Legion

Publication history

Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bill Sienkiewicz, Legion first appeared following the conclusion of The New Mutants #25 (March 1985) in Moira MacTaggert's notes, leading to his full story appearance in the following issue, The New Mutants #26 (April 1985).

In 1991, Legion was assigned to be a co-starring character in the newly revamped X-Factor, as a member of the eponymous superteam. However, writer Peter David was uncomfortable with this, and ultimately editor Bob Harras independently came to the conclusion that Legion should not be used in the series. David explained "I don't mind building a story around [Legion], but working him into a group – you're really asking for a bit much from the reader. Believing that a group of people will come together to form a team is enough of a suspension of disbelief... 'Oh, by the way, one of them is so nuts he shouldn't be setting foot off Muir Island'... that's asking the reader to bend so far he will break."

Fictional character biography

While working in an Israeli psychiatric facility, Charles Xavier met a patient named Gabrielle Haller. The two had an affair which ended amicably. Gabrielle became pregnant with David, but did not tell Charles.

David, at a young age, lives with his mother and godfather, Daniel Shomron, in Paris until Daniel is killed in an attack by anti-Semitic terrorists. The trauma of the situation causes an initial manifestation of David's mutant powers, as David incinerates the minds of the terrorists. In the process, he unintentionally absorbs the mind of terrorist leader Jemail Karami and is rendered catatonic for years. As he recovers, David is moved to Moira MacTaggert's care at Muir Island. The trauma, possibly in conjunction with his powers, causes David to develop dissociative identity disorder, with each alter manifesting different mutant abilities.

The Karami alter, which manifested telepathic abilities, struggles for years to separate his consciousness from David's. In the process, Karami attempts to unify as many alters as he could, trying to end David's catatonic state. Some of the alters resist Karami, most notably Jack Wayne, a swaggering adventurer who was telekinetic, and Cyndi, a temperamental, rebellious girl who was pyrokinetic. Karami, Wayne, and Cyndi persist as David's most prominent alters.

During his time at Muir Island, David saves Moira and Wolfsbane from a fatal accident by accessing the telekinetic abilities of Jack Wayne. However, this allowed Wayne to take control of David's body and leave the island. The New Mutants track him down and convince Wayne to allow David to again assume control. Soon after, David is possessed by the Shadow King. Under the Shadow King's influence, David kills Destiny and destroys 2/3 of Muir island. When the X-Men and X-Factor defeat the Shadow King, David is left comatose.

Legion Quest/Age of Apocalypse

Years later, David awakens from his coma, believing his psyche to be fully healed. When he had killed Destiny, David had absorbed her psyche. Destiny gave David vague prophetic guidance about the great world that could exist "if only, years ago, Professor X had been given a real chance to fulfill his dream." David understood these words as a directive to travel back in time and kill Magneto, Xavier's greatest adversary, to allow Professor X to achieve the dream of human-mutant coexistence.

As the X-Men attempt to stop him, Legion travels twenty years into the past, accidentally taking the X-Men with him. When Legion attempts to kill Magneto, Xavier intervenes and is killed, erasing Legion from existence and creating the "Age of Apocalypse" timeline. Ultimately, Bishop repairs the timeline by enlisting the aid of the new reality's X-Men to travel back in time to the moment of Xavier's murder. Bishop confronts Legion, creating a psionic loop that shows him the damage that his actions would cause. David allows the energy to incinerate him, in his last moments apologizing for what he had done.

Return

It is later revealed that David was transported to Otherplace, a timeless interdimensional limbo, and manifested thousands of alternate personalities. David wanders through Otherplace for an untold period of time, trying to return home. Magik, a mutant able to travel across dimensions, contacts one of David's alters, "The Legion," who can alter reality at a cosmic scale. Magik offers to guide Legion back to this dimension, provided that The Legion would aid her by destroying her nemeses, the Elder Gods.

David re-manifests in the physical world, although his primary personality has been imprisoned in his mindscape by his other alters, allowing the more malicious alters to control his body. One of these alters kills and absorbs the mind of a young girl, Marci Sobol, who becomes another alter within Legion. Legion battles the X-Men until Karma and Magik help him regain control of his body. Afterwards, he is placed in the care of Professor X, Doctor Nemesis, Danger, and Rogue.

Weeks later, Magik brings the Elder Gods to Earth and causes catastrophic destruction across the world. Karma awakens The Legion to fulfill its bargain, erasing the Gods from existence and resetting the world to before they had manifested. After this, David is taken back into the care and treatment of the X-Men.

Age of X

Believing that David's psyche would be healed if his alters were quarantined, Doctor Nemesis begins to catalog and contain these alters within David's mind. Unbeknownst to Doctor Nemesis and Professor X, David's mind subconsciously perceives this intervention as a threat and creates a "psychic antibody," a powerful new personality, to defend itself. The new personality has a degree of David's underlying ability to alter reality and time. Assuming the appearance of Moira McTaggert, the personality attempts to 'protect' Legion from the 'assault' on his mind by creating a pocket reality where Legion was the hero that he always wanted to be.

