S03.E08: Chapter 27

[Bort]

The end of the end. Series Finale

Airdate: Monday, August 12, 2019

[AimingforYoko]

So while Farouk changed David, David changed Farouk? I guess. I'll have to ponder that for a bit. 

Line of the night: "So we just take his word for it?" "We're telepaths, we don't have to take anybody's word."

And did Switch just become an Omega-Level mutant?

[ItCouldBeWorse]

David may have a wonderful childhood, but won't Syd have the same troubled one and end up in Clockworks?  David didn't even meet her until they were both there.

[Cthulhudrew]

I think I wouldn't mind the ending so much had it not relied upon the kindnesses of a character that just spent the last two seasons cutting a bloody swath across humanity (in his/her elegantly charming manner, to boot).

It seems a bit of a copout for such a thought-provoking, medium challenging series to end like this. But then, I felt this third season was somewhat lackluster overall, so when I say it could have been worse, that is meant entirely complimentary.

I will definitely miss the psychic dance offs and rap battles.

[AnimeMania]

I thought they would have included more of the regular cast in the finale.

[nikita]

What a cop-out. IMO, this resolution missed the entire point of the Legion character, especially as an allegory (? too on-the-nose to be mere allegory?) of mental illness. Farouk's presence in his head, his adoption, his sister! all shaped who David is. What a cheat just to call "do-over." And it's not like the visuals this season were so trippy as to distract from the repetitive and banal so-called story.

I would rather have seen David transcend the circumstances that made him rather than simply start over. It's boring. And I am sure people with mental illness wish they could start life over from the beginning. It's more interesting to explore how life can be improved with a shitty hand dealt.

ETA: What was the point of the robot stuff with Switch? And calling Farouk a robot? Huh?

Edited August 13, 2019 by nikita

[rmontro]

14 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

David may have a wonderful childhood, but won't Syd have the same troubled one and end up in Clockworks?  David didn't even meet her until they were both there.

Good point.  Maybe since "time" appreciated her suffering, "time" rewarded her with a better outcome.  Or:

There will be other ripple changes with time, and Charles' future will be different.  Maybe Charles finds her and Syd ends up as an X-Man.  Maybe they even hinted at that by saying she would be "extraordinary".  Although that would likely put her in contact with David at some point, but in very different circumstances.

2 hours ago, nikita said:

What a cop-out. IMO, this resolution missed the entire point of the Legion character, especially as an allegory (? too on-the-nose to be mere allegory?) of mental illness.

I wondered about that.  I've actually gone back and forth on whether or not David is actually mentally ill.  If he is, what happens next depends on the cause.  If the damage to him was caused by Farouk being in his brain since he was a baby, then he should be all right.  

But a lot of mental illness has a physical cause.  They never really said that David's future was going to be as sunny as Syd's.  Even if David does turn out to be mentally ill, he will now have two nurturing parents to support him, so his life should be better than it was.

So long, Legion.  You were weird until the end.  

[futurechemist]

I watched the episode and still struggle with understanding it.  What exactly happened to Cary and Kerry?  First they got old, then they became kids?  Or their old serves were erased by resetting the timeline?  Why wouldn't the "new" versions of them have the same trouble where Kerry gets absorbed into Cary for most of her life?  

David's sister Amy was his adopted sister not biological, right?  So he'd grow up with Professor X, but never know Amy?

I would have liked to see more of the other regular characters.  Lenny, Ptonomy, Melanie and Oliver, Clark, etc.  It seems weird to spend so much time with Summerland and Division 3 over the series just to completely ignore them at the end.

[justmehere]

10 hours ago, Cthulhudrew said:

I think I wouldn't mind the ending so much had it not relied upon the kindnesses of a character that just spent the last two seasons cutting a bloody swath across humanity (in his/her elegantly charming manner, to boot).

Yeah, I must have missed the part where he actually changed rather than suddenly just declaring that he loves David. Since when? I'll have to re-watch and see if there were hints, especially when he began working with Division 3. Maybe if Charles had been more instrumental in Farouk's change, rather than Farouk convincing Charles of peaceful resolution, I could accept it better.

