Loki Episodes 1 & 2 Review
Credit to: Disney and Marvel StudiosWhat’s The God of Mischief Up To Now?
The wait is finally over! We finally get to see the outcome of Loki’s escape in Avenger’s Endgame, and it really is a delight to see. As a refresher to those who don’t remember too much of that film, we see a botched time travel mission from Iron Man, Ant-Man, and good old Captain America. Through an unfortunate series of events, we see the Tesseract fall into Loki’s hands, who uses it to escape his capture. Here, we get to see the effects of it all. With everything explained, let’s just get right into it.
Episode 1: Glorious Purpose
Wow. This episode was honestly so much better than expected. There’s so much development into the character of Loki, so much more than I could’ve imagined. Right, so here we see immediately see what happens to Loki after Endgame. Using the Tesseract, Loki transports himself to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. A bit odd that Loki couldn’t control the Tesseract here, but it’s fine. This scene is very similar to Tony Stark’s landing in the desert in Iron Man, something I’m sure was intentional. Loki is approached by curious Mongolian people, wondering why he’s there. Loki being Loki, attempts to assert himself as a dominant figure that’s meant to be above them, but of course they don’t understand him. It’s super funny. Suddenly, a translucent doorway appears, and three people wearing some serious military gear walk through it, investigating the scene. Loki warns them not to interact with the Tesseract, to which they get defensive and draw their baton weapons. Another female officer walks through the doorway, analyzing the scene herself, identifying Loki as a “Variant”. The woman places Loki under arrest, on behalf of the “Time Variance Authority” or “TVA”, for committing crimes against the “Sacred Timeline”. Loki of course thinks nothing of it, and attempts to walk past the woman, who hits him with the baton and actually slows him down to 1/16th speed and places a collar around his neck. He’s taken away, and the soldiers are ordered to reset the timeline before taking the Tesseract as well. Loki is moved through the doorway with the woman, and we see him try to escape a few times, but is actually rewinded back to the officer. Loki is walked through a door, where he is confronted by a weird smiling robot who burns his clothes away, and he falls through a couple of floor doors where he is suddenly given a TVA jumpsuit to wear, papers to sign, a ticket to see an attendant, and a brief lesson as to what the TVA is. We find out via a talking female clock on a television screen that there was actually a multiverse, and a multiversal war, with every unique timeline fighting for domination over one another. Higher beings called the Time-Keepers fused the multiverse into a single timeline which is called the Sacred Timeline. When Loki escaped, that actually wasn’t supposed to happen, and is therefor considered a Variant. When he eventually stands trial later in the episode, he’s confronted with this fact. He attempts to throw the Avengers under the bus by saying they went back in time, but we learn that this was actually supposed to happen. Really cool to get that explained to us.
A bit before Loki’s trial, we see an investigation happening in France in 1549, where a few TVA soldiers called “Minutemen” are laying dead. The investigating Minutemen and a detective named Mobius, played by Owen Wilson, reveal that this isn’t the first time the Minutemen have been attacked and killed, and they show the same patterns as the last killings. The devices they use to reset timelines, called reset charges, were also stolen by the killer. The killer also gave a child who witnessed the slaughter a candy, clearly from another time. They leave after the child says the killer was a devil, and Mobius is given a file on the newest Variant, Loki. They then reset the timeline, and we get straight to Loki’s trial. I’ll speed through the rest of the episode as to not give too much away, because this show is awesome so far. Alright, so, we see Mobius sort of come to the rescue of Loki to use him as an asset to his investigation, we see Loki quite literally come face to face with all of his past actions and his eventual future, which includes his mother’s death which was caused by Loki himself, and he even sees his own death. Pretty crazy to be presented with all of that in one sitting. Super sad scene. Oh, and we find out that Loki was D.B. Cooper, so that’s… that’s crazy. Of course we see Loki attempt to escape, and almost succeeds, until he reaches the front desk area of the TVA and finds multiple copies of the infinity stones. Yes, the TVA has acquired dozens of infinity stones, and guess what? They just don’t matter in the TVA. Crazy right? Realizing just how mighty or above everything that Loki has known, we see him tame himself and return to Mobius, explaining that he truly isn’t a bad guy. Poor Loki. Anyways, we see Loki being given a new chance as someone who can help the TVA find the one who’s been killing Minutemen and causing issues with the timeline, and we even find out who. The Variant causing all this trouble… is Loki.
Man oh man. Honestly, my reviews can only do so much. Like, you all absolutely have to watch this if you haven’t already. This series is already so charming, witty, and funny. The writing is just wonderful, the character development for Loki and these brand new characters is all just so great, and the pace of this episode is absolutely phenomenal. I can’t recommend this series enough. It’s honestly the best Marvel series on Disney+, though it’s not like Falcon and the Winter Soldier or WandaVision was anything super impressive. I love Loki so far, more than I thought I would. The level of mystery and the unique storytelling is just so appealing. Truly a wonderful pilot for this series.
