FX’s upcoming X-Men spin-off series Legion doesn’t look like any other superhero show. Part of that is because it comes from Fargo’s Noah Hawley, who has already proven he can do something special with TV shows that are kind of based on movies, and in anticipation of the show’s premieres in February, Hawley has started revealing a little bit more about the show’s world and how it fits in with the X-Men series.
Hawley already confirmed back in October that the series will retain the backstory that protagonist David Haller has in the comics—he’s the son of Charles Xavier—but in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hawley suggests that he’s not really rushing to get to any proper crossovers with the movies. “I’m a firm believer that the show has to stand on its own two feet,” he says, adding that a crossover would only be justifiable once they “earn that right through the quality of our storytelling and hopefully our popularity.”
Regarding the show’s setting—specifically the time period it takes place in—Hawley says he wrote the script assuming it would all happen in the present day, but once they started putting things together he realized that it doesn’t really take place in reality, it takes place in David Haller’s interpretation of reality. This angle allows the show to do fun stuff with retro and futuristic elements, with Hawley specifically noting that there are very few cars in the entirety of the show’s first season because “cars really date something.”
Entertainment Weekly also asked bout tropes of the superhero genre, specifically asking if anyone will wear a cape. It’s an odd question, since very few X-Men characters traditionally wear capes, but Hawley says he’s not totally opposed to the idea of capes and that “there might be like a count or Visigoth with a cape” on the show. Regarding another superhero trope, he says there’s never going to be a big superhero battle where good guys fight bad guys, because he didn’t want the story to end by saying that “might makes right.”
Legion premieres on FX on February 8.