---

I don't mind David going back in time to change his history. The show always played with dimensions - having so much take place on astral planes - so it seemed reasonable. He still likely inherited mental illness from his mother and would have to deal with that, but to prevent the massive damage done by Farouk and resolve with his parents (not sure if that was possible in present time for him -- Charles is alive somewhere, but what about Gabrielle?) -- that seemed most important, and I liked that choice. He was sooooo damaged and headed down such a dark path - I don't know how much he could have recovered otherwise.

In other bits - I loved the visual of Farouk having been the straight jacket that bound David. I also liked the idea that Switch was only shedding baby teeth, in a sense. She may no longer be physical in the same way, but she's more powerful and has greater access to all experience as she now is.

I liked that Cary and Kerry are still together - it just seemed a little weird that Switch didn't even acknowledge them. (I thought the images of them as children were memories, but I need to watch again.) Wondering if they go back to... well, where, now?

I'd think Division 3 would still have existed due to chasing other mutants. Clark would probably still be hunting them rather than having reformed (or having ended up frozen in space). But as for interaction with Summerland - who knows? It also wasn't clear what would have changed for Melanie and Summerland. Would Oliver have been rescued from the astral plane without David? Or would David still have ended up with them somehow? How would things have changed for Lenny? Just life in an institution? No abuse from Farouk, no death in a wall, which are good things, but definitely some unanswered questions. I would have liked to see even quick montages (a la Six Feet Under) of what David and Syd's (and others') altered lives looked like. It leaves the door open to revisiting that world, but Noah Hawley said in an interview he isn't really considering it. 

Still - a show like no other and a great, wild ride. Good stuff.

[rmontro]

8 minutes ago, justmehere said:

He still likely inherited mental illness from his mother and would have to deal with that

Good point, that is likely the case.  And I do think he's going to have to suffer some mental illness because the show never said anything about his future being "glorious" or "extraordinary", unlike Syd's.

9 minutes ago, justmehere said:

I liked that Cary and Kerry are still together - it just seemed a little weird that Switch didn't even acknowledge them. (I thought the images of them as children were memories, but I need to watch again.)

That was my impression as well, because there was a scene of them as adults after the scene of them as children.

Good point on Oliver also.  He probably never escapes the astral plane.  Shame too, since he was one of my favorite characters.

[Bruinsfan]

If Farouk in the past has been humanized by all the memories his future self gave him, he may not be  a source of conflict with Summerland or Division 3. Things may turn out very different for Oliver, Melanie, Clark, and all the other characters affected by the antipathy between those two organizations.

I think Lenny will probably have a somewhat crappy life, but it will be her own. And Amy and her husband will have normal lives unmarred by all the craziness that follows in David's wake. (Remember how Amy described her childhood as being like growing up in a haunted house back in Season 1?) Even the Mi-go monks probably benefit by not having Farouk's body entombed underneath their monastery and driving them all crazy.

[tennisgurl]

I kind of expected a sort of montage to show what everyone's new lives are like, but they probably want to leave that to us to speculate. Confusing until the very end, this show! I am not totally sure what I feel about the finale, but it sure leads me to contemplate a lot. 

I think the bigger deal here might not be David becoming a more stable person, but Farouk becoming a more humanized less evil version of himself. Maybe because of that, Division Three and Summerland both become very different organizations that are less at odds with each other? Maybe with Charles and Gabriel together raising David (and Charles ruminating on becoming a teacher) he starts his school and things get better for all mutants? Switch seemed to imply that the next timeline would be much better, so I can imagine that Summerland might not even exist in the form that it did previously, because it wasn't necessary. Amy will presumably live a normal life, Lenny will presumably make the same mistakes she made before, but without being stuck in a wall or taken over by a monster, and maybe things will be more peaceful between Division Three and the mutants, so Oliver wont end up on the astral plane, Clarke wont be injured in the first episode, etc. 

I wish we had seen more of the rest of the cast, at least get some hints as to what happens to them, it seems weird to have a series finale with most of the characters not even around. 

That all being said, I am going to miss this show a lot, despite its ups and downs. Its visual style was utterly unique and fascinating, the powers they gave many of their characters were very memorable different, and while it sometimes went for too much style over substance, the times when the two things came together were among the most memorable in genre television. Most of all, in the sea of superhero shows out there, this show was just happy to do its thing, no matter how weird it was, and I will always love it for that.

