Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 6

[rogueslayer452]

Fandom Snowflake Challenge #06: In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

Whenever I think about shows that are an absolute trippy mindfuck, Legion is the first that comes to mind. It's among my favorite non-MCU Marvel based shows set in the X-Men universe, and the moment you watch the first episode you'll understand why it's so different than your standard mutant adaptation. The show only ran for three seasons, but it was a wild ride from start to finish. While I previously shared one of my favorite fanvids featuring a favorite character from the show, for the Snowflake Challenge I'm going to be sharing a compilation of clips from the second season. These are non-spoilery epilogue monologue sequences that were before some episodes (narrated by Jon Hamm) which offer a unique storytelling element to the themes and concepts the season explores, specifically delusions, perception of reality, and madness.

Watch on YouTube

"There is a maze in the desert carved from sand and rock. A vast labyrinth of pathways and corridors a hundred miles long, a thousand miles wide, full of twists and dead-ends. Picture it. A puzzle you walk. And at the end of this maze is a prize just waiting to be discovered. All you have to do is find your way through. Can you see the maze? Its walls and floors? Its twists and turns? Good. Because the maze you created in your mind is, itself, a maze. There is no desert. No rock or sand. There is only the idea of it. But it's an idea that will come to dominate your every waking and sleeping moment. You're inside the maze now. You cannot escape. Welcome...to madness."
-- Legion 2.01 "Chapter 9" monologue (not featured in the compilation)

My Thoughts: What I love about these little epilogue segments is how truly interesting and thought-provoking they are. It goes into subjects such as moral panic and conspiracies, to philosophical ones like allegory of the cave and areas of psychology. It presents these things in a way that isn't belittling the audience, and combines a calm and soothing narration over storytelling visuals, each segment overlapping with the other as it correlates to what is happening with the characters in the show. Even the quoted piece of narration, which happens over just a black screen, is a wonderful setup to what we're to be expecting. Although this concept was only done for the second season, it's still marvelously done and it's what makes this show truly stand out, imho.

Comments

[kairosimperfect]

My favorite show! Thanks for the link to that video. I remember thinking when Season 2 aired that I wanted something like this to rewatch on its own or to show people, but then I forgot to ever look for one. :)

I hope there's a psychology professor somewhere making use of it, too.

[rogueslayer452]

It's something that I think is worth showing to people who don't even watch the show, because although it is tied with the show/the season it stands on its own. It's just so beautifully crafted with the visual storytelling and the narration, and it's certainly something that one can use when teaching psychology and just discussing the topics featured as well. It's just so fascinating.

Which is Legion in general. Fascinating. Bizarre. A total mindfuck. It's great. :)