We’ve reached the end (of all things?) and the word of the day is two words: Free will.
Summary
Loki and Sylvie arrive at the manor at the end of time and Miss Minutes greets them; she lets them know that they are in the realm of “He Who Remains” and that he has agreed to reinsert them back into the timeline together if they just give up this mission. They move on and meet this mysterious figure (Jonathan Majors), who seems delighted at their arrival. He takes them into his office and explains the gambit: He lived on Earth in the 31st century and discovered the existence of multiple realities, but so did many other versions of himself. Plenty of his variants merely wanted to meet and share knowledge, but some of them wanted to conquer parallel universes and a giant war broke out across the multiverse. Eventually, He Who Remains came across Alioth and used him to implement a solution: He would keep one clean, orderly timeline, and that would prevent any of his variants from trying to take over ever again. He created the TVA to that end.
Back at the TVA, Mobius confronts Renslayer. Their fight doesn’t come to anything (she disarms him instantly), but she is adamant that their work can’t have been for nothing. She tells Mobius that she’s going in search of free will and TemPads herself somewhere (somewhen) else. The timeline is branching uncontrollably, and Mobius and B-15 argue over whether they should be trying to stop it or simply letting it happen.
He Who Remains knows the flow of time up until this moment. He offers Loki and Sylvie their two options: Kill him and unleash the multiverse (leading to another multi-timeline war and this eventual solution probably being executed all over again), or take up the job in his place, explain why it’s necessary to the other TVA workers, and keep the system going. Sylvie thinks he’s lying and is determined to kill him. Loki believes him, and wants to consider both options carefully. This leads to a fight breaking out between the two. After crossing swords, Loki puts himself between He Who Remains and Sylvie, telling her that he promises his intent is not to rule—he merely wants her to be okay. They kiss, but Sylvie says that she’s not him before TemPad-ing him back to the TVA and slaying He Who Remains. He promises that she’ll be seeing a lot more of him as he dies.
Loki goes in search of Mobius at the TVA. When he finds him, he tries to explain what he just witnessed, but this Mobius doesn’t seem to know him, asking what section he’s from. The TVA has changed entirely, centered around He Who Remains, and organized into multiple branches for the whole of reality.
Commentary
So. If you aren’t a comics buff: You’ve just been introduced to Kang the Conqueror.
Kang was a popular theory for the villain of this show from the beginning, so this isn’t exactly surprising as a reveal. On the upside, Jonathan Majors is wonderful in the role, and giving his all in this presumably more mellow iteration of Kang who wanted to keep the universe safe. (From himself. I mean, that right there is a pretty great origin for using the character down the road.) Part of the fun of this set up is knowing not only that will he be back, but that ostensibly every time we see him, he’ll get to try a new take of the character. If they’re all variants from different timelines, he gets to play around infinitely.
Is this version meant to serve as a kind of “core” key-in to the character? Here’s hoping—Kang is often written/played very straight and serious, and winds up kinda boring as a result. What Majors is already bringing to the role serves as great roots for building a more interesting villain.
Having said that, the entire first season of Loki amounts to just this: a build-up to the reveal of one of the MCU’s next mega-villains. And that’s disappointing for a number of reasons, the central one being that this show is supposed to be about Loki, yet they’ve spent a hefty chunk of their narrative space in setting up another segment of the MCU. All the shows are doing this, of course, but neither WandaVision nor Falcon and the Winter Soldier did it quite so obviously. Loki did such a poor job of it that they had to end-load the entire reveal.
The same goes for Mobius and Renslayer’s plot lines, which don’t end so much as fizzle in prep for future appearances. We’re supposed to accept this because we’re being told already that a second season is incoming, but that doesn’t make both characters’ underuse and random dispatching less of a disappointment.
Here’s another thing that stands out awkwardly: Kang presents this whole conundrum by offering Loki and Sylvie two choices. They can either kill him and let the multiverse run wild, or they can jointly take his place as the ones running the TVA and keep everything orderly and neat. This show tried awfully hard to set itself up as a discussion on the terms of free will: Who has it, who doesn’t, how you exercise it, what it means, how the conceit of its existence potentially shapes personhood.
And in this presentation of choice, Loki, god of mischief and chaos, only ever considers those two choices.
