Loki: Science/Fiction

 “Reality isn’t what you think it is.”

So, last episode painted everything into a corner. It gave us the ultimate cliffhanger: everything is over. Where now? It reminds me in broad terms of the end of Steven Moffat’s first series of Doctor Who, but it is very much its own beast. This is an excellent piece of television. Also, I approve of the point made about the Velvet Underground being a literally earth-shaking band.

So Loki, already established as time slipping- with an effect that suddenly reminds me of the fate of poor Victor Timely- spaghettied. I suppose being a God helps. 

And so Loki goes on his journey to the main timeline lives of all his friends- Hunter B15 the community doctor; Mobius the single dad jetski salesman (what else?); Casey the bank robber escapee from Alcatraz (what?!); OB the physics professor and aspiring science fiction author. It’s all good fun, though hard to see where all this is going.

Then Sylvie. And that wonderful scene in the bar. The scene that starts by laying out the ideological oppositions of these two variants of the same person. Both believe they support free will, free agency, yet these concepts are not easy to apply to a slippery, timey-wimey multiverse which is somewhat unstable.

Sincere though both are, though… both are selfish. Sylvie wants her humble life in Oklahoma. It’s not much, but it’s human. It’s happiness. It’s what she’s always dreamed of. For Loki… for the first time in his life, he has purpose through friendship. The trickster god need not be alone. I’m not sure this quite works with the character’s history and nuance… but there’s enough sleight of hand.

So all hope lies in time-slipping Loki TL rewrite the timeline. There is hope.

Except… the first scene in the “previously on” very much seemed to me to suggest that He Who Remains is indeed manipulating all of these events.

Superb telly, in case it needs reiterating.