Legion: Chapter Six

The Doctor is in.

And make no mistake about it, she is in charge.  (He is in charge?  It?)

Last week I wondered if this "Clockworks reality" was David's or The Devil's.  I was leaning towards David's this being a safe place for him.

At the conclusion of this episode I no longer think that. Welcome to the house that "Lenny" built. 

We start out with the gang going through individual therapy sessions.  Since The Devil/Lenny is in charge, she is making sure she examines her subjects at their most vulnerable.

Their childhood.

That's where it all started for David right?

Melanie is attacked for her loneliness and the longing for her missing husband.  She's reduced to the state of a young girl.  She nervously chews her gum and twirls her hair.

No makeup.

Ptonomy relishes his ability to "time travel".  Yet, he's taken back to that place where he is most stricken.  The death of his mother.

Cary and Kerry are reduced to squabbling siblings with an unhealthy attachment for each other. 

The "Eye" is treated like a petulant boy with an insecurity complex over his maturation process.  He seems angry.  (I think she called him "Walter".)

Syd is all zipped up.   Her legs are bought up to her chest and her hair in a cute ponytail.  She doesn't like to be touched but she senses something is wrong.

She's abused by Amy.

Why single these people out?  Why separate them and put them on the defensive?

Because they amount to what is known as a defense mechanism.  They are David's firewall.  (The Eye is included because he wanted to kill David and The Devil can't have that.)

Dr. Lenny has to keep these people off balance and in a prison of their own insecurities to render them ineffective.  

Dr. Lenny is especially sensitive to Syd's influence over David.  She'll do anything to thwart it.  Syd has a special relationship with David other than their romance.  They touched each other once and that has provided a link that transcends normal emotion.  They can feel each other.


I asked myself, if you're "The Devil", why not just kill these people?  Hmm, this may be The Devils' prison but it is built on David's foundation.  Perhaps if she harms them then everything falls apart.  She needs to protect what's behind the door.

Behind the Door

 

A place where The Devil can frolic.

What a tour de force by Aubrey Plaza.  She must have had fun as she gamboled about as Lenny retracing the steps where The Devil foiled David at every turn.

 

She's effectively neutered him.  He's sipping coffee, catching up on his reading.   He even confided to Syd, "Maybe we belong here."

Yeah, about that moment.

David had left his room and snuck off to be with Syd.  He opens her door and snuggles up to her in bed.  (Pillow safely in place between them.)

Here's that moment.  No feet.  No feet behind the door and no feet as David enters.

Is Legion playing with our perception again?  I initially thought "Lenny" had entered Syd's room as David in order to fool her.  But I don't think she/he has ever impersonated David before.  Maybe she can't because it would reveal her true nature.

I'm still a little stuck on this scene.


 
 What Dreams May Come

There was an interesting interlude where everyone spoke of their dreams.  

The dreams seem to be a portal into reality.  Syd's are most effective because she has a greater insight into this reality thanks to her link with David.

But she is not alone.

Cary dreams of ice cubes.

What a clue that was!  Ice cubes!  We all know who lives in an ice cube.  

It wasn't long before Cary had one particular lucid dream.  He had to separate himself from Kerry, which I think was important, and he dreamed of the forest.

There he was met by The Diver.  Now we are getting somewhere!  We know the Diver as Oliver and he uses his apparatus to make tangential contact with reality.

Real progress!

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Lenny has neutralized Syd by having her listen to the crickets.  It's peaceful and it shuts her off from David and any dream-link to reality.

Lenny's most important foe, vanquished.

But there is success on another front for team Summerland.

While Lenny isn't watching, Melanie receives a visitor outside the dream state.  (But still in an alternate reality.)  It's apparently Oliver and he beckons her to follow him.

Melanie transcends the prison plane she is being held in  (The Clockworks zone) and returns to the frozen world that last represent her real world.

Interesting that it is still frozen in time when Syd pleaded with David for the White Room but they entered The Clockworks Zone instead.  Does The Devil/Lenny have to expend energy to hold the previous reality in place?  While elsewhere, energy is spent creating the false reality that is clockworks?

The Diver points to the bullets held in time and David with Syd in their embrace.

Melanie figures she must have to alter the bullets and or move the couple.  She's having difficulty in both.  At least, I'm assuming this is what The Diver wanted. 

But this effort seems to have set off alarm bells.

  

Eyes appear looking into the frozen reality.

I'm thinking this is Lenny looking into her frozen work and sensing something is amiss.  Melanie may well be in jeopardy.

Can Oliver rescue her from the astral plane?


