Whedon, famously, became frustrated when his obligations to the continuity of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe wound up weighing down Avengers: Age of Ultron with world-building for future Avengers outings. The X-Men franchise now finds itself free from those continuity constraints. Because Legion’s David Haller will never team up with Wolverine, the mutants can sink into different tones and genres in a way that Marvel can only do superficially.

“I love to say that what’s great about Legion is that if you haven’t read a comic book and you haven’t seen an X-Men movie, you can come in and understand it—and this can be your comic,” Shuler Donner says.

So what, then, defines an X-Men property in this brave new mutated world? “It’s always about tolerance,” Shuler Donner says firmly. “We’re about outsiders and grounded characters.”

But that mutant-as-outsider metaphor, under Singer’s guidance, continuously circled the theme of gay rights. (Though Magneto, of course, also literally represents Jewish Holocaust survivors.) “I was sold it by Bryan, who said, ‘Mutants are like gays. They’re cast out by society for no good reason,’” Ian McKellen told Buzzfeed in 2014. “And, as in all civil rights movements, they have to decide: Are they going to take the Xavier line—which is to somehow assimilate and stand up for yourself and be proud of what you are, but get on with everybody—or are you going to take the alternative [Magneto] view—which is, if necessary, use violence to stand up for your own rights.”

In shifting the focus from Professor X vs. Magneto, the franchise can now delve even deeper into other metaphors of the disenfranchised. Deadpool (albeit in a lighthearted way) explores the shame of physical disfigurement. By casting a crop of new mutants as the offspring of young Mexican women literally on the run for the border, Logan becomes an immigrant tale. Meanwhile, Legion examines the stigma surrounding the mentally ill. “You want to walk a very careful line when dealing with mental illness, but you really can be an outsider,” Shuler Donner explains. “You see the world through David’s mind, and you are the ultimate outsider. He never knows what’s reality: is it the monster without, or the monster within?”

That hint at monstrosity also indicates that Legion is likely to go in a dark direction that matches the more mature tone of R-rated Logan and Deadpool. The character—traditionally more of an antihero or, if you prefer, villain—comes across as vulnerable and sympathetic in the first part of the series thanks, in large part, to a wide-eyed performance from Dan Stevens. “It’s a non-origin story in a fun way,” Shuler Donner says. “You get to know him before he fulfills what has been written for his character—which in the comics is a villain. What Noah added to that is that it’s a love story. You see that he has the potential to be a villain, but he also—the love story means his interest in Syd [(Rachel Keller)] is more important. So then the question is, did we change, or did we stick to the comics books? Tune in to find out.”

It’s tempting to concoct a tidy narrative where the darkness of Deadpool begat Legion and Logan, but both projects were already in the works when Ryan Reynolds’s Merc with a Mouth took home such an unexpectedly huge haul last year. (The pilot for Legion was announced way back in 2014.) Still, the unexpected success of Deadpool allowed Logan the R-rating Shuler Donner says she wanted for 2013’s The Wolverine—and with director James Mangold returning, Logan delivers on the kind of dark superhero tone that the latest Warner Bros. Batman and Superman films have been chasing all this time. Shuler Donner says that Mangold has a way of pulling out the best version of Wolverine: “There’s something about the combination of Jim and Hugh.”