With Netflix jumping into the Marvel Comics universe, The CW network establishing a TV home for DC Comics heroes like “The Flash” and “Supergirl,” and movies devoted to caped crusaders and Dark Knights dominating multiplexes, the idea of another new series based on a comic book character summons more dread than excitement.
But the new FX drama “Legion” is anything but another superhero saga, bloated with overblown action sequences and overdone special effects.
If you’re a fan of Marvel Comics’ “X-Men” titles, you may know that Legion is a character created by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, who first appeared in 1985.
And if you’re a fan of outstanding TV, you know that Noah Hawley, who created the “Legion” TV series, is also the creative force behind two mesmerizing seasons of “Fargo,” the FX anthology series inspired by Joel and Ethan Coen’s classic movie of Midwestern manners and murder.
In “Legion,” both showrunner Hawley and star Dan Stevens — still best known to “Downton Abbey” fans who never got over the death of Matthew Crawley — bring exceptional emotional depth to a story that gets off to a surreal, intentionally disorienting start.
Stevens plays David Haller, who was diagnosed at a young age with schizophrenia and who is, when we meet him, in a psychiatric hospital.
The pilot episode, written and directed by Hawley, begins with a splintered, manic montage, scored to The Who classic, “Happy Jack.” We see young David as ecstatic, wild, destructive and finally, as an adult, medicated to a state of monotonous calm as he passes his days at the hospital.
But when David meets a new patient, Sydney “Syd” Barrett (Rachel Keller), he asks her to be his girlfriend. Though Syd warns him she doesn’t like to be touched, she feels a connection to David, too.
On the day Syd is being discharged, David is so overcome with longing, he moves toward her for a kiss. Without giving too much away, it turns out she wasn’t kidding about the not-being-touched thing.
Syd’s condition involves some of the many mysteries and secrets that unfold — or don’t — in the first three episodes of “Legion” made available to critics.
And there’s much more going on than David and Syd’s sudden bond. David learns that he may not be sick at all. The voices he hears and visions he sees aren’t necessarily signs of his illness, but of special powers he’s only just learning about.
But is that true? Is David indeed a mutant, with telekinetic and telepathic abilities? What can David — or we — believe? “Legion” puts us inside David’s perspective, and it’s a turbulent place to be. Never sure what’s really happening, swept back to visions of the past, stricken by visions of the future, David’s psyche is a patchwork of pain.
Hawley shows the gift for visuals that have distinguished “Fargo,” with camera angles, colors and special effects that capture what it’s like for David to lose control and send objects flying into a nightmarish whirlwind of destruction.
The first three episodes deliver some information. David is so powerful, he’s wanted both by a nefarious government group, and by more benign forces, led by Melanie Bird (Jean Smart), a therapist who wants to help mutants like David.
The sheer originality of how “Legion” looks and feels shows that Hawley is serious about exploring the shifting nature of David’s reality, his memories, and the struggles he has with his own mind and fears about what is and isn’t real.
There are slow spots in the early going, which is probably to be expected, considering this is an origin story, and even in the first three episodes, we’re sifting through several characters, settings and events.
And with all this world-building going on, “Legion” doesn’t, at least in these early episodes, make the most of Hawley’s talent for letting his characters express themselves in distinctive, individual voices. And the horror of David’s situation hardly lends itself to Hawley’s characteristic wit.
But those are small problems, considering that “Legion” is a trippy explosion of creativity. Hawley has added ’60s-inspired touches to the costumes, hairstyles and feel of the show, which calls to mind Francois Truffaut’s 1966 movie version of “Fahrenheit 451,” among other influences.
“Legion” also sprinkles in references to ’60s and ’70s cultural touchstones. The “Clockworks” psychiatric hospital recalls Stanley Kubrick’s movie of “A Clockwork Orange.” A doctor is named Kissinger (after Henry Kissinger, secretary of state for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.) And Syd Barrett’s name is a nod to the original member of Pink Floyd, who struggled with drug abuse and mental illness.
Hawley again shows his skill at casting in “Legion,” especially where Stevens is concerned. It’s impossible not to empathize with David, because Stevens plays him with such sensitivity, moving from fear to violence to vulnerability with breathtaking fluidity. Stevens gives a beautiful, scary, heartbreaking performance.
The rest of the cast is equally affecting, including Keller, who makes Syd strong but wary; Smart, who shone in “Fargo” Season 2, and provides a much-needed moral center to “Legion”; Aubrey Plaza, as David’s very odd friend, Lenny Busker; Katie Aselton as David’s sister, Amy; and Jeremie Harris as Ptonomy Wallace, who works with Melanie, using his skills as a “memory artist.”
“Legion” may not show us characters saving the world or running around in costume. But it’s super all the same.
“Legion” premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8 on FX.
— Kristi Turnquist
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