Is ‘Legion’s Admiral Fukuyama Secretly The Shadow King?

Admiral Fukuyama aka Admiral Fukyama on Legion

Here’s a crazy Legion theory for your Thursday: is Admiral Fukuyama secretly the Shadow King?

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with Season 2 of the trippy show, David Haller (Dan Stevens) and his plucky team of mutants are now working out of the headquarters of Division 3. The joint human-mutant taskforce is mostly working on eliminating the parasitic mutant known as The Shadow King, a.k.a. Amahl Faoruk (Navid Negahban).

Leading Division 3 is a cyborg named Admiral Fukuyama (sometimes misspelled as Admiral Fukyama). According to the Legion wiki, as a boy he had a machine planted in his brain that disfigured him, hence the basket over his head. He communicates through the Vermillion, three mustached androids who work as his mouth and eyes.

At the end of “Chapter 11” Fukuyama got mindjacked by the Mi-Go Monk, who left him twitching on the floor as the Monk talked through the Vermillion.

Prelude out of the way, let’s get into this!

The Case For Admiral Fukuyama Being The Shadow King

Here’s the deal, folks: we’ve got a mind without a body, and a body without a mind. Put the two together, and you’ve got a whole character.

Yes, you’ve got theater actor Marc Oka playing Admiral Fukuyama, and Navid Negahban playing Farouk. But Oka literally has a basket over his head, so ultimately he could turn out to be anybody. Literally, any body.

Also I’ll point you to our breakdown of the Mi-Go Monks for more of a connection between Fukuyama and Farouk. (You can also listen to an audio breakdown on our latest Legion podcast).

The short version is that Mi-go is a race created by H.P. Lovecraft. They would remove the brains from humans, and place them in “brain containers” in order to transport them from one universe to another. They would then hook those brains up to external devices so the people could still communicate. Sound familiar?

At the very least, there’s a connection between Fukuyama, the Mi-Go and the Vermillion we haven’t explored yet. At the most, the Mi-Go Order hid Farouk’s body, and then put a basket on his head and attached him to the Vermillion as a way of hiding the corpse.

It also would make a lot of sense that, since we know the Mi-Go Monk knew the location of Farouk’s body, he hid it in plain sight.

One last detail, and this is a biggie: as noticed by an intrepid Redditor, Admiral Fukuyama almost spells out Amahl Farouk.

Sure there are some difference there, but if you say the names out loud, they’re basically the same name.

The Case Against Admiral Fukuyama Being The Shadow King

Legion is never that obvious. The Reddit thread argues that “Admiral Fukuyama” rearranges — almost — as “I Am Amahl Farouk.” The key is “almost,” and there’s no reason to think such a blatant clue would be hidden in a show that likes to put mazes inside mazes.

Instead, it’s probable the characters are meant to parallel each other. A lot of time is spent exploring mental illness on the show. This season it’s all about delusions, and showing how our mind and body are often running an cross-purposes. Farouk illustrates that. Fukuyama illustrates that. So there’s every chance it’s just thematic, instead of a plot point.

Still, it would be a huge twist, so we’ll have to see what happens…

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