Marvel Disney Plus is back with their newest show Loki and it is glorious. I knew it would be great, but this is better then what I expected and also really different.
So far it is more of a detective mystery show then crazy time travel shenanigans. There are many questions raised by this episode, but no answers. But boy does this episode carries an emotional punch and character development of 10 years in one episode.
As the show promised us, this is the Loki that escaped with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame and the episode opens with that. I mean it opens with the Avengers arresting Loki back in 2012. It is funny that we see Loki wave the Hulk goodbye as the elevator leaves and Hulk has to take the stairs. But the episode fast forward the fight between Stark and Mr. Secretary, Alexander Pierce, and the intentional heart attack. Ant-Man kicks over the briefcase with the Tesseract and Stark from the future takes it. Unfortunately, Hulk bursts through the wall super angry, kicking future Stark out of the way and the briefcase flies open. The Tesseract land near Loki. He is no fool and he picks it up and uses it to travel away. That breaks the timeline.
Then we get a new Loki green Marvel logo. I love the different Marvel logos. This one has some strange music in the background as well. For that strange feeling.
It seems that Loki lands himself in the Gobi Desert and I am not sure that it is the year 2012 anymore. He gets up from the sand in a scene which really minds me and all of the internet of Iron Man getting up from the sand after winning his first battle. Loki meets a few local people and starts giving them his famous glorious propose speech, but they don't actually understand him since they don't speak English. Obviously. They try to talk to him, but then the TVA shows up.
The team that was sent is led by Hunter B-15 (played by the excellent Wunmi Mosaku from Lovecraft Country). They simply appear out of a portal that disappears. All Loki cares about is the Tesseract, little does he know. He gets arrested for crimes against the Sacred Timeline, which sounds like lies to me. I don't think that there is a Sacred Timeline, or one timeline for that matter.
Loki is pissed off. He had a really long day losing to the Avengers and getting beaten by the Hulk. The TVA doesn't seem formidable at first. He actually threatens B-15 and she hits him with a stick that controls time it seems. It looks like slow motion, but only he is stuck in slow motion. She puts a collar on him that controls his time flow from what I understand. It looks very X-Men. Before they leave, the TVA team leaves a device which resets the timeline. Whatever that means. It is filled with yellow energy which later turns into purple as the device is activated. It makes me think of the destroyed New-York from the trailer of the show which had a purple shade to it. Loki looks shocked, but we don't get to see how a reset timeline looks like. Loki is taken to the TVA headquarters.
TVA basically deals with the bureaucracy of time. I think this is the first time that Loki sees bureaucracy in his entire life. It is formidable and uncompromising and careless. Loki tries to escape but B-15 uses the time control to bring him back to the point from which he started. B-15 asks the desk guy to log in the Tesseract and suddenly the stone loses its glow. Also desk guy calls the Tesseract a dumb name which is funny. B-15 throws Loki in an elevator which has a funny looking robot in it which comes to life. It has a screen with a smiley face. It says hi to Loki and tries to pinch his clothe off. Loki disagrees, he is attached to his clothe. But the machine melts the clothe off of Loki. A fine sight indeed. He lands in a different room with prisoner clothe. It is futile to resist.
The room has another bureaucrat in it and a cat. The person behind the desk has a mug with a picture of the cat. Or maybe it is another Flerken? Never trust a cat in the MCU. Loki literally has to sign about everything he ever said. When he talks, he has more things to sign. He seems angry, but in the end he shut up and signs. Then the floor opens and he is dropped down into another room. Now he has to go through a machine to verify that he is not a robot basically. For a moment he actually questions whether he is an organic being or not. It is rather interesting and funny. He hesitatingly goes through the machine and has a picture taken of his temporal aura. I guess this is how the TVA finds the variants.
