Anti-Hero Profile: Legion

While Multiple Personality Disorder has largely been debunked in psychological science, we continue to see characters with this odd disorder in works of fiction. Some are boring, like in soap operas. Others are incredibly dangerous, like our next character, Legion. This Omega Level Mutant has suffered from MPD from his earliest versions, and despite getting control of his subconscious on a number of occasions, seems to lose control each time. But more on that in a second, let’s get to it.

No, i don't know why his hair looks like a paint brush.

Legion was born David Haller, the illegitimate son of Charles Xavier and his ex-girlfriend Gabrielle Haller. Charles was unaware of his son’s existence for many years, as Gabrielle chose to never tell him. David grew up in Israel. It wasn’t a perfect life, but I don’t think he had any major complaints, even when his mother married and moved him to Paris. She’d become an Israeli diplomate. Things were fine in Paris, until a terrorist attack. A group of terrorist broke into their home, and started executing every Israeli they could find. When David’s step-father was murdered, it unleased the beast. His firsts Mutant ability manifested, Telepathy, which he used to fry the brains of the terrorists. The problem was, this was a double edged sword. Each time David connected his mind to a terrorist to kill them, he was forced to feel all of their thoughts and emotions leading up to their death. The trauma was too much for David to handle, and as he blasted the terrorist’s leader, he was rendered catatonic. Which was somewhat beneficial to the terrorist leader, Jemail Karami. As David lost consciousness, his mind somehow grabbed hold of Karami’s and pulled the terrorist mind into David’s. David was moved to Muir Island, and was looked after by another of his father’s old flames, Moira MacTaggert.

While David was comatose, Karami was working. The terrorist struggled for years to, one, split himself off from David’s main consciousness, and two, take over David’s body for his own nefarious purposes. Thankfully for David, Karami had some competition. The trauma that put him into his comatose state fractured his mind, creating multiple personalities, each with their own will, and surprisingly, their own superpower. Two of David’s most powerful alternate personalities were Jack Wayne, a swaggering adventurer that was pretty obviously based on John Wayne, and a temperamental rebellious teenage girl named Cyndi. While Karami seemed to take hold of David’s telepathic abilities, Jack claimed David’s telekinetic power, and Cyndi claimed his pyrokinetic power. It was a battle royal for control of David’s body. This proved to be the perfect situation for one of Xavier’s oldest enemies, the Shadow King to strike.

Put as simply as possible, the Shadow King is a former human telepath with powers on par with Xavier. His body was destroyed some time ago, and he somehow survived, becoming a colossal demon of psychic energy that feeds on the misery of others. Shadow King possessed David, and used the young man’s formidable psychic abilities to psychically make people more aggressive and depressed, which fed Shadow King’s power. He also murdered Destiny, the longtime friend and partner of Mystique. This drew the attention of Charles, and the X-Men. While reluctant to do anything to hurt his new found son, Charles lead his team into David’s mind, and excised the Shadow King from David. He slipped back into a coma afterwards.

Perhaps the most effective mind within David's troubled head.

A few years later, Mystique tracked David down. She wanted payback for Destiny’s murder. Unfortunately for the blue shapeshifter, David chose that exact moment to awaken. He seemed to have mastered his mind and the various personas that inhabit it. He was able to easily best Mystique, and then set out on his new goal. What goal, you may be asking. Why, helping Charles realize his dream of human-mutant coexistence. Hooray. He plans to do this by going back in time and murdering Magneto before he got the chance to amass his powers and become a threat to Charles. Less hooray.

Using his immense power, David leaped back in time. The transfer greatly drains David, and for a short time he suffered from amnesia. Magneto somehow trigger’s David’s memories, and he goes on a rampage. Using his abilities in full view of the public, David unwittingly revealed Mutants to the world decades before they were supposed to. He attacks Magneto with a “psi-knife.” Basically, he focused his immense power into a single point on his hand, creating a weapon capable of destroying anything it touched. Unfortunately, Charles nobly gets in the way, and is killed instead.  Charles’ death causes a ripple effect across time and space, and creates an alternate timeline known as the “age of Apocalypse.” This universe is where Apocalypse pretty much rules the world. Thankfully, the time hoping X-Man Bishop was unaffected by the change. Because reasons. He recruits the X-Men of this timeline, Magneto named his followers after his fallen friend, and goes back to fix things. They arrive just before Legion attacks. Bishop gets in the way this time, and forced Legion to stab himself with the Psi-blade. In his last moments, Bishop shows Legion the ramifications of his actions via telepathy. David apologizes as best he can, and then dies. His mother makes a vague comment of feeling a “maternal loss” and it’s implied that the events of this time hopping seemed to erase David from existence.

Yeah, this image sums him up pretty well.

