Is Patrick Stewart Set To Make A Cameo As Professor X In Fox's 'Legion' TV Series?

X-citing times are coming for X-Men fans! As we all know, Marvel Entertainment and Fox Television are working together on two X-Men live-action TV shows. The first show, Legion, promises to be an intriguing series that explores the psychological struggles of star David Haller (played by Dan Stevens). We already know that the series will exist within the X-Men movie timeline, but now it seems it may be more closely connected than we first thought...

Patrick Stewart May Appear In Legion!

According to the East Coast Movie Guys, Patrick Stewart — currently reprising his role as Charles Xavier in the third Wolverine movie, Logan — will make a cameo. Stewart is no stranger to the small screen (he's most famous for playing the role of Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation), and he'd surely be up for a brief appearance.

The timing of all this is pretty interesting. Right now, Patrick Stewart is filming what's expected to be his last appearance in the X-Men movies. In Logan, he's playing an aged, weakening Charles Xavier, one who has a sort of father-son relationship with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Stewart's return to the role is one of the most exciting details about Logan; he's a firm fan-favorite.

A cameo from Professor X would actually make perfect sense for Legion. In the comics, Legion is the son of Charles Xavier and a woman named Gabrielle Haller; when the two parted ways, they didn't know Gabrielle was pregnant. The resulting child was one of the most powerful mutants ever born, with enough power to destroy cosmic beings with a wave of his hand.

Unfortunately, David Haller is also dangerously unstable. He suffers from multiple personality disorder, and each of his personalities has access to a different powerset. Worse still, those personalities have ranged from a salacious prostitute to a homicidal maniac, so nobody can ever be sure what they're going to get when they cross paths with David! Because of his multiple personalities, he's known as 'Legion'.

There's one other side to Legion's psychological problems, though; he has daddy issues. Xavier didn't even know that Legion existed for most of his son's life; when the two did eventually cross paths, Xavier was forced to use his psychic powers to restrain him, and left him undergoing treatment. Legion has always felt a desperate sense of abandonment, and his struggle to earn his father's love has been the driving force for many of his insane actions. In the most notable example, he traveled back in time to kill Magneto before he could stand against Xavier's Dream. In a dramatic irony, Legion accidentally killed his father instead!

Naturally, further time-travelers eventually fixed this, but you get the point; Legion has real problems with his absent father.

How Closely Will Legion Follow the Comics?

One of the abiding questions about this surreal series is this: how closely will it follow the X-Men comics? Fox has a reputation for ignoring comic book continuity as much as possible, but the star of the show seems to be portrayed in a fairly comics-accurate way. Showrunner Noah Hawley explained:

“I always feel like the structure of a story should reflect the content of the story. If the story, as in this case, is about a guy who is either schizophrenic or he has these abilities, i.e., he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not real, then the audience should have the same experience.”

Legion, it seems, will plunge into a world where we'll have no way of knowing what's real — or what's in the star's head. It will immerse us in the experience of a psychologically scarred mutant with near-infinite power. It sounds to be at least loosely inspired by one excellent series, X-Men: Legacy by Simon Spurrier.

But a cameo from Patrick Stewart would change everything. Even if this is just a single flashback scene, a cameo would establish Legion as utterly comic-book-accurate (something very unusual for Fox). It would also establish a definite relationship between Legion and Fox's film universe.

It's important to remember that this is just a rumor, although it is a well-timed one. If this is right, then not only will Legion be potentially the most surreal superhero TV show ever made - it may well be surprisingly accurate in relation to the original comics.