6) A Fascinating Central Character
Despite his talented co-stars, Legion is Dan Stevens’ show through and through. Anyone who only knows him from cosy British drama Downton Abbey will be surprised to see him give such a highly-energized, twitchy performance. While Stevens is hugely impressive in the role, he’s aided by the fact that David Haller is a fascinating central character.
After the likes of Breaking Bad and House of Cards, it’s often said that this is the golden age for TV anti-heroes, and David definitely fits that bill. What Legion does is examine how disorienting it would be to be a vastly powered being. If you have the power of telepathy and telekinesis, would you put on a cape and go save people? No, most likely you’d just go out of your mind – much as David does. You know the subplot in X-Men: Days of Future Past where a weaker Charles Xavier can’t handle the pressure of hearing the world in his head? Well, David Haller suffers similar throughout Legion, but on a much higher scale.
Another intriguing part of the character that the pilot episode touches on is that David is a hugely unreliable point-of-view character, as his frequent hallucinations make it nigh-on-impossible for the viewer to know if what they’re watching is really happening or not – adding another exciting layer to the series.