Sylvie wants option one and Loki might want option two, but neither of them ever suggests that there’s any number of other possibilities here, and I get that there’s a (poorly conceived) ticking clock on this, but the very idea that someone says “pick Door A or Door B” and any variant of Loki’s character doesn’t come back with “oh weird, I seem to have found Door #247” is dull storytelling and also a betrayal of both premise and character.
The actual fight sequence between Loki and Sylvie is fun and well-choreographed, Hiddleston is giving his all in his heartfelt plea for Sylvie to stop and consider her (two! just two!) options, and the problem is, this all comes down to the emotional state of a character we barely know. If they wanted to make this work, the entire show should have revolved around Sylvie as the main character; we could’ve learned more about what life was like on the run, why that life has made it hard for her to trust (because those aren’t one-to-one states). That would have made it more affecting and painful when she rejects Loki and goes through with her plan. It’s unfortunate that the whole concept wasn’t better constructed because at its center, the idea of essentially telling yourself “I just want you to be okay” should be absolutely beautiful.
Sylvie isn’t given enough space and breathing room to be her own character, and that perhaps stings more than anything: that we got a woman version of Loki who is forced by circumstance to be bruised and cynical, who then gets wedged into a love story arc because that is what always gets foisted upon female characters. The fact that the previous episode suggests that she is maybe the only female variant of Loki makes this exceptionally insulting; they couldn’t even give us the possibility of other woman variants who might have more fun, get into some good trouble that isn’t bound up in pain and isolation.
So this is depressing on the love story front and offensive on the gender identity front. The fact that both Waldron and Hiddleston stated in interviews that they knew how important it was to fans to see the character portrayed as genderfluid, that they had worked toward it, and then they gave us this is pretty much beyond my ability to comprehend. If they had maybe, I dunno—talked to some trans people—a lot of these mishaps could have been untangled. I realize that bringing this up again probably makes me sound like a busted record, and that plenty of people don’t have this problem (or any) with the show. I’m not bringing it up to be a killjoy or yuck everyone’s yum or whatever-the-heck you want to call it. I’m bringing it up because there was an opportunity here for one of the biggest franchises in cinema history to portray one of their most popular characters as unequivocally trans, and they did everything in their power to weasel out of that choice because that’s how it goes when your only goal is making money, and we should care about that.
And because we largely don’t, I will keep shouting into the Void at the end of time. Maybe Richard E. Grant will answer back, his death a ruse, and he’ll shift seamlessly into Jennifer Tilly, and we’ll drive off together in a pizza delivery car.
Perhaps the second season will work to fix some of these problems. Perhaps it will even offer up what the show initially promised its viewers back when it was just an announcement on the San Diego Comic-con main stage: a show in which Loki messes around in the events of human history. Who knows what we can count on going forward. But for now, this is what we’ve got: a stepping stone to the next Spider-Man and Doctor Strange films.
Which makes the real takeaway here, to my mind, crystalline: Hire trans people to work in writers rooms.
For all time. Always.
Things and Asides:
- The early aside with Miss Minutes is probably relying on predestination paradox thinking, but it reads more like a plot hole: If Kang already knows how this whole ordeal is going to turn out, what’s the point in tempting Loki and Sylvie with life together in a different timeline?
- The way Miss Minutes is deployed is weird all by itself because it’s suggested that she can’t be in more than one place at a time (hence Renslayer being annoyed that she didn’t retrieve her files fast enough). But she’s ostensibly a program, even a form of artificial intelligence, so why would that be true at all?
- Shoutout to Natalie Holt, who was responsible for the score of this entire show and did a phenomenal job. Hands down one of my favorite pieces of the series.
- By the way, that Nexus event thingy that happened when Loki and Sylvie held hands, was that a random thing meant to clue Kang in to their potential, or was it just maybe nothing at all because that never really came back.
- Kang is eating an apple. Christian symbolism around knowledge aside, why is it always apples? I get that they’re easier to eat, but there are plenty of similar fruits that could suffice here. My kingdom for someone to bite into a pear or a nectarine once in a while.
