Loki, Season 2
Loki, Season 2 is streaming on Disney Plus at the time of writing. No rating. Common Sense says 11.
STORY: B-
Starting off with an easy-to-follow plot makes our reentry into Loki’s saga much easier (and much more fun) to follow.
Loki (the series) is teeming with time. There’s time travel. There’s timelines. And now, apparently, there’s time slipping.
What you’ll need is time to rewatch the first season. As is tradition, the first episode of the season begins with a recap of the previous. It’s not a short summary, yet it’s nowhere near complete enough to refresh the overloaded part of our brains in charge of keeping track of the MCU. The MCU-abellum, I believe it’s called.
For me, trying to grasp every confounding intricacy of time travel and wild theory of sacred timelines feels like trying to grab snowflakes in a blizzard. The episode’s straightforward plotline (Loki needs to stop slipping through time so he can get on with the business of finding Sylvie) serves as a warm cup of cocoa in the chaos.
PEOPLE: A
Loki (the series) loves to revel in time travel hijinks, but it only excels because of its actors.
I have begun to care less and less about what happens to the sacred timeline. Or if the sacred timeline is actually sacred or simply a McGuffin filled with hot air and horsefeathers.
The actors are the reason I won’t stop watching this show. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson have nuclear-level chemistry (the clean energy source kind of nuclear chemistry, not the Oppenheimer kind). If they ever do a bottle episode where the two of them try and decide what to order at a diner for 38 minutes, I am most definitely watching it. Twice.
Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan charms his way into this chemical equation with his deadpan one-liners. I can’t wait to be reunited with Sophia Di Martino, which thankfully seems likely to happen in episode two.
FILM NERD STUFF: A-
Retro set design reinforces the show’s unstable sense of time.
Loki (the series) supposedly takes place sometime during the 21st century. Yet the TVA is full of the wood paneling, carpeted walls, and reel to reel tape recorders found in my grandmother’s house.
The show’s sense of time is all over the place. Its events take place in the present day (or close to it), its technology feels from a far off future, and its interior decorators really found their groove in the 1930s. That last bit is pretty genius.
The characters’ sense of time is more scrambled than a Denny’s breakfast. By using design and decor to scramble the audience’s sense of time, we feel a bit of what they feel. That fun, tiny twinge of discomfort reels us into the story and builds our sympathy for the characters.
IT’S A STRETCH (Elective Class): D
The sprawl has become too much.
Perhaps one day you will find yourself with a job. And perhaps, that job will require you to go to a meeting. If that is the case, you will perhaps definitely attend a two hour meeting that really could have been over in ten minutes.
I’m not saying that watching MCU is like sitting through a boring business meeting. I’m saying that at this point it feels like they’re taking a story that could be told in a handful of movies and stretching it out over years, over different properties, and over multiple mediums. Who can keep track of it all?
Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania was over six months ago. Loki’s first season was two years ago. The Avenger films feel like a lifetime ago. Marvel is stretching Loki (the story) across time in much the same way as Loki (the dude) is getting stretched.
Longer meetings don’t necessarily create better meetings. I can’t help but feel that the MCU needs to apply the same principle to its stories.
FINAL COMMENTS:
Loki (the series) is perfect for the person suffering from MCU fatigue, but not ready to quit just yet. It helps to know the bigger picture, but the show is still eminently enjoyable as its own thing.