At long last, Loki is upon us. Now I, Robbie, writer at Multiversity, have been burdened with the glorious purpose of reviewing this show, week by week. So let us begin, and see how the latest Disney+ addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes.
Since there’s a lot of new information to cover, there will be some spoilers.
1. Where We Are Now
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but this series follows Loki after the events of Endgame, by which I mean, it’s Loki from the end of The Avengers, where history changed and he could escape with the Tesseract/Space Stone.
So what does this mean for our main character? Well, this is Loki before he underwent his character development throughout Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok. He hasn’t witnessed the death of his adoptive parents, or worked together with Thor, much less sacrificed himself to fight Thanos. (And yes, it did confirm that he really did die in Infinity War and was not faking it, like he did his many other deaths.)
The Loki we end up with in this series may be different from the Loki that we knew before. But seeing how his history is supposed to go clearly had an impact on Loki, and we can’t say yet whether the series will end with him returning to his proper place in time or finding a new way to live on.
2. Welcome to the TVA
Much of this episode was spent introducing us to the Time Variance Authority (TVA). Their mission is to ensure a single, proper, “sacred” timeline by eliminating any Variants. In Loki, we get to see that they’re a ridiculously bureaucratic but also powerful organization, capable of forcing people into slow-motion, rewinding their position through time, and disintegrating people with a tap from one of their weapons.
We also get to see them in action, stepping through time doors in a way that… okay, they look a lot like the ones used in Legends of Tomorrow, I can’t deny that. But they move quickly and efficiently, using capsules called “reset charges” to restore timelines to their proper place.
What finally makes Loki realize he’s out of his league is when he sees that they have multiple Infinity Stones casually stored in drawers and used as paperweights. Imagine, the MacGuffins from the last several years of Marvel movies, items of such great power that they can rewrite all of reality, and they’re nothing but useless trinkets to the TVA. After all Loki has been through because of them, well, it’s no surprise it would cause him to freak out.
Notably, there are also several versions of individual stones, presumably taken from their own variant timelines. As was noted in Endgame, removing a stone from its place in time (without putting it back afterwards) results in a new timeline, so it stands to reason the TVA would swoop in to fix any of those.
Oh, and Owen Wilson’s character, Agent Mobius, does exist in the comic version of the TVA as well. His comic counterpart is responsible for the 616 universe’s timeline, so you have to imagine the constant time shenanigans caused him a bit of a headache.
With all that said, the TVA in Marvel Comics is a little… less impressive. Yes, they still exist to maintain the proper flow of time, but they’re very inconsistent about it. Think of all the time travel stories that happened without their interruption – “Days of Future Past” changed history, “Age of Ultron” nearly shattered it, heck, even Squirrel Girl had that time when she was sent into the past and had to loop through an event so she could get multiple time-displaced copies of herself to fight Doctor Doom! That’s not even getting started with Kang the Conqueror and all of his paradoxes. And not a TVA agent to be seen.
But when She-Hulk uses time travel to warn a teammate of his impending death? Then she’s put on trial. The TVA was also put to spectacular use in “You Are Deadpool,” but for any big events that rely on time travel, they’re pretty much not around.
3. Let’s Talk Time Travel
Time travel is one of my favorite topics to explore when used in fiction, so this series already has a lot going for it. So let’s examine this a little.
Continued belowNow, we already know that in the MCU, time travel does not normally create paradoxes, since it’s all dependent on the time traveler’s personal chronological journey. (How this will change with Kang the Conqueror in Quantumania remains to be seen.) More importantly, this episode establishes that time travel is also part of the intended flow of events.
So when the Avengers travel through time to stop Thanos in Endgame, the changes they made didn’t change history in any way that it wasn’t already meant to be changed… with the exception of Loki escaping. Since he did remove the Space Stone from its proper place in time, he created a divergent timeline, as established.
