Legion - Chatper 23 - Review: For The Further We Go, The More Risk Waking The Demon

At the end of last week's episode of Legion, viewers experienced a glimpse into the love story between David's parents and their downfall when David and Switch try to time travel to past in order to stop The Shadow King from successfully destroying their lives, but ultimately fail and get pushed out of the past for some unknown reason.


This week explores the reason why, when Legion's corporeal reality falls prey to various temporal anomalies thanks to time-eating demons!

If one remembers, the concept of there being demons in the time steam was first introduced in the first episode of the season, as Switch's time traveling lessons warn about them, but also they may have been made present right before Switch is taken to the Astral Plane via Farouk. But in any case, what exactly they want remains unclear.


The episode starts with Kerry and Ptonomy first noticing time glitches, as Kerry is both looped and displaced in time, but not enough for Kerry to not get Ptonomy thinking about it. Elsewhere David and Switch are expelled from the hall of time, as Switch tries to explain time-eating demons to a frantic and distraught David, whose primary concern is not for the tooth-loosing and energy-drained Switch, but for saving himself by warning his mother, but soon he comes to recognize that this is a matter he must deal with and it isn't as easy as it seems.

Cary whose been working on a machine to help Switch amplify her powers, thinks he sees something out of the corner of his eye, but the time demon quickly disappears and leaves a blue goo behind that Cary touches. This immediately undoes the memory block David just previously did to Cary. He comes across Switch, who also tries to tell him about the time demons, and although Cary listens, he insists that she come with him to place where she doesn't have to hide.

David trying to keep his followers calm soon learns of Cary's escape and that Switch had gone with him. This makes David angry, but not enough to cause any real destruction, but before he can really do anything about Cary and Switch, he's swept away seemingly into the past to where his mother was being held at a prisoner camp.

Back in the present more temporal distortions continue, as the Shadow King begins to explain more about the time demons. He says that they need to kill them where they sleep, inside black holes; the time that exists between time!  The Shadow King, Kerry, and Clark travel to this place, but it seems that despite what Farouk had said, it was no easy task trying to hurt the demons, as they clearly had an affect, despite Farouk believing they wouldn't.


As for Syd, she's lead to chase after herself until she comes face to face with a younger version, one who already switched places with her mother and engaged in sexual acts with her mother's boyfriend. The two begin to engage in friendly conversation of 'self love' that results with Syd in a state of flux about to be devoured by a time demon!

David too has a moment with his mother, trying to get her to change the past, but David comes to believe what he's experiencing is lie, as he confronts two men appearing behind him in the same cell, who quickly turn into a pair of time-eating demons. David tries to get close to them, but they constantly reset him back a few spaces in time over and over, until David is able to just light one of them on fire from afar. He tells the other one to go tell his friends to stop, or he'll kill every last one of them.

At the same time Cary is able to reach some secret phone booth to call Ptonomy in Division 3's airship. Ptonomy too seems to be in some disabled state, but he recommends a "reboot" to the system, which Cary does, but oddly from there a "new time code" can be entered and this appears to "stabilize" time!

In the time between times, the time demons begin to disappear in front Kerry, Clark, and Farouk.

But are they really gone, was any of that real, and as Cary asked Ptonomy, 'Do the Demons have a specific agenda or do they just randomly eat time like wild animals?' It's anyone's best guess, but I'm leaning towards a purpose, which I'll explain in the next section.


Stray Observations/Musings

Sydney:

A few episodes ago, I had wondered if a lot of this story will come down to Syd, more than David. The reason I feel that way is because of all the characters Syd seems like the most enigmatic to me, almost a muse-like character that IMO, has yet to be really be honest with herself about whom she is and instead seems to avoid that by believing a future-version of herself that she has never met and placing a great deal of blame for everything on David, believing he'll end the world, wanting to stop him at any cost. But she hasn't really ever asked how or if she could possibly play a role in why it happens!

This episode kind of brings the focus back to her. The Time Demons are first described by Switch as cats with blue eyes. Syd's whole disposition is very cat-like and is probably the reason that season 2 goes out it's way to show Syd practicing her powers on a cat.

But more so, the question posed by Cary about the time demons having a specific agenda, if they are sentiment vs being mindless time-eating animals may have a tell in Sydney's (and David's) time distorted scenes.

It's true we don't know how much control the time demons have with the anomalies that the characters experience, but it is curious that Sydney and David both would have opportunities to confront things from their past that would be considered 'life-altering' moments!!

For Sydney's scenes we see both versions of Sydney play nice to each other, but at the same time the younger Sydney almost begins to push the present-Syd, as she admits that she never met the other future version of herself, but also the present-Syd is careful not to really tell her younger self the whole truth about David, only telling her that falling in love is worth it, despite that man she loves does the same thing that their mother's boyfriend did Syd, by "turning her around".

