He tries to find Farouk telepathically, using an amplification chamber created by scientist Cary Loudermilk to increase the range of his abilities, but instead relives a memory from the nightclub of a strange monk and a dance battle with Oliver and Lenny Busker.
David gives his girlfriend Syd Barrett a compass that will always lead her to him, and promises not to keep secrets from her, but does not tell her of the future version of her that sent the orb and told him to help Farouk find his body.
He regrets helping Farouk now that it caused loss of life, and convinces the Loudermilks to further enhance his abilities to try and contact Syd in the future.
Ptonomy attempts to look through her memories but finds them disturbed, and is forced to face a strange delusion within his own mind involving Admiral Fukyama.
Ptonomy's mind continues to be haunted by the delusion, seemingly planted by Farouk as a distraction, that Admiral Fukyama is secretly working against them.
Ptonomy plants this fear in the minds of Syd, the Loudermilks, and agent Clark Debussy, and they attack the android Vermillion who serve Fukyama.
In the Mainframe, Ptonomy sees how Fukyama was recruited as a teenager to become this machine so that Division 3 could hide secrets in his "mind" from mutant telepaths.
He also finds that the monk uploaded some of his memories to the Mainframe, including the location of Farouk's body; it is in Le Désolé, a constantly changing desert.
As part of his plan, David remotely releases Lenny from her cell and telepathically tells Clark to bring the "Choke" to the desert.
David insists that he is good and should not be punished for potential future actions, but they make him face the fact that he sexually assaulted Syd.
Hallucinating his alters in the room, David suddenly becomes fed up with the actions of his former allies, before he destroys and escapes the trap and teleports away with Lenny.
In June 2016, FX President John Landgraf said that Legion, if successful, could run for as many seasons as Hawley feels it needs to tell the story.
[20] At the end of that month, Hawley explained that he planned for the season to have ten episodes, and to focus more on the series' other characters in addition to David Haller.
[21] Hawley added that with the Shadow King reveal at the end of the first season, Haller can now blame "every bad thing he's ever done on the entity that's now gone, and now is thinking, 'I'm just a purely good person'... there's sort of a hubris to that.
"[28] Returning from the first season to star are Stevens as David Haller,[13] Rachel Keller as Sydney "Syd" Barrett,[14] Aubrey Plaza as Lenny Busker,[13] Bill Irwin as Cary Loudermilk, Jeremie Harris as Ptonomy Wallace, Amber Midthunder as Kerry Loudermilk, and Jean Smart as Melanie Bird.
[29][30] In November, during production on the season, Taghmaoui announced that he was no longer involved with the series, and FX confirmed that "a decision was made to recast" the role of Farouk.
Hamm agreed to take on the role,[28] and Hawley thought he gave the segments "such character", comparing the final performance to Rod Serling.
Notable changes include: Melanie Bird's style changing to comfort clothing to portray her mourning in Oliver Bird; Wallace's suits featuring more color and floral designs at times; Busker's swimsuits showing how the character is being used and abused by the Shadow King; and Farouk sporting three-piece suits.
[33] Haller's style becomes more British punk, drawing inspirations from Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten to portray a character coming from one mental institution to another.
The final version used in the series was recorded with a Neumann condenser microphone and then digitally manipulated to give it a "kind of eerie multilevel sound".
Because of the tendency for a government facility to become "unbearably sterile", Wylie looked to add depth to the sets with custom-made wall paper and complicated floor designs which did not go so far as to make the spaces feel personalized.
The Division 3 dining hall is based on Hawley's idea of a "sushi-go-round" restaurant but with the food on boats floating in water, with Wylie's final design labelled a "1970s Italian waterpark version".
Also built was Cary Loudermilk's "lair", the series' take on a traditional superhero lab, which includes an "amplification chamber" that is an homage to the machine Cerebro that appears in the comics and films.
[37] This was made possible when the show was awarded over $11 million in tax incentives by the California Film Commission under its "Program 2.0" initiative.
The season also continues to explore Haller's father, Charles Xavier, though Hawley was reluctant to confirm an appearance by one of the X-Men film actors (Patrick Stewart or James McAvoy) reprising that role for the show since he felt incorporating elements directly from the films "too quickly" was "cheating on some level", rather than telling his own standalone story first.
[21] Footage from the season debuted at the FX Television Critics Association panel in January 2018, introducing Negahban as Farouk in an announcement of his casting.
[50] A "blue carpet" premiere event was held for the season on April 2, at the Directors Guild of America headquarters in Los Angeles.
The website's critical consensus reads, "Legion returns with a smart, strange second season that settles into a straighter narrative without sacrificing its unique sensibilities.
"[58] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 85 out of 100 based on 10 critics for the season, indicating what the website considers to be "universal acclaim".
[59] For the 70th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Dana Gonzales received a nomination for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour) for the episode "Chapter 9".