Simon Abrams

“Villains often think they’re the heroes of their own stories,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “Their need for power often comes from their having been hurt, which, to them, justifies their actions.”

“There’s always a moment on the show where the worst person says ‘I’m the victim here,’ ” he added.

A variation on that moment happened last year in the Season 2 finale of “Legion”: The emotionally unstable mutant David Haller (Dan Stevens) raped his girlfriend Syd (Rachel Keller) after he used his reality-warping superpowers to erase her short-term memory. When Syd confronts him, David defends himself by insisting that “I’m a good person; I deserve love.”

David’s shocking heel turn is especially disturbing because he is a Marvel superhero — in addition to being the biological son of the X-Men founder Charles Xavier, David fights misanthropic villains in comic books like The New Mutants and X-Factor.

Hawley continues exploring David’s dark path from victim to bully in the third season of “Legion,” premiering Monday on FX. The new season is also the final one, wrapping up a series that, with its expressive musical numbers, intricate flashbacks and other unconventional narrative and aesthetic elements, has been one of the most innovative and psychologically complex superhero screen adaptations.

The New York Times spoke with Hawley about how he turned an iconic hero’s son into a vicious antihero. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: David’s rape of Syd completely shifts our understanding of his character and the direction of the story. Did you plot out the “Legion” narrative one season at a time, like with “Fargo”?

A: I need to know how the story ends so that I know what it means. From the very beginning, I had an arc in mind that answered the question: Does David have a mental illness or does he have superpowers? By the end of Season 2, we realize that it’s not either/or: He’s unstable and has powers. David sees himself as a victim, and that warps his understanding of responsibility and what he needs to do to be a good person.

Q: Were there any themes or plot points that you had trouble clearing with Marvel?

A: No. I never got a note from Marvel saying “We don’t think you should do this,” or “We’re worried about the brand.” I came in from left field through FX. And because of Marvel’s deal with Fox, Marvel didn’t have a lot of control over whether we could do the show at FX or not. I thought that they might want more control, content-wise, since “Legion” didn’t really fit into their larger brand’s message. But that’s not what happened at all.

Q: Did you have any discussions with Marvel about including Charles Xavier? He’s featured prominently in flashbacks in Season 3.

A: The things I wanted to do with him didn’t offend them. But it’s been a dance over the last couple of years about using him, first with 20th Century Fox, the studio that made the X-Men movies. 20th Century Fox was initially very protective of the X-Men and didn’t want Xavier to be overexposed. During our first year, Fox said we could show his wheelchair, but we couldn’t show his bald head.

But at the end of the day, “Legion” is a story about David, a character who was abandoned by his biological parents. So there was no way we weren’t going to include Xavier. Eventually, Fox relented and let us put him in our story.

Q: You’ve said before that you sometimes get notes from studio executives to “clarify” certain story elements. What, generally speaking, needed to be clarified?

A: I do think that there is an impulse, in reading any show’s scripts, to try to logically understand the story in a linear way. But while “Legion’s” story is not meant to be confusing, it is designed to be told from its characters’ points of view. So if David is confused, then you’re going to be confused. And when he gets clarity, you’ll get clarity.

I did have a conversation with FX at one point, because the script for a show like “Legion” can only tell you so much. I asked them: “When you have a script for “Atlanta,” can you tell from that script exactly what the episode is going to be like?” They can’t, because so much of that show is about the space between the script’s lines.

With that said, I’ve never had trust issues with FX. If they’re confused by something, they will ask. And at the end of the day, I got to make “Legion” the way that I wanted to make it.

Also, I’m OK if (viewers) are confused about the right things. I just don’t want them to be confused about things that I don’t want them to focus on.

Q: The musical numbers, like the duet version of “Behind Blue Eyes” in the Season 2 finale, emphasize the subjective nature of the story. Is that the main reason you use them?

A: A song, in a classical musical, allows characters to speak their inner truth in a way that’s not just expository, but also feels like a genuine expression of their selves. You can do so much more with a dance than with a fight. A fight is binary: Either you win, or I win. But a dance is not just a battle — it’s also about peacocking and seduction. So in these musical numbers, we’re trying to get deeper inside the characters not as a gimmick, but as a shortcut to something unexpected and with greater impact than, say, an emotional speech about redemption.

