The Short Take:
An engrossing second episode that leans even harder into time travel logic and philosophizing. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson play a perfect “do you trust me” game.
If lofty sci fi isn’t your thing, you may want to wait until Black Widow hits theaters and Disney plus (for an extra $30) on July 9. Meanwhile, the rest of us Whovian paranormal investigators will rejoice as we adventure and contemplate our place in the cosmos.
[SPOILERS ahead! And you can’t reset your own timeline after you’ve read this review.]
The Long Take:
With not one but four jumps through history and enough file folders to make any FBI agent’s head spin, the second episode of Loki scratches every genre itch I was hoping for after last week’s pilot. Watching Loki ghoulishly taunt the residents of Pompeii moments before Mt. Vesuvius erupts would have been delightful enough. (Especially since it may also be a shout out to Doctor Who, which had an episode called “The Fires of Pompeii.”) But we also visit a Ren Faire in 1985 and rock out to “Holding Out for a Hero” during a fight scene. As a nerd of a certain age, I felt personally attacked by this. But I also enjoyed it.
And I love it when characters do possibly hand wavy yet supremely consequential research! Loki spends quality time in some dusty library stacks and I was enthralled the entire time. The close-ups on snippets of texts were a little fast and furious for me to keep up 100% of the time, if I’m being honest, but there was energy and charm in Loki and Mobius figuring things out. The writing is witty and well-thought-out enough that even if I’m not yet up to speed, I trust that the writers have carried the 1, so to speak. I especially admire the “seed planting” Waldron has done so far; he hardly ever wastes information. The animated clock featured in the introductory video quizzes Loki on what the “red line” means. He rolls his eyes and shrugs it off, and in the moment it seems like that dialogue is only there to show how bad student bored Loki is. But that concept becomes very, very important at the end of the episode when the renegade Variant sets off a bunch of reset chargers to bomb the sacred timeline. The visual confirmation of all the little red lines fanning out is a brilliant way to call back a concept that was brand new to viewers less than an hour prior. My personal favorite might be when Loki ruins Mobius’ salad. He emphatically relays his revelation about Ragnarok being the perfect hideout for the other Loki because it has, as the blue vintage typewriter font says, “zero variance energy detected.” Humor aside, this is a very functional scene for establishing a credible system of rules the show can follow.
The script for this episode is lean yet densely packed, with exactly the type of high-minded conversation that befits a time travel story. There’s a lot to dig into, and I felt like I wanted to watch the episode again right away, not because I was confused, but because I want to keep thinking about it. One of, if not THE best science fiction television series of all time, Star Trek: The Next Generation (or TNG), is the gold standard for me here. Loki asking Mobius why he believes in the TVA, Loki balking at the idea that the time keepers just created him, and Mobius pointing out that Loki’s own creation myth is no less ridiculous — all of this started to approach that standard for me.
The general premise of Loki is so clever because it fuses a character study with this kind of existential philosophizing, forming its own Möbius strip of sorts. This episode uses the question “Who is Loki?” to get us to the bigger question: “Who are any of us?” Loki says that no one is all bad or all good. But how much fate vs. free goes into determining where any one person, any one Loki is on that spectrum? Forcing him to investigate other versions of himself is a direct prompt for introspection and character development, as well as the best vehicle for larger existential questions. It’s also just fun to watch our Loki’s ego confront a potentially “superior Loki.”
Even with sharp writing and satisfying genre tropes, the core strength of the show is the rapport between Loki and Mobius (and by extension Hiddleston and Wilson). Every conversation, with ambiguously layered dialogue, performs a thrilling high wire act of distrust and manipulation. I may be too naive in wanting Loki to be “good,” but when he jumps into that portal after Lady Loki, I genuinely can’t decide if he does so as a self-serving betrayal or as just a rogue agent trying to catch his new nemesis.
Who’s side SHOULD Loki really be on, though? After listening to podcasts and reading articles all week, the most commonly asked questions seems to be about the motivations of the TVA and/or the time keepers. Are they authoritarian control freaks imposing their will on the rest of the universe? Or are they thoughtful gardeners, thanklessly tending to time and space on our behalf? The question of fate vs. free will becomes a lot stickier when those enforcing the fate do so for their own benefit. Will a multiverse of madness ultimately be something our MCU heroes fight for or against? Only time will tell, I guess… (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself there.)