Legion has finished its first season with a climactic confrontation between the various factions at work - in the outside world, Division Three mounts an assault on Summerland, led by the surprisingly non-dead interrogator, who we know know is named Clark. Meanwhile, attempts are made to separate the Shadow King from David permanently, and Lenny ain't about to let them do that without a fight.
In a sense, the finale does suffer a bit from a premise that makes the build-up far more interesting than any conclusion could be, and visualizing mental battles is never all that easy. But the show does a pretty good job of it. We're left with an ending that doesn't actually take anyone off the board, but the pieces have been moved in ways that we're sure to see big changes in season two.
First off, the episode begins with a surprising perspective. We watch as Clark, who has been covered with burns over 40% of his body, wakes up in a hospital bed watched over by his husband and son. Oh yeah, I guess shady government agents also have lives and loved ones! While I don't think we really get enough of his or Division Three's worldview to feel their methods are justified, we do get a sense of how much of their actions are motivated by fear - not irrational fear, but a logical, rational sense of terror that there's no real upper limit on the power of these potential threats, something David represents perfectly.
Still, not knowing how powerful and in-control David is, their attack on Summerland is kind of pathetic. The faceless goons Clark brings wind up immediately overwhelmed by David's telekinesis. Clark is then a prisoner, and while he's still able to give his superiors (which include the aforementioned husband) a live-feed of what he sees, he plays it cool and winds up keeping the truce while the Summerland crew try to work on the Shadow King.
And ultimately this work is unsuccessful. The parasite is slowly erased from David's mind, but then it starts to fight back, turning David on himself and threatening to kill him. As Lenny taunts Syd in the White Room, it's hard to un-make soup, and she/he/it has been a part of David for practically his whole life. The roots go deep.
This prompts Syd to take a new approach. Syd goes into the room where David is strapped to a chair and kisses him, swapping bodies and allowing the Shadow King into her own. The Shadow King then quickly transfers into Kerry's body (the mechanics are slightly unclear to me here - can whoever is temporarily occupying Syd's body after she has used her power then use Syd's power on someone else? Or, more likely, is this the Shadow King only transferring into Kerry, thus leaving an unoccupied David to fight her?) Anyway, the two have their epic confrontation - waves of psychic energy smashing into each other. And David emerges victorious - only for the essence of the Shadow King to fly right into a wrong-place-wrong-time Oliver.
Amid all the chaos, newly possessed Oliver (who had only just remembered Melanie's name) walks away and gets in a car.
So the Shadow King has been excised from David, but now possesses Oliver. Division Three has been forced to stop their assault (and David suggests to Clark that they've really got to start working together now.) It looks like we'll have a Jemaine Clement/Aubrey Plaza road trip in season two, for which I cannot wait.
And then, in a mid-credits scene (this is the thing all comic book properties have to do now I guess) some weird little flying robot pokéballs David into it, and that's our cliffhanger.
A lot of questions remain about Legion. The visuals that represented David's fractured mind were one of the main draws to the show. How fractured will it remain now that the Shadow King is no longer part of him? Also, how much of an X-men show will this be, and how much will it remain its own thing?
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