Noah Hawley's Underrated Masterpiece: A Terrifying X-Men Series

Noah Hawley has been getting a lot of flowers for his work on Alien: Earth, but he made a much scarier show called Legion, and it’s still criminally underrated. Since he reimagined Fargo as an anthology series in 2014, Hawley has become one of the most prolific TV creators in Hollywood.

Whenever FX has a hot new I.P. on its hands, they take it straight to Hawley. If he can satisfy fans with a TV reboot of a Coen brothers masterpiece, he can pretty much make any property work on television. Hawley proved that again recently with the blockbuster success of his Alien series.

But I found Alien: Earth to be a mixed bag. There are some terrific performances, particularly by Sydney Chandler and Timothy Olyphant, and the series effectively recaptured the used-future aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s original film. But it just wasn’t very scary. The xenomorphs went buck wild — it just looked goofy — and the other CG monsters fell far short of the horrors designed by H.R. Giger.

Hawley actually made a much scarier show back in 2017. After he’d created Fargo but before he created Alien: Earth, Hawley put his stamp on a different franchise altogether: X-Men. But Hawley’s X-Men series is worlds apart from the colorful cartoon that most people associate with Marvel’s mutants. It’s a terrifying odyssey into a fractured human psyche.

Legion Is More Of A Mind-Bending Psychological Thriller Than A Superhero Show

Legion is technically a superhero show — it’s based on characters from Marvel Comics, and the main characters have superpowers — but it’s not exactly what you’d expect from a superhero show. It’s more of a mind-bending psychological thriller than a typical comic book actioner. It’s much closer to Fight Club or American Psycho than it is to Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Dan Stevens stars as David Haller, a mutant who was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age and spent his whole life going in and out of various psychiatric hospitals. When we meet him in the pilot episode, he’s being hunted by a government agency called Division 3, but before they can get to him, he’s picked up by a plucky resistance group.

Legion Is Much Scarier Than Alien: Earth

Alien: Earth had a couple of scary moments. Any time the xenomorph looms over someone, salivating before making its move, it’s bound to send a chill up your spine. It rehashes the original 1979 scare with Harry Dean Stanton, but it’s almost always effective. The series’ directors did a good job of building a tense atmosphere, even if the payoffs weren’t always worth it.

But on the whole, it wasn’t a particularly scary show. Scott knew that to truly horrify his audience, he couldn’t overexpose the xenomorph. But Alien: Earth puts the xenos on-screen every chance it gets, so they lose all their impact. Plus, it removes their cunning ability to sneak up on people and just has them thrashing around like a gorilla.

The horror aspects of Alien: Earth were especially disappointing, because Hawley already proved he can do horror beautifully in Legion. Legion is a much scarier show than Alien: Earth. David is an unreliable narrator, so the series is constantly messing with your head, gaslighting you into thinking that what you’re seeing is really happening.

When he wrote and directed the pilot episode, Hawley made the ingenious choice to shoot the series from David’s warped perspective of reality. It’s a uniquely surrealist approach to the superhero genre. The entire show is a dreamlike experience, almost like a David Lynch movie, with plenty of disturbing non-sequiturs and shocking twists.

Alien: Earth Works Better As Straightforward Science Fiction Than Horror

Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh looking suspiciously at something in Alien: Earth season 1 episode 8

Similar to It: Welcome to Derry, Alien: Earth works as a TV series even if it doesn’t necessarily work as a horror show. Welcome to Derry is a 1960s suburban drama buried inside a Stephen King spinoff, and Alien: Earth is a curious science fiction experiment hidden behind the veneer of a haunted-house fright-fest.

The concept of putting a child’s consciousness into an adult android body is a little creepy at first, but you can certainly say it’s never been done before. The show’s dystopian, almost Blade Runner-esque look at a not-so-distant future ruled by trillionaires and their monolithic corporations is hauntingly plausible.

Legion Is Noah Hawley’s Most Underrated Show

Jean Smart standing in fire and smoke in Legion

Fargo and Alien: Earth are both massive hits that attracted an impressive fan base, but Legion never got its flowers. It was just as critically acclaimed as Hawley’s other shows, but it didn’t achieve the same popularity with audiences. It did well enough to sustain a quiet three-season run, at which point Hawley decided to end it, but it never set the world on fire.

If you didn’t find Alien: Earth scary enough, give Legion a watch. It’s a trippy odyssey exploring the disturbed mind of a traumatized psychic. The all-star supporting cast features Jean Smart, Aubrey Plaza, and a pre-Prey Amber Midthunder, all giving stellar performances alongside Stevens, who anchors the show with an uncanny mix of off-the-wall wackiness and everyman relatability.