- The opening of this episode involves a cacophony of quotes to symbolize… the multiverse I guess. But it’s entirely confined to Earth and, in doing so, combines soundbites from real-life Earth heroes (Maya Angelou, Neil Armstrong, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai) with Marvel superhero catchphrases. Which is incredibly gross to overlap for a number of reasons, primarily that Marvel is forcibly intimating that its brand is as inspiring as real people who did real things. No, Marvel. This is not a good look on you. *slaps dessert out of their hands*
The MCU will continue this summer with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings at the movies and What If…? on Disney+.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is probably going to reread Agent of Asgard as a palate cleanser at this point. Thanks to Al Ewing for that. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
My kingdom for someone to bite into a pear or a nectarine once in a while.
Apples prevent the ‘dripping down your chin’ issue.
Yep, there’s a reason I’ve been saying Kang was the contender for the next long-term threat after Thanos.
Did I miss something, or did we get an explanation for why Sylvia was collecting all the WMD’s?
So…does Jonathan Majors get to be the MCU’s Harrison Wells?
@3 – It wasn’t, IMO, clearly explained and was totally dropped after the second episode, but apparently the WMDs were simply a tactic to draw away TVA agents so that Sylvie could sneak in and kill the Timekeepers. It was dealt with offscreen.
After the delightful chaos of the last episode, this one was kind of meh. Lots of gloomy talking, and like you said Emmet, in a world of infinite possibilities, too much squishing down of possible courses of action into either/or choices. And I agree that having only one female Loki, and her in the end being there for romantic conflict, was kind of off key.
Meeting Kang was kind of like getting to the end of a Scooby Doo episode, the gang unmasking the bad guy, and it is someone no one has ever seen or heard of before. A good mystery leaves clues for the viewer so the ending doesn’t come out of nowhere.
And this was not the Kang who wants to rule worlds, this was a weary and depressed version, who didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died. Not the flashy and megalomaniacal character who exploded into the narrative of the comics whenever he appeared. Meh.
I did like that, in the end, Loki was in an alternate timeline where Mobius doesn’t recognize him, there are no Timekeepers, and the TVA has a statue of Kang on display. And I finally realized that Miss Minutes is voiced by Tara Strong, who I fell in love with years ago while watching My Little Pony with my granddaughter. No wonder I loved that character.
This episode could easily have had a bit “To Be Continued” tagline at the end (which it kind of did, with that stamp that said “Loki will return in Season Two,” or something like that). Not a very satisfying ending to a series I had mostly enjoyed. I am hoping that, at the very least, this gives us to see more of characters I enjoyed, like Kid Loki, Croc Loki, and Mobius.
And this was not the Kang who wants to rule worlds, this was a weary and depressed version, who didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died. Not the flashy and megalomaniacal character who exploded into the narrative of the comics whenever he appeared. Meh.
I’m actually glad they went with (for all intents) Immortus rather than peak Kang here.
This is the appetizer for the feast to come (much in the same way Thanos’ cameos were in the 6 years leading up to Infinity War).
It’s more interesting in that we saw a Kang at the end of his career and his story. So we have his admission that he in his prime and his variants are monsters and threats. It builds the anticipation of seeing him cut loose in the coming films and shows (again, just like Thanos).
Wow, this fizzled out so badly. So in the end a series called Loki with several variants of Loki and several mentions of what it means to be a Loki and whether Loki can change and whatnot wasn’t about Loki at all, but merely a long intro to a villain we won’t even bother to name even if we all know who he is. Bah.
I’ve appreciated these reviews. They’re much closer to my own take on this series than anything else I’ve found; it’s weird to have a consistent “I want to like this so much more than I do” response while most of the reviews aside from the reflexively anti-genre ones are more or less swooning, so thanks for calling it as you see it.
I disagree with you on one thing, and it isn’t really substantive. I commented on an earlier review that I was happy with the Loki bi reveal. I take that back, you are in my view 100% right on the weak tea nature of the queer representation in this series. (It’s not even tea, it’s basically water). But I think you’re wrong to let yourself invest in the possibility that Disney will ever risk going further out on a limb than endorsing what would have been a progressive position a generation ago.
I don’t mean to be cynical about the values of any given individual who works for them. But the company itself is a global conglomerate with shareholders and an ironclad commitment to the bottom line. They will only ever make good art within the constraints of not scaring the conservative horses. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect more intelligent SF, better consistency with the established character the series was meant to be about, sharper comic and dramatic writing, and more rewarding use of their excellent actors than they gave us here. I don’t think you can ever expect anything from them that would let queer people feel fully seen. That’s asking capitalism to work in a way it just won’t.