5 Out of 5.
Episode 2: The Variant
We’re back for another episode, but unfortunately, this episode lacks the amount of charm that the first episode had. It isn’t bad, but I’ll explain myself at the final section of this breakdown. So we start off at a renaissance fair in Wisconsin, 1985. Why the Loki Variant is here is beyond me, but alright. The Minutemen step through their portals and investigate this big tent with music playing in the background. Of course, it’s a trap, and we see the hidden Loki mind control the commander of the Minutemen to kill her fellow comrades. After the fight, the variant steals the reset charges the fallen Minutemen had, and takes the portal device to open up a doorway. The Variant grabs the now unconscious commander and drags her through the portal, leaving us to wonder what their plan is. We quickly jump to Loki himself, who’s stationed at a desk and is talking to the same clock woman as we saw in the previous episode. Her name is Miss Minutes, and we get a funny scene with Loki trying to hit her with a rolled up magazine, and she has to dodge all around his desk before jumping into a computer monitor, where she calls him a jerk. Mobius walks in and hurries Loki to follow him, where he tells Loki about the recent Wisconsin attack. The two attend a debriefing, and we see multiple cool and weird Variant versions of Loki, including one that kinda looks like a Hulk Loki with horns. Weird. Anyways, Loki, Mobius, and a team of Minutemen arrive at the Wisconsin crime scene, and Loki goes on this really weird and unnecessary time wasting rant about how this Loki variant is extremely dangerous and wants to overthrow the Time-Keepers and rule the TVA. I’ve tried to dissect this scene to make sense of it, but I still can’t. It’s really odd and out of place, but I guess it could be that Loki wanted to see what happens if the branch timeline became too unstable. Still, super odd. We see Mobius answer to the person who approves missions, the same person who Loki answered to during his trial, a woman named Ravonna. Ravonna of course is disappointed that the investigation brought them nowhere, and that Loki is only wasting their time. She also mentions that the Time-Keepers are actually extremely focused on this case, emphasizing how important it is. Mobius actually defends Loki by explaining his usefulness, and Ravonna gives Loki one more shot. Great.
Mobius takes Loki to this massive area with a bunch of desks and a library, and we see Loki examine available files on the Loki Variant. Loki actually finds the file about the destruction of Asgard, an event we saw back in Thor: Ragnarok, but Loki notices something that says “zero variance energy detected”, meaning there was nothing wrong with what happened there. This bit of information causes Loki to bring up a theory to Mobius which may help catch the variant Loki. He figures that the Variant Loki only operates in time periods right before a disaster happens, which is why there’s no variance energy. They go out and test Loki’s theory in Pompeii, Italy. If you’re unaware of this unfortunate event, there was an event all the way back in 79 AD where a massive eruption from a nearby volcano caused an insane amount of death and destruction. Loki and Mobius head here before the eruption, and Loki begins speaking Italian, warning the people that they’re all going to die, frees a bunch of goats, and throws food all over the place. The volcano erupts, and there’s no variance energy. This is because no matter what Loki does, it doesn’t stop the disaster. The theory is correct, so they head back to the TVA and gather files on all the disasters to ever happen. Now, in the first episode, Mobius takes a candy that was given to the little girl to have it analyzed. Here, we see that same candy be of use. Mobius finds out when this candy was sold, and finds all files of any apocalyptic events that happened near those years, They eventually land on a disaster that apparently happens in Alabama in 2050, so they gear up and grab a team to head there before the disaster happens. Sure enough, they find the kidnapped Minuteman soldier (called a hunter) in a super store called Roxxcart (totally implying the fictional corporation Roxxon from the Marvel comics), and Loki meets the Loki Variant, who controls the minds of random individuals, including the first hunter that arrested Loki, to talk with him. They of course get into a scuffle, but the Loki Variant eventually reveals themselves. The Variant is actually a woman, none other than Lady Loki from the comics, but we’ll find out her real name no doubt. In this Roxxcart, all the stolen reset charges Lady Loki stole eventually go off, creating dozens upon dozens of time branches. Lady Loki creates a portal, and before Mobius can stop him, Loki walks through with her. End of episode.
Uhhh… hmm. I mean, this episode wasn’t bad at all honestly, but it definitely couldn’t find its footing. It definitely didn’t have a steady pace, and there were times where this episode was a little corny or confusing. It does have its interesting moments, of course with the reveal of Lady Loki being one of them, but this episode was just a bit too… much. It was slow, then it was way too fast, then it was slow again, and yeah, it really did have some pretty bad pacing. The writing was just a little too weird this time around, but the reveal of Lady Loki was pretty cool.
2 Out of 5.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this is a pretty interesting series. Started off great, but declined pretty badly in the second episode. I absolutely recognize its potential, and I really hope it does redeem itself, because this story is really unique, and I think we can use a little more of that in the MCU. It’s as strange as WandaVision while being a fast paced action filled goose chase for a baddie just like Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s having a little trouble standing, but it has plenty of time to do better. Well, that’s it for now! Tell me what you all thought, are you liking it so far? Or is it too weird for you? I’m super interested to find out what you all think! Until next time, this has been The Wolf Den!
