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10 Reasons You Should Be Watching Legion

After 17 years of the X-Men movie universe, Fox are finally branching out into the medium of television of with FX's new prestige drama, Legion. Starring Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast), the series follows David Haller - a schizophrenic psychiatric patient who finds out that he's actually one of the most powerful mutants in the world. We've only seen one episode so far, but we have to say, we're pretty damn impressed with it.

6) A Fascinating Central Character

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Legion

Despite his talented co-stars, Legion is Dan Stevens’ show through and through. Anyone who only knows him from cosy British drama Downton Abbey will be surprised to see him give such a highly-energized, twitchy performance. While Stevens is hugely impressive in the role, he’s aided by the fact that David Haller is a fascinating central character.

After the likes of Breaking Bad and House of Cards, it’s often said that this is the golden age for TV anti-heroes, and David definitely fits that bill. What Legion does is examine how disorienting it would be to be a vastly powered being. If you have the power of telepathy and telekinesis, would you put on a cape and go save people? No, most likely you’d just go out of your mind – much as David does. You know the subplot in X-Men: Days of Future Past where a weaker Charles Xavier can’t handle the pressure of hearing the world in his head? Well, David Haller suffers similar throughout Legion, but on a much higher scale.

Another intriguing part of the character that the pilot episode touches on is that David is a hugely unreliable point-of-view character, as his frequent hallucinations make it nigh-on-impossible for the viewer to know if what they’re watching is really happening or not – adding another exciting layer to the series.