Psyched Out

Surreal Super-show Legion Is Returning For Its Third And Final Season. Tara Bennett Speaks To Star Dan Stevens

- Tara Bennett

WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED IN 2015 that writer/director Noah Hawley was adapting the X-Men-related character of David Haller (aka Legion) into a live-action television series, no one was prepared for what he was about to serve up. Surreal, perplexing, occasionally inscrutable, but always mesmerising, Hawley's Legion levitated the superhero TV show bar to a different plane.

While the series has embraced its mutant-empowered cast of characters, from the consciousness-swapping Syd to memory artist Ptonomy, it’s always been more interested in getting to the roots of a life-long battle with mental illness for David, diagnosed with schizophrenia in his youth.

The first season unspooled David’s past to reveal that another mutant, known as the Shadow King, hijacked his mind long ago to try and harness his telekinetic powers. Separated from his “parasite” in season two, David’s interior explorations only got weirder as he stretched the boundaries of his abilities via dance battles and, eventually, a nauseatingly dark path: altering the memories of his love, Syd, to overcome her withdrawal of consent in their relationship. Unable to face his moral failing, he teleported away with his former symbiont Lenny. A reckoning will come in the third and final season.

“It’s taking a mature, responsible and yet complex route to tackling that issue,” star Dan Stevens tells SFX. “I think it was surprising for some people, and uncomfortable, to discover something like that happening in a fantastical comic book universe, while it was going on all around them in the news. But reality’s grown to be quite a strange place for a lot of people, also dealing with some big questions. You know, ‘Can we still love people who’ve done terrible things?’ That’s certainly a question that’s been asked a lot lately.”