Summary
The time travelling multiversal addition to the MCU saga not only paves the way for the future of the franchise, but has a massive amount of fun revelling in its weirdest and most esoteric corners.
WARNING: This review is burdened with glorious spoilers.
In LOKI, the third Disney+ series to spin out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the franchise has finally stumbled into all of our wheelhouses. Literally all of them. Taking the irreverent fun of Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy, the genre-bending madness of WandaVision, and the high stakes of any Avengers film, it casts the villain we love in the role of a bureaucratic, time travelling anti-hero.
Picking up after the events of Avengers: Endgame, in which an Avengers-era Loki (Tom Hiddleston) buggered off with the Tesseract, the variant God of Mischief is arrested by the mysterious Time Variance Authority (TVA). Seemingly backed by limitless power and resources, TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) is charged with bringing this Loki up to speed and getting him to help with their investigations. It seems another variant Loki has been polluting the sacred timeline and getting a little stabby across time.
Things gets especially interesting when we discover that the anarchistic variant is Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), a female ‘Loki’ from a parallel timeline. Every bit Loki’s equal — and arguably superior — she has been journeying through the timeline intent on destroying all of the TVA’s minutemen. Meeting Loki changes both of their destinies, uncovering hidden truths about the power behind the Authority and the nature of the Marvel multiverse.
One of the joys of comic books for me has always been the re-interpetation of classic characters across the parallel worlds, alternate timelines and multiversal mishaps. Hell, I’ve written about it at length for various places. So, building an entire series around the intersection of Lokis across the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse is so inside my personal headspace that it’s been living there rent-free for decades (with an option to buy). As such, LOKI is a purely joyful tour through some of the weirder and more indulgent aspects of the comics. Sure, this could be viewed as a little too inside baseball, but it also speaks to the Phase 4 willingness to break free of previous formulas and linger longer in the curious corners of the MCU.
This is especially true of the penultimate episode of the series, appropriately titled ‘Journey Into Mystery’ (after the comic in which Thor and Loki were introduced). Richard E. Grant appears as one of several Lokis — alongside a child Loki (Jack Veal) who killed Thor, a boastful Loki (DeObia Oparei), President Loki and even an Alligator Loki — converging on ‘our’ Loki prior to a final confrontation with the mysterious powers that be. Scholars and bloggers alike will be unpicking all the Easter eggs for months to come.
One of the strengths of LOKI is its ability to switch genres at will is one of the series strengths. It’s a bureaucratic time comedy. It’s an episode of Doctor Who the following week (‘Lamentis’). It doesn’t ends with the big CG battle required by all MCU outings, but instead with a confrontation between complex minds. When the series continues (something confirmed by a post-credits stinger in the final episode), there are literally infinite combinations of characters and stories they can try out.
Yet the core power rests in this phenomenal cast. Hiddleston slips effortlessly into a role he’s played half a dozen times before, yet now with added depth and nuance we’ve not seen before. Di Martino, primarily known for her TV work, steps confidently into the MCU as a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Wilson feels like he’s always been here, like some kind of Stan Lee-esque watcher who has just emerged to tell us of his love for jet skis. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and criminally underused indie queen Sasha Lane round out the impressive cast.
Compared with the Netflix Marvel series a few years ago, these Disney+ series are operating on a scale hitherto unseen. It’s partly because these series directly tie into the broader cinematic universe, but also because they are willing to dangle threads out there and yank them away. Take the season finale (‘For All Time. Always.’): following the massive special effects spectacular of the previous episode, the rebirth of the multiverse comes primarily from an intellectual sparring match. Rather than simply wrap it up here, the coming of ‘He Who Remains’ (Jonathan Majors) is teased. For those in the know, it’s Kang the Conqueror: a time-travelling entity who may just serve as the Thanos of Phase 4.
WandaVision led us up to the door of the next Doctor Strange film, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier opened the door for a new Captain America, and LOKI is no exception. Given that one of the next major films is Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, it’s no stretch that this series was a way of introducing audiences to the parallel universes us comic book readers have known and loved for decades. Indeed, we know Major is reprising his role as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. For now, the MCU has revealed it’s short-term purpose, and it is indeed glorious.
2021 | US | DIRECTOR: Kate Herron | WRITERS: Michael Waldron (creator), Elissa Karasik, Bisha K. Ali, Eric Martin, Tom Kauffman | CAST: Tom Hiddleston, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Tara Strong, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Sasha Lane, Jack Veal, DeObia Oparei, Richard E. Grant | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney+ | EPISODES: 6
