The first season of Legion was not unlike Mr. Robot, in that the whole point is to not know what the fuck is happening. At least with Legion, fans could draw from the X-Men source material for hints and clues. But there’s still a lot of questions left unanswered, and it seems like we’re going to have to get comfortable with the unknown. According to series star Noah Hawley at the Television Critics Association Winter press tour, Legion Season 2 resets the story somewhat because of a time jump in the story.
“I didn’t want to go in Season 2 it’s all clarity all the time, so we built in a time jump,” Hawley said according to /Film. “We can muddy the waters again. I think that’s the fun of the show, the mystery of trying to figure things out.”
“If the first year was the story of an insane man in a sane world, then I was interested in looking at David now being the sane man in an insane world. We’ve established he doesn’t have schizophrenia and he has these abilities. There is this time jump, for him to come back and suddenly the world is a very different place.”
The Shadow King is also back for Season 2, as he appeared in the clip shown to press from the second episode. This time the villain will be played by Navid Negahban, who replaces Said Taghmaoui from Season 1. We’ll no longer see Shadow King through Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), which will also be a change of pace for David Haller (Dan Stevens), Lenny and the tone of the series.
“I think traumatic is the right word,” Plaza said at the TCA event. “It’s really scary to play a character that you don’t know who she is. You’re being used as a vessel. In the first season, Lenny almost becomes like David, in a sense. She doesn’t know what’s real or who she is. For Season 2, it’s like the power I thought I had has been totally taken away from me. I’m totally stripped down. Now we have to dig deeper and see who she really is.”
Hawley is also looking forward to exploring psychology on the macro level. The first season was largely a David Haller character study. We follow him trying to disentangle reality from illusion. As it turned out, he wasn’t all that crazy. His surroundings largely caused him to believe something was off in his own brain.
“I was interested this year in looking at a mass psychology. Mental illness can also be cultural in a way, so those issues were interesting to me. We’re also exploring with Dan, he’s on a journey here in which in the language of this world, you have heroes and villains. It’s not determined yet where he’s going to end up. A lot of that’s going to have to do with what’s holding him on the good path, this love story with Rachel and his experience with Farouk. That’s really interesting to explore, I hope.”
The last season left off with David finding allies, though we don’t know much about these characters and their agenda. That’s something David will have to figure out in order to move forward.
David’s preoccupied with “Issues of trust and in terms of who exactly has rescued him, what have they rescued him from,” Dan Stevens said. “Is he a force for good or evil? Either way, is he being used? What does that then turn that into? Which team does he end up playing for is always at play I think. that’s really heightened this year.”
Legion premieres on an unspecified date in April. For more on the show, check out our Newsweek interview with the production designer.
