Wonder Woman actor hops to Marvel for FX’s Legion

Fresh off Wonder Woman, Saïd Taghmaoui will face off against Dan Stevens and Jean Smart as the elusive villain of Legion season 2.

It’s hard to imagine what Legion season 2 will look like. Season 1 of the FX drama was a trip, fusing the surreal visuals of A Clockwork Orange and Twin Peaks with an action-packed superhero narrative. The plot, such as it was, consisted of journeys into the protagonist David Haller’s volatile psyche. After a show ventures onto another plane of existence, where else can it possibly go?

Audiences at SDCC 2017 got a tantalizing tidbit of information. During the Legion panel Thursday night, showrunner Noah Hawley revealed that actor Saïd Taghmaoui will play the villainous Amahl Farouk.

Even though he played a pivotal role in season 1, Farouk never appeared onscreen. Known as the Shadow King, he is a parasite who feeds on hate and has potent psychic abilities. After a battle with David’s father, known to comics fans as Charles Xavier or Professor X, left him weakened, he survived by inhabiting people’s bodies. So far, we have seen him mostly in the guise of Lenny, David’s fellow drug addict and psychiatric hospital inmate played by Aubrey Plaza. In the finale, the Summerland team exorcised Farouk from David, only for him to relocate to Jermaine Clement’s Oliver Bird. We last saw them literally driving off into the sunset.

For season 2, evidently, Farouk manifests as his true self. According to FX, his true self is “always nattily dressed,” has a “thin Clark Gable-style mustache”, and was “hip long before there was such an idea”. The description doesn’t exactly scream “super-villain,” but as Lenny demonstrated, cool appearances can be deceiving.

Right now, we can’t imagine Taghmaoui as the embodiment of evil. The France-born actor is fresh off his role in Patty Jenkins’s blockbuster Wonder Woman. Although Gal Gadot was the film’s indisputable breakout, she received able support from a dynamic ensemble, including Taghmaoui as Sameer, a secret agent who guides Diana and Steve Trevor to the WWI battleground. He made the line “I’m both frightened and aroused” seem genuinely charming.

His previous credits include the 1995 French film La Haine, David O. Russell’s Three Kings, and four episodes of Lost.

Legion offers him an opportunity to do something different. Even more than its trippy imagery and slick soundtrack, what made season 1 so immersive was its cast. From Dan Stevens to Amber Midthunder, each actor brought vivid life to his or her character, relishing the playful dialogue and general weirdness. Plus, Fargo shows that Hawley has a knack for creating complex, unconventional antagonists. Needless to say, we can’t wait to see Taghmaoui flex his acting muscles.

Legion season 2 is scheduled to air in spring 2018 and will run 10 episodes.

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