9) A Short, Tight Series
As much as we love the likes of The CW’s The Flash or ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., their hefty 22 episode seasons do mean that each run is filled with some less-than-stellar outings. In fact, even Netflix’s Marvel dramas at 13 episodes apiece tend to run out of steam in their later instalments.
Legion, on the other hand, is a tight eight episodes long. With such a short run, there’s no need for any tiresome case-of-the-week plots, or even to extend one serialized story beyond its natural lifespan.
For more on why they decided to go this route, here’s creator Noah Hawley on why he kept the series as one contained story:
[zergpaid]“Film and TV have traded places where, you know, where you are now in a case-of-the-week movie world. One week, the Avengers fight this guy; the next week, they fight that guy. You can’t take the story too far in any one direction.”
8) A Talented Showrunner
Many of the best comic book movies are those directed by someone with a very clear creative vision; for instance, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers or, of course, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. This is true of comic book TV, too, as Legion proves.
Its showrunner is Noah Hawley, who has garnered a lot of attention for his critically-acclaimed TV adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. It was seen as quite a coup for Fox to get the highly sought after writer, particularly as his strong authorial style didn’t seem to fit with a capes-and-cowls superhero show, but then again, that’s far from what Legion is.
Thanks to Hawley – who wrote the first two episodes – Legion is a densely-packed drama whose skittish, demanding plotting perfectly reflects the fractured mental state of its protagonist. It’s a fresh take on the subject matter (more on that later) and we can’t wait to see what Hawley does with it next.