Q: A lot of the show’s male characters either want to take charge or refashion the world in their image. Is it fair to say that “Legion” is about the perpetuation of male-dominated narratives?

A: The show is certainly an exploration of masculinity and ideas of who the “hero” is. The hero is often a man in literature and films. These stories are also often told from a very male point-of-view; they’re often about how might makes right and how war is the only way to solve a conflict. I have a 6-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter and everything is conflict-oriented with him. Everything is like, “This could be turned into a gun.” We certainly don’t raise him that way, but he has this testosterone energy that, if left unchecked, is not healthy. So I do think David has a sense of entitlement in terms of what he thinks the world owes him. If he were a woman, he might not have those expectations.

Q: What would you say to a viewer who, after seeing what’s happened to Syd and the way David treated her, wants to know why the show is still primarily about him and not her?

A: I don’t see “Legion" as being entirely David’s show. In this last season, I think we pivoted away from a more traditional male narrative, after David did something that we can’t morally tolerate. We opened “Legion’s” story up to strong women played by Lauren Tsai, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza and Amber Midthunder.

Also: While the superhero genre isn’t entirely a “male” genre, it is still consumed by a lot of boys between the ages of 13 and 18. And if we don’t have these stories about power — and the way that men use power to, on a human level, do evil to women — I think we’re doing those readers a disservice. I do think “Legion” shifted its focus — I hope successfully — so that it changes who we think of as the show’s protagonists.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/arts/television/legion-season-3-fx.html" id="23150f38-083b-3e5a-a7a9-779780327f5c">The New York Times</a>.

'Legion' picks up the pieces of a shattering twist

Noah Hawley, the creator of the neo-noir anthology crime series “Fargo” and the bold Marvel adaptation “Legion,” doesn’t think in terms of heroes and villains. Most of his protagonists are both.

<h1>This is thanks mostly to his tenure as the frontman of the proto-punk band the Stooges, but also because his reckless, sui generis stage presence embodied a gleeful but slightly scary abandon that became synonymous with the genre.</h1>

His presence looms over “Punk,” a four-part documentary series about the fashion, politics and musical influences that defined punk rock, which debuted this week on Epix.

Osterberg (credited as Iggy Pop) is an executive producer of the series, along with fashion designer John Varvatos — which might raise eyebrows given that Varvatos put what some would say was the final nail in punk’s coffin in 2007 by buying CBGB, the hallowed punk club at 315 Bowery, and replacing it with one of his boutiques.

In a phone interview, Osterberg defended Varvatos and also discussed the Sex Pistols, drugs and his favorite music critics. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Punk, in its original form, was nothing if not iconoclastic. How do you feel when critics, fans or other musicians call you the “Godfather of Punk”?

Once it gets into reverence, does that bother me?

I was, initially, but now I don’t mind being called “Godfather of Punk”; I suppose I’ve grown into the suit! There are occasional personal feelings that come from one-on-one interactions, when someone lets me know something genuine about the role that my work played in their life. When any type of music is still enjoying its vitality — that’s a social influence. And then, as people carry on that style and figure out how to further produce it, the style becomes academic, by really imperceptible steps.

Even in country music: There is a hell of a big stretch going from Hank Williams to Garth Brooks, buddy! That process of change happens in all genres. Rock ‘n’ roll sort of took a beating and is now basically irrelevant, because it got mined to death. But whatever anybody wants to call me is OK. I’ve been called worse things than the “Godfather of Punk”!

You’ve said that the Sex Pistols were honest with their fans because they always told their fans that they shouldn’t be trusted.

I said “They always thought they were honest.” I don’t remember applauding anybody for saying “Don’t trust me.” I was much more impressed with their onstage ability than whether they were swindled out of thousands of dollars by their manager [Malcolm McLaren]. I just don’t care. But that doesn’t mean [McLaren] was not an effective Barnum-type showman. He was, you know? And that’s fine.

