David makes an ambitious attempt to alter his personal history, which gives the audience a view of his real parents and the circumstances of their meeting.

Last week, Legion picked up its pace a bit, delivering action and intrigue in spades while still feeling just a little bit too self-satisfied. This week, it slows right down again as we spend an entire episode getting to know David’s real parents and the story of exactly how they meet.

This means that we are introduced finally to Legion’s version of Charles Xavier, and it’s a pretty different screen incarnation of the character than we are used to. There’s elements of course of Patrick Stewart’s idealism and James McAvoy’s cocksureness, but these are mere components of what is an altogether unique take on Professor X. Here, we are presented with a man who doesn’t seem at first to fully understand what he is or why he can do the things he can do.

It’s also of course the first time we’ve seen Xavier on screen actually meet a woman he does more than some light flirting with. Gabrielle, when they meet, is a uniquely troubled individual herself, and there is more than a slight feeling of déjà vu upon which David himself comments as he discovers the origins of his family at the same pace we do. The irony here is that each parent fears that something of themselves will be passed onto their child, to his detriment, while all the time David is desperately searching for ways to make them realise the much more significant peril of Farouk’s impending arrival.

Of course, having forced Switch to bring him back this far presents its own challenges. The time-traveller hasn’t gone this far back before (and indeed it’s doubtful that she should even be trying) which places its own limitations on David’s plan. What that plan might be isn’t even clear – prevent Farouk from ever possessing him? That would fundamentally alter everything, stopping his ‘schizophrenia’ and therefore preventing him from being institutionalised and ever meeting Syd at all. Perhaps that is his goal, having realised that simply stopping himself from violating her won’t change that he did (and would arguably make it worse because he’d know and she wouldn’t).

What’s really fascinating though, is how the episode plays with the perceptions of the viewer from start to finish. We can never be really sure of exactly how real anything that we see actually is, as it’s made clear early on that Charles’ mental abilities are quite similar to David’s in terms of being able to alter perceptions. That means from the very first moment, we can’t be sure of whether we are seeing what happened, or what certain characters simply believe happened. It’s slow and methodical, but it’s also very clever.

Verdict: Plays with its themes in surprising and interesting ways and gives us a unique take on Charles Xavier to boot. 7/10

Greg D. Smith