David is in hiding, being hunted by those he used to call friends. But he has a plan, involving seeking out a very special sort of mutant.

Nothing much has changed in Legion land – the show is still wilfully odd and refuses to be pigeonholed along with other ‘regular’ examples of the genre. But it’s difficult not to feel as if the bloom has somewhat faded, given that it’s doing the same sort of thing it’s always done and how it so ham-fistedly closed out its previous season. The revelation that David – to that point our protagonist in proceedings – was in fact a rapist (and there’s really no other way pf putting it) was poorly handled to say the least. Slung in with the various other moral conundra the show likes to pontificate about, it was treated as if it were a dusty philosophical problem rather than something immediate and horrifying which one character had done to another.

By its own standards then, the show is much as before. The first third of the episode follows a character we have never met before through their own life and their search for meaning, without even a cursory introduction. When they finally do find what they’re looking for, it’s at least some familiar – if not welcome – faces.

Turns out that David is hiding in some sort of compound, and the neediness that’s lurking just beneath his affected air of lordliness underpins the fact that the writers really either didn’t read any of the screaming critique of their tone-deaf ending last time out or they just didn’t care. Either way, if the objective here is to make us loathe the character of David and his inability to see past his own pain and his own selfish wants and desires then I guess we can count this outing as successful.

Other familiar faces do put in appearances, though not for nearly long enough, and there’s a feeling that the central premise the show is working towards for this episode is one that could have been dealt with in a few scenes instead of the whole sixty minutes. It feels obtuse in its pacing and its narrative choices, and even the stuff that does feel good mainly serves to highlight how very much is bad. There’s even a basic administrative choice made with the structuring of the episode that feels very much like a middle finger from the writers to an audience whose attention they simultaneously crave and despise. Not the best of starts.

Verdict: Feeling way too pleased with itself, and showing no signs of having learned anything from the previous season. I am not expecting good things, based on this opener. 3/10

Greg D. Smith