Legion, FX’s mutant magnum opus, was a great entry into the X-Men franchise. The show was brilliant in its execution, revolving around David Haller, who is the son of Charles Xavier.
While the show allegedly took place in the same continuity as the X-Men timeline before Days of Future Past, it was not known which era was Legion from. Whether he was the child of James McCavoy’s version of the character or that of Sir Patrick Stewart’s was up in the air, until Legion introduced an entirely different version of the character.
The show never tried to bring Patrick Stewart’s version of the character
Legion was one of the better-made shows to come out of Fox, and it seemed that Charles Xavier was primed to make an appearance at any moment in the show. However, while it would make more sense for the character to be Patrick Stewart‘s age, Noah Hawley had a very different idea in mind for the version of the character that should have appeared in the show. Speaking with ScienceFiction.com, he said:
We’re going to have to meet [David’s] parents eventually. Nobody fought us on it. There was a question obviously about what age is he? What’s the model? Is he the McAvoy age? Is he Patrick Stewart age? Should we try to get either of those actors to do it?
Ultimately, I felt like we established our own alternate reality here on ‘Legion,’ where it’s both 1964 and the future… I think I felt like the younger Xavier was actually more consistent with the timeline. But there’s something about David, if David meets his father and his father is his age, I think there’s something interesting about that.
With how cerebral the show was, there was a lot of mindbending stuff that happened in one episode after the other, but the fact that Harry Lloyd essayed the role of Charles Xavier, being around the same age as David Haller, added another level of intrigue to the show, that was brilliantly explored with it’s writing.
Bringing Patrick Stewart into the show might have been the wrong call
Legion was a great show that was pretty well executed. However, Charles Xavier appearing as his younger self injected a lot of drama into the story, which an older Charles Xavier would not have done. Had we seen Patrick Stewart’s version of the character appear in the show, it would have made a lot of conflict easier for David.
The character would either have had to appear with other X-Men, or his appearance would have induced a pothole if it did not tie in with the larger continuity of the films. While this could have been a separate timeline, as was the case with the X-Men films, the story would have lost some of its charm.
Legion can be streamed on Hulu.