[Bort]

If anything, this show introduced me to the fact that Aubrey Plaza is a very underrated actress. She’s got way more range than I ever knew. 

[scrb]

They spent the whole series not killing Farouk and in the end, the still wouldn’t kill him.

I thought after the first season David would overcome the Shadow King and become this fearsome superhero.

But the whole series became about his lifelong struggle.  The second season pretty much nothing happened or they just went around in circles.

This third season, there was narrative drive, things actually were happening and it seemed to be headed towards a climax.

But maybe a decisive battle and ending would be too conventional, too pedestrian for Hawley.  So they just call things off because being inside David’s head humanized Farouk?

Then when he tells young Farouk, the younger version calls him an old, soft, pussy.  But the magic sunglasses show David’s life and even the angry young Farouk becomes weepy and empathetic.

Maybe Hawley put dripug-addled hippies in this last season because he’s one of them.

[Enigma X]

I freely admit I often walked away from the episodes asking wtf just happened. But, every since we were introduced to Farouk and learned he was the Shadow King, I have felt he never fully answered for helping David become the monster he eventually became. That always seemed weird to me that no one truly called him out on his shit.

And count me in as another who was not thrilled with this ending. I don’t mind the happy ending. I actually like happy endings no matter how many people hate them. But the ending seemed a bit anticlimactic.

[bosawks]

I didn't mind the happy ending because in Legion style we only get our happy ending with the knowledge that all the characters we've known will, in effect, die.

And we end with the request to be good.  A request, not a guarantee.

[HotRats2112]

11 hours ago, Enigma X said:

But the ending seemed a bit anticlimactic.

I think this is where I ended up too.  Like many shows (Lost, GOT) I walked away saying, "well, it was an ending".  

It's possible that I'm just sad the show ended.  I have to say the only show finale that I openly cheered for was Newhart.  Yup.  Newhart.  Genius.  

[Frost]

12 hours ago, Enigma X said:

But, every since we were introduced to Farouk and learned he was the Shadow King, I have felt he never fully answered for helping David become the monster he eventually became. That always seemed weird to me that no one truly called him out on his shit.

This is my problem with the series.  The lack of atonement.  For David, for Lenny, for Amy, for the countless others he tortured and murdered over time.  Farouk felt bad about what he did?  And his early self promises to walk the straight and narrow and that's it?  I'm not usually an eye for an eye person but Farouk caused an immense amount of pain and suffering to a LOT of people and a bit of inner contemplation just doesn't seem to be enough consequence.  

Regardless of the time do-over, those people did live through the pain and suffering the first time, even if their new selves won't.  So, while I'm glad Farouk experienced sudden enlightenment, I kind of wanted David to finish his Old Testament retribution. 😀

[Enigma X]

12 minutes ago, Frost said:

Regardless of the time do-over, those people did live through the pain and suffering the first time, even if their new selves won't.  So, while I'm glad Farouk experienced sudden enlightenment, I kind of wanted David to finish his Old Testament retribution. 😀

I agree.

[cdnalor]

That's the trouble with having time travel in a story; it gives the characters the possibilty of using a big "reset" button that makes all previous events irrelevant.

I agree that the finale was rather anticlimactic, what with Papa X and elder Farouk simply sitting down with a couple of beers to figure out what to do about the kids.

Was that a "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" reference when David pulled a fish out of his ear?

Edited August 15, 2019 by cdnalor

[LucidDreamer]

Ack! My stupid DVR cut off the last minute or so. What happened after Charles came home and talked briefly with Gabrielle on the porch? Was there a final scene beyond that?

[HotRats2112]

19 hours ago, cdnalor said:

Was that a "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" reference when David pulled a fish out of his ear?

That's what I thought too!  

[superloislane]

Are they killing those time demons? They were impossible to destroy when we first saw them but now they can be taken down by a sword

Poor David - he does deserve love

Legion decides to attack one at a time for quite a while

Surprise song!

