Believe it or not, I don't really do streaming TV shows very well. They're not on a fixed schedule that forces you to watch, even when they come out weekly, and I have trouble concentrating on a single show when I could be doing a lot else at the same time - especially now that I no longer go to the gym, where I could watch a show on the treadmill (I read when I'm on the train, where that's not really an issue). So if the show doesn't really hold my interest full on, I'm going to have a hard time keeping up, which is why I only watched the last two episodes of Wandavision and not any of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - despite really enjoying the MCU. So while I caught the first episode of Loki a week late, it wasn't a surprise that I fell behind after that. Yet the time traveling/alternate universe premise interested me enough to give it a shot this past weekend when I binged the remaining five episodes.
And well, I liked Loki, but to use a weird comparison, it reminded me a lot of The Force Awakens. The show, like a lot of Marvel properties, is tremendously cast, such that each part, no matter how big or small, is filled with a tremendous actor, bringing his best performance to the part. And the plot features some interesting aspects, with some interesting characters....who, like in the Force Awakens, never really have enough time on screen for their plot arcs and character development to really make sense - a fact that really come to a head in its last episode, which is a mess. If it wasn't for the actors being so brilliant, I'd be giving a negative review, but there's enough here to keep me interested in season 2.....albeit hesitantly.
Note: After the Jump, there will be spoilers. Do not read past this point if you haven't seen all six episodes and still want to.
Loki very much feels like a show that can't always tell what it wants to be. Is this a story about a new version of Loki realizing that he wants something more than to rule, and that to do that he'll have to learn to make friends and perhaps love and trust someone else? Is this a buddy cop comedy with a dark conspiracy myth-arc between Loki and Mobius? Is it a multiversal time travel romance between Loki and another version of himself? Is it a mystery plot? It very much tries to do all of those things, and well, it in large part works, because of how good the cast is.
Tom Hiddleston is brilliant at selling his character development, which is great because he doesn't get much time to do it. So Hiddleston gets to realize how useless his efforts to rule the world are by seeing a montage of what happened originally and seeing the TVA use infinity stones as props - and then from fighting for his life working for Mobius then alongside Sylvie as he grows attracted to her relentless attempts at survival and her strength despite it all, and then in seeing the fates of all the other Lokis in the void. Owen Wilson makes Mobius fun and easily believable as an honest true believer who finds himself betrayed by what Loki shows him, turning his side. Wunmi Mosaku is brilliant as Hunter B-15 in a similar more violent role. Sophia Di Martino is tremendous as Sylvie, investing her with as much depth as the story lets her have, besides just being a typical marvel badass.
And the plot is really interesting in concept - Loki finds himself abducted by the all powerful TVA and having to help them track down another version of himself to stay alive; he successfully tracks the variant down, but the variant turns out to be Sylvie, who is enacting her master plan to destroy the TVA; he foils her plan accidentally and winds up developing feelings for her on a doomed planet, where she also reveals a secret about the TVA; Loki and Sylvie reveal that secret and inspire a TVA revolt, the reveal about the Time Keepers being fake, and Loki's banishment into the void; Loki meets his other variants as survivors of the void, realizes how stupid their selfishness is, and with Sylvie finds a way to discover and kill the man behind it all; and Loki and Sylvie learn the truth, differ over how to approach it, and Kang is unleashed....by his death.
All that is really interesting (and yes I just recounted all six episodes in order), but there just isn't enough time for it all to work. So Hiddleston and Di Martino have enough chemistry to sell their relationship, but it still happens extremely quickly, to the point where I know it didn't work for others. More importantly, Di Martino or the actress who plays her as a child never has enough time on screen to truly sell what she is interested in and why, with us getting one scene of her child escape and nothing else portraying her background.
And so in the final episode, where Sylvie decides she needs to kill He Who Remains no matter the consequence, because of everything that happened to her, because of how far she's come, because of the need to finally have a shot at free will.....doesn't work because we've never really seen WHY she believes that. It's a bit better with Loki himself, where we can understand why he wants to be patient now rather than jump to a killing of He Who Remains without thinking of the consequences, but even there it's hard to see why he should be so opposed to Sylvie's path. In short, this is the big climax, the big scene where Loki's heartbreaks and everything goes wrong, and yet I completely did not get why the hell the two characters would be fighting over this choice, which is a big problem.
I complained on twitter about the length of these episodes, but Loki very much could have used another 2-3 episodes to build the characters, perhaps another episode with Loki and Sylvie on the run and another episode in the Void to really build everyone's' attitudes, in order to make that final confrontation work. It still ALMOST does, thanks to Jonathan Majors' brilliant performance as He Who Remains, and well I can't wait to see him next season and in the third Ant Man film But its the main character's plot arcs that need to work, and they don't really here, without the time for this character development, like a lot of the most recent Star Wars trilogy.
Hopefully season 2 can improve this by a lot with more time. We'll see.
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