PatternRec

OK so episode 5. We know King, YED, Angriest Boy, Benny and Lenny are all the same. Here's my take on each: YED - this is the Shadow King in the present time. In the comics the human host bodies of the Shadow King would become morbidly obese due to his appetites and the fact that he didn't give a fuck about the bodies he used because he could take another. I think they decided to take this aspect and use it metaphorically for the visual of the psychic entity rather than going down the physical route (which was something that usually took years and years) Angriest Boy - probably the first incarnation of the Shadow King when it attached itself to David. Could be an image from a scary book or more likely it's the closest approximation of human it could look when it first met David. The YED, the older version, has always been depicted in a tattered version of the little boy costume, except when it's naked (ugh). King - Angriest Boy realizes that little David will trust a puppy. What better way to start getting control of him? This way instead of looking like a scary boy from a Victorian era children's book David sees him as a puppy and they can interact. YED will alter David's memories any time he begins to perceive the true entity. Benny, a real friend of David's when he was a junkie. Using the same logic as "a little boy will trust his puppy" the YED uses the image of David's best friend to continue to be able to talk to David in David's mind without being revealed for what it is. Lenny, same as Benny, wash rinse repeat. edit: clarifying ideas, fixing grammar

OMG this was a great episode. Glad to see so many questions answered. So King, YED, Angriest Boy, Benny, Lenny are all the same entity. It's pretty much confirmed if you know the comics that this is Shadow King. That doesn't give any spoilers, just let's us know that our villain is from the books since so much of the show and characters are not. I'm still wondering why people could see Lenny and Benny but not King? Maybe at some point as David got older and the Shadow King got stronger it was able to create some sort of body people could see? Or maybe it can manipulate memories of people around David as well, not just his. Both theories seem problematic. I'd lean towards the former but would love to hear thoughts either way. edit: I think I figured this out - put it in the thread linked below. I've got a little more about my YED theory but I'll put that in the spoilers thread.

"It's called 'power clashing' and I do it because I can."

I've read two differing pieces of info on this. On the one hand in an interview at comic con in a panel Hawley said that Legion was def Xavier's son, that it was a piece of canon they had to use, but in another article I read one of the heads of the X-men movie franchise said that there wouldn't be any continuity with the tv show. So I don't know if this means they changed their tune or if Hawley plans to keep prof X but make the tv shows separate from the X-men cinematic universe (XCU?) the way DC does. edit: new epsidoe tonight! SQUEE!

I didn't really like the bit while watching it but reading the quotes you put and hearing the cadence of her voice in my head I was chuckling. Reminds me of a character from SNL in the 80s, where a lot of the bits were funnier to do with your friends than actually watch :D

She's an amazing impressionist. She has a reel of impressions on YouTube from before she was on SNL and the Owen Wilson one was there as well as a few others. I can't really fault her for her actual voice - that's just what she sounds like. As a matter of fact she had another pre-SNL YouTube video that was called "this is my voice" where her boyfriend brings it up. She re-worked it for the episode with Aziz Ansari. Here's the original:

I have to admit I was a little taken aback by the depression comment in the podcast because it did sound like you were equating "believing in past lives" and "depression" but I'm also a long time fan so I know this isn't a podcast where I hear detrimental things about MI and such.

I have faith that this is going somewhere. Hawley's good. Like you, I hate the "all just a dream" endings you get in stories like this. Otherwise I will join in the tv punching, all the while yelling "Jacob's Ladder!" Yeah I like that too. I can accept the unreal in a story, things like teleportation etc, if the characters' emotional reactions to them are appropriate. He's been whittling thing. There was a dog but I think he made some other stuff too. None of the characters in the show are in the books except David. And possibly YED if that is the Shadow King. The Shadow King has been an X-men big bad for a while and is a psychic entity that takes over a human host like a parasite so unless Oliver's info was all a misdirect I'm pretty sure that's who we're dealing with.

Even though their political alignments are so far apart I think one of the reasons Baldwin does a good Trump is that they're not dissimilar in temperament.

I'm just saying I wouldn't want to have to split my attention. Can't it be bathtub one night, Tardis the next?

If your taking a bath with Amy Pond why do you need a Tardis? Seems extraneous. :p

I don't remember the exact scene, but I'm pretty sure Syd or Ptonomy mentioned that they knew Lenny was actually dead and raised the same question of wtf?

"We interrupt Battle of the Network Space Krakens to bring you this special report...." - Futurama

Replace all the Geico spokespersons with a single dog. Caveman, lizard, talking pile of money with googly eyes, etc. Just get all their commercial s on the same page for once.

It's my favorite Skype-delayed sing-a-long.

I think the showrunner bible might require this to be a main point of the plot every episode.

Interesting you bring up Morrison, since his creation, Cassandra Nova, is a powerful psychic entity that lives in the astral plane and needs to take over a host body in the real world to escape the astral plane, which is what I believe the Shadow King is doing in Legion.

Did anyone else notice the sign where the truck crashed? "uncertainty ahead" :D

As a casual viewer I'm a little confused - are all the gorillas in Gorilla City telepathic or are they just intelligent? And even if it's just Grodd that's telepathic how can they ever fight him without any protection from mind control?

haha it was a good episode. Kurt and Paul are super strong comedians so it made sense to have them on with a pointsme winner. I felt bad for Jessica a couple times when the others were riffing because it has to be intimidating to be around people with experience like that. One or two of her jokes fell flat but she was really funny overall, and she won me over with the obviously improv-ed line about people in Westchester plotting to kill Kurt after the whole thing with Kurt knowing that dude from the video.

I haven't gotten to that bit yet. I'll listen for it. I just wanted to comment on how funny it was when the pointsme guest mistook Kurt Braunohler's real voice for him doing a female impression.

When David meets Oliver Bird in the Astral Plane Oliver says that the "monster as metaphor" was wrong. He also says that while it's part of David it's not a "symptom; more like a... parasite." Makes me think we're definitely dealing with Shadow King rather than Mojo, as far as "who is the yellow-eyed devil" theories go.

We get the first reference to the Astral Plane from the comic in Episode 4. Also the Cary/Kerry mystery is cleared up, as @ZoloftBlob correctly predicted. More evidence to support or debunk as I continue my re-watches: So far we have evidence that the entity can edit or erase things in David's memories. I think we actually saw this happen in episode 3. Melanie and Ptonomy are with David in his memories and when they try to push past a block the Devil shows up but only David sees him. Just as the chaos ends we see an image of the Devil flash in David's eye. When Melanie asks what happened David says he doesn't know. I think the flash in the eye was the memory erase happening. I think also for some reason the YED is replacing Benny with Lenny in David's memories. In episode 4 we learn that David's childhood dog King never existed. Re-watching episode 3 with that info I noticed that the Halloween memory shows David and Amy trick or treating with King, and when King runs off David follows and once he's alone that's when he sees the Angriest Boy. I think this is more evidence that the dog is somehow the entity, or connected to it.

In Episode 3 at the end when Melanie is stuck in the memory and she's reading the book when the king comes up behind her there's emphasis on the line in the story about the mother getting her head cut off. This could be literal or could just be a metaphor for what Dr Bird represents.

David's "imaginary" dog that no-one else could see is named King, ie. Shadow King? A psychic entity/leech that's been with him for a long time corrupting him from childhood and driving him insane? The entity masquerades as a puppy, something a child would love and let into his heart and mind, at which point the entity could grow until it takes over.