As I’m writing this, the seventh and penultimate episode of Season 1 of Legion has just aired on FX. It answered a lot of baffling questions, brought together several plot threads, and set up all the players for a final showdown next week. For those of you who gave up on the show midway through its eight-episode first season—or never bothered to start the series in the first place: now is the most important time to tune in. The series is at a creative high, and could beautifully stick the landing next week. It could also stumble at the finish line. But either way, you don’t want to miss out. So turn off those other, subpar comic-book shows: this is the series you should be bingeing.

If you’ve managed to avoid any information about the series whatsoever, the gist is this: Legion is a loose (very loose) adaptation of a Marvel comic-book story about a mentally deranged young man, David Haller (Dan Stevens), who discovers that his disordered mind also houses a tremendous number of uncanny powers. He’s the son of Charles Xavier—though this show is about as far away in tone from the X-Men cinematic universe as you can get. It’s also (probably) divorced almost entirely from the world of Professor X, Storm, Jean Grey, Magneto, and the rest. It’s from the very thoughtful mind of Fargo creator Noah Hawley and is, for my money, the most inventive and entertaining show currently on television.

Unshackled from any of Fargo’s realism constraints, Hawley on Legion is like a kid in a candy shop, packing each episode with boundary-pushing visuals. The show flirts with but never achieves alienating levels of disorientation as the camera whirls upside down or shifts into gummy slow motion. Inspired by creative freedom of both his protagonist’s subjective reality and the comic-book medium, Hawley is free to insert a Bollywood number, check in on Jemaine Clement grooving out in a space ice cube (really), or, in the latest episode, switch to a black-and-white silent film (complete with dialogue cards) while a scorching version of Ravel’s “Bolero” plays.

All this experimentation with form is saved from feeling overly precious and exhausting simply because it’s anchored by the emotionally honest performances of its leads. Given his mental condition (or at least years of mental abuse), David Haller could be a slippery character to latch on to. But in Stevens—who has been both cuddly and appealing on Downton Abbey and dangerously seductive in The Guest—Legion found the perfect leading man. When Stevens makes his enormous blue eyes go wide with innocent confusion, viewers are instantly sympathetic. When those same eyes then gleam with manic evil seconds later, audiences may cringe in fear. Very few performers could contain such multitudes.

A steadier sympathetic figure is David’s would-be girlfriend, Syd Barrett (yeah, that’s right), played by Fargo Season 2 alum Rachel Keller. Syd is given a more typically X-Men-esque mutation-as-curse plotline. Like Rogue, she can’t endure skin-to-skin contact—the lightest touch will force her to temporarily swap bodies with the other person. This puts a wrinkle in her dating life and, eventually, is revealed to be attached to some serious childhood trauma. But though she’s a guiding light for David, Keller doesn’t play Syd as victim or sap. She’s complicated, dark, brave, and, despite the genre setting, one of the more nuanced female characters currently on TV.