'Legion' Recap: "Chapter 5"
Cameron Lee ’20 / Emertainment Monthly Contributor
Spoiler Alert: This recap contains spoilers for Chapter 5 of Legion
This week’s episode of Legion brought some major revelations to the table while providing us with plenty of twists and turns that was both entertaining and downright horrifying.
After the confusing and exciting events of last week’s episode, our heroes rush back to Summerland with a wounded Kerry (Amber Midthunder) where she returns to the body of Cary (Bill Irwin) to heal from her wounds. David (Dan Stevens), in only a few hours after leaving the astral plane, has somehow managed to master the astral plane. He takes Syd (Rachel Keller) into the astral plane to a large white bedroom. In the astral plane, Syd’s powers don’t work, which allows David and Syd to finally get intimate.
After having sex for the first time, they return to the real world. David suddenly leaves to rescue his sister, so Syd, Dr. Bird (Jean Smart), and Memory Man (Jeremie Harris) go the the base where David’s sister is being held to stop David (here, the show continues to make great use of music as demonstrated when Syd and company travel in slow motion to the base set to Radiohead’s “The Daily Mail”). They arrive to find the base destroyed, soldiers are dead, trapped in floors and walls, and David is gone, as well as his sister. They go into the base and view the security footage of what happened. David looks like a psychopath vaporizing everything in his path, smiling and dancing his way through the corridors. This is clearly not the David we are used to and something is clearly wrong.
The team exits the base and Syd is transported back to the astral plane by David. She arrives to find David on the bed with a banjo shushing Syd when she tries to talk to him. David begins playing and singing the creepiest version of “The Rainbow Connection” that would make Kermit the Frog crap his pants. The song choice itself is very clever as it represents David’s childhood and the power of illusions which makes the next scene so tragic because we learn that David was adopted and his childhood was indeed a lie.
Not to overpraise Dan Stevens here, but he is truly incredible in this episode, as he displays every kind of emotion possible (he even sings and plays the banjo, which he learned to do a few days before shooting this scene), and is worthy of at least an Emmy nomination for his performance. Syd gets out of the astral plane just in time to see Cary contact the group through some strange phone device- that is never explained- which allows them to see Cary through the sky. Cary explains to them that David is being controlled by an unknown mutant (the Devil with Yello Eyes) ever since he was a child. Syd deducts that David must be back at his childhood home, so the team starts to go to David’s house along with the Eye, who is revealed to be following them.
David (now fully controlled by the Devil with Yellow Eyes) tries to get some information from his sister by transforming into Lenny (Aubrey Plaza– who, by the way, is giving the best performance of her career), the childhood dog they never had, and the Devil himself. As our team reaches David’s house, Dr. Bird warns them that they may be entering David’s mind. Suddenly the whole scene goes mute, the characters can’t each hear each other and we can’t hear them. The tension in this scene is unbelievably high and the actors do a great job selling this, especially when Cary bursts in with his highly expressive face that provides plenty of humor.
They find David making out with Lenny/the Devil, confirming that Syd may have been having sex with someone else (cue vomiting). The Eye bursts in and takes Memory Man’s tommy gun and tries to shoot David, but Syd tells David to go into the astral plane which he does. As soon as they reach the plane, David is immobilized out of fear and the Devil with Yellow Eyes appears to chase Syd around the bedroom, which is scary and downright horrifying to watch. Just as the Devil reaches Sydney, everything goes white and everyone- including the Eye- is now back at the Clockwork hospital from the pilot episode, with Lenny leading the group in a therapy session.
Where does Legion go from here?