Loki Season 2 Review: For All Time, Always, Gets Convoluted
- There are small joyful character moments
- The story has become a convoluted mess
- The characters have no lives beyond the immediate threat
"Loki" Season 2 starts where Season 1 left off: Loki (Tom Hiddleston), after meeting He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and trying to prevent Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) from killing him, lands back in the Time Variance Authority — and finds he's slipping between times. Of course, this would have more impact if, at this point, there wasn't so much time variant gobbledygook that we stopped caring. In fact, that's the problem with the second season of the series as a whole. Technical mumbo-jumbo trumps good, old-fashioned emotions and understandable plot points, and as a result, "Loki" Season 2 fails to resonate, at least not in the first four episodes made available for review.
It's understandable why the folks at Disney decided to give reviewers four episodes rather than the usual one or two. The first episode takes off at a pace that can only be considered season finale-like, giving the impression that it should have capped last season instead of starting this one. Also, both the first and second episodes are so full of time variance speak that we have little time for anything else. The third and fourth episodes have less of this, and the second episode starts us on a Season 2 story that comes to a head by Episode 4. Still, questions remain, like what is the point of all this? Why should we care? And why did Hiddleston agree to be in this monstrosity?
That isn't to say that "Loki" Season 2 is absent of all pleasure. There are still things to enjoy along the way, but overall the effect is alienating and troublesome. Show creator Michael Waldron and Season 2 lead writer Eric Martin could have gone anywhere after the first season. They could be jumping across Marvel timelines, picking out key points in history to insert Loki and his friends into. But instead, the minds behind "Loki" have doubled down and decided that what Loki really wants to do is save the TVA.
Time chaos
See, after the first episode, which is all about saving Loki from blipping forward and back in time, Ourobouros (Ke Huy Quan), a new character who repairs and replaces items in his basement shop, finds the TVA itself is in trouble. Something about alternate timelines overloading the system. But the trouble is, they can't even open the doors to the outside without an aura scan (whatever that is) of the person who created the TVA, He Who Remains — and he's dead.
Of course, Loki knows he can find a variant, but he has no idea how to do so, so instead he and Mobius (Owen Wilson) follow Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who's teamed up with Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). She leads them right to Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors again). There's a lot of back and forth, including run-ins with Sophie, who wants to kill both Renslayer and Timely; and Timely siding with Renslayer then Loki and Mobius, depending on who he thinks seems more trustworthy at the time. But the crux of the story is Loki and everyone else's drive to save the TVA and all the timelines that now exist in the world.
The problem is that while, for example, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) feels bad when someone from their agency prunes a timeline, viewers don't. After all, we don't know anyone in those timelines on the show, so why should we care if a timeline is wiped out? The only impact it has on us is that one of the lines of their drawing is erased. The show spends entirely too much time on these predicaments and not nearly enough on things the audience will actually care about.
While there's nothing wrong with going in the direction of time chaos, the show has allowed its plot to get so technical that it's hard to understand what's going on. The thing is, I'm not sure if everything they're doing fits together, but that's not what I care about, either. I care about people and their lives — specifically the individuals who this show is about. But none of the people in this show have much of a life beyond the immediate threat. Sophie is the only one who wants anything beyond saving the TVA, and even her desires are minimal. As a result, there's nothing much to invest in here.
Small moments of joy
There are things to enjoy — even if, overall, they're small. For example, seeing Loki finally use his magic to capture a rogue hunter in Episode 2 is a lot of fun, even if there's more running around than necessary leading up to it. That's an instance of classic Loki using his powers to get the jump on someone, and it's a lovely moment because of it.
Finding Victor Timely is another thing that causes the pleasure centers in the brain to tingle. While everyone may have their opinions of what Jonathan Majors allegedly did in the real world (his domestic violence trial starts soon), he's undeniably a great actor, and his Timely is yet another example of that. When we first meet Timely, we're reminded of Majors' talent in spades.
In fact, everyone in "Loki" is good, from Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravenna Renslayer to Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, and new players like Ke Huy Quan. And of course, there's the man himself. Tom Hiddleston continues to play Loki with a level of talent and self-assurance that makes you wish he had better material to work with.
If Hiddleston objected to the new scripts, wouldn't that be reason enough to try to go in a new direction? But apparently Hiddleston, despite his status as an executive producer on the show, didn't have any notes on the way "Loki" has devolved into a convoluted story about time. I can't say why. Maybe he's just happy to be playing Loki again. Or maybe he enjoys the parts of "Loki" with his character so much that he doesn't mind the severe lack of quality elsewhere. No matter the reason the show has slipped, though, it's sad to see Loki taken down such a dark, confusing path. The only comfort is the fact that at least the Loki in the main timeline is dead. The Loki we see here is just a variant.
The second season of "Loki" premieres on October 5 on Disney+.