Loki: Glorious Purpose

 "The last thing I want is a throne."

SPOILERS, obviously. I mean, this is not only the season finale but surely ends the show for good, two seasons to tell one complete stiry and then stop.

Loki begins and ends with an episode called Glorious Purpose; the snake eats its own tail. But look how far Loki has come, a triumph of character development from the writers and from Tom Hiddleston. In the end, Loki is truly a god from a myth, sacrificing everything so that a whole multiverse of infinite timelines may live and countless people may live. Last episode he confessed to Sylvie that he was motivated not only by altruism but by fear of losing his friends, of loneliness. So we know that his sacrifice, meaning perpetual loneliness, is meaningful and a final redemption.

And this is all beatifully mythical- Loki, for all eternity, alone on his throne, sacrificing everything. There are obvious echoes of Christian mythology, of course, but far more of the old myths. It's a different pantheon, but this evokes such things as Apollo driving the Sun across the sky in his chariot every day. It's appropriate, then, that the new loom should reveal itself as Yggsdrasil, the World Tree. The ultimate Ragnarok has been averted.

So yes, much of the episode is timey-winey fun evoking such things as Back to the Future, and it's brilliant. But there's real depth here, and character. Not only Loki; Mobius accepts he needs to leave the TVA and discover who he really is. We even get to see He Who Remains being sincere with Loki and, while we can't accept what he stands for, we can understand his motives. He's not evil, but genuinely focused on what he sees as the greater good. Jonathan Majors is extraordinary as ever here, with HWR and Victor Timely being crucially different performances.

There's so much subtext here, too. I'm barely scratching the surface. There's a lot about free will vs. determinism which is at once timey-wimey and philosophical. There's lots of great comedy in the timey-wimey scenes ("I'm not questioning your surprisingly advanced engineering skills..."), beautifully performed. There's an ambiguous end for Renslayer. And, in the end, there's what appears to be a stable multiverse. This, I'm sure, is at the heart of this phase of the MCU. More than that, though- episode, season and series- this is utterly magnificent.

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.

Loki: Heart of the TVA

 "I promise you this will make sense!"

Wow. This is some extraordinary, important, timey-wimey storytelling with revelation after revelation. Yet it's all about the characters, the performances, the humour.

So yes, Renslayer and Miss Minutes (does she die for good?) are the baddies. But they have their reasons. We learn at the very start that this version of Renslayer was the partner of He Who Remains, commander of his armies... yet he sent her back in time to run the TVA, and erased her and everyone's memories. Wow. How very Kang and Ravonna. No wonder she and Miss Minutes are now plotting on their own. Yet no one wants to join them, and- except Brad- endure a tortuous death rather than join them. But what's their plan? And are they being manipulated by You-Know-Who?

I love the ideological debate between Loki and Sylvie: the TVA may now mean well, but can they or anyone be trusted with that much power. Loki at this point has come so far from his "glorious purpose" beginning, yet his growth, and his friendship with Mobius, has been believable. And Sophie's bollocking of Mobius is a nice touch too. Is she implying that she may know who he is on the timeline?

But Victor's reaction to the TVA is a joy, as is the mutual fandom- and time paradox!- between him and OB. Yet it all ends in, well, darkness and doom, surely the ultimate cliffhanger. This is truly extraordinary stuff, far above any other Marvel TV show.

Loki: 1893

 "And why'd they include Balder? No one's heard of him."

Oh Boy. This isa bloody brilliant, hugely exciting bit of television, with tension and excitements all the way, and so many twists and turns.

Yes, there's far too much CGI in the Chicago of 1868 and then 1893, but the historical setting is perfectly realised- the sets, the costumes, the social attitudes (sadly having to include some degree of racism directed at Victor Timely without which, unfortunately, the setting would not have been plausible) all perfect, and it being wisely decided that there's no need to include H.H. Holmes, unless one of Timeley's bidders was subtly meant to be him.

So many ideas here, though. Victor Timely is a Kang variant born in the mid-Nineteenth Century, not the Thirty-First. He has the genius of Kang but exists in an age where the necessary technology does not exist, so he is forced to be a con man, set up by Renslayer and Miss Minutes, acting at the behest of the late He Who Remains, who obviously planned all this, and much else, before his surely expected demise at the hands of Sylvie.

Speaking of whom... I love the debate/fight between her and Loki in the Ferris Wheel, but all the more I love her unexpected decision to spare Timely and allow him to be returned to the TVA. After all, who is Sylvie, of all people, to punish a variant for the crimes of another version of themselves?

Also cool is the love triangle, with both Renslayer and Miss Minutes(!) vying for Timely's affections. Miss Minutes is a delight here. But so does the whole damn thing. I've no idea where this is going, but it's clearly pivotal for the MCU. I'm so very here for the ride.

