FX orders ‘X-Men’ drama ‘Legion’ featuring ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Parks and Recreation’ alum

This past weekend, fans of the “X-Men” franchise got a good taste of many of their favorite characters courtesy of the new “Apocalypse” feature film; now, we’re getting a chance to see precisely what happens when it comes to TV.

Today, the network confirmed that they have picked up “Legion” to series, and that it will premiere at some point in 2017. Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey” fame is starring as David Haller, a complicated man who in the comics, is the son of Charles Xavier. It’s hard to know just how faithful this show is going to be to the source material given that we are still so far out, but Jean Smart and Rachel Keller of “Fargo” fame are joining Stevens on the show; the same goes for Aubry Plaza of “Parks and Recreation” fame.

Frequent “X-Men” film director Bryan Singer is on board the show as an executive-producer, and the same exact thing goes for “Fargo’s” own Noah Hawley. What we are trying to say here is that there is clearly a nice array of talent on board, so you’ve got plenty of reasons and then some to believe that this show will turn into something special. With that, let’s just hope that it lives up to the billing we’re starting to get for it in our head.

Hopefully, “Legion” will also do enough to justify its existence in what is an incredibly crowded field of superhero TV shows right now. After all, you’ve got four DC Comics shows airing over on The CW, while ABC still has “Agents of SHIELD” and Netflix has everything that is going on with their universe at present.