David's Session

 

Perhaps sensing trouble (perhaps) Dr. Lenny brings David into a therapy session.

She's neutralized the threat that is Syd but she may be thinking the final hurdle is to fully compromise David.

She begins by telling him she thinks Syd is not the right girl for him  (This being from the position of authority as his therapist.)  David counter he is in love.

Lenny will have none of this and responds that love is worth nothing.  Furthermore, life is worthless too as there is no point to it without power.

As David resists Dr. Lenny decides to drop the pretense.

She reveals she knows David's real father and how he was abandoned by him.  She tells him she's known David from the womb and David's father sought to hide David away.

Very interesting reveal!  (Yes, I am aware of the comics version of David's father.)  But there is something contradictory here.

If they were "born" together how could the father hide David away?  Wouldn't they have always been together?  If not, what separated them?

 

Dr. Lenny/The Devil presses her advantage.  (And briefly reveals her true face.)  She taunts David with being nothing but a fungus.  She tries to tempt David with their potential power together.  Something that would rival God's power!

She admits she was initially taken aback by David's power but then contradicts herself by saying she's only interested in his body.  Odd.

Was she just trying to belittle him with a little reverse chauvinism or was there a slip?  Perhaps she couldn't resist proving her dominance over him.  I watched this a few times and it seems like she lost track of what her objective was.

Or she could've been drunk with power.


An Awakening

  

We return to Syd safely "cricketed" in David's childhood bedroom.

The following is how I'd like to be woken up should I ever be trapped in a bad dream.

   

The goofy smiling face of Bill Irwin's Cary Loudermilk.

He's so cheerful and obviously flush with his new found knowledge and power.  He's come to rescue Syd and release her from the Clockworks Zone.

I'm just theorizing here, but I think it was Oliver that beckoned to Melanie in Clockworks and then directed her in the frozen room.  He never reveals his face from inside the suit.

Cary did, which leads me to believe he is going for a ride in the suit to get Syd.  Maybe Oliver is busy elsewhere.



Daddy Issues


In my last blog post for Legion (you can read it here) I speculated about David's father and David's adoptive father.

If you follow the comics you've been aware of David's real father all along.  (Yes, I know who it is.)  Speculation has been running rampant on the internet about the identity of "The Devil".  That speculation has been proven correct since the release of teaser for Chapter Seven.

I still don't know anything about David's adoptive parents or David's original mother.  We'll have to see how the adoptive parents figure in and how much they knew about David, The Devil and the original father.

Plus the fate of David's mothers.


Odds and Ends

Poor Rudy (Brad Mann) he's been taking on the chin of late.  Or drooling from it.

"Everyone loves dogs"

"Not me," says David.  King was David's imaginary childhood pet and companion.  "King" is also a clue to the identity of "The Devil" that many have correctly seized upon.  

For those in the know, we now realize why King led David to "The Angry Boy" during that Halloween flashback.

  

I'm hoping there still was a real Lenny.  They keep flashing back to her grim fate at Clockworks.

You know what that is above?  A black screen.  Yeah, it didn't come out that well.  Everytime they went to commercial there was a 2 to 3 second pause of blackness.  I don't think we've experienced that before.

Ominous.  Let's keep an eye on this.

 

Evil Amy.  One of David's only happy memory's from childhood.  Plus, one of the only people to understand him as an adult.

In the Clockworks Zone she is wretched to David and Syd.  (Retched?)   A sign of things to come?  Actress Katie Aselton has hinted as much.

The bullet sparked when Melanie touched it.  So perhaps not frozen but incredibly slowed down.  So maybe The Devil can't stop reality just inhibit it.  This probably explains why Melanie couldn't move Syd and David.

The secret must lie elsewhere into bringing everyone back to their normal state.

I caught this during one of the "commercial to episode" interludes.  It's usually just a swirling mass of color and sparks.  This one had a ring in it.


Another circle, halo or ring.  So.

• Symbolic of Cary's halo device that must be placed over The Devils's head  to "isolate the entity"? 
• Perhaps a Halo symbolic of the good in everyone?  (Or almost everyone.)
• A circle to show us what come around goes around?

This definitely bears watching.

There are only two episode left.  The Devil must be revealed and the identities of David's original and adoptive parents. 

The battle has been joined and I have a feeling not everyone one will survive.  Also, what of poor Kerry back at the Clockwork's Zone?  Can they un-freeze reality to save her from "The Eye"? 

If they do, David and Syd have to be saved from the bullets.

Lastly, I wanted to get a video of "Lenny's" dance number.  I couldn't find it on the FX site so I will try to get it myself and see if FX allows it.  

Stay tuned.