Years later, Legion is discovered trapped in a concrete box in Colorado by the New Mutants. It’s another X-Men off-shoot team. While they try to figure out what to do with Legion, he accidentally absorbs the mind of the New Mutant’s telepath, Karma. Inside Legion’s mind, Karma discovers that David is pretty much under siege from an army of split personalities. They’re all fighting to get to a girl named Marci, who has a doll they call Moira. Apparently in his absence from…existence, David had created Moira, a totem of sorts. Whoever has Moira gets control of David’s body, and access to all of his powers. In the physical world, Legion escapes his prison box and flies off to kill another X-Man, Dani Moonstar. In his head, one of his lesser personalities revealed that he was transported to the Age of Apocalypse timeline, and had lived as a slave. During his newest rampage, he absorbed another New Mutant, Magik, into his mind. Magik, little sister of Colossus, is a powerful wielder of magic, and has the mystical “soul sword.” She uses this magic sword to kill some of David’s more dangerous personalities, including Jack Wayne. The New Mutant’s then find the real David, and give him the Moira doll. David is then taken to Utopia, the new homebase of the X-Men, and they start reorganizing his brain. Various telepaths use their powers to lock Legion’s alternate personalities away, leaving David the only one powerful enough to control himself. They learn that Marci was in fact a little girl from the Colorado area that’d been keeping Legion company when he somehow returned from the other timeline. One of David’s evil personalities killed her, but David himself was able to absorb the girl before he was besieged by personalities. Marci is left free to be David’s source of stability and comfort. While David reclaimed his body, he’s periodically lost control again to other powerful personalities. Like with many who suffer from Mental Illness, David’s battle is never really done.

David Haller is easily the most powerful mutant born since En Saba Nur (Apocalypse) himself. At least in terms of the number of abilities he has. He seems to have every superpower imaginable, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, warping time and space, super strength and speed, electrical manipulation, teleportation, and magnetic powers. To name a few. The down side is, that each of these powers has a separate personality connected to it. Some are benevolent, most are more interested in being the “one” personality within Legion. Through strenuous mental training, and occasionally advanced technology, Legion has gained control of his immense power. But he’s always walking the razors edge, always risking falling and being consumed by another persona.

For those that didn’t recognize the term, I’ll quickly explain Omega Level Mutants. Omega Level is a classification given to the most powerful Mutants in the X-Men Universe. The classification is rather vague, but an Omega Level Mutant is always immensely powerful. Some powers that could give one the OL qualification include immortality, extreme manipulation of matter and/or energy, powerful psionic (mental) abilities, and the potential to exist outside the normal boundaries of the physical universe. Jean Grey, Iceman, and Apocalypse fall under this classification. Storm I feel is right on the border.

So far, Legion is a character that hasn’t appeared much outside the comics. This could be due to the mental illness that is connected to the character. Who knows?

His hairs ability to stay pointy like that is a power all it's own.

His first and to date only major appearance was in X-Men: Evolution. This version is largely true to the comics, in that David is an immensely powerful Mutant with multiple personality disorder. David is seemingly kidnapped by a Scottish Punk named Lucas. In reality, Lucas is alternate persona of David’s. He’s essentially a composite of all of David’s evil personas from the comics. He’s cruel, vain, sadistic, and selfish. There’s another personality named Ian, who is a mute boy, and somehow in league with Lucas. In the episode’s conclusion, Charles’ tries to use his powers to force the other personalities out. It works, but instead of forcing David into the forefront, he releases Lucas. Lucas then reveals that this was his plan all along, to use Charles to get rid of the others, as Charles was the only Mutant strong enough to do it. He then laughs manically as he flies off, using not only his original telekinetic powers, but also Ian’s pyrokinetic, implying that Lucas now has control of all of David’s possible powers. The series ended before the show could continue David’s story, but from the sound of things they fully intended to bring Lucas/Legion back as a recurring antagonist.

I guess that FX, 20^th Century Fox Television and Marvel Television are collaborating to create a live-action show focusing on Legion, to be released sometime this year. It’s set in the same universe as the X-Men films. Should be interesting to see what happens.

Legion is an interesting character. The whole “huge power in an unstable mind” thing has been done before, but Legion does it very well. Part of what makes him interesting is just seeing how Charles reacts to seeing his son. In his episode of X-Men: Evolution, it ends with Charles stating that he was saddened that he never got to know the real David before seemingly destroying him. To see Professor Xavier, the quintessential teacher, suffer a personal failing like that is such an interesting character moment. Personally, I’d love to see what would happen if Legion at his full power battled Apocalypse. I think it’d shake the foundation of reality. He’s the broken Mutant. The potent powerhouse. The Legion, for they are many. Next time, something DC related. 

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/xmenevo/images/4/4f/X-Men_II_-_Legion.png/revision/latest?cb=20130903173050

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/e/e6/Sins_of_the_Son.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130709182739

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/e/ea/X-Men_Legacy_Vol_2_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120810162256

http://x-menevolution.wikia.com/wiki/File:X-Men_X-Factor_-_Legion.png