The fundamental gender unequal moment in this was when Miss Minutes made offers to both. Compare them? She lists all these accomplishments for Loki. Sylvia just gets to be happy. And yes, I know viewers are supposedly familiar with all the failures of Loki, but he gets a glorious purpose and Sylvia has nothing other than vengeance. She had to have dreams beyond murdering the head(s) of the TVA. Even Thanos had a goal of being a farmer. But Sylvia is defined only by her vengeance. It both simplifies and ruins her character.
I agree that there ought to be trans participation in writers rooms, 100%! But I’m not sure it was a failing of the show that the versions of Loki were not portrayed as more gender-fluid in their own individual identities. The focus in ep 3 was on attraction, not identification (which, also… not handled particularly well). In other words, they were saying that Lokis were sexually attracted to more than one gender more than they were saying they identified with more than one gender. So the missteps with Sylvie’s gender representation and/or plot beats are, I think, a more general difficulty of imagining *women* as characters, who might care about more than their accumulated pain and their romantic options when making choices in life. Sigh! Also, that moment in episode 5 when Loki was interrogating the rest of the Lokis in the bunker as to whether they had ever seen a woman version of themselves, was… painful. He seemed to be implying that the mere existence of Sylvie broke reality (or “freed” it), which is taking gender essentialism pretty far in the opposite direction of where they should have been going, IMO.
But on a more silly note, I’m bothered that we saw Loki could conjure a blanket out of thin air in the Void, and yet he was wearing a torn and dirty button down shirt and tie for the rest of the show?? Talk about stereotypical cis hetero masculine behavior!
I hate to say it, but this episode was booooring. I wasn’t really on board with the actor…something about his demeanor just irritated me and he would. not. shut. up. and I kept waiting for Sylvie to just kill him and get all this crap over with.
I also felt the ‘conflict’ between Loki/Sylvie was just really trite/cliche and meh. The only real gut punch to me was Mobius not recognizing Loki at the end and Loki realizing he’s trapped in a universe where nobody knows him, etc.
I am completely indifferent about a season 2 at this point.
Although I suppose the idea that we’re in a kind of ‘Mistborn’ situation – where the Big Bad is actually guarding things from something even worse – is an interesting one. But as you say, Emmet, it just felt so uncreative in regards to the options.
Jonathan Majors isn’t playing Kang here. He’s playing Immortus. Who is also Kang (and also Rama-Tut), but Kang later in life when he became a ruler of time as opposed to a time-travelling conqueror. Also Majors’s outfit in this episode is much closer to Immortus’s than Kang’s…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
KRAD: Jonathan Majors isn’t playing Kang here. He’s playing Immortus. Who is also Kang (and also Rama-Tut), but Kang later in life when he became a ruler of time as opposed to a time-travelling conqueror.
Yeah, for me, half the fun of Kang showing up in the MCU as been the potential for him to not only cross swords not only with the next generation of heroes, but also past and future versions of himself (Immortus and Iron Lad).
I have one problem with this episode: when Loki says to Sylvie something like: “After all this time?!” – I wonder: What time? They have been through some crazy things, but it all seems to me like maybe a day. Not long enough to ask such question.
Also, I live for charismatic bad guys redemption arcs, so this show is basically made for me, but Loki went a bit too fast from Avengers “kneel, because freedom is overrated” Loki to this “free will of the entire multiverse is what I´m figting for” Loki.
I wish these characters (not just Loki and Sylvie, but also Mobius and other Lokis and TVA agents) could have spent more time together. I wish there was more than one female Loki variant. I wish there was Mobius on jetski (maybe season 2?) and all sorts of other things.
But that moment, when Loki says to Sylvie “All I want is you to be okay,” was the best thing ever.
All in all, it was kind of a low-key ending for the series.
I kept hoping Loki would wind up seeing Sylvie as a sort of long lost twin sister rather than a love interest, even though I knew it was a long shot.
I think I’ve got a clue as to what Sylvie’s nexus event was. She was playing with her toys and idealizing a valkyrie she wanted to be like. Every male Loki who grew up in Asgard grew up in a world full jocks where his primary talent, witchcraft, was seen as something jock warriors don’t do (ice giant Loki, who they showed briefly as a variant, grew up in a warrior culture where he was a tiny runt and people wondered why his parents hadn’t left him to die).