But again there is hypocracy here, as the older Syd does not address the "satisfaction" they both felt right after the incident, believing that what Syd's mother's boyfriend did during sex was crime and not at all finding compassion for what they did to their mother by hijacking and compromising their mother's relationship, possibly one that Sydney simply never understood.  But there is also hypocracy in Syd's choice to shelter her younger self from the whole truth by not recognizing that this is what David was trying to do for them when he wiped her memory, or when he wasn't always upfront about what was really going on.

But Syd seeing her younger self and going back to that specific incident along with admitting her avoidance of not pursuing her future-self may be enough to crack open the egg of self discovery that doesn't just let her keep putting herself first, as maybe this conversation is about self forgiveness and she can't forgive or save David, until she begins to with herself.

So, maybe the time demons are benevolent by forcing the characters to take a closer look inward, despite that they came off as scary and evil?

The Shadow King:

This also brings me to Amahl Farouk again. For a lot of viewers The Shadow King still tends to be the bigger villain, as we have been reminded over and over again, even in just the last episode, everything he did to David and David's parents, whose malicious intent may extend to his manipulation of Oliver, Lenny, and Melanie; and through Melanie, possibly Syd.

This episodes foray with the Time Demons is written and directed in a way where Farouk takes a backseat, as if he's always just been one of the good guys, but if anyone was looking closer, they might ask, how is it he knows so much about these Time Demons?

Although there surely isn't a direct answer, if we go back to season two viewers might recall that we have seen some time anomalies already when David and Syd are traveling in the desert to try and find the Mi-Go Monks' monastery, which housed Amahl Farouk's body below...


The monastery itself kept SWITCHING locations, causing David and Syd to run in circles, but when they stop and make camp, the space-time inside the tent begins to fluctuate and viewers come across different ages of Syd & David. At one point they were sitting right next to their future remains.

Speaking of Syd and David camping, there is a parallel scene in this episode with Farouk, Kerri, and Clark, as they search the time between time. (It was quite humorous give how how happy Farouk appeared in these shots of him eating leftover animal remains and whipping out a sword from his mouth!)

Could the time demons be involved with either Farouk or the Mi-Go Order?

Another curious thing is that during the first episode of season 3, Switch is taken out of her time hallway and transported to the Astral Plane, where she has a conversation with Amahl Farouk. But before she travels there, she here's something lurking in the hall of time. When she is forced to confront Farouk, she makes a point to say that she thinks he's the monster and not David. In all honesty though we don't know if it was Amahl or a Time Demon in the hallway, but this episode does a lot of work to make Amahl look more innocent, but it's entirely possible that his efforts in the episode are self serving.

The Time-Eating Demons - All You Need Is Love or Self Sacrifice?

I have to say that even though I don't know where these time demons stand or what role they will ultimately play in terms of the bigger picture, the whole concept is SO MUCH FUN! It also doesn't hurt that they are very reminiscent to The Beatles villains featured in the Yellow Submarine animated music video, The Blue Meanies! In that cartoon some of them are  left to mingle and make peace, proving one of the Beatles earliest philosophies true with all you need is love!

However they also reminded me of Frank from Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko is film that debates the reality of a schizophrenic with that of a possible time traveler, who decides to go back in time and end his life in order to save his family, who died at the beginning of the movie.

At the beginning of the episode we also have Kerry mentioning how she misses Cary and she asks Ptonomy if he misses things, like time spent with her. Ptonomy seems to give a very non-emotional and factual response, which causes Kerri to say that no one is like how they used to be. That everyone acts like an adult now.

"Everything negative can be changed to positive, once you know how." -Time Travel Lesson

It suggests that there is an element of truth that all of the characters have lost their child-like sense of wonder for the sake of cynical idealism. It's curious then to think about this in relation to how the Time Demons have characteristics like both the cartoonist blue meanies of Beatles lore, where love and peace wins out vs Donnie Darko's eerie Frank the rabbit that pushes for Donnie's dramatic sacrifice.

But this notion of childhood expands far beyond this with not just Syd confronting her 16 year old self as mentioned above, but also with Lenny's experience of viewing glimpses the life of the daughter she never had, Violet. Uniquely despite that Lenny wasn't there for important moments, the incident left her in an emotional state, one rare to see in the character. Even David who has been pushing so hard to save his own childhood took notice, balancing out the desperate drive we have seen from him throughout the season far with a bit of compassion. And unlike what he did to Syd last season, he accepts that Lenny wants to feel her pain.

Perhaps this is a step in the right direction whether or not David can have a hopeful ending where he and everyone can be forgive or if he will have to end his life to save everyone else's.