Loki: Breaking Brad

 "We're all gonna die! Oh, hey, pleased to meet you."

This new season continues to be very good indeed. In fact, thus far it's the best Disney Plus Marvel show for some considerable time.

Ostensibly there's a lot of plot. Loki and Mobius need to find Sylvie, so they inyterrogate Brad, an agent working for Dox who may have found her, and said interrogation takes up much of the focus.

Except the interrogation is not the point: it's really aboiut the amazingly deep friendship and rapport that has built up between Loki, a god and a bureaucrat, who have really bonded to the point that Loki can relate... well, the plot of an episode of What If? (nice touch) while Mobius can express his fears aboiut finding out what his life would have been on the original timeline. I'm fairly sure jetskis would be involved.

Eventually we end with truly horrific scenes of Dox and her crew carrying outb their mission- not, as we'd thought, to find Sylvie, but to prune all the new timelinesband therreby slaughter untold quadrillions. We can sympathise with Sylvie- a goodess, albeit never having lived like one, who has found happiness in 1982 Oklahoma working a dead end job. A normal, humble life is heaven for her.

Last erpisode was about awesome concepts. This episode, while advancing the plot, reminds us that this show has such deep characters and such bloody good actors. Top telly.

Loki: Ouroboros

 "I need a Loki who remains!"

Yep, this is bloody brilliant, all right.

We ended last season on a big reveal and a big dilemma: to kill He Who Remains... let's justcall him Kang, ok? To kill Kang or not to kill Kang? Kill him, and his TVA will no longer prune the other timelines, meaning countless quadrillians will not be murdered. But does this mean inevitable multiversal way with multiple Kangs, and extinction? Yeak. Tough choice for Loki. So Sylvie makes it for him.

A lot happens here, not least with Loki slipping between what we learn is not different realities but the TVA in the past and present. It seems Kang has been changing things over the millennia and wiping everyone's minds, again and again. And the TVA, led by a general and a judge we haven't previously met, are having to face this new reality. It's going to tke a while to see how this all shakes down.

We end with an exciting action sequence which really shows us the genuine friendship and bond between a much-changed Loki and Mobius. Well, esxcept for the post-credits sequence with Sylvie in a 1982 Oklahoma McDonalds, which is a whole other thing, but the characterisation here is superb, as is the humour. This is a supremely well written, acted, directed and designed piece of television. I'm excited.

Loki: For All Time. Always

 "Only one person gets free will. The one in charge!"

Wow. This is huge. So suddenly there are branches everywhere, there's an array of Multiverses, and He Who Remains... no, that names a bit of a mouthful; let's give him a one syllable name such as, like, "Kang", because that's blatantly who he is, given his actions and backstory- is dead, but his variants will live on.

Kang is awesome, a deeply clever puppetmaster who is the man behind the curtain at a Citadel at the End of Time, so clever he can break the fourth wall and cheerfully show Loki and Sylvie the script of the scene they're in. He gets to say "We're all villains here". His Multiversal backstory is fascinating. He's eneormously charismatic. Yet his existence offers a horrible vision of free will. It cannot exist, or Multiversal War breaks out. Tyrannical, stutifying order vs. destructive anarchy. As Kang puts it, get rid of the dictator and... well, we all remember Iraq. Must it be either tyranny or Hobbesian chaos? Either way, the die is cast.

The debate, fight, kiss and betrayal between Loki and Sylvie is deeply moving in the end. So is the bitter parting between Mobius and Ravonna... and, indeed, the fact that Loki ends up back at the TVA, with no one knowing who he is.

Unsurprisingly, we get a second season. This is superb telly.

Loki: Journey into Mystery

 "Don't die isn't a plan. It's just a general demand of living."

Nice title. I love these subtle, or not so subtle, little nods.

Wow. This is a big, big episodes and I'm not even going to get started on all the hidden little artifacts around the void. We get loads of Lokis, one of which is Richard E. Grant in the original costime by King Kirby himself. The whole thing is enormous fun.

Then we get the simmering romance between Sylvie and Loki. More Miss Minutes, always a good thing. A frigging alligator Loki, one up on Walt Simonson's frog Thor. We get the revelation that the pruned aren't killed; they're sent to a bit of the far future beyond which we cannot see, and where a beast guards something beyond, something which may hold the secrets of the Time Keepers. Wow.

It's not just about the revelations, though, awesome though they are. The relationship between Loki and Sylvie is subtly and beautifully done, alongside the friendship between both of them and the relievingly not-dead Mobius, who will hopefully achieve what he sets out to do.

This is brilliant. So what lies behind the curtain...?