That's a lot of guys with David wigs dancing in the background

Thank God Switch is okay...in a fourth-dimensional state

The father/son scene may have brought a tear to my eye

Did Switch and Syd speak before this? When did she help her?

Why is Kerry getting old?

"I've always wanted to be a teacher" - hmm maybe a professor?

And it ends with "Be a good boy" - good words to live by there David.

Rewriting time brings up many questions - for one, why would Syd's life be extraordinary since she still ends up in the mental institution with or without David and now she won't remember the second childhood she had so that was pointless right? 

Farouk is still out there but I guess he's just stopped being crazy and killing everybody? Yeah right! He never got any punishment for his crimes for crying out loud! And we never got any explanation for why Division 3 was working with him and trusting him!

Poor Ptonomy he had nothing to do this season but I guess with time rewritten, he's now a man again? And I'm guessing poor Amy, who didn't even get one mention this entire season, is alive now too?

Lenny is probably still crazy and drugged up somewhere.

With David never meeting up with everyone, doesn't that mean Melanie and Oliver won't find each other again?

Considering they very much implied that David's mental illness is hereditary, he will most likely still have that. But it's possible that with loving parents who actually know what he's going through, he might deal with it better.

With Charles and Gabrielle staying together and raising David and Charles wanting to become a teacher, we could assume that he builds the school and maybe David becomes the first X-Man? I'd like to think the characters all came together this way.

It's weird they didn't give us a 'here they are now' flash segment at the end showing us where all the characters were but I guess they want to leave it to our imagination.

But, overall a better finale than I was expecting - I was expecting them to kill David and I was going to be really pissed. But they gave him a second chance which is much better.

Edited August 18, 2019 by superloislane

[Bruinsfan]

I think that the present Farouk, who perpetrated all the harm to David and the other characters we know, will fade away as his past is changed like Syd, David, and everyone else. Past Farouk, who's now benefited from his future self's humanizing experiences with David, had yet to commit those offenses. (Of course we saw that he already caused other horrors in deposing the former king, but maybe he'll undo that now?) As for atonement, well, at least proposing a better solution than violence may have been a step in the right direction for him?

I still don't think there was enough onscreen in the way of progression from enemy to ally for Farouk, though. He went from torturing David and turning his newfound friends against him to working with Division 3 in good faith with zero explanation. An aired scene where he had a change of heart might have been a good choice in place of one of the many we got of hippies weaving around in smoky rooms.

[scrb]

1 hour ago, Bruinsfan said:

I still don't think there was enough onscreen in the way of progression from enemy to ally for Farouk, though. He went from torturing David and turning his newfound friends against him to working with Division 3 in good faith with zero explanation. An aired scene where he had a change of heart might have been a good choice in place of one of the many we got of hippies weaving around in smoky rooms.

Listened to The Ringer Watch podcast with Andy Greeenwald, who's credited as one of the writers on Legion in IMDB.

He talked about recently revising scripts.  Not sure he was talking about Legion but if he was, that would mean they were changing script just weeks before they aired?

That sounds unlikely but he said they were writing in Lake Tahoe.

I wonder if they changed the ending right up to the time they were filming the episodes for this season or if Hawley knew all along that this is how the series would go.

Then again, I think when they produced season 2, I don't think they necessarily knew they'd get just one more season to finish.

So the earliest they knew how it would all end might have been when season 3 was decided as the last season and that might have come during the airing of it.  I think ratings were low and people didn't receive it as well as season 1 so maybe FX said "hey we can give you one more season to wrap up the series."

To me, season 3 seems a reaction to the criticisms of season 2 where nothing happened and season 3, a lot of things are happening, including all the confrontations people expected in season 2.

But who knows, maybe they just didn't want to have a conventional ending where the villain is vanquished or they became fond of the Farouk character, who after Davis became the biggest figure in the show.

[polyhymnia]

I am still processing this finale.  I have to say that I loved the ambition of this series.  They weren't always able to pull it off but it really had some amazing episodes and I am sorry that it is over.

[AudienceofOne]

Firstly, I liked this finale conceptually and thematically. I'm just struggling with Farouk's transformation. I don't know when this happened.