Sylvie, growing up in Asgard and having her foster-mother’s talent for witchcraft, was accepted. Her nexus event was when she decided to grow up to be a hero.
Which may be why there are no other female Lokis that we know of, they all got pruned as children. Maybe it even became standard policy to prune the females as infants.
In which case, they should have just said so. The reason they didn’t may be that I’m wrong and being female is still a singular variation, or maybe Disney didn’t want to give us the image of an infinite number of little babies being eaten by Alioth.
I’m hoping they veered off from talking about female infanticide (which has an ugly, real world history). But, we’ll see.
I loved the series, right up to the very end. Honestly, the season climax did not impress me very much. The only thing that saved it was the announcement in the end credits that there would be a season 2.
@8: “Wow, this fizzled out so badly. So in the end a series called Loki with several variants of Loki and several mentions of what it means to be a Loki and whether Loki can change and whatnot wasn’t about Loki at all,”
The series actually was about what it means to be Loki and whether Loki can change, and the final episode paid that off pretty well. Thought it was a great ending to a pretty good series. Looking forward to the next season.
@8: They absolutely named the character. He Who Remains is the character’s name both in the episode and the comics. Kang, Immortus, Rama-Tut, Nathanial Richards are all additional names for variants of that same person.
As someone who is pan/bi & genderfluid, the treatment of that romance is simply just… Unpleasant. So many of my friends have come to me about how uncomfortable, or frankly, gross they found it. And just… Agreed. I don’t necessarily dislike Sylvie as a character, and I think her actress is great, but I don’t see how this “helps” produce a narrative that makes folks feel represented, especially as you say, that Lokis are RARELY or NEVER women. ??? And that her seeming “main” focus has become a romantic interest, or that “when faced with a man & woman EVEN OF THE SAME PERSON” writers can’t help but think “romance!?”. Can people not care about each other UNLESS they want to be romantically or sexually involved? Nor does it say a lot for their queer representation that “The only way we can find love if it is extremely narcissistic or even incestuous.” Even worse to me is that they said they would not pursue their bi-ness further, as characters. But yet had them romantically involved and kiss. That is still being bisexual…? I think that speaks quite a lot on how they don’t understand what bisexuality is.
I feel like it especially overshadowed how fascinating He Who Remains is & Majors’ job, which WAS fantastic.
I love the one perspective someone made, which is: Sylvie & Loki have only known each other for roughly a few days. How is any of this meant to feel realistic? Or enjoyable?
He Who Remains would present a binary choice. Things are either part of the Sacred Timeline–stability, predictability, bureaucratic layers, maintaining greater mystery for the lowers because the uppers have literally seen the end of time–or they are not. You can either take on this grand legacy, or you can plunge us into the very war and destruction I’ve spent millennia pruning out of existence.
Sylvie would see a binary choice. Either destroy this person who is behind the destruction of not only her life, but the lives of every variant in the TVA, or stand aside and become the evil you’ve been seeking to destroy. (Easy choice. Inevitable choice.)
Loki might recognize a binary choice. Punish the person who’s disrupted his life and erased his purpose, or take over the agency manipulating all of time and space into a single vision. But Loki tells Sylvie, “I just want you to be okay.” He tries to keep her from making the choice she’s making without stopping to think about it first. Through the TVA, he’s seen what happens to him
They both call him a liar. Sylvie adamantly says she doesn’t believe him. Believe him about what, though? That killing him (which is what Sylvie wants) would trigger a war? She’s envisioning a choice outside the ones He Who Remains presented–kill him, destroy the TVA, and … I don’t know, has she thought past that point? She has to believe it would be a better result than the scenario he presents or she wouldn’t’ve followed through.
He Who Remains may have presented a binary, but I’m not convinced either Sylvie or Loki thought of it as one.
—
To expand on Sylvie’s interpretation, I think it’s interesting that she comes to this point where she thinks she has to kill in order to finish what she’s been trying to do for countless years, and there doesn’t appear to be a “what next.” Loki tries to stop her and get her into the space where she can consider it, but he’s unable to – Sylvie makes her choice.
In episode 1, that’s what Loki is presented with. All your life, Loki, you’ve grabbed for power — but what’s next? What would happen next?
