Our first ever President-picked episode - LEGION! Anthony & Dr. Issues go inside David Haller's shattered mind to revisit dissociation, talk about what it's like being the son of the most famous mutant in the world, and the most auditorally challenging couch visit yet!
SHOW NOTES:
- Introduction
- Response to comments (3:06)
- Background (9:55)
- David Charles Haller - Created by Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz - New Mutants #25 (Mar. 1985)
- Son of Charles Xavier & Gabrielle Haller - they had an affair, but Charles didn't know of his existence for many years
- Sole survivor of terror attack - absorbed the mind of terrorist leader into his own mind
- Kept under observation by Dr. Moira McTaggert on Muir Island for many years
- Determined that he split his personality, with each one able to control a different ability
- Early personalities included Jack Wayne, who was telekinetic, and Cyndi, who was pryokinetic
- After emerging from catatonia, he was possessed by the Shadow King, who used him to kill Destiny
- As he grew, he learned to control his personalities, and decided to go back in time to kill Magneto to help his father's vision of mankind & mutantkind coexisting
- Ends up accidentally killing Xavier, who jumps in to protect Magneto - creates Age of Apocalypse era
- Bishop goes further back to kill Legion with his own psi-blade
- Discovered to be alive in a box - now has thousands of personalities, each of whom have a different ability
- Some of his personalities are in Limbo - they battle each other
- Used to battle Sentinels during Second Coming
- During Age of X, new personality created to protect Legion - looked like Moira McTaggert
- Avengers vs. X-Men - Death of Xavier causes David to lose control of his personalities, creating death & destruction across the planet
- X-Men Legacy - Begins to merge with everyone on the planet, eventually Blindfold stops him
- TV show portrays mental illness in visually creative style
- Issues (20:15)
- Dissociative identity disorder
- Son trying to outdo father
- TV show - schizophrenia
- Treatment (40:44)
- In-universe - Get inside his mind
- Out of universe - Treated like schizophrenia with anti-psychotics
- Couch skit (49:27)
- Ending (52:39)
- Next episodes: The Question, Sentry, Casey Jones
References:
- Three men make a tiger/Blind men and an elephant - the idioms Anthony conflated at 20:05
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