The Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded even further with its latest series, Loki. Marvel has been steadily releasing new series, which expand the MCU, to Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+. This year has already seen the release of WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, both of which are worth watching.
A large difference between Loki and the other two MCU shows of this year is that we’ve already seen the titular character die. Loki (still embodied by Tom Hiddleston) is killed by Thanos at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War. So do the events of this series occur before our current time in the MCU? Well, yes and no.
The series opens with a scene from Avengers: Endgame in which the Avengers travel back to the events of Avengers, but things go awry during the alien attack. With the commotion caused around the time travel, Loki is able to slip away with the Tesseract. Director, Kate Herron, told Insider about how she restructured the scene with some never used shots to focus on Loki’s point of view.
We follow this newly created timeline’s Loki to a different space and time, one in which he is promptly apprehended and taken in for legal processing by the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. At the TVA, none of his magic works. In fact, no magic works, including that of the Tesseract, which, at this point, is still housing the Space Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones.
As Loki goes through processing, we are treated to a quirky cast of characters with a strange sense of humor that will feel very familiar to fans of Wes Anderson films. As his character does, he goes from cooperative and conniving to outburstingly obstinate, but without his powers, the theatrical, magical spectacles are replaced with a disappointing silence, and then often a giggle.
Before being punished for stepping out of the Sacred Timeline, Loki is whisked away by TVA agent, Mobius M. Mobius (played by Owen Wilson). Mobius explains to Loki and the viewer what is going on, how the TVA controls time, and how Loki isn’t nearly as powerful (or cruel) as he thought. In fact, that’s what most of Loki Episode 1 is, exposition, but it was fun and left me excited for the season.
Episodes release on Wednesdays, with the season set to have six episodes. I’ll be tuning in each week to see where this quirky change-of-pace takes us.
7/10