Over the course of the first season of FX’s Legion, it becomes clear that David Haller (Dan Stevens) has a strange relationship to reality. He’s spent the majority of his adult life convinced he’s schizophrenic, and to be fair, the glimpses of his consciousness we’re shown make it seem like he is, only the truth isn’t so clear cut. David learns he has special abilities. These abilities account for the voices in his head and his ability to move objects with his mind, amongst other powers he comes to learn about when the truth of his mutant abilities is revealed to him. Shortly after leaving Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital, he’s taken to Summerland, a place where his abilities can be honed through “memory work.” It’s during this memory work where it becomes clear there are gaps and discrepancies in David’s memories. Investigation into these missing pieces and false leads brings forth a nightmare creature, The Devil with the Yellow Eyes, a parasitic mutant who has remained hidden within David’s subconscious for years, and who fights to keep control of David.

This creature turns out to be The Shadow King, or Amahl Farouk, an evil mutant living inside of David’s consciousness. Farouk gained access to David at a young age after David’s mysterious mutant father (Charles Xavier) defeated him in battle. Farouk’s body and spirit were separated, allowing Farouk’s spirit to latch onto David and feed off his mutant abilities. Farouk is a psychic parasite capable of manipulating reality. In the past he’s presented himself to David in the forms of David’s childhood dog King, The Angry Boy (from The Angriest Boy In The World book), and his friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza). All of these forms were used to blur David’s perception of reality. When David finally comes face to face with Farouk in Chapter 10 (S2E2), he refers to himself as “The Tapeworm.” Farouk pushes David to exercise his mind, telling him, “You are the creator of reality” and referring to the two of them as “gods”. All of the time Farouk spent possessing David, along with David’s life long belief he was mentally ill, has left David’s grasp on reality tentative at best. We know David also has the ability to alter reality, we’ve seen him construct realistic simulacrum’s of reality on the astral plane where he and Syd (Rachel Keller) can be together intimately despite her touch sensitive mutant abilities. It’s clear Farouk knows David has the inherent possibility of being an equal, if not stronger mutant than he.

At the end of last season, David was strong enough to banish and defeat Farouk, casting his spirit out of David’s body, where it quickly took up residence in Oliver’s (Jemaine Clement). The season also ended with David being trapped in a mysterious orb and whisked away. As season two opens, no one knows where David has been or what he’s been up to. For David his absence feels like a day, but to everyone else it’s been a year. Where was David, who trapped him in the orb, and what’s the deal with the apparently jumbled space-time continuum? David again has trouble with memory, but what’s the reason for this? Everywhere Oliver/Farouk is seen, a strange teeth chattering psychic mental virus (The Catalyst) takes control of the people in the vicinity. It isn’t entirely clear if Farouk is behind the virus, or if something else is causing it, but it’s highly contagious. Farouk is searching for his body, and everyone at the united Summerland/Division Three group wants David to stop him, but they’re also worried David may still be under Farouk’s control, or colluding with Farouk to help him find his body, which is something they believe will make Farouk unstoppable.

The truth is David is colluding with Farouk to help him find his body. The only reason he’s doing it is because while in Cary’s (Bill Irwin) sensory deprivation tank, a version of Syd from the future visits David to urge him to help Farouk. In her timeline David kills Farouk in seven days, and then later dies himself. Soon after, a plague wipes out almost all of humanity, which Syd says Farouk could have stopped. Is the vision of the post apocalyptic future she shows David brought about by The Catalyst? Either way, it’s hard to tell if this future Syd is real? Farouk has used people close to David as delusions to manipulate him in the past, is future Syd a delusion or in the future does she gain the ability to travel through time? David’s love for Syd clouds his ability to critically analyze the situation, but there are also clues that future Syd may be legit. While examining the orb, Cary is struck by the thought that the orb looks like something he would’ve created. Is it possible future Cary made the orb so Syd could travel back in time to warn David, pushing him into doing something that would alter the plague ridden timeline their future selves are in? Cary’s technical abilities are superb, so much so that when David wants to find future Syd again, Cary is able to make tweaks to the sensory deprivation tank to allow David to step outside of space and time, giving David multi-dimensional perception, which enables him to contact future Syd again.

There are arguments for and against this future Syd being nothing more than a delusion sent by Farouk to get David’s help locating his body. This season a Narrator (John Hamm) describes to the audience how ideas can lead to madness and delusion. He says that ideas are like healthy baby chicks, but delusions are dark creatures that feed on ideas. When the delusion’s egg hatches, it is a dark, slimy creature that leaves a black oily slick behind it. Right before David retreats to his room and summons a telepathic meeting with Farouk, there’s a black oily trail going into David’s room, as if his room is occupied by a delusion. It’s also important to note that when Oliver and Lenny attack the Division Three compound, Lenny pulls Cary into David’s room while Kerry attempts to fight Oliver. What was Lenny doing in David’s room? Lenny was one of David’s original delusions in the first season, and now he’s working with the person who inflicted that delusion on him.

It’s hard to tell if David is truly delusional, seeing things clearly, if he’s being manipulated, or if he’s in control of his faculties. Farouk is a master shaper of reality, as we see when he and David have their battle of wills. Could all of this be a clever construct to get David to help Farouk do what he’s unable to do alone? David already feels guilty for creating a diversion so Farouk (as Lenny and Oliver) can assault Division Three because of all of the casualties, but he’s gotten Farouk to promise no more people will die if David helps. Is the promise of a manipulator worth anything? If the future really is in danger and helping Farouk will save it, how does this match up with Admiral Fukyama’s warning that Farouk would be unstoppable if his spirit and body were reunited? All roads lead to the last surviving monk of the Migo Order as the key to finding Farouk’s body, and we’ve seen glimpses of him before in David’s memories. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when they find the body, and whether or not David’s perception of events changes afterword.