Rachel Keller Cast As Female Lead in Legion

Hold tight X-Men fans. There’s some forward progress on an X-Men TV show — or at least a series set in the mutants’ corner of the Marvel Universe.

We told you a while ago about Legion, one of two X-Men-related series in the works thanks to an agreement between Marvel and Fox. It’s also got some forward motion behind it now, thanks to Deadline reporting that Rachel Keller, currently enjoying the buzz from her performance on Fargo, had been cast as the female lead for the upcoming show.

Keller should be excellent, but her casting raises one big question: who exactly will she be playing? In the comics, the main female in the life of David Haller, the powerful but troubled mutant later known as Legion, is his mother, Gabrielle Haller. Keller is too young to be the mom of an adult male lead, unless it’s only in flashbacks, and the description of her character provided by Deadline’s sources makes it sound as if she’ll be a mutant as well.

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Figuring out which one would take more of an X-Men expert than yours truly, and it’s possible the Legion writers could invent from from whole cloth or create a composite of several different comic book characters.

(For the record, I highly doubt it will be Rogue, despite the sources mentioning touch-based powers, as my educated guess would be that Fox will avoid using mutants we’ve seen in the X-Men movies.)

That’s a mystery that will be revealed in time, doubtless before Legion actually hits the air. Expect more casting news to follow relatively quickly, as Legion revs up to join the FX lineup in the next year or so.