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One of the most unsettling moments of Legion chapter/episode 5 involves David Halley (Dan Stevens) shushing Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller) before playing “Rainbow Connection.” It is a moment that complete sums up some of the central themes of the story, and it is one of the show’s best artistic choices.

(Note: Don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers; I have yet to wrap my head around the series to really understand what is actually taking place, so it would be impossible for me to actually reveal anything. Some general themes will be discussed.)

“Rainbow Connection” (above) is a whimsy, dreamy song played by Kermit the Frog from the opening of The Muppet Movie. Instead of a log, David sits upon a bed as he begins to strum his own banjo.

The moment is sweet yet creepy.

Color is key. Everything is white except for what isn’t. I say what because we don’t really know what it (?) even is, and I wont dare speculate. There is something going on within the show, but we don’t have enough information to truly define or explain it. Let us ignore that and break down what the song means instead.

Syd suddenly appears in a room, and David is sitting on a bed all in white. She tries to talk to him but she is silenced. Then, he begins to play “Rainbow Connection”:

“Why are there so many songs about rainbows

And what’s on the other side”

David seems lost, distant. Then he looks to his right and the camera begins to pan to the side, revealing a doorway. He sings:

“Rainbows are visions, but only illusions.

Rainbows have nothing to hide.”

As David says “hide,” his voice quivers and he seems to break down. Syd moves, and we see an open door with a red room as he continues:

“So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it.

I know they’re wrong, wait and see.

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.

The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

We lose track of David as Syd closes the door. The song cuts short.

The original song expresses belief in the purity of the imagination. It is a dreamer’s longing to achieve something beautiful in the world, to reach beyond your limitations. The skeptics, the ultra-rationalists, are those who are dead inside. They see the world, but they do not see the true world.

Coming from a Muppet, the Muppet, the song expresses the essence of suspension of disbelief. Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term in his Biographia Literaria, explaining:

my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith

To Coleridge, what allows the audience to accept unnatural settings and plots is the greater truth inherent in their message. We accept a puppet frog on a log playing a banjo because he longs to experience the beauty connected to dreams and the imagination. He is a manifestation of a part of ourselves, the dreamer or lover. We ignore everything else. The facts are the symbolic truths and not the tangible reality.

Going further, Kermit sings the song as part of a film playing within The Muppet Movie as the Muppets watch, and the film within the film is about the entertainment industry. It is very meta-meta-meta. As the film within the film concludes, the Muppets all join together to sing the final verse of “Rainbow Connection”:

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending.

Keep believing, keep pretending.

We’ve done just what we’ve set off to do.

Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you”

But how does any of this deal with Legion?

David Haller seems to be at war with himself. The banjo playing David is a representation of the lover and dreamer, the innocent imagination that seeks to embrace what is beautiful. He is clinging to everything in hope to have a better existence. He is connected to the child David, the beautiful boy that is so powerful and so innocent.

Yet there is a darker side. David cuts the song off short, yet those who know the song can fill it in for themselves during the scenes that follow:

“What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see?

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.

The lovers, the dreamers and me.

All of us under its spell.

We know that it’s probably magic.

Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices?

I’ve heard them calling my name.”

We know that David has a connection with the stars. We know that he seems to be half asleep and hears voices. We know that the reality, memory, and dreams of Legion are constantly changing.

While Kermit sings of the innocent imagination, David sings about the darker side, and it’s the unspoken words that sound the loudest. The are made manifest in what follows, without having to actually understand what takes place next.

But what is reality within the show? What is created by David’s mind and what actually exists? Is there anything we can actually accept as “fact” within the series? Suspension of disbelief is unstable without a footing yet the confusion and chaos is truthful to us. Thus, we try to accept what we are seeing while our mind rebels constantly against it. We experience pain and loss, glee and happiness, shock and awe, emotions that contradict each other sometimes at the same time.

We are lost in David’s imagination with no way to know which way is out. Some believe that rainbows are “illusions,” but illusions are truth to the lovers and dreams. The layers of fiction within Legion are all layers of truth, revealing important concepts in complicated ways. We fell down the rabbit hole.

Earlier in the episode, Syd tells David: “Who teaches us to be normal when we are one of a kind? Just promise me that if you get lost we get lost together.” Unfortunately, we are all lost with David, and we have no one to teach us how to get out. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is no actual way out, and there is no normal. Maybe we need to come to terms with the turmoil instead of trying to flee from it.

There is a part of David that clearly longs for happiness, but there is a part that does not. There is also a part of us that does the same, and our own imagination can both inspire and crush us. We can fantasize about future success or we can fall prey to anxiety. Our dreams can just as easily become nightmare.

We want David to be able to sing Kermit’s song without it being twisted by inner darkness. We hope that he can find his own “Rainbow Connection” and gain the ability to conquer the fear and anxiety because we want to conquer our own. David is us, and we are David.