The following article contains spoilers for “Chapter 10” of FX’s Legion

In its first season, FX’s Legion challenged conventions familiar to the superhero genre and dazzled with opulent visuals. The season explored how superpowers can act as a mental illness. It also featured Aubrey Plaza tearing apart a room soundtracked by Nina Simone, a man dancing in a giant ice cube, a silent horror sequence, and countless other weird moments.

Season two of Legion premiered in early April and the sophomore season is just as visceral an experience as the first eight episodes. Throughout the second season,  the weirdest, wackiest and trippiest moments from the show will be ranked in the ‘Legion Weirdness Index’:

10) The Boss’s Office

Legion is known for its visual flair and the second episode’s director Ana Lily Amirpour presents Admiral Fukyama’s office with such vibrancy that it provides some of the episode’s standout shots. We’ve seen the office in the season two premiere, and Amirpour finds a different but equally interesting approach to the scene in “Chapter 10”. The pair of close-ups of David are amazing shots that lean into the weirdness of the Division 3 setting.

9) Lend A Hand

The Cary/Kerry dynamic gets a spotlight in this episode with their powers inverted by the Shadow King. Noah Hawley and the Legion team have proved their love for musical sequences in the show, so it was no surprise a lullaby was a major part of the solution for Cary to escape Kerry.

8) Merry Go Round

There’s a lot going on in the episode’s opening scene:

  1. Aubrey Plaza is eating a lollipop
  2. It’s on a Merry-go-round
  3. Lenny isn’t a fan of the word “nipples”
  4. “Nobody’s ever asked a stalk of asparagus how it feels”

7) The Vermillion

Ptonomy may have grown used to the moustached women that could have been featured on 808s & Heartbreaks, but their weirdness is still plain enough to retain a spot on the Legion Weirdness Index in back-to-back weeks.

In this episode, we learn they’re called Vermillion and that they’re synthetic androids without a known quantity.

6) The Shadow King’s Powers

We knew from season one that Amahl Farouk/The Shadow King/Lenny/Oliver is an extremely powerful mutant. But it’s not until this episode that we realize how strange and wide-ranging his powers are. As he’s all-to-eager to admit himself, the Shadow King is closer to a God than a regular mutant.

“I am the sun. The moon,” Farouq says to David in the astral plane.

In this episode, we learn of how powerful the Shadow King can be both within the Astral Plane and without. There are hints that he causes the clattering teeth virus, can affect the powers of other mutants, transfigure humans into animals and (as we already knew) murder people with relative ease by turning them into dust.

5) Jon Hamm Talks About Reality

Don Draper returned in “Chapter 10” for another mind-bending anecdote, this time about reality. Like his previous narrations, it unpacks how quickly a mind can fall into madness.

As are most things on Legion, they’re visually interesting, but each can also serve as a warning for the path David finds himself on. Since the pilot, David has gone from being told he’s a schizophrenic to being told he’s a God. From being told that the things in his head weren’t real to being told that reality is what you make it.

Farouk was shown during Hamm’s narration manipulating a child into death by toying with his perception of reality. David has always had a shaky perception of reality and Farouk may be trying to lead him down the same path as the child’s.

Also, Jon Hamm’s voiceovers are the closest we’ll get to Mad Men in 2018, so hopefully we get at least one of these per episode.

4) A Few Pointers

Just outside the hexagonal maze that is Division 3 headquarters is a bigger world with which Legion is intentionally vague with details. This week, we received a brief glimpse of what a major city in this world/time period looks like, and it raises more questions than answers.

The giant green hands in the background of David and Syd’s rooftop conversation are pointing to…something? Is it an Easter Egg for David’s giant green Marvel counterpart?  It’s a weird choice that could have a symbolic meaning we’ll find out later, but for now, it’s just another bizarre Noah Hawley creation.

3) Another Musical Interlude

It wouldn’t truly be a weird episode of Legion without a dance sequence. This time, Lenny and Oliver cash in on David’s distraction and deliver death to Division 3. They also show off their wizarding world transfiguration ability and turn two people into a pig and a fish. Yikes.

2) David’s Trip To The Future

This week in Legion’s visual references to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

 

1) Wrestlemania

The main event from Tuesday’s episode of Legion was a bout for control in the astral plane. In one corner, David Haller. In the other, Amahl Farouk and his tag team of Lenny and Oliver.

The Shadow King shows he would make a great wrestling heel, taunting David as they literally grapple for control. But the biggest question raised from this episode: what is David’s walkout music? Based on last week’s closing sequence, “White Rabbit” is a contender. The series opened with a montage set to The Who’s “Happy Jack”. Some DMX would be appropriate for the X-Men, but “Where Is My Mind” probably best captures David’s mental state.