The TVA is a bureaucratic nightmare. Loki finds himself in another room. With waiting lines that are empty besides him and another person. There is a security personal that asks him to take a number and even though it is ridicules, Loki complies. Then he views the Miss Minutes video which is meant to explain everything about his crimes before his trial. She explains that once there was a multiverse war in which timelines battled for supremacy and they nearly destroyed all of existence. Then the Time-Keepers emerged and reorganized everything into a single time line – the Sacred Timeline. Which is totally a lie as we know that there is still a multiverse out there. But the video explains that when someone steps off their planned course a nexus events happens. You know, like the The Scarlet Witch is a nexus being. Leaving things unchecked can lead into madness, like the Multiverse of Madness that is coming our way soon. The real danger according to Miss Minutes is another multiverse war. It actually seems like the TVA creates another version of you that will step into the timeline in the correct moment while you go to court. That's crazy. It seems like there is something very wrong and fishy about the TVA to me.
The TVA are incredibly cruel. The dude who didn't want to take a line ticket gets vaporized. So that's what the sticks does. Loki panics and starts looking for his ticket and finds it. He hold it up like a trophy.
Then we meet Mobius M. Mobius played by Owen Wilson. Mobius is a shape. If you remember it the shape of the time traveling bracelets from Avengers: Endgame that Stark built. His name is literally connected to time travel. Mobius comes to a church in which there are dead bodies of TVA agents and it is not the first time this has happened. The team had no idea someone was hunting them down. Whoever did this stole the time reset charge. I wonder what you do with a lot of reset charges, I think we will find out. Into the church comes a little kid and Mobius stops the agents who is with him from attacking him. Mobius shows him some pretty advanced technology, which I have a feeling is against the roles, but I am not sure that he is a rules kind of a person. Mobius asks him if he knows who did this and the kids points to a mural of the devil with a blue tongue. I don't think this is there to indicate Mephisto or Satan. I think that the horns are Loki horns. The kid survived because Loki is also the protector of children in Norse Mythology. When the kid smiles, his teeth are also blue. The devil gave him some blue chewing gum. I still don't know what it means that a branch is nearing a red line. But unfortunately, I have a feeling that the kid is going to get reset as well. Before they leave Mobius gets the news that Loki has been arrested. That is interesting news to him. The TVA is giving off some sinister vibes here, but so does the killer.
In the meantime Loki stands to trial. Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is his judge and in the comics she has deep connections to Kang the Conqueror who is the main villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It will be interesting to see how it is all connected. Clearly the judge has yet to experience Loki trying to talk himself out of something. He pleads not guilty of violating the timeline and blames the Avengers for doing that. Because you know, it is all still the same day and the hate is still fresh. He even suggests that he will eliminate them for the TVA, how Loki of him. But apparently the Avengers going back in time was meant to happen, him escaping was not. Loki doesn't seem to believe that the Time-Keepers exist and neither do I. The judge believe that everything they say is sacred. She has zero patience to someone who is doubting the entire system and probably with good reason. Loki tries to use him magic to attack everyone, just magic doesn't work in the TVA and he is sentenced to be reset, which I guess is like being killed. Something is fishy about the TVA when you think about overlords which no one has ever seen.
It is ridicules. The judge won't even tell him what reset means. It is heartbreaking when she tells him that this is not his story, it wasn't until now, but now it is. Mobius steps in to intervene. The judge already knows what he wants to do and thinks it is a bad idea. But Loki is being released to Mobius custody. Loki wants to burn the TVA to the ground, but Mobius doesn't seem to object. Loki is overwhelmed with the size of the TVA, when he sees the vast city that it is. It is designed to look like the 70s, but it is still all very technologically advanced. Loki says that it is a nightmare and Mobius replies that that is a different department which he will help Loki burn to the ground. Nightmare was supposed to be the villain the Doctor Strange 2 so it is an interesting reference. So many Marvel connections.
