FX's 'Legion' Series Still Won't Connect To The X-Men Movies, But A Different Mutant Series Will

We're just a few weeks away from FX unleashing their new comic book series Legion. The new TV show follows David (Dan Stevens), a man who has been schizophrenic since he was a child, being placed in and out of psychiatric hospitals. While David and all those around him have presumed that he's merely mentally ill, the realization soon begins to set in that all of these voices and visions in his head may be a result of him being a mutant.

Legion is based on a Marvel Comics title where David is the son of Professor Charles Xavier, and since it involves mutants in general, fans have been wondering how/if the series will connect to the X-Men movies. Unfortunately, for those hoping for some kind of connective tissue, it has been further confirmed that Legion will exist in its own universe. However, the good news is that another X-Men television series in development at FOX will not be so separated from the X-Men franchise.

Find out more about Legion and the new X-Men TV series in the works after the jump.

IGN recently had the opportunity to sit down with X-Men franchise producer Laura Shuler Donner, who is also working on Legion at FX, and they asked whether the show would ever explore David's parentage. Here's what she had to say:

Probably the driving mystery is, yes, who is David? But not in that sense. It's more, 'Is David schizophrenic? Is he crazy? Or does he have powers?' That is the mystery. 'Who is David?' We just don't want to get into the Xavier world, because that's not what this show is about.

Since that response didn't give the answer they were hoping for (even though it's been answered several times previously over the past year), the next question was more direct when they asked if the series takes place in the continuity of the X-Men films. That's when Donner flat out said:

We're making it separate. We're our own world.

So again, don't expect any references to mutants you know or anything like that. Honestly, since the X-Men timeline is so convoluted and complicated, it's probably best that this series ventures out on its own. That means it won't be beholden to any rule established in the movies or anything like that. It should make this series even more interesting to watch.

However, for those hoping to get more mutant action on the small screen with some connective tissue to the larger X-Men universe, we have good news.

For those who haven't heard, Burn Notice creator Matt Nix is working on a different X-Men related TV series for FOX. Details have been pretty scarce on the series, but producer Laura Shuler Donner had some new information to offer, indicating that the series will feel more part of the X-Men film universe:

Matt's [series] is much more a part of just the world in terms of there are mutants, mutants are hated and there are Sentinels — though very different from what we've seen before. You feel like you're here in the X-Men world.

So unlike Legion, where the government knows about mutants but the general public doesn't, this untitled X-Men series will have people not only knowing about mutants, but hating them. And if there are sentinels, then there's clearly some sort of initiative to hunt them down in the works. That raises the question as to when in the X-Men timeline the series would take place. Presumably, it would need to be somewhere in the X-Men: Days of Future Past timeline, but exactly when remains to be seen.

As for what the show is about, the rumor right now is that it focuses on two parents, who don't have any mutant powers, trying to protect their mutant children from the government. That will likely mean trying to find other mutants to help them out, but that's just speculation on our part.

Even though this developing series (which hasn't been greenlit by FOX yet) sounds like it will take place in the X-Men universe, it's very unlikely that any mutants we're familiar with will be part of the show. But the use of sentinels in a network television program is interesting since that would presumably be a rather expensive endeavor. Maybe Donner's talk about how the sentinels will be different means they will be smaller, so as not to cost so much in the visual effects department. Or maybe they'll be more like androids so they can resemble humans and also be inexpensive. We're not sure.

Either way, it sounds like Fox is really doubling down on how they use the X-Men comics library that they have at their disposal, so it should be interesting to see how these shows expand the world of X-Men in different ways on screen.