Lenny Busker

Ambiguity is the key to Legion’s nervy junkie

In the original scripts for Legion, Lenny Busker was written as a middle-aged man. Then showrunner Noah Hawley decided to offer the role to Aubrey Plaza, who is neither. She agreed on the condition that he didn’t rewrite the scripts to reflect her casting. The result was a male/female friendship that’s all too rare on TV; Lenny and David have a bond, but it’s an awkward, complex, edgy relationship that has nothing to do with will-they-won’tthey sexual chemistry.

Lenny’s death halfway through the first episode pushes them even closer together – she seems to live on as a figment of David’s fractured psyche, his only confidante in a world where he can trust nobody. Plaza’s comic brilliance was well established in Parks & Recreation, but as Lenny she couples it with a nervy unpredictability. You don’t know what she’s going to do, you just know it will be good.

The obvious way to develop Lenny’s storyline would have been to reveal that she was just a mask used by Farouk to manipulate David, and that the real Lenny died back in episode one. But Legion has never been about the obvious and Lenny is too good to waste, so instead we discover that her consciousness has been preserved by Farouk. The second season made us wait, initially confining Lenny to brief appearances as Farouk’s sidekick – but the waiting paid off in an entirely Lenny-centred fifth episode.

The trick with a character like Lenny is to keep her balanced between good and evil for maximum unpredictability, and in season two Legion has reset that balance. She’s been resurrected by Farouk, but there’s a grim twist to how it’s been done. Is Lenny free of him now? Please don’t take her off that knife-edge, Legion: we like her there. Eddie Robson