TV REVIEW: “Loki” Season 1 unlocks the Marvel timeline
Sophia Di Martino and Tom Hiddleston in the season 1 finale of Loki.
Time travel is a messy business. Every time a writer dips a toe into the concept, it has a way of flooding us with questions. The rules for a particular depiction of timey-wimey-ness have to be meticulously thought out for the story of the movie or show to float.
If the season finale of Loki, on Disney+, is any indication, the show is finally coalescing around its own approach to the currents of time. However, its direction is very reminiscent of two other well-established sci-fi series, Doctor Who and Lost. At best, Loki features a carefree, don’t-worry-about-it attitude, and at worst, it’s mostly characters sitting around, questioning who should get to be the man or woman behind the curtain. Neither is necessarily a bad thing, but if handled poorly, I can foresee it wearing out its welcome very quickly.
WARNING: Major spoilers for all six episodes of Loki Season 1 follow.
When the series begins, it has a fairly blank slate: a version of the titular Asgardian God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) escapes his captors after the events of The Avengers, but is quickly re-captured by an organization called the Time Variance Authority (TVA). The TVA is tasked with trimming out problematic spin-off events from the Marvel cinematic story we know and love. From a meta perspective, I guess we have this mysterious group of bureaucrats to thank for doing a lacklustre job and allowing the story to happen at all?
Owen Wilson as Mobius, an analyst at the Time Variance Authority.
As the first several episodes play out, Loki is pressed into service by the TVA. He’s told that there are many variants of him out there, causing trouble and threatening the TVA’s “sacred timeline”. Loki and his handler Mobius (Owen Wilson) begin tracking a female Loki variant calling herself Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino, in a breakout performance). Initially at odds with each other, Loki is drawn to his doppelganger for reasons he can’t quite explain, but it’s through Sylvie that Loki slowly begins to self-reflect, a quality that we haven’t seen in his movie appearances.
In its more intimate moments, the show presents its argument for how Loki can be a sympathetic character. His reflexive double-crossing and illusions are the result of Loki acting out of anger and fear for most of his life, a performance that serves as an emotional defense mechanism. Of course, this revelation strips our protagonist of the kind of clever strategies and one-liners that made him fun to watch in the movies. If character development is what you’re after, the Loki in episode 6 of this season is very different from the one in episode 1, so much so that you’d probably bet on “Loki Prime” to win in a fight. But the show’s Loki losing his edge is probably important if we’re going to cheer him on.
Sylvie and Loki decide they need to figure out who’s really running the TVA, though not before a sequence of time- and dimension-hopping adventures. This is where having the production firepower of Disney behind the show pays off. There’s an overload of CGI landscapes (though some large practical sets do help ground the crazier vistas). Compare that with Doctor Who, which (even in its most recent season) still sports the same lovingly crafted, low-fi quality it’s known for. By the time Sylvie and Loki reach the end of their journey in the Loki season finale, the production value is on par with the blockbuster movies for which the show is laying a foundation.
The main distraction during the season finale is how hard the episode is working to set up the second season, not to mention planting seeds for at least three upcoming movie sequels featuring Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and The Wasp. Much of the episode is just Loki and Sylvie sitting in a derelict mansion at the end of time, confronting an entity known as He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). It’s hard not to side with Sylvie, who gets increasingly infuriated by all the knowing smirks and elliptical non-answers from this new character. And in classic Marvel style, Majors’ appearance is designed to tease the arrival of Marvel Studios’ next Thanos-tier villain: Kang the Conqueror.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Judge Ravonna Renslayer.
This is where Loki gave me huge flashbacks to the final chunk of Lost. The latter show (yes, I’m still a fan all these years later) was legitimately critiqued for a pattern that will be familiar to Loki viewers. Lost occasionally devolved into scenes of people screaming at mystical characters, who spoke in riddles about protecting (or destroying) the island the show centred on. Likewise, Loki spent the majority of its first season adding layer after layer of mythology, propping up and tearing down omniscient overseer characters, and leaving us on a big cliffhanger. The question is whether all of this is merely a vehicle to propel the stories of billion-dollar revenue streams (ahem, movies), or whether we’ll get a satisfying conclusion for our trouble.
If the final goal of a season finale is to hook you in for another block of episodes, then consider Loki successful. A little bit of Googling of character names ought to give you a hint of where the next episodes will go. And I’m still charmed by the series’ retro-futurist aesthetic and the connective tissue to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and the Fallout games. But if Season 2 doubles down on those Lost vibes, I might have to bail - there’s only room for one show like that in my life.
Stray thoughts
The Jonathan Majors appearance would have been funny to see with a large audience: only a tiny fraction who read every bit of casting news might get the “Oh shit” moment.
I kind of wanted Miss Minutes to transform into an evil version at some point.
I can’t tell if the final shot of the Timekeeper statue with Kang’s head is a reference to the Planet of the Apes 2001 remake. [Update: writer/producer Eric Martin confirms he did have the series on the brain]