Loki Season 2 Is Not What You Expect…
We watched the first four episodes.
(SPOT.ph) The dog days are over for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The glory days of the Avengers are over—definitely, at least for three the original six—the Guardians of the Galaxy have split up, and literally no one remembers that “Peter Parker” kid anymore.
With Phase Four and its 100 hours of “new beginnings” for new heroes, unsung side characters, and a brand new streaming service Disney Plus, Marvel’s Phase Five currently has the difficult challenge of being the “middle chapter,” moving all these pieces from their origins to the right spots audiences can be invested in these characters before they team-up, fight another purple bad guy, and save the universe, or whatever.
SPOT.ph watches the first four eps of Loki Season 2
Dubbed as the middle chapter of the “Multiverse Saga,” Phase Five now brings us back to the Marvel title that kicked off all these multiversal shenanigans in the first place: the series Loki. How does the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first stab at a season two stand out amidst the wave of new content that has already come before it? Does it follow through from the first season’s finale, where the multiverse literally exploded? These were questions we got answered after watching the first four episodes of Loki season two. The first episode dropped on October 6, with new ones coming every Friday until November 10.
Also read: Loki, Goosebumps, Rookie + More Titles to Stream This October
Loki Season 2 Review
After—let’s just say—more lukewarm receptions to recent outings Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion, all eyes have been on Loki’s second season to bring back that Marvel charm. After all, the first season was a fun sci-fi romp featuring a chaotic amount of multiversal variants of the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston). A quick six-episode jolt that just so happened to kick off the Multiverse storyline we’ve seen ripple into other storylines like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, No Way Home, and even Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
With that, you’d probably think Loki’s sophomore season would follow with that self-serious tone and feel of intense foreboding of the imminent threat known as Kang the Conqueror arriving on the heroes’ doorstep. The trailers for the series have certainly built up this way as well, with a panicky Loki raving about how all the variants of He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) are now about to come out of the woodwork with the eclectic time emperor now dead.
However, it’s fascinating that the series pivots back to…time travel hijinks rather quickly. As depicted in the now-streaming first episode, after dealing the blow that unravels the fabric of the multiverse at the end of the first season, Loki variant Sylvie (Sophia DiMartino) heads on over to live a quiet life as a McDonald’s employee on Earth in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Loki’s first order of business is to get his time travel side effects fixed by none other than Ouroboros, an inventor who hasn’t realized he’s been working in the TVA’s basement for thousands of years (played by none other than Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan, no less).
No, the Loki series doesn’t follow the standard formula of a “six-hour” movie Marvel has been adopting for their other Disney+ shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight, and Hawkeye. There is an overarching plot centered on the main characters fixing what is essentially the mechanism at the core of the TVA headquarters from overloading, but otherwise, each episode is rather self-contained in a new peculiar scenario.
This is a breath of fresh air, since Marvel’s “It’s a series, but we really see it as a long film with parts that release weekly!” approach hasn’t been panning out, especially with each series revolving around a murder mystery, or a conspiracy, or an recognizable character being Actually Behind Everything all along. Loki season two’s premise is “The TVA is about to explode. We got to recruit this con artist from the 19th Century to help us out,” which is followed by the titular Norse god being chased down the street by a holographic clock and large 19th Century goons with big mustaches.
The second season packs a riot when it leans more into its sci-fi camp nature, especially when it mixes it with the fantastic elements of Loki’s abilities. It should be enough to keep audiences entertained on a week-to-week basis. However, how it fairs on long-term rewatchability remains to be seen, since it does feel overall lacking on the engaging character work that made the first season as memorable as it was.
Ironically, Loki the character takes a backseat to his own spectacle, as the show’s second season doesn’t really revolve around the core examination of what makes a person a person and if an individual has it within them to change. It seems that with our already definitively changed Loki, there’s not much more for his character to do narratively other than to bicker with his alternate self or exchange quips with Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius.
The addition of Quan and the expansion of Judge Renslayer’s role are welcome, but the series seems more occupied with just having characters end up places as opposed to having them make decisions to end up there—which was literally what the first season was all about! The consequences of free will and all that jazz. This season, characters seem to just keep getting shoved through doorways or disintegrated against their will.
Also read: 10 Years Later: Why Iron Man 3 Is Still Top-Tier MCU
Still, the second season of Loki is still one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings in the Disney+ era. Loki can join Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff and Holland’s Spider-Man as one of the handful of characters post-Endgame who have successfully crossed that hump of “I’m interested” to “I’m invested.” A rare feat, really.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Spots.
Loki Season 2 premiered on Disney Plus on October 6. A total of six episodes will drop every Friday.