I disagree with you about the binary choice problem. Hiddleston Loki’s position wasn’t to simply accept one or the other but to stop and think. The fact that all his energy was spent on keeping Sylvie from acting on one of the two kept him too distracted to present another option. He was, for the moment, despite the contrived urgency presented to them, choosing not to choose – the greatest free will option available when presented with a too simplistic either/or – at least long enough to evaluate whether there really are only two choices. Sylvie, however, would not allow it.
AAALLLL of this. 100%. Sylvie wasn’t developed enough for me to give much of a crap or form an emotional bond to her – we didn’t get enough of her Loki-isms either to even really see her as a Loki version, bar her being in Asgard. And for a series about “LOKI! TIME TRAVEL!” it didn’t fully deliver on its premise. I feel like we expected a series full of “Pompeii in Episode 2” moments, but ended up with a series where the main star didn’t even get a “WOW” moment. among other things. I did really enjoy the series to start but it unraveled from episode 4 onwards.
“Richard E. Grant will answer back, his death a ruse, and he’ll shift seamlessly into Jennifer Tilly” –
Actually, I think the progression is Richard E. Grant -> Jim Broadbent -> Hugh Grant -> Joanna Lumley.
(Look, “The Curse of Fatal Death” left an impression.)
Thank you for perfectly articulating all the things that have been annoying and disappointing the hell out of me with Loki. I kept wanting to like it, and really wanting some sort of madcap Loki and Sylvie go all Bonnie & Clyde on the TVA. Instead, it came down to a six episode trailer for a movie, with a side order of “Will the boy kiss the girl?”
I think the plot hole the reviewer points out regarding Miss Manners’ offer is actually solved by Steve Berman’s comment @12 – there was no chance that either of them would take that offer because it’s not what either Loki or Sylvie actually wanted. Loki had already disavowed wanting to rule, and as Sylvie’s actions made clear, she doesn’t want to forget her past to be happy. The offers were deliberately unequal because Kang knew they wouldn’t accept them.
I felt like the first three episodes were weak and almost gave up on the show. The last three held my interest, but I still felt something was wrong in this series that could make it a first class show. The variant theme just does not work for me. I plan to watch the next season though.
As a straight white man it’s good to read Emmet’s articles, as they offer a different and thought-provoking perspective. But their (valid) issues with representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe often overshadow their views of the shows and movies, and so their reviews sometimes become quite ranty. Which is a shame, as they’re so well-written.
I loved this show from beginning to end and I don’t buy most of Emmet’s criticisms (which is fine, it’s all opinion). For me, Sylvie is an excellent character, which is a tribute to the writers and Sophia di Martino. I really cared about her.
For the reasons other commentators have mentioned, I don’t think the binary choice criticism is valid. I also understand why people have a queasy reaction to the romance, but I have no problem with it. The actors sold it and it makes perfect sense for lonely, traumatised narcissists to fall hard for themselves.
Yes, you could look at the lack of a genderfluid Loki as a missed opportunity – but you could also celebrate that a major character (a now heroic one) is canonically bisexual is a big step forward. Sure, it could be further – but it’s progress.
Really looking forward to season 2.
This review puts a lot of the nebulous feelings I had about the series and especially the last episode into words. It’s not satisfying for some completely new character I’ve never heard of to show up and be the big bad at the end. It’s bad writing, and that’s one of the biggest problems in the MCU and whatever they’re calling the TV version. I was just talking about this with a friend, actually. All the movies are written by a committee to serve the greater purpose of supporting the sequence of movies that are coming up next – and that committee includes marketing, because we gotta sell the next 3 movies to audiences so they’ll come for the next big Avengers movie or whatever it is.
Honestly, I’ve stopped caring. I’m going to see Thor: Love and Thunder because I loved Ragnarok, and Taika Waititi knows how to bring out Hemsworth’s comedic talent, but I have no desire to see any more Marvel movies or shows.
I really liked Loki and enjoyed it the most out of the three Marvel shows so far. Certainly far more than Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
To me, the Sylvie and Loki “romance” makes perfect sense. Neither variant has been able to love anybody else in a long time; I can buy that the first person they’d love is themselves.
@34 – I think you have hit the nail on the head for me. To be sure, I enjoyed parts of it, and Majors’s performance has grown on me. I’ve enjoyed watching a few reactors/commentators I follow who are really geeked out for some of the implications.
