Game of Thrones’ Harry Lloyd to play Professor X for Legion’s third season

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

It was announced yesterday that Noah Hawley's Legion, which stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, the mutant son of Professor X, will be coming to an end with its upcoming third and final season. It seems that some very important, but as yet unseen, characters will be turning up in that final season, including Professor X himself.

It was announced that Harry Lloyd, who played Viserys Targaryen on HBO's Game of Thrones, will be stepping into the role of Professor X, and that Stephanie Corneliussen (Mr. Robot) will be playing Gabrielle, David's mother. While speaking with The Wrap during the Television Critics Association's winter press-tour, Legion creator Noah Hawley said that it was always his plan for Professor X to make it into the story, even if it meant that he had to get through some high-level red tape first. "The movie studio definitely controls that story and those characters and there was a negotiation that had to go on," Hawley explained. "Going into this third story, that conversation began to be had at the highest levels, because I can’t finish the story unless I can do it." Thankfully, the studio pretty much let Hawley do whatever he wanted with the character.

The good thing with ‘Legion’ is that our reality is so detached from the comics — or anything — because it’s David’s subjective experience. The tesseracts in his reality doesn’t really have to linearly tie to anything we’ve seen before.

In the mythology of Legion, Professor X defeated Amahl Farouk, aka The Shadow King, in a telepathic battle, but Farouk attached himself to a young David unbeknownst to Professor X, who sent the child away in order to keep him safe. "At a certain point, his parents felt like the child was in danger and so they gave him away to be raised by somebody else," Hawley said. "Not because they didn’t want him, but for his safety, without realizing that already that he had been compromised." The third and final season of Legion will debut this June.