Archive for the 'TV Series: Legion' Category

‘Legion’ Will End with Upcoming Season 3

Collider — The FX series Legion is coming to an end. The network confirmed today at the Television Critics Association that the upcoming third season of the wildly original superhero series will be the show’s last, as has been the plan from the beginning. Legion first launched in 2017 as the highly anticipated new show from Fargo creator/showrunner Noah Hawley, but he put a very distinctive stamp on the adaptation of the Marvel comic.

The series ostensibly stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, a mutant diagnosed with schizophrenia who also happens to be the son of Charles Xavier—aka Professor X. But unlike Gifted or Gotham, Legion is a show that’s far more concerned with bending reality to explore the psychological effects of mental illness than with the explosive effects of superpowers. Indeed, the series is as obtuse as it is ambitious, and it is ambitious.

The first season found David learning to control his powers with the help of a group of mutants. Season 2 found David battling the parasitic mutant the Shadow King after spending a year trapped inside a mysterious orb (I told you this show as weird). That season ended in a very curious fashion, upending the audience’s perception as to who the “good guy” and the “bad guy” ultimately are in this series. That then sets up Legion Season 3, which will bring the story to a conclusive end.

Legion Season 3 is due to premiere this summer, as production was pushed back slightly so that Hawley could go off and direct a movie. It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes together, but whether you like the show or not, this series remains one of the boldest and most exciting programming choices in recent memory. You can’t say FX doesn’t go all-in with talented creators.

Legion: First Look At Season 2

FX Networks has just released a two-minutes trailer introducing their new shows and seasons coming this spring (and later this year) on their network. The clip containing the first images of “Legion” Season 2 starts at about 1:02. Enjoy!

Legion: S01E08 “Chapter 8” Episode Promo

‘Legion’ renewed for season 2

EW – Don’t worry, Legion fans, the acclaimed X-Men-verse drama from writer-producer Noah Hawley will return for another year. FX has renewed the series for a second season.

“The first season of Legion was a stunning achievement,” said FX programming president Eric Schrier. “More than a new series, Legion is a wholly original take on the superhero genre. Our thanks to Noah Hawley for taking the creative risks and shattering expectations.”

Legion opened to strong reviews from critics (averaging an 82 out of 100 on Metacritic) but a sluggish start in the ratings (1.6 million — below premieres by FX’s The Bastard Executioner and Taboo and well below the likes of Hawley’s Fargo). But the Marvel series starring Dan Stevens as a mutant troubled by his incredible powers has been a strong gainer in DVR playback.

Legion airs its sixth episode tonight while Hawley’s Fargo returns for its third season April 19.

(Video) Legion “1.03 – Chapter Three” Promo

The Cast of Legion Lied to Star Dan Stevens to Make the Show Better

VANITY FAIR – “There are are no rules. It’s complete and utter chaos,” Aubrey Plaza says of FX’s first comic-book series, Legion. “It’s a post-truth comic-book show! The fake news of comic-books shows!” star Dan Stevens chimes in.

Topical Donald Trump jokes aside, the actors are right. In an X-Men spin-off world focusing on David Haller (Stevens)—a potentially schizophrenic, potentially superpowered young man—reality is constantly bent to the breaking point. And on set, creator Noah Hawley (of Emmy Award–winning Fargo fame) ensured that for Stevens, the experience was as disorienting as possible.

Speaking with Vanity Fair at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, Stevens admitted that as his character hopped back and forth between multiple realities, his show-runner kept the actor firmly in the dark: “David has to accept all the realities as possibly real. Noah was really good about forcing to be off balance.” Pointing a finger at co-star Aubrey Plaza, he added, in a mock-accusatory tone, “She knew a lot more than I did about what was going on . . . maybe that’s just my paranoid delusion.”

But Plaza—who demonstrated her ability to lie with deadpan precision throughout this interview—grinned and said, “I knew more than he did, but I would pretend I knew even more. Just to mess with his mind.” And it’s easy to see how Stevens would be thrown. In between anecdotes about shooting Legion, Plaza would casually drop a lie. For example: “The warehouse was like a maze. All our sets were in these weird, dark corners,” she said. As Stevens nodded along at that first part—which was true)—she added, “We had strobe lights on every corner.” At this detail, Stevens cracked up—the interview equivalent of a lie-detector test.

He burst into laughter a short time later as she placidly added that the show once involved a cut subplot in which their characters were obsessed with The Bachelor. “No, no, no,” Stevens said through guffaws. When asked, Plaza said she wasn’t sure how often her good-natured falsehoods make their way into print. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably all the time,” she replied with a grin. “I try not to read any of it.”

But Plaza’s flexible relationship with the truth is far from the only disorienting aspect of Legion, which uses mind-bending camera angles (“It’s upside-down day,” Hawley recalls announcing to the cast on set) and a reality firmly unmoored from our own. Stevens calls the show’s look a “fake nostalgia for a 60s/70s aesthetic” that constantly gets disrupted by modern touches, like an iPad.

“I didn’t realize until I had my first wardrobe fitting,” Plaza said of the unusual look of the show. “This is what I’m wearing? Why is that? When does this take place?”

But for all the mind-bending unreality of the show, Stevens revealed that most of the special effects—including a show-stopping scene in David’s kitchen—were done, surprisingly without the benefit of C.G.I. “They blew those drawers,” he said. “They packed them with everything. You watch closely, and there are Pringles and playing cards flying through the air—”

“That was real?” Plaza interjected. “I thought that was fake.” Looks like this time, Plaza was the one in the dark.