But like you said, it mostly feels like setup for the next thing, and I think they dropped the ball a little bit on Loki/Sylvie in a personal level. There’s this part where Loki says ‘after all this time, you still don’t trust me’ and it’s like…WHAT time? They spent maybe a day together on Lamentis, and then ran to attack the Timekeepers, Loki and Sylvie got pruned pretty much right after that, they defeated Alioth fairly quickly…and then this episode happened.
Loki’s character did get SOME good development and there are some good themes to chew on but I also feel like we didn’t get to play with it enough (or with time hijinks!)!
To me WandaVIsion is my all time favorite in terms of the story AND the creative way they told it – I do have some complaints about the finale, but in some ways I appreciate even more that they kept it mostly personal, aside from the hint at the end that there was something bigger going on. We didn’t need Mephisto and Nightmare and all that. I think this went a little too far in the opposite in that we’re now turning this into some big huge thing with big huge consequences that are so severe it’s almost hard to care because when there are a bunch of infinite timelines and variations and recursions I tend to get a little nihilistic about things.
Also – and this is me projecting my baggage, I get it – I’m kind of over all the ‘oh, poor Loki, he feels so bad/sad because he says can’t be trusted!!! woe is him’ because…HE CAN’T BE TRUSTED. It was only a few days ago he was gouging out people’s eyes or whatever.
I get story wise he has changed (and he does show in some ways that he IS changing), but no sane person would actually trust him yet.
Not a comics person, so I always feel that MCU content has to stand on its own.
While I loved the emotional beats between Loki and Sylvie (and thought they should be more about varying ambitions), what I disliked was how so much of the quirkiness and mystery of the earlier episodes wound up being either arbitrary or ignored. Why the faux-70s retro bureaucracy? Why the giant library of paper documents for an organization that has mobile computers, hologram projectors, and the ability to view into alternate timelines? How could these goons running around with glowsticks possibly have any power over people with infinity stones? If Renslayer is the sole authority and she doesn’t know about the staff being variants then how the variants get brainwashed? I enjoy the esthetic and get the individual story beats are funny, but as a whole the setting is so much less coherent than anything else in the MCU.
Also – I wanted to add this but I forgot, I actually have the opposite reaction to the ‘voices’ at the beginning. To me it was fun, not gross, and adding the ‘real’ voices seemed to be saying the opposite thing – that these are the ‘real’ superheroes in our lives. (But I love Malala so I was basically excited to see her).
And from the MCU point, I feel like it says something that the most emotional I got during this episode (aside from when Loki wasn’t recognized by Mobius) was hearing Vision say “What is grief but love persevering”.
(I wonder if that was added after the fact given how popular WV ended up being since if I recall Loki was supposed to come out first.)
got another question about the finale: does this mean that the real reason He Who Remains was destroying variant timelines wasn’t because the whole timeline threatened the others, but to stop one individual (a variant Kang) developing?
Well, if the general complaint (of whatever variety) is that we should have gotten more… then the show did its job. We didn’t know for sure there’d be a season 2; now we do. There is room to explore more. First comes the expansion of the multiverse, which really started with Into the Spider-verse. Doctor Strange is trumpeting the Madness. The Disney+ series may touch on the concept. And maybe we’ll get Iron Lad in one of the Iron/Armor shows.
I’m taking this for what it is, not what it is not. I mostly enjoyed it and didn’t burden it with great expectations that apparently ruined some viewers’ experiences. You’d think 6 hours would be enough to explore all the ideas introduced, but it really wasn’t. Why wasn’t this 8 hours? Perhaps that would’ve allayed some concerns or agitated feelings.
I didn’t initially like Jonathan Majors’ portrayal of He Who Remains. It seemed too goofy and batty, but maybe that’s what happens to your brain after eons of life. I liked him in Lovecraft Country, but the performance was a bit too mannered here. It did remind me of the Twelfth Doctor’s meeting with Maisie Williams’ Me at the end of time. He found her in a library filled with all her journals over billions of years, all her experiences written down because even an immortal organic brain can’t store every memory.
Even this show’s understanding if gender fluidity reflects Who. It’s not a character changing their present identity into another sex/gender (despite Loki’s ability to shapeshift in mythology). It’s changing gender identity in their next incarnation. So the Doctor became female in her 13th life, with the added possibility that the 12(+1) previous white straight male incarnations may not have been the default. The template for the first Time Lord was actually a girl from another universe (another parallel). Doctor Ruth may have preceded Hartnell’s; plus add in the possibility that they were more often female than the unbroken series of a (Baker’s) dozen men.
