Spoilers for the Season 2 premiere. To say that Legion is a weird show is an understatement. Weirdness and absurdity course through the very fabric of the show, resulting in some of the oddest images in the entire medium of television. Season 2 of Legion wastes no time introducing surreal new visuals in the form of the the mustached women. The mustached women of Legion Season 2 seem to be crucial to helping David Haller eliminate the threat of the Shadow King. But, like everything in Legion, their true origin and purpose is hard to pin down.
A lot has changed between Season 1 and Season 2 of Legion, and unfortunately David Haller hasn't been around to see these changes happen. After having been kidnapped by a flying metal orb of unknown origin in the Season 1 finale, David Haller has no memory of the year between the events of his kidnapping and his awakening. After being awakened by Ptonomy, David is informed that his former colleagues are now working to hunt down the Shadow King and is introduced to Admiral Fukuyama, a man who wears a basket on his head and speaks through a group of mysterious, mustachioed women who he seems to share a consciousness with. In a series famous for its odd, often inscrutable imagery, the sight of Admiral Fukuyama's setup and the women who speak for him is among the strangest. Odd as it may be, working with Fukuyama could be the only way to put an end to the Shadow King.
These women, who are listed in the Legion credits as "Vermillion," are a group of similar-looking women who all sport thick mustaches and identical bobbed hair, wearing skin-tight black bodysuits and glowing blue necklaces. The Vermillion speak for Fukuyama, and share a singular mind, trading off communications from one to another. The Vermillion offer an explanation for their and Fukuyama's unique circumstance, but don't provide much clarity. The Vermillion tell David, "Our mind cannot be read. When we were a boy, we had the machine put into our head. For days we screamed. The pain was in the volcano puncturing the molten core. The device buried deep in our cerebral cortex like nails from a bomb in a public place. Hardware inside software. And now we are this: the machine that bleeds. The organizing principle."
The self-described "machine that bleeds" has a penchant for presentation, but also has some practical knowledge regarding how to stop the Shadow King. The Vermillion reveal to David that the way to kill the Shadow King once and for all is to kill its mind and its physical form. Not the physical form of Oliver Bird — the man that The Shadow King is currently inhabiting — but the physical form of Amahl Farouk. David and company need to retrieve the Shadow King's body before the Shadow King does. "On its own the Shadow King's mind is powerful," the Vermillion say. "But were he is to rejoin his body, he would be unstoppable."
Admiral Fukuyama and the Vermillion are some of more eccentric personalities that David Haller has come to know over the course of Legion, and will likely be a major presence throughout all of Legion Season 2. Fukuyama's leadership seems to be a good sign for everyone who would like to have the Shadow King not bring about "the end of everything" that the Vermillion warn David about in the Legion Season 2 trailer. But their involvement could also provide some major complications. With the Shadow King infecting people's minds, getting a hive mind under his control could make the Shadow King an even more immediate threat to David and his fellow mutants.
