Really loved how they used that to cap off the season. Felt distinctly like the kind of thing you might see happen at the end of a Marvel comic book arc.
Still surprised this was as good as it was. This joins The Dark Knight, Winter Soldier and Civil War on my list of truly excellent live-action Marvel/DC universe adaptations.
Lenny and Oliver trapped in paradise, and many interesting ideas about Shadow King
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
Interesting. The way they phrase it in that interview does make me wonder about some things though. Like is Lenny then really Benny's consciousness, but warped into a girl by David's mind, while it was inside it? And was that consciousness then pulled along with the Shadow King when it was going from host body to host body? Maybe the Shadow King formed a link with it after using it to hide his appearance for so long. We saw in S1 that Legion and Shadow King's minds kind of became connected after prolonged exposure (and a weaker connection with Syd's, after a more brief exposure), so it's possible IMO. But then that would also suggest that David can indeed pull other minds into his own and keep them there, like in the comics. And then there is still David's weird abduction at the end of S1. Lots of questions for season 2 now.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
The visuals in the trailer are breathtaking
This is by far the best comic show I’ve ever seen
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
There are other teasers floating around that include some even weirder visuals. Here we go. Some of the footage is the same, but some of it is new stuff:
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
Farouk seems more or less godlike even without his body
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
He seemed to imply that David was at least his equal though (at least in terms of raw power, but Shadow King obviously has vastly more experience), referring to the two of them as gods, and saying David was the "creator of reality". It's hard to know who has what abilities now. Seems some of the powers, like the disintegration, was Shadow King, but things like flat-out teleportation is David (based on him teleporting out of the water tank in ep 1 of s2). Both appear to have TK & TP though, as well as matter manipulation (Shadow King turning someone to a pig and another into a fish, and Syd still using David's own abilities when she swapped bodies with him back in S1 to remove the doors at Clockworks). The conversation between David and the burnt face guy also implied that the pyrokinesis way back in S1 was David (the whole "you're going to burn me alive" bit).
An interesting little Easter egg they also dropped was when Cary was working on that orb thing and mentioned the existence of the Shi'ar in that particular timeline.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
Apparently Amahl mindcontrolled all of Egypt before Xavier defeated him
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
That's a pretty big assumption. He said that he ruled for decades until Xavier came. Not that he was mind controlling everyone. Though apparently his body is impervious to normal means of harm.
What I like about this show though is how they go far deeper into exploring what telepaths can do on the astral plane than what we ever see in the films. The closest we come to anything we see in Legion is the Xavier/Apoc astral fight, but that also pales in comparison to many of the things in this show.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
David seems to be getting a handle on some of his other abilities pretty quickly.
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: Though I want to know if he is really the one who is going to end the world or if this isn't some more Shadow King trickery to get people on his side.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
__________________ "Happiness is a lie. Life is horror. The light is always dying all across the universe. The last star will flicker out someday, when it does, all that remains is shadow. And I will be its king!"'-Amahl Farouk
Was cool to see [SPOILER - highlight to read]: full-on Legion, goofy hair, outfit and all, shown at the beginning of the last episode. Really interested to see how this all plays out now. Is David really the insane monster who ends up destroying the world, or is this a kind of Flash/Savitar situation (creating a time remnant to fight Savitar made Savitar), in that Amahl tricked Syd into thinking David was the monster, thereby putting events into motion where they help him get his body, and is told by tricked future Syd that David is the one who ends things, which makes him trick Syd in the present, thus restarting the cycle?
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
Complicated season finale. On the surface, it looks like [SPOILER - highlight to read]: David has gone full villain. And yet, it might not be that simple, if we take into account all the Jon Hamm narrative bits. Various examples not only handled the idea of reality/illusion, but also about spreading/mass delusion (like the one with the spreading spasm/twitch), and then the final text message before the trial (about the crazy person actually being the sane one because everyone else bought the delusion).
Don't get me wrong. David is definitely a seriously broken and messed up individual, and has done some terrible things at this point. And we have now seen 4 different versions/personalities so far (main David, rational David, back in S1, and now cynical David and ego-maniacal David). But still, I think Shadow King played a hand that has yet to be fully revealed.
Though it looks like they ended up pushing David into becoming exactly what they were trying to avoid (you see a shift in his demeanor/expression right at the end, before he goes full light/godmode and blasts out of the containment cell, from strain to the crazy, grinning, psycho "true" face that he normally hides). So, not sure what they will do now, as their aim was to have the Shadow King stop him before he went full Legion-mode. They seemed to be a match for each other before (Amahl had him a in a bit of trouble at one point, but David broke free with his army flamethrower guy projection just before the Choke wave hit and depowered them).
But with regard to that, I think it's a case where David has more raw power, but the Shadow King is vastly more experienced. Based one his conversation with Future Syd, he's been at it for centuries. Based on the show's timeline, from David's perspective, barely two months ago, he was still locked up in Clockworks. Timeline for the first season is 6 weeks (thanks to them showing us Clark's burn PT in the finale there), and we see 13 days pass between David arriving back and him heading out in pursuit of the Shadow King (even though a year passed in between seasons, it was only a day from his perspective inside the orb).
Overall, not as good as the first season, IMO. A few episodes dragged a bit, and felt somewhat like filler.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
One thing I will say though is that Dan Stevens seriously deserves some awards for his performance this season. I mean everyone was good, but how Stevens depicted David's slow breakdown across the season was brilliantly done.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
Also, Syd is awful. [SPOILER - highlight to read]: I know what David did to her at the end of the season wasn't right, but she is hardly blameless herself. Hell, her actions and instructions (both present and future her) is largely responsible for pushing David in the direction he ended up going. Or how, suddenly, she is willing to give Amahl a pass to the point of killing David over what he might do in a possible future instead (if not for Lenny intercepting the shot, David would probably be dead). I mean Shadow King is an established murderer, torturer etc. but hey ho, let's forget all that because he showed her like 3 out of context shots of David being bad. Or her irrational, and quite frankly hypocritical views on a lot of things. Like blaming David for "leaving" when he literally got sucked up into some orb from the future (which she saw happen IIRC). Or claiming he was responsible for the S1 Division 3 attack, even though Amahl was running the show then, because of power semantics. Except, using that same logic, she is a murderer who is responsible for killing Lenny. And let's not forget the shitty things she did when she was younger, like with her mom's boyfriend. And then she still calls herself the "hero" of the story.
I want to blame her actions on Shadow King manipulation, but she has been kind of shitty all season long. Then again, she was with David in the mental hospital, so she is hardly completely sane herself.
__________________ Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.