David’s meddling with time proves to have a far more dangerous and immediate consequence than he could have imagined – one that threatens everyone.

Last week we saw David pushing the limits of what was possible for time-travelling mutant Switch, as he pushed her to take him back to his own origins to try to save his infant self from the depredations of Farouk. This week, we see why those limits exist, and what the consequences are of breaking them.

Even by Legion standards, this leaves us with a bizarre episode indeed as David – and everyone else for that matter – faces off against demons which feed on time. The appearance of the creatures themselves is spooky enough – the way in which the show chooses to implement them and portray the effects they have on the world are worse still.

If the jerky, time-slipping antics that make up most of the ‘present’ stuff are weird though, they’ve got nothing on what’s happening elsewhere. One character goes back in time. Another meets a past version of themselves in the present. Some of our heroes end up going somewhere even nuttier, in a format that only this show, with its heritage of oddness, would even think to attempt.

It’s as imaginative as it is oddly unsettling, producing many different riffs on what should be a tired old theme – that you shouldn’t mess about with time, lest it mess about with you. Giving that ‘messing’ a tangible presence as an actual antagonist – albeit a mysterious, voiceless one – works well, as do the multitude of different ways in which that antagonist asserts itself.

What it doesn’t do, in fairness, is really advance the plot a great deal, beyond giving a potential glimpse as to exactly how David might end up becoming the destroyer of worlds that prophecy insists he will be. That one fleeting moment aside, it’s hard (yet again) to escape the feeling that the writers are just a little too pleased with themselves, and the show just a little too self-satisfied as a whole. It’s fascinating visually, and plays with some truly interesting ideas in its presentation, but it feels increasingly like the show is running in place, flexing at how very bohemian it is without really doing much beyond existing.

Verdict: Visually and conceptually arresting, but narratively a little empty. 6/10

Greg D. Smith