Rachel Bellwoar reviews the fifth episode of Legion…
It’s time to save the girl, David says, but a lot of what makes ‘Chapter Five’ tick is fear of losing David, not Amy. “We can’t lose him,” Dr. Bird says but lose him in what way? To Division Three, when he carries out his one-man rescue mission without a plan?
To the astral plane? Since meeting Dr. Bird’s husband, Oliver, and finding out there’s a plane where he can design a world out of illusions, David is no longer waiting for instructions but issuing them. It’s a power that seems to click into place after Dr. Bird talks to him telepathically. The first matter of business is creating a room where he and Syd can be together and touch, in their minds. Doused in blue, the room is a safe place until we see red light underneath a door frame. Lenny is inside and, at this point, the door is closed shut.
Maybe that’s why Sydney knows to be scared when David first takes her there. David is too sure, unconcerned, and his timing interrupts her from talking about what she and the others had been uncovering about his past. She deserves the chance to be swept away but, in a series that overlaps images all the time, there’s something about bugs appearing on strawberries fading into a blood soaked cloth, where the pores look like strawberry seeds, that’s one of the series’ most menacing.
David himself is menacing when Dr. Bird’s at her most vulnerable, wanting David to bring Oliver back from the astral plane. Back facing him, it’s a relatively short amount time but feels like a lot for Dr. Bird not to turn around while they’re speaking. She’s lost her advantage and sweet David almost seems to revel in the change of power. The series had been building to a point where Dr. Bird would be revealed as Evil Corporate Lady but instead her talk about war fades into something more personal. Oliver is closing in on twenty-one years in the astral plane but his visits there started slowly. When Dr. Bird asks Sydney how David’s been doing it’s not to pry but to warn. She’s a glimpse of Sydney’s future but it’s a warning unheeded, when David and Syd return to their room.
“Promise me, if we get lost, we get lost together,” Sydney asks David, but the morning after they have sex she wakes up alone. David has gone to Division Three without making his promise and he’s not alone. It’s for Amy that the Yellow Demon goes through the cycle: angry boy, Benny, Lenny, King. All of them are the same, the Yellow Demon parasite that Cary proposes this episode has been living in David’s mind for thirty years. They’re finally figuring it out, “The Rainbow Connection,” that David sings about, scared, the lyrics no longer a call to dreamers but a price for being told “Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide.” The red lighted room’s door is open, and Sydney has to close it before King and the angry boy can get out.
David knew they were wrong about his memories and Cary should be the person to figure that out. He shares a body with Kerry and there was a time he didn’t believe her consciousness existed—that she was a figment of his imagination. Which was ok, because Kerry wasn’t out to destroy him. Even in mutual awareness their ecosystem is fragile, the bruises Kerry took on during her fight appearing on Cary’s face, but David’s second consciousness is malignant. There’s no telling what he, or she, is capable of. “It wears a human face” but is the human face Lenny, or David, and if the Yellow Demon is wearing David, does that mean he’s in control?
Sydney is the Yellow Demon’s biggest threat. She poses an influence on David to rival the Demon’s own, one based on love, not power. She’s the one who trapped Lenny in the wall at Clockworks, when it seemed an accidental killing of David’s friend, not the fake death of his enemy. Stepping in front of the Eye to take bullets for David, she shouldn’t survive but the scene cuts to her and David in their room. Sadly, what was once a safe place has been infiltrated. The Yellow Demon is no longer locked in the red room but out to get Syd. Is this because Sydney’s dying in the real world? A therapy session at Clockworks might be just what the doctor ordered at the end of this crazy hour.
Rachel Bellwoar
Originally published March 9, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