The group, as a whole, had a lot of flair. Johnny Lydon is very good at the things you’re supposed to be good at when you front a group. And [guitarist Steve Jones] was a really good foil for Johnny, especially when it came to doing publicity. Everybody contributed something musically, or in terms of image, to the group.

In “Punk,” the deaths of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen are presented as examples of how drugs essentially killed the punk movement.

There was a lot of that stuff around the music business as I experienced it, as a punky type. And it was the hard stuff, so there was always a price to be paid. LSD and marijuana were the stuff being pushed in 1966 and 1967. And taking those drugs has a way of breaking down some barriers that people need to hold themselves together. But while those barriers are being broken down, you also get insights about life and the world around you, especially if you’ve grown up as a milk-fed American lamb to the slaughter, as we all were when we were told, “Go to Vietnam, but don’t ask why.” All that.

Cocaine came in next. And it seemed like a good drug because, after a while, the weed and the LSD weren’t doing it anymore. Some people were getting into speed, but cocaine was a more upscale stimulant that, in effect, kept the party going. Eventually, people’s nerves were shot, their patience had worn thin, and many turned to opioid drugs, as well as Valium and other soporifics. Those are very subtle, dangerous drugs.

Are there books or critics about either your music or punk music that you think are especially valuable?

Lester Bangs and Nick Kent are two people I can think of, off the top of my head. Both of them, in sort of a flailing, wild, highly subjective way. But why not! At least the two of them were treating what they write about like it’s actually important.

I read the stuff Lester Bangs wrote about me and thought: “Oh no, I’m a buffoon! But wait: I am a salient blowtorch of nihilism. Cool! Wait, am I cool or not? I’m not sure!” I have one of his books in hardback. I’ve had it for a long, long time. It’s sitting on the shelf along with “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” the collected works of Allen Ginsberg and a few other books. I look at their spines and think: “OK, this is what’s important!”

In “Punk,” you talk about your work without retrospectively judging yourself. What kind of questions were you asked and how did they make you feel?

I knew and had worked for John Varvatos before I accepted both the interview and the fairly basic responsibilities that come with being listed as an executive producer. He loves and is genuinely interested in music. I once saw, in one of his stores, a book about the 100 greatest rock albums or something; at the time, I was modeling for him, so I was picking up some free swag. The book was thoughtful; it was a work of “soulful commerce,” I would say. So I knew that was where this show’s interview questions were going to be coming from. Like, there would inevitably be questions like: “So, you became a junkie ... " and that sort of thing.

Whereas, a critic — who’s concerned with arcana and “pure art” — is going to have different questions. In those cases, you listen to the question and try to answer it inasmuch as it can be respected. And then you try to insert something of your own that has nothing to do with the question, so that you get in your own licks. You try to twist the thing over a little bit to your own point of view.

What would you say to people who remain outraged that CBGB was turned into a Varvatos boutique?

What would I say to people who think, “It all happened at CBGB, man”?There was something about that room that was conducive to a range of musical approaches that centered on a kind of detail-oriented, reference-oriented, intellectually-tinted art-rock. Like Talking Heads and many aspects of the Ramones, which was stylized in many ways. And Blondie, though that’s not as obvious in Blondie: [Lead singer Debbie Harry] seemed to learn how to sing out of nowhere. I don’t know how she could have done that without a club she could go to over and over while she was learning.

And then Patti Smith’s group, obviously, even though I think “The Piss Factory” was recorded in the Nightingale. That was a little dive bar, smaller than CBGB, where they kept sawdust on the floor because people were going to puke, pee and spit, right? But she was also playing at CBGB, too. You could develop in that room. It was small in a particular way.

Iggy pop is fine with being the godfather of punk

Over the years, the Michigan-born rocker James Osterberg Jr. — better known by his stage persona, Iggy Pop — has earned a reputation as “the Godfather of Punk.”

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Simon Abrams

Articles written by the author

'Legion' picks up the pieces of a shattering twist

Iggy pop is fine with being the godfather of punk