David sets out to confront Farouk, who has confrontations and revelations of his own to deal with. The creeping insanity that has been wheedling away inside Ptonomy’s mind becomes a real issue at Division 3.

Legion finds itself at a crossroads here. It’s committed to a style and format which makes it a challenging, thought-provoking watch, but there’s a line it finds itself in danger of crossing here from dense, thoughtful horror/drama into obtuseness.

Even I, a seasoned fan of the show and its own particular brand of oddness, struggled to find the threads of this episode, so much so that I’m sat here three days after viewing it to finally write the review.

First up, there’s a subplot involving a confrontation with Farouk. David is not best pleased with the fact that his one-time nemesis, whom he has lately been trying to help at the urging of the future self of his girlfriend, has murdered his sister. This much is to be expected, as is the Shadow King’s dry, challenging response to this. The issue is that it feels a little like we have been here before, and no matter how densely/cleverly the show tries to wrap this present for us, we still feel the familiar outlines through the paper.

Subplot the second for the episode revolves around Farouk himself and his own search for answers. The whole set up for what he does here, and how he does it, is frankly incomprehensible. Doubly so, given that everything we have seen so far suggests that he is an order of magnitude more powerful than David or anyone else who is opposing him. It’s difficult to see the character suddenly a little unsure, and also to see why he would be. Maybe it foreshadows some grander revelation about the character himself, but at this point it just doesn’t quite make sense.

The overarching plot considers the idea of Moral Panic, specifically in relation to the weird little black creature that crawled into Ptonomy’s ear a few weeks ago and which finally gets dealt with here. The way in which this part of the story unfolds is a great ‘meta example’ of the very thing the opening monologue of the show warns us about in its usual cod-psychology way, but that means that for much of the run time, you sit as a viewer feeling utterly perplexed by what is unfolding on the screen before you. And not the normal, Legion level of perplexed but a genuine feeling of ‘Hang on, have I missed an episode or fallen asleep for half of this one?

Verdict: I’m keeping the faith, but this episode tests the patience of the viewer hard. Stay with it to the end and the conclusion just about manages to stick the landing, but this is skirting dangerously close to overdoing it now. 7/10

Greg D. Smith