Then we have the elevator scene. Mobius introduces himself and Loki is not impressed. Mobius explains that he is taking him somewhere to talk not to be killed. Loki says he doesn't like to talk which Mobius knows is a lie. Mobius knows that Loki loves to lie and to talk. Loki find him very odd so he asks him how long has he been here which Mobius has no idea. What I find interesting is that Mobius and all of the workers think that they were created by the Time-Keepers, but I don't think so. I mean they all look very human to me. Loki also calls the Time-Keeper "space lizards" which is sort of true, I mean they are lizard like in the comics. And yes it unfair that they get to decide the future of all of existence. Loki does love to talk.
They arrive at some sort of office and Loki doesn't like the looks of it. He think it looks like the kind of room you bring people into in order to kill them. Loki only trusts himself, which in this case he totally should. Mobius likes his comments, and says "slap it on a T-shirt" which Disney totally will. Mobius basically says that there is no free will, the path that Loki choose is the path that was chosen for him by the Time-Keepers. That is a really sad thought. Loki tries to attack Mobius, but Mobius simply rewinds Loki back in time to his previous place. That is harsh and evil, but necessary in the case of Loki. Mobius literally tells Loki that he knows that he intends of betray him, which is fascinating, but true. Mobius wants to learn more about Loki which is suspicious. His job is to catch particularly dangerous variants and Loki is not one of them, he is a kitten in comparison. Which raises the question: what does Mobius want from this Loki in the first place?
Mobius may seem a bit ridicules but he is smart. He wants to know what Loki's endgame is. Loki says he wants his thrown. He was born to be a king. That is the Loki of 2012. Then he wants to be king of all the Nine Realms in the end. It seems that Mobius wants to show him that his ambition has no end. After that will he just live happily ever after or go into space? He already knows all of the answers in the TVA. Mobius calls himself a Loki fan, but I doubt that is true. Mobius does want to know why Loki wants to rule out of all the things that he can do. Loki gives the speech of freedom is a lie, it leads to so many wrong choices, like all the wrong choices that Loki made. Although since the TVA exists it means that true free will doesn't.
Mobius then goes to show Loki his own greatest hits on a projector. That projector looks super old and new at the same time. From some reason it doesn't start with his childhood, but with his loss to the Avengers. Mobius notes that Loki losses a lot. Mobius wants to what makes Loki tick and if he enjoys hurting people. He shows Loki the destruction he caused in New-York, but Loki doesn't care. But Loki is good at escaping consequences. I can't believe that Marvel turned him into D.B. Cooper. That is so brilliant and it is mischievous I think. Mobius is so excited about this reveal like he didn't know all along, that's suspicious. Loki calls Mobius out. He is smart. He wants to know why Mobius is so interested in his motives. He thinks that this is all an illusion and by the end of the show we might find out that he is more right than anyone in the TVA thinks that he is. Loki thinks that the TVA is just a detour on his way to greatness. He believes in himself a lot. But Mobius know more about Loki than Loki. So do we, but Loki doesn't.
Mobius does a horrid things and shows Loki the future. He show Loki how he is responsible for his own mother's death. Frigga maybe Loki's adoptive mother, but he loved her like she was his only mother. Loki doesn't believe she is dead, he thinks he is being tricked, despite the fact that Mobius says that that is the proper flow of time, she will always die again and again. Loki threatens to kill Mobius and Mobius goes for one below the belt and says "like you did your mother?" that's a low blow and Loki is pissed off. He tries to attack Mobius, but he gets rewind to the same place. Mobius gives it to him hard. He says to Loki that he was born to cause death, pain and suffering so that others can better themselves. He is just a chapter in everyone else's story. That's really hard for Loki to hear, Loki who always wanted to be the center. He makes it sound like he is just a footnote for the Avengers. And then he offers Loki his hand to help him up. Loki uses this opportunity to steal time controller. Loki is all about taking advantage of opportunities.
