We Are Legion! Part III—The Fateful Legion Quest to the Age of Apocalypse

Some quests people embark on are definitely worthwhile. 

I mean, who can fault King Arthur and his knights for seeking out the Holy Grail? 

Or the Monotones trying to uncover the truth about who wrote the Book of Love?

But sometimes, some things are just better off left undone, and you have to hope that there will be a little voice inside your head that goes, “Whoa there, killer.  This whole notion you’re going off of?  Yeah.  Not cool.  Why don’t you head on home and make yourself a relaxing beverage?”

Or six.  Whichever.

Of course, when one of the little voices in your head also happens to be another personality that has a special ability of its own, I suppose all bets are off and that warm cup of "apple cider" is just going to have to wait until later.  

If there is a later, that is.


That’s pretty much where Legion found himself once he awakened from the coma the Shadow King left him in during The Muir Island Saga.  Prior to his trip to sleepytime, Legion’s multiple personalities each struggled for dominance, each one possessing a different mutant power and poor David Haller being the sum of all of those parts in a mathematical equation that could only be Voice A + Voice B x Voices C-E = Batcrap Crazy.

I’m pretty sure Hawking proved that one.

But at the end of X-Factor #108, Legion woke up just in time to see Mystique trying to kill him for his role in the murder of her dearest friend, Destiny, years prior and one of the first things everyone realized about the newly up and around Legion was that he wasn’t schizophrenic any longer.

Sure, he was still insane, rambling about preserving his father Charles Xavier’s dream and destinies not yet written, but at least he was just David, so that was a start.  It didn’t make Mystique any more rational in dealing with him, however, and in X-Factor #109, he basically wished X-Factor into the cornfield and left Mystique by her lonesome while he set off to make things right…or at least his perception of right.

Luckily, he was making total sense…

And that kicked off Legion Quest, one of the boldest X-Men stories ever.  After the prologue in X-Factor #109, the tale ran briskly through Uncanny X-Men #320-321 and X-Men #40-41 with one tie in, Cable #20, and featured a now integrated Legion with a new power set, most notably the ability to travel through time.

His quest?  He felt slighted by his father and felt that the two of them and his mother would have been able to have a happy life together if only Xavier’s dream of human and mutant coexistence had been achieved.

His blame for the dream never coalescing?  Magneto.  Uh oh.

He didn’t exactly think this one through all the way…

Traveling back into the past, to a time where Magneto and Xavier were still friends well before the X-Men were formed, Legion sought to take Magneto off the board, reasoning that if Magneto hadn’t been there to challenge Xavier so often, then more time would have been there for him and his mother.  It was tragically sentimental as far as motives go, and it went just as tragically awry.

See, Legion hadn’t taken into account just how close Xavier and Magneto were back then and when he was prepared to deliver the killing blow—despite the efforts of Storm, Iceman, Psylocke and Bishop who had been caught in his powers and went back in time with him—Xavier intervened and took the hit, resulting in a time paradox in which Legion killed his father before his own conception, shredding reality in the process.

This was actually the original ending to Back to the Future; it didn’t test well.

Thus, was the Age of Apocalypse born, a timeline in which Apocalypse rose to power and the world was in perpetual war, the doomsday clock seconds from midnight because Xavier had never lived to form the X-Men to challenge him.

Luckily, Magneto took up the call to arms, but it took a timelost Bishop to convince the reality’s inhabitants to help him set things right and overthrow Apocalypse.

The Age of Apocalypse is often remembered as one of the greatest crossovers in recent Marvel history, but it’s just as often forgotten that it was precipitated by the heartbreak and loss of a lonely child who just wanted his father to love him.  Legion wasn’t evil, but his actions helped set into motion events that lasted for decades, including the incursion of Age of Apocalypse refugees like Sugar Man, Dark Beast and X-Man into our reality, and a later jaunt back to that timeline where Warren Worthington III, Archangel, was erased as a being, replaced by a new entity altogether during The Dark Angel Saga in Uncanny X-Force.

All the kid wanted was to be loved and noticed.  And all of reality nearly paid the price.  Now, with Xavier dead and Legion starring in X-Men: Legacy, who knows how far he’ll go and if anyone can stop him once he gets an itch to go questing again..?

I totally wouldn’t bring up the hair thing again.  Just sayin’.