a matter of time before Legion went head-first into the multiverse, but who know they could do it so beautifully.
“Chapter 14” takes a look at the alternate lives of David and Amy. While at first, it’s a little jarring, given that they don’t actually explain what’s going on until a good ten minutes into the episode, the point it makes by the end is one that’s well worth it.
There are four over-arching multiverses David’s that we are introduced to, along with a few smaller reoccurring ones that are done in a format similar to what we saw when Syd’s backstory was explored.
The first is what I’m going to call homeless David. He’s older, has a long grown out beard and is pushing a shopping cart full of garbage around with him everywhere he goes. He still has his powers, but since he never got any proper help in dealing with them they’ve just made him insane. He’s always shouting at the voices he hears in his head, making everyone who passes him on the street think he’s insane.
This points back to something that Legion does so well — address the topic of mental illness. Yes, this is an X-men spinoff show, but Noah Hawley is so smart to really bring the humanity into what having a superpower live David’s would be like. It’s not all fun and games; it would take a serious, schizophrenic-like toll on your mind and without proper guidance, it could completely destroy you.
A group of thugs come across homeless David sleeping under a bridge one night and decide to beat him up. That’s when homeless Davids’ powers are released for the first time, as he zaps them into the oblivion. Later, we see an entire police force try to take homeless David down. Once again, he wipes them completely out — right until Kerry (girl version) shows up and cuts him in half with a katana sword.
Not totally sure what to make of Kerry being there, but the point is that powers/mental issues can completely destroy you if you try to do it by yourself.
Next, we see David as a young intern who is delivering coffee in a business meeting. Evidently, it’s some very important merger, which David picks up on as he’s handing out the beverages.
That’s not the only thing he learns. He’s able to read the minds of some of the men at the table and learns that the entire merger is a trap and based on lies. Taking a chance, he has a sudden outburst and tells his boss about it. She’s skeptical at first, but it turns out David was right — maybe his powers can be used for good after all.
Jump forward a good forty years and David has now become the richest man on the entire planet. He hired that very same boss who he used to work for to basically be his secretary now, just because he likes the fear he strikes in her.
Amy comes in, asking for a new house after her husband was caught cheating. David, who is now straight up a-hole, goes into her mind and makes her run away scared.
Yes, he’s the richest man in the world and that was only possible to do with his powers, but all the humanity is completely sucked out of this David. Power, in rich David’s eyes, means money. Maybe he thinks he has what he wants, but it’s a pale comparison of the David that we’ve come to know.
Third David: a mild-manner employee who stacks boxes for a milk company. He lives with Amy, who is doing all she can to help take care of David. It’s not working. She’ll come home to find him wearing two bathrobes, listening to jungle noises for seemingly no reason.
Still, she keeps trying to get him to take his medication and go to the doctor.
One day, shy David is walking home from work when he gets a vision of the yellow-eyed demon from season one. This causes him to act out, and the police eventually arrive. Still up in arms about the demon, David finds himself in handcuffs and about to be put in the back of the vehicle when Amy shows up.
Things get worse from there. Amy tries to intervene but gets shoved to the ground. David, upset and unchecked, wields his powers to straight up murder both of the police in brutal fashion. Another cop car arrives and guns David down in the street.
Dead.
This one was tough. Sometimes, even with support from a loved one, depression is just too strong. Still, I think this version is better than the rich prick version of David.
Fourth version: what I’ll call the real David. Yes, this is the multiverse, so technically all these versions are real — but this is the David that we’ve been following in Legion since episode one.
We see some flashbacks between him and Amy from season one — the one scene where she’s frustrated about why David can’t just be happy. She clearly wants to help, even though she doesn’t totally understand what her brother is going through.
David, at some points, tries to hang himself from an electrical wire and that’s when she knows she has to intervene. Her support isn’t going to be enough, he needs proper help. That’s how he ends up in the hospital we see in season one.
It’s the conversation the two have in the car before he’s taken to the hospital that got me. David is screwed up in all kinds of ways, but the love between him and Amy is real. They share a moment — and we now know that, since Amy was killed in the previous episode, it’s one of the last moments they have together.
Other glimpses of timelines that we get are one where David and Amy (who at first I thought was Syd) are elderly and Amy has to do pretty much everything to take care of David, and one in which David is stuck in an office and hallucinates some kind of dancing rat.
Even with everything that’s gone wrong, this timeline for David is really the only one he has a chance at true happiness. The only question is what else is it going to cost him.
Tune in to Legion on FX tonight and check out our other Legion recaps by clicking here!