Mobius has other worries on top of that. B-15 shows up to interrupt. She yells at Mobius that this is a mistake and tells him that another unit has been lost. Because someone out there is smarter than them. When Mobius gets back into the room he finds that Loki is gone. Loki reset himself into the first room in the TVA. Yes, it does look like there is a version of Peggy Carter that was arrested, Loki even looks at her strangely. Mobius still wants to catch Loki alive so he could help them. He is not done breaking Loki down. Loki goes to Casey, the desk dude and threatens his life. I know that it says that the Time-Keepers created the people who work at the TVA, but it is still odd that Casey says he doesn't know what a fish is because he lived his entire life behind a desk. Loki wants the Tesseract, but infinity stones only work within their own realities, the TVA doesn't count. When Loki looks inside of Casey's drawer he sees a lot of infinity stones. Casey says that they have a lot of them, some of the people there use them as paperweights. That really crushes Loki, and the viewers considering the audience reaction to this information. Loki wonders if the TVA is indeed the greatest power in the universe. But we know that that can't be true.
There is little time to wonder. B-15 barges in and almost kills Loki and Casey in one swipe, but Loki moves himself in time back to the end, to the room where Mobius investigated him. Loki uses this time alone to look at his future. He seems devastated to look at his dead mother. Tom Hiddleston pulls off some great acting in this scene. He is great throughout the show, but this scene is just wow. He is tearful when he sees Odin saying his goodbye, to both him and Thor as equals, his sons. He seem sad for the father he will never see again. He gets emotional when he sees Thor saying that he thought the world of him, that they would fight side by side forever. Then he sees them fighting together which is awesome. He laughs through tears when Thor says that maybe Loki is not so bad after all, and Loki says maybe not. And Thor says he would give him a hug if he were there which Loki replays that he really is there. Then he sees what no one should ever see. His own death. He sees Thanos killing him and he sees Thor crying over his dead body, while the ship around them gets destroyed. Loki is devastated. He can't do anything but laugh at the tragic conclusion of his life. We all cried when we watch him die in Infinity War, but watching your own death is cruel. He may have gotten his redemption, but he never managed to escape Thanos' shadow. There is no glorious purpose though.
He doesn't have time to mourn because B-15 is on to Loki. She is very physically impressive, but he is the god of mischief. He steal her control, takes off his collar and puts it on her and basically uses to it to play with it and her cruelly. But he gets tired of this quickly and just gets rid of her and tosses the controller to the side. Not much can entertain him now. Then we get a funny scene with Casey who explains to other workers that Loki threatened to turn him into a fish and he still doesn't know what a fish is. Then he sees a very pissed off B-15 but showing up in the hall way. It is not her day.
It is not Loki's day either. He is just sitting on the floor looking desolated. Mobius finds him. Loki finally understands that he simply can't go back. He says he doesn't enjoy hurting people, but it always looks like he does. He says it is a desperate play for control by the weak, but Loki was never weak. He was just lost. But he definitely lacked control in his life from the moment he found out that he is a frost giant. Loki sees himself as the villain, but Mobius and the audience don't see it that way. Loki keeps playing with the Tesseract because that's all that he can do with it. The TVA is formidable, and the stone can only work within its own reality in the multiverse and the TVA is outside of it all. TVA are formidable force, but I am not sure that they are a good one.
Now though Mobius cuts to the point. Mobius needs Loki's help to catch a variant that is killing their minuteman. That variant is a Loki variant. Loki is rather shocked at this turn of events, although we were expecting it.
Then we see the trap in action. Minuteman show up at an anomaly. Get burned by the oil that they discarded and a hooded person stabs the one that almost gets away. Their time reset device gets stolen again. I wonder if this Loki also doesn't enjoy killing people, but he must.
Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson are absolutely killing it on this show. These are just amazing displays of acting. You can clearly read the emotions in Loki's eyes when he looks at the greatest moments of his life, his happiness with Thor and desolation at the death of his mother and his own death. Life didn’t end up so good for him. I just love this show. It is absolutely crazy. Also, it is totally clear that the real villains of this show are the TVA themselves, that part is clear to me as it is to Loki. The first episode laid out some interesting concepts and premises for this show and I love it! This is even crazier than WandaVision. I can't wait to see where this show goes and how connected it is to the MCU.
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