We also see that if a timeline change goes on for too long, it reaches a “redline.” That’s presumably a point of no return for the timeline, creating a new branch in the multiverse — something the TVA does not want to happen. Otherwise, apparently, it can lead to another war of the multiverses.
So time travel doesn’t cause paradoxes or alternate timelines due in part to the nature of time travel, but also because if someone does, the TVA swoops in and puts it all back to normal.
I really wish this show would also touch on how time travel was used in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last season and how the TVA would respond to the alternate timeline they created, but the movies always ignored the events of the TV shows, and I get the feeling that Loki is going to ignore it too.
4. Loki vs Destiny
What’s the main conflict of the episode? Not Loki vs the TVA, but free will vs predestination.
Loki is taking the stance of free will. His decisions are his to make, and the TVA cannot choose his destiny for him. In fact, he’s very insistent on that fact. Yet at the same time, he is also convinced that he is meant to rule, that he has a “glorious purpose.” There’s an inherent contradiction there, same as how he boasts that he’ll “free people from the shackles of choice,” treating himself like a liberator while becoming a tyrant.
The TVA takes a completely different approach. The timeline is set in stone, and it has to happen; anything deviating from that will be removed. Loki doesn’t have a “glorious purpose,” his destiny is to be the villain that drives heroes to excel, undergo some character development, then die. We’ve seen it happen, it’s written out as such.
This idea of destiny versus choice is something that comes up in more or less any time travel story, although not all of them explore it. If the future is written, then our choices mean nothing and all is predetermined. If the future can change, then we run the risk of paradoxes. We also saw this in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where the timeline was set in stone until a massive event managed to change it, and time travel was later shown to create alternate timelines when things change too much. (But again, Loki will likely ignore everything from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Loki seems to be walking a line between these two possibilities. The future is written, but in part because any choices we make that go outside of that future are punished and corrected. It creates an interesting dichotomy that I hope this show will explore further.
Or maybe I’m overthinking it.
5. This Series’ First-Episode Surprise
Well, of course the episode had to end with some sort of twist. WandaVision’s first episode ended with us seeing someone at S.W.O.R.D. watching the show within a show. Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended with the reveal of John Walker as Captain America. So what’s Loki’s big reveal?
In this case, we learn that the big threat that’s been wiping out TVA agents (or “Minutemen,” as they’re called) and creating nexus events is… Loki. But not this same Loki, a different version of Loki. We don’t know much else yet, other than how he grabs tech from the year 3000 (Oh hi, Kang) and sets a bunch of Minutemen on fire in Oklahoma, but this is establishing an interesting conflict.
Where did this alternate Loki come from? Will the Loki we see now eventually become him, establishing a temporal loop? After all, he did threaten to burn the TVA down, and destroying them would be in line with Loki’s stated belief in making his own choices and not being tied down to a TVA-prescribed destiny. He’s attempting to break his own temporal shackles, metaphorically speaking. Or perhaps the Loki we’re following will have a change of heart and stop the alternate Loki.
Continued belowEither way, it’s a good enough hook to bring us in to the next episode, so Loki is off to a strong start.
Other Thoughts
– Loki is D.B. Cooper due to a bet with Thor, and I love it.
– Tara Strong did a fantastic job voicing Miss Minutes, the mascot character of the TVA that explained everything in a humorous little animated video.
– Gotta respect how Loki made sure to ask for Casey’s name before threatening to gut him like a fish, just so he could personalize it.
– The phrase “nexus event” was tossed around a bit. In addition to the “Nexus” anti-depressant advertisement in WandaVision, there’s also Man-Thing’s Nexus Of All Realities from the comics. We’ll see if there’s any connection there.
– Yes, Loki’s file does cite his gender as “fluid,” which is a good nod to how his mythological and comic book counterparts could and would switch between being a man or woman (or neither) whenever the need arose. I’m glad that my nonbinary/gender-fluid friends are getting representation, but I really hope they do more with this than just include it as a “blink and you’ll miss it” easter egg. Give us Lady Loki, Disney!