The alternate pocket reality, the Age of X, is a dystopia in which mutants are nearly hunted to extinction; the remaining mutants are kept alive by Legion's mutant team, the Force Warriors, who create a force wall to repel attacking human forces. Legion remains unaware that one of his personalities had created this world, and most of the mutants who had been brought into the reality by 'Moira' believed that they had always been there. After learning the truth, Legion speaks to 'Moira,' who offers to create as many universes for him as he wanted. Instead, David absorbs 'Moira' and erases the Age of X reality, restoring its inhabitants to Earth-616.

Lost Legions

With the Age of X incident underscoring the potentially apocalyptic scope of David's power, Professor X proposes a new approach to help Legion retain control of himself. Instead of isolating David from his alters, Professor X suggests that he learn to co-exist with them. To this end, Doctor Nemesis, Madison Jeffries, and Reed Richards designs a wristband that allows David to access the powers of his alternate selves without being controlled by them. However, this caused six of his alters to escape his mind. While tracking down and re-absorbing the alters, David accidentally absorbs Rogue and suffers severe nervous damage after releasing her time.

The Fiend

To aid his recovery, Professor X leaves David with Merzah, a powerful empath and telepath who ran a Himalayan monastery. While at the monastery, David gained much greater control of himself, and he stops using the wristband. Under Merzah's tutelage, David creates a facility in his mind where his alters are kept and controlled. While David is at the monastery, Professor X is killed. When Legion senses this, the mental shock causes a catastrophic release of energy that kills Merzah and everyone else at the monastery. David, reaching the full extent of his powers, erases himself from existence.

Trauma

For unknown reasons, David survives. His mind is again fragmented into many alters, including a malicious new alter, Lord Trauma. Lord Trauma aimed to take over David's mind and body by absorbing all of David's other alters. In a desperate attempt to save himself, David seeks out the help of psychotherapist Hannah Jones. While Jones was ultimately able to help Legion defeat Trauma, she remained trapped in David's psyche, while her body is in a vegetative state. To thank Jones, Legion places her psyche into a dream state where she achieves her biggest goals.

X-Men Dissassembled

As the X-Men race around the globe to fight the temporal anomalies that have been springing up and to corral the hundreds of Jamie Madrox duplicates wreaking havoc, Legion arrives at the X-Mansion, seemingly in control of his powers and psyche. While the young X-Men try to ascertain what he wants, elsewhere Jean Grey and Psylocke team up to psychically purge whatever force is controlling the army of Madrox duplicates. Finding the prime Madrox imprisoned below the area where the army of duplicates are congregating, he explains that Legion imprisoned him and implanted his alters and powers into the hundreds of duplicates. However, with his control broken, Legion goes berserk in the mansion, attacking the young X-Men and ranting about a vision of the future. The rest of the X-Men arrive to help but Legion singlehandedly takes on the whole team until he and Jean Grey go head-to-head. Legion then explains that he is trying to prevent a vision of the future – the arrival of the Horsemen of Salvation – but just as Legion mentions them, the Horsemen arrive.

Reign of X

After the X-Men establish Krakoa as a mutant nation, Legion is captured by members of Orchis, who create a psychic weapon that they use to manipulate Krakoa's mutants. After rescuing Legion, Nightcrawler learns that the weapon is a restored Onslaught.

After the Hellfire Gala, Legion joins the Scarlet Witch and Proteus in enhancing Cerebro. They give it the ability to copy the minds of mutants who died prior to its creation and potential mutants who died before their X-Gene activated, enabling them to be resurrected.

Powers and abilities

Legion is an Omega-level mutant who has dissociative identity disorder. Fundamentally, he has the ability to alter reality and time on a cosmic scale at will, but due to his multiple personalities, in practice his abilities vary depending on the dominant personality: each alter has different powers enabled by David's subconscious manipulation of reality. The core personality, David Haller himself, generally does not manifest mutant abilities, but must access various personalities to use their power, sometimes losing control of himself to that personality. Some of Legion's personalities physically transform his body (e.g., manifesting a prehensile tongue, becoming a woman, transforming into a werewolf, etc.). The first alter to manifest, Jemail Karami, was telepathic. Other prominent alters include Jack Wayne (telekinetic) and Cyndi (pyrokinetic). Legion has over a thousand different personalities (the exact number is unknown), and his mind can create additional alters in response to external or internal events.

The cumulative abilities of all his personalities make him one of the most powerful mutants in existence, if not the most powerful. Since the abilities of his personalities stem from his subconscious alteration of reality, Legion is theoretically capable of manifesting any power imaginable.

Legion can absorb other people's psyches into his mind, either intentionally or, if he is next to them when they die, unintentionally. Conversely, in several instances Legion has had personalities manifest and act separately from him (or even against him) in the physical world; in most instances Legion has ultimately reabsorbed these personalities back into himself. Presumably, both his absorption of other psyches and the physical manifestations of his own personalities are enabled by Legion's underlying ability to alter reality/time at will.

Generally, David's ability to access and control his personalities/powers is closely tied to his self confidence and self esteem: the better he feels about himself, the more control he exercises. Unfortunately, David often suffers from self-doubt and self-recrimination, meaning that he must struggle to remain in control.

