Legion (TV Series): News, Trailer, Release Date, Cast, Characters & All You Need To Know

Much to the delight of Marvel fans everywhere, 2017 sees Marvel and Fox working together on two X-Men TV shows. Perhaps the most unusual of these is Legion, an 8-episode series that stars Dan Stevens as a powerful mutant with multiple personality disorder. With Noah Hawley (of Fargo fame) as showrunner, it's proving to be one of the most promising and inventive superhero shows to date!

Legion News and Rumors

Updated 03/16/2017 - The Devil With Yellow Eyes Confirmed as The Shadow King!

Attentive fans have long speculated that the mysterious, monstrous Devil With Yellow Eyes is actually the Shadow King - a classic #XMen villain! In the wake of Chapter 6, the evidence has simply continued to build. In a final, fascinating twist, though, FX released an alternate promo confirming everything fans had suspected. Here's all you need to know!

Meanwhile, in other great news FX has ordered a second season of Legion!

Legion Release Date

Legion premiered Tuesday February 8th on FX! Tune in every Tuesday at 10.00pm.

The 'Evolve' trailer gives a fascinating glimpse of the overarching narrative, suggesting that Legion will incorporate some traditional X-Men-esque narratives. That said, remember that the series is through the eyes of someone who can't tell what's real and what's not - it's entirely possible that these clues are misleading.

The first Legion trailer immediately set the strange and off-beat tone of Legion. In the comics, David Haller traditionally has multiple personality disorder, with each character accessing a different powerset. The trailer shows something different, though; it hints at David actually swapping places with a girl he touched, perhaps absorbing her into his broken psyche. This is actually fairly similar to a concept Marvel toyed with in the pages of New Mutants back in the mid-2000s.

The second trailer upped the action level, to spectacular effect!

Some intriguing short promos were also released in the run-up to Legion's debut — check out some of them below:

Legion Characters

Played by Dan Stevens, the star of the character — David Haller — is (loosely) based on a prominent X-Men character. In the comics, David Haller is the son of none other than Charles Xavier. He's always desperately struggled to retain any semblance of sanity, and is powerful enough to have twice warped the very fabric of reality (launching the "Age of Apocalypse" and "Age of X" epics, respectively). In recent years, the character was given a starring role in Simon Spurrier's tremendous X-Men: Legacy series, which tonally seems similar to Legion.

The story seems to only be loosely inspired by the comics, and we frankly have no way of even knowing which Legion characters are actually real people! Showrunner Neil Hawley (Fargo) 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 Cast

Dan Stevens — most well-known for his role in Downtown Abbey — is taking on the title role. 2017's going to be a good year for Stevens, who's also starring alongside Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast.

Given that the story seems to be very original, it's actually very difficult to predict which roles will be important to the plot. We do, however, have some details on the Legion cast:

• Tatyana Forrest — of The Flash and Frequency fame — will play David's mother (Gabrielle Haller in the comics).
• Katie Aselton (The League) is playing an original character named Amy Haller, described as David's "practical" older sister who's struggling to stay positive.
• Jeremie Harris is confirmed to be playing a character named Ptonomy Wallace (likely to be one of David's personalities). Ptonomy is described as being “an outsider by nature, stand-offish and sardonic who is a former child prodigy who feels trapped in the past.”
• Aubrey Plaza will play an alcoholic, drug-abusing friend of David's known as Lenny - who we now know hides a terrifying secret.
• Jean Smart plays the nurturing therapist Melanie.
• Rachel Keller plays the street-smart Syd.

Legion Theories

Fan reaction to Legion is very positive, and at NYCC fans — and critics — were given a teaser. The series sounds to be among the most creative comic-book-inspired shows ever made. As Vox commented:

"Each scene is visually thrilling.Some are chilly, evoking the icy, metallic feeling of a clinic. Others play with the composition of the frame, carefully considering the way the characters inhabit (or are absent from) the space around them and the how close they are to one another. Sometimes, the show experiments with David’s point of view; through his eyes, some characters appear hazy or out of focus, occasionally blurring into the sunlight behind them."

This unique style has made it wonderfully difficult to predict the direction the show would take - what is reality in Legion? The core idea seems to be a twisted mix of Chris Claremont's "Muir Isle Saga", blending effortlessly with Simon Spurrier's classic X-Men: Legacy run. That approach has left us unable to differentiate between reality and David's own mindscape, with fans particularly curious about Syd. Is she for real? Or is she another of David's alters?

The identity of the monstrous Devil with Yellow Eyes has fascinated fans worldwide, but the truth has finally been revealed - and David's broken past has been explained with it.

Where to watch Legion online

The series airs on the FX networks, and is available online through Amazon Prime.