In order to provide a contextual review within the season, this review will contain spoilers from Loki Episode 1, but not the end of Episode 2.
After being apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has begun to learn its true power. It exists in a time and space that allows Casey, the desk clerk, played by Eugene Cordero, to wield over 10 infinity stones without any sort of understanding, or care, for the power that we have seen them to have throughout the course of the events in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
At the very end of Episode 1, Loki learned that the reason he was saved from facing a judicial ruling from the TVA is that he is being tapped to help with a case to catch another time variant. That time variant is another Loki. During this episode, we learn that Loki has diverged from the Sacred Timeline on multiple occasions, but he’s normally been brought to the TVA’s justice by Owen Wilson’s Mobius, the investigator.
Throughout the episode, we are provided a lot of playful banter between Loki and Mobius, taking jabs at each other to try to figure each other out, neither being in any way forthcoming with their own goals. We see the two start to form almost a buddy cop dynamic, although more subdued than action-oriented ones like Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, which premiered today.
While this episode continues to be primarily exposition, we do see several missions, including one going so awry that it results in the bad variant Loki kidnapping a TVA field operator. The variant Loki that we follow causes his own problems on one we see him take part in.
While Episode 1 establishes the world… or space and characters, Episode 2 builds on the relationship of the characters and functions of the TVA. The episode was fun with an ending that has me ready to watch the next episode, but I am not thrilled that the second out of six episodes still felt this slow and build-oriented.
6/10