Review by Pradipa PR

Legion: Season 1

1x08 Chapter 8

A rather tacky season finale. The finale should've been episode 7. The episode started with showing one of the secondary antagonist's flashback, which is unusual and a very humane approach in superhero shows in depicting their villains. It progresses to Haller and team dealing with the evil Amahl Farouk/Shadow King and its ultimate result.

As I've said, this episode is rather tacky. First, is the villain's flashback. Initially this gave me the impression that there is always a shade of gray in every villain's action - a rather human depiction of superheroes' villain - but turns out the humane depiction seems to be a move toward giving Clark, the said villain (the interrogator in episode 1), to switch to the side of the heroes (Haller and co). Which brings me to the problematic question: after the looming problem about this "war" being fought between humans and mutants, how could the government agents turn side so easily? Granted, it was after seeing the evilness of Amahl Farouk, but it's too short and unconvincing.

In regards to the flashback, the inclusion of homosexual couple (and with black adopted son, nonetheless) feels rather out of place. I'm all with representation, but it seems to come out of nowhere. Especially this makes me pose the question I've stopped pondering: when do the events in the show take place, 1980s? 2000s? Considering they seem to plan this to fit into the X-Men movie's timeline, things could turn up weird if this is actually set in 1980s...

Anyway, back to Amahl Farouk, the end with him possessing Oliver's body raises up more questions that haven't been answered in previous episodes. Especially, why does he (Oliver) easily agree to be a host for Farouk? What is his intention exactly? This episode also has a mid-credits scene which to me seems to come out of nowhere and can completely change the direction Season 2 progress - it's really odd, that scene shouldn't be in mid-credits, it should be as the part of the episode. I feel like as Legion has stopped using the non-linear narrative (unlike in the previous episodes), it started to show its weak points. But I'm hoping it's just in this episode.

All in all, as I've said before, the finale should've been episode 7. Episode 7 would've made the perfect cliffhanger, focusing only two main plots. With this episode we got so many subplots that we're not sure the direction it's heading. It's still a decent one though, so it's okay-ish. Still a worthy watch, this show is.

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