Now, it's been obvious to me for a while that he sees David as his son and has the same desire for family and love that David has. But I always interpreted that emotion as being one of possession and control. That he wanted David to be his, in the same way that David wanted his cult kids and Lenny to be his. And in the past we see a Farouk who essentially has the same cult-style children setup that future David had and I can't see that kind of symbology as being an accident. 

And yet we're somehow meant to believe that Farouk has learnt the finer art of self-sacrificing love along the way? When? 

He's shown absolutely no evidence of it before this; just a desire to own and control David and prove his dominance over him.

The whole thing kind of smacked of Farouk teaching David a lesson in non-violent conflict resolution through empathy and... what??

A better ending would have been either David and his father defeating Farouk finally in the astral plane or, as others have said, a solution that involves David not being to hit a reset button on his life. Because it makes it seem like he was right - none of the deaths mattered  because they got washed way. 

 I would have liked to see even quick montages (a la Six Feet Under) of what David and Syd's (and others') altered lives looked like. It leaves the door open to revisiting that world, but Noah Hawley said in an interview he isn't really considering it. 

At first I was the same but then I realised this is better. We ended on the potential of a better future; freed from external influences. Baby David's life is Baby David's to either succeed at or fuck up - and this applies to the other characters too. Which of those we get doesn't really matter because it's entirely on him. 

On 8/16/2019 at 1:11 AM, Frost said:

This is my problem with the series.  The lack of atonement.  For David, for Lenny, for Amy, for the countless others he tortured and murdered over time.  Farouk felt bad about what he did?  And his early self promises to walk the straight and narrow and that's it?  I'm not usually an eye for an eye person but Farouk caused an immense amount of pain and suffering to a LOT of people and a bit of inner contemplation just doesn't seem to be enough consequence.  

There is always a tension between justice and reconciliation when resolving a conflict. In this case, they were emphasising the need for forgiveness and reconciliation in resolving a conflict and... they're right of course... but there's a reason why conflicts often never get resolved. People are hardwired to want at least an appearance of justice. 

In fact, nobody in this really atoned for their crimes. Both David and Syd remained convinced to the end they were solely victims and refused to acknowledge any point at which they were also perpetrators. But I guess that doesn't really matter when this timeline never existed. 

Edited September 6, 2019 by AudienceofOne

[AudienceofOne]

On 8/14/2019 at 4:47 AM, rmontro said:

I've actually gone back and forth on whether or not David is actually mentally ill.  If he is, what happens next depends on the cause.  If the damage to him was caused by Farouk being in his brain since he was a baby, then he should be all right.  

A lot of mental illness is similar to an autoimmune disease and requires a confluence of genetics and environment to trigger. So even if David has the potential to be mentally ill, Farouk's presence was almost certainly the environmental factor that sent him over the edge. Without that, and with some stability at home, David is far less likely to develop the illness.

[Bruinsfan]

Yeah, Farouk's absence and the fact that Charles will be there with foreknowledge that David is a telepath and able to train him in using and coping with his powers right from the start remove the two big traumatic influences in David's life. He still has the potential for congenital mental illness, but he'll be raised in a loving home with a mother who's functional despite suffering such and a father who can read his mind and step in to help if things get to be too much for him to handle. His circumstances will now give him a better shot at a happy life than he'd have pretty much anywhere else. (OK, unless Melanie and Oliver could re-raise him like they did Syd.)

[Hobo.PassingThru]

Time travel is crazy and this show was just crazy enough to bring it up and end the show with it happening.

So, all the characters got a do-over and as far as we know, Syd and David and David's mother went on to better lives? The Time Traveler did not say that Cary/ Kerry would go onto greater lives but circumstance showed they might have lived better lives separately.

Since Syd did seem to already have a second chance at her earlier life, will her reboot make it a third time around or are we to believe that Melanie and Oliver did raise her the second time?  It would seem like they didn't because she regained consciousness to pick up where she left off in her life and to lead to the final episodes' events. So, whatever the alt-childhood was it probably wasn't a Second Life? Does that sound plausible?

I'll miss this show and it's great parts: the music, the actors, the performances, the direction, the stories, and the fight scenes-- as hilariously non-confrontational or shockingly violent.

The show had a lot of visually beautiful segments and episodes, too