FX’s Legion is quickly shaping up to be one of the most exciting comic book television shows in some time. Developed by Fargo creator Noah Hawley, Legion stars the son of Charles Xavier, David Haller, a character with immense powers that is also legitimately insane. However, whether it’s his own brain or his mutant powers that’s fucking up is the question raised in the new Legion trailer.
Debuted at New York Comic Con in 2016, Legion immediately set itself apart with its trippy visuals and arthouse influences like Wes Anderson and the British Mod scene. The first trailer generated a lot of buzz and will be yet another stylistically different chapter set in the X-Men universe alongside the sleek and polish X-Men films, and the gritty Logan spin-off. The new trailer delves more into Legion’s story elements including secret government programs, a mysterious war, and whether or not Haller’s powers are causing his insanity.
Based on the character Legion, Haller is a schizophrenic whose multiple personalities each controls a different mutant power. It’s unclear how closely Haller’s character in the show will resemble the one in the comics, or when exactly the show takes place in the complicated X-Men chronology. However, it will fit into Bryan Singer’s X-Men films in some way, so the references to war and government agencies could have direct connections to events in the movies.
However, the central story focuses on Haller and the woman he falls in love with while imprisoned in a mental asylum, only thanks to his insanity (and mutant powers), it’s going to be hard to tell whether or not the events he sees are even real in the first place.
However, the one thing that remains true is that Legion is looking to be a stylishly ambitious show that will translate the trippy visuals of the X-Men comics to TV. As seen in the famous Quicksilver scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past, the X-Men characters lend themselves easily to mouth-dropping set pieces.
Legion premieres February 8, 2017 on FX.
