'Legion' recap: 'Chapter 16'

The race begins.

Believe it or not, there’s only a couple of episodes of this season of Legion left. Wow did that come fast.

“Chapter 16” — which is episode eight of the 11 this season — furthers the drama as both David and Farouk have begun their foot race to find Farouk’s body.

Ptonomy isn’t involved, though. His mind is still stuck inside the tree thing that they put him in the previous episode. While we still, really, have no idea what this place is other than it operates on some sort of binary code, Ptonomy goes exploring and learns a few important things.

First of all, he’s able to look inside the mind of bucket head. Seeing into his past, he sees that bucket head was, more or less, created so that the government could have an all-seeing eye that could also protect their treasured secrets.

On further exploring, Ptonomy then finds the Monk hiding out. Hiding out may be the wrong choice of words here — rather he’s strapped to a wall and looks pretty miserable.

The Monk does give Ptonomy some valuable information, though — he tells him where Farouk’s body is.

Ptonomy knows he has to get this information to David ASAP and, lucky for him, he manages to find a way. By tapping into the binary on the walls, Ptonomy is able to control one of those mustached people and tell David.

While confused at first, David eventually realizes who he’s talking to and what he’s being told: the body is in Le Désolé.

Unfortunately, at almost the exact same time, Farouk has learned the exact same information. He’s able to find out through that future car we saw him building in the last episode and the intel he gathered from Future Syd, leading him to a nice old lady who delivered his body to the monks all those years ago.

The race begins. Before leaving, David has to think out about who to approach this — he knows he can’t win one-on-one with Farouk, but he also can’t exactly tell anyone or else Farouk would know he’s after the body too.

Instead, David taps into the minds of Lenny, Clark and Cary and leaves them with some information that will be presented to them at a future time — you know, because he’s a mutant and all.

Farouk, somehow, managed to get a rickshaw in this race across the desert while David is stranded on foot. Not really sure how he managed to pull that one off or why David can’t just imagine a rickshaw of his own, but whatever.

Present Syd isn’t happy to find out that David left. In his defense, he left a note that said “Gone to kill the monster” this time, but that’s not good enough for her. After consulting with Clark, she decides to join him by parachuting into the middle of the desert.

Again, I’m confused at the whole logistics of this race — if she can fly a plane into this desert area, why can’t they just take a plane all the way to the monastery?

Then, things get really weird as David and Syd enter a tent and find two skeletons lying in it. The kicker is that the two skeletons are them, which they can tell by Syd’s necklace, from some other alternate reality.

Guess that version of David and Syd didn’t have a faster way to move across the desert either.

The real, alive David and Syd argue over what this means; Syd thinks it means their doomed to die together out here if they’re together, but David is holding on to the “love is what we have to save if we’re gonna save the world” idea that Syd introduced him to awhile back.

After a lot (and I mean A LOT) of walking/rickshaw montages, the episode ends with David’s plan beginning to play out — only to be ruined by Farouk.

On the plus side, David managed to break Lenny out and she gets to ride off on a motorcycle (don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be back). On the negative side, David planted some instructions inside Clark’s head, and while Clark begins to complete them he’s quickly knocked unconscious by Melanie.

Melanie, it turns out, is receiving messages from Oliver and is now under Farouk’s control. Makes sense, given how little Melanie has been in this season and how she’s in such a rut because of Oliver. In the final, terrifying shot, we get another glimpse of the minotaur creature that was inside Melanie’s mind in “Chapter 11.”

And I’m already having nightmares at the thought of that thing returning.

Check out the final three episodes of Legion on FX, and read our other Legion recaps by clicking here!