Personalities

The following characters are different personalities of Legion that have appeared thus far, each one manifesting different powers:

Jemail Karami (Personality #2) is a terrorist with telepathic abilities.

Jack Wayne (Personality #3) is a roustabout adventurer who possesses telekinesis. This personality was often quite dangerous and would not hesitate to hurt or kill others if it would allow him to remain independent/free from David's control. Jack Wayne was later subsumed by the personality Lord Trauma.

Cyndi (Personality #4) is a rebellious girl who possesses pyrokinesis. This personality of Legion has a crush on Cypher.

The Legion (Personality #5, which claims to be Legion's "real me") can warp time and reality. Magik nicknamed this personality the "God-Mutant."

Sally (Personality #67) is an obese woman who possesses immense strength.

Lucas (Personality #115) can channel sound into energy blasts.

Personality #181 can enlarge himself to an undetermined size. This was the first power Legion utilized with the Neural Switchboard Wristband.

Johnny Gomorrah (Personality #186) can transmute objects into salt.

Time-Sink (Personality #227) can manipulate time. This rebellious personality was able to become independent from David but was eventually found and reabsorbed by David. David was ultimately forced to stop using Time-Sink's powers because when David tried to access the personality, it would always fight to get back its freedom.

Personality #302 can move at supersonic speeds.

Equipment

Following the Age of X, David briefly used a Neural Switchboard Wristband engineered by Doctor Nemesis, Madison Jeffries, and Reed Richards. This device allowed Legion to utilize a personality's power set for several seconds without being overwhelmed by that personality. However, he soon abandoned this and attempted instead to develop a more organic control over his personalities.

Mentality

Legion has been described as having dissociative identity disorder. In his first appearance he was also described as autistic, however this diagnosis has not been used since.

Origin of name

Legion's name is derived from a passage in the Christian Bible (found in Mark 5 and Luke 8). In it, Jesus asks a man possessed by many evil spirits what his name is, to which the man replies "I am Legion, for we are many".

Reception

In 2014, Entertainment Weekly ranked Legion 21st in their "Let's rank every X-Man ever" list.

In 2018, Comic Book Resources (CBR) ranked Legion 14th in their "8 X-Men Kids Cooler Than Their Parents (And 7 Who Are Way Worse)" list, and 1st in their "20 Most Powerful Mutants From The '80s" list.

Other versions

Ultimate Marvel

The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of Proteus is a composite character with elements of Legion. This version is David Xavier, the son of Moira MacTaggert and Charles Xavier.

Ultimate Universe

An alternate universe version of David Haller from Earth-6160 appears in Ultimate Wolverine. This version was killed in a landslide alongside his mother Gabrielle Haller and transferred his consciousness into computer code. Sometime later, Beast found David's consciousness in cyberspace and convinced his personalities to work together. David's consciousness was placed in the Opposition's network, where his personalities worked together as "The One" to treat psychological issues.

In other media

Television

Legion via David, Lucas, and an original personality named Ian, a young mute boy with pyrokinesis, appears in the X-Men: Evolution episode "Sins of the Son", voiced by Kyle Labine. This version's body transforms to reflect the personality controlling him. Additionally, due to the series' younger target audience, his connection to Professor X is toned down.

A character partially based on Legion named Takeo Sasaki appears in Marvel Anime: X-Men, voiced by Atsushi Abe in the Japanese version and by Steve Staley in the English dub. Similarly to Legion, Takeo is the son of Professor X. Additionally, while Legion himself does not appear, he is stated to be responsible for creating "Demon-Hall Syndrome", a mutant affliction that manifests secondary mutations, such as multiple personalities, uncontrolled physical mutations, and psychological instability.

David Haller / Legion appears in Legion, portrayed by Dan Stevens as an adult; Tobias Austen and Noah Hegglin Houben as an infant; Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez as a toddler, Christian Convery, Luke Rosseler, and Jacob Hoppenbrouwer in different stages of his childhood; and Alex Mulgrew as a teenager. This version was diagnosed with schizophrenia instead of dissociative identity disorder whose reality-warping abilities are often confused with psionic abilities such as telepathy and telekinesis. Throughout the first season, he enters a relationship with body-swapping mutant Sydney Barrett and discovers the Shadow King has lived in his mind since childhood before the latter possesses another psychic mutant named Oliver Bird. In the second season, David pursues the Shadow King, only to join forces with him to avert a future plague and become more psychopathic. In the third season, David starts a cult and recruits a mutant with time-traveling capabilities called Switch to help him warn his parents Professor X and Gabrielle Haller. However, he puts his mother into a catatonic state. Eventually, he confronts his father before attempting to kill the Shadow King for ruining his life, but reconciles with him instead, creating a new timeline in the process.

Additionally, an alternate reality version of David resembling his comic book counterpart appears in the episode "Chapter 18", also portrayed by Stevens.

Collected editions

Solo series

X-Men Legacy volumes 1–4 were rereleased as Legion: Son of X volumes 1–4 in 2018.