The Short Take:
While it didn’t quite live up to the expectations set by the premiere, the second episode of Loki still filled my plate with fun moments. Our plot progress bar has slowed yet some emotional arcs feels rushed.
[SPOILER ALERT: Don’t box yourself in if you have not seen this episode.]
Image Credit: Gamespot
The Long Take:
I now have concerns.
Last week, I felt nothing except the exhilaration of being back in the world and with the characters of a show whose first season I loved. This week, there were certainly scenes that gave me individual bursts of that feeling throughout. The key lime pie automat conversation. Loki’s casual mention of how his attempt to conquer Earth in the first Avengers film was just because he “lost it.” Loki and Sylvie’s tense reunion. Mobius’ McDonald’s apple pie takes.
And yet, a sinking feeling started to creep in. What if this season isn’t as tightly controlled as I thought it would be?
Allow me a moment to explain what I mean by controlled. For teachers of writing, control is often a rubric value with which to assess a student’s work. A writer demonstrates considerable control when their paper reads as though they have a distinct and consistently applied purpose in mind. It can be difficult to dissect or explain away, but controlled writing will be instantly recognizable because it instills confidence in the reader, assuring them that they are in safe hands. The writer makes each choice along the way for an apparent reason. Writers that do not exhibit strong control over their own writing ramble, lose focus, or simply do not communicate to the reader why they are receiving a certain piece of information at any given moment.
I saw several signs of a lack of control in this episode.
To qualify this statement, I should say it’s still early, and a lot could become clearer in the coming weeks, but with only six episodes total, every episode counts, and so I feel as though it’s appropriate to ring these alarm bells.
What alarmed me most was the fact that the plot of this episode doubled back on itself, netting us with zero progress in the overarching story of the season. And yes, I know that we found Sylvie in this episode. That in of itself was huge development, and I thought Tom Hiddleston and Sofia DeMartino played their reunion perfectly. They were strained, awkward, and so fraught with one another.
But the end of this episode — the big battle Loki drags Sylvie into — essentially undoes, albeit temporarily, the consequential events of the finale. Sylvie stabbing He Who Remains to death effectively “freed the timeline”; we’ve cut to the image of the timeline rapidly branching, going from one “Sacred” stream to a bramble of multiple timelines. General Dox’s bombing of the new and ever-growing bramble, however, brings us back to one timeline.
The varied timelines almost immediately start to sprout again, but this still feels like a plot regression more than anything else. What exactly was this all for, other than perhaps to stall for time so O.B. can figure out some kind of workaround for the Temporal Loom (which now is no longer overloaded) or so Loki and Mobius can track down Miss Minutes to override the system.
Image Credit: The Ringer
Perhaps this turn of events wouldn’t have felt so empty for me had we had more emotional investment in specific variants lost on the timeline. When a somber Hunter B-15 stares at the screen and says, “those were people. Those were lives,” I felt as though the writers thought that would hit a lot harder than it actually did.
It’s not that I didn’t feel as though she would feel that. She did, after all, see flashes of her previous life on the timeline. So her “pruning is murder” stance makes total sense. If the emotional beat of thousands of branches crying out had been earned by this point, though, she wouldn’t have needed to say that explicitly.
And how could we have earned it? General Dox’s plot to bomb the entire timeline occurs and resolves very quickly — in two episodes. While there were hints that Dox was up to something, we find out about her sinister plan and witness the execution of that plan all in one episode.
Image Credit: We’ve Got This Covered
I could point to Hunter X-5 as the show’s way or getting us to realize the stakes, the ramifications of General Dox’s actions. I get the impression from Rafael Casal’s engaging performance that X-5’s attachment to his life as Brad Wolfe distracted him from the TVA and Dox, despite the loyalty or fervor with which he seemed to do his job in Episode 1. We never actually get to see him living his life as Brad Wolf, though. Similarly, we have never seen what B-15 saw at the end of Season 1.
Image Credit: Tell-Tale TV
X-5 or Brad doesn’t even appear in Season 1. I assumed based on how we meet in him in Episode 1 that he was someone I was supposed to know but didn’t remember, but no, he’s brand new. The character seems fun enough as an antagonist, but every time I see him I think, “Who is this guy? And why is he just showing up all of a sudden and acting like he’s very important?”
All that said, anything with Loki and Mobius was fantastic. In contrast to X-5 and the anonymous lives lost in Dox’s bombing, their relationship feels so earned and well-developed that I couldn’t care less what they were doing, as long as they were doing it together.
Still, Loki’s character arc seemed to backtrack in this episode. His exchanges with Brad exhume all the pain and heartbreak of Loki’s villainous past because Brad wants to get into Loki’s head in order to distract him from the interrogation. But we already went through all that in Season 1.
Perhaps that was the point, though. Not to rehash or relitigate Loki’s dark past and gradual reformation, but to show that accusations like Brad’s “you make everything worse” would have broken Season 1 Loki but does not bother Season 2 Loki, who has found his Glorious Purpose, accepting his growth, change, and strength as a character.
Instead, we see Mobius crack. He lets Brad get under his skin and decks him. This behavior is so uncharacteristic that Loki says he’s never seen Mobius like this before. I very much appreciated this role reversal, with the “you have issues you need to work out” spotlight moving away from Loki on to Mobius. I would be interested in seeing how Loki helps Mobius all throughout this season, ending with Mobius accepting himself as a result.
Will that character arc drown in a sea of bizarre plot choices, though? So many critics last week were abuzz with the news that Daredevil: Born Again, a forthcoming series that would bring back actors and characters from the critically acclaimed Netflix Daredevil series, has gone back to the drawing board. And, because of the timing, they considered this news in the context of Loki Season 2. I have always thought of Loki as the exception to a lot of the flaws in the Marvel Disney+ project. Now enters the tiniest bit of doubt.