That’s Loki conception of genderfuid: not within, but in sequence or parallel. I’m not aware of how much the producer and star promised as far as representation, but in this sense they underdelivered. Perhaps they should’ve said nothing at all and let the show speak for itself.
I’m guessing that this was probably the intent behind that scene, but to me the execution was vague, clumsy, and off-putting. It doesn’t make much sense in context (how does going to the void at the end of time where all possible timelines converge = hearing a bunch of inspiring sound clips from Earth’s late 20th/early 21st century?) and it doesn’t seem connected to any themes of the episode or series. Maybe they could have tied it in with some dialogue like “Every universe has heroes trying to make the world better, why should we eliminate all those possible timelines,” but no, there was nothing like that. Thus, with no explanation or thematic resonance, it comes across less as “Malala and Nelson Mandela are like superheroes!” and more like “Our fictional superheroes are equivalent to Malala and Nelson Mandela!” After all, Marvel doesn’t make movies about Maya Angelou or Greta Thurnburg.
I did like hearing Vision though.
Regarding review: Yes. That
An option that I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere is that Slyvie could have enchanted “He Who Remains” to find out whether or not he was telling the truth.
People complaining about Loki saying “after all this time” when it has not actually been that much time — a thought that occurred to me is that despite having multiple opportunities where he could have abandoned her or otherwise betrayed her, he had not done so. He just didn’t express that very well. That’s probably not quite enough to make him actually trustworthy, but.
As noted, the offer given by Miss Minutes doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. I found myself wondering if, given that and other scenes where she seems to be hiding something/evading something, maybe she had her own agenda, perhaps not quite in line with that of “He Who Remains”.
Miss Minutes is basically delivering the Last Temptation of Christ; which fits with the apple-munching of He Who Remains. Then again, others saw it as the Willy Wonka test of worthiness to replace him as the new Gods of Time.
Supposedly a scene where King Loki wields Mjolnir to the adulation of Asgardian crowds was deleted from the final episode. Most of what she says was meant to be visualized, but the pandemic changed their production plans. Kang himself was only intended to appear in the end credits, with Loki and Sylvie’s conflict extended. I’d say they made the right choice including more of him. Despite some saying he came out of nowhere, the ground was prepared for his reveal.
I’d say that the final episode , and the series as a whole, is better and more thoughtful than it’s being given credit for in some aggrieved reviews. A simple thing like the the camera inverting as Loki and Sylvie are walking down the Citadel’s hallway, like an hourglass being turned. Or the Citadel’s tower looking like the business end of the pruning sticks.
The aesthetics of the Citadel also deserves notice: the gold traceries throughout reflecting the Japanese art of Kintsugi, repairing broken objects, usually pottery, with precious metals. “As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.” (wiki) Kintsugi
The Citadel is a physical manifestation of all the “repairs” the TVA has done to the preferred timeline.
Maybe time will be kinder to this series in some reviewers’ eyes.
In light of how this episode ended, thinking about it, I would’ve appreciated a montage of Sylvia and Loki crossing variant timelines to fix things, trickster god style. Not always big things, I’m thinking kind of the low-key Dr Who stuff (like the Doctor and Donna at Pompey) or Quantum Leap. They could have had Loki leaving little clues and/or parts of a message for Möbius. If they tried to film a few of those stories, it would have just been seen as filler episodes. However, doing it as a montage would have given more weight to the relationship between Loki and Sylvie in the final episode. They could even have noodle incident references like Dr Who is so found of, indicating a lot more adventures we don’t see, and giving FanFic writers an easy slot to set the Excellent Adventures of Sylvie and Loki.
@@@@@ 44 – “after all this time”
Yes – I thought it was actually a kind of cute call-out to the fact that they have literally been traveling through time and space together. Their time may have been compressed, but they have literally stepped through thousands of years together, to the end of time itself. They’ve been through a lot! “Misattribution of arousal” comes up a lot in action movies because characters go through life and death situations constantly.
“We’re supposed to accept this because we’re being told already that a second season is incoming, but that doesn’t make both characters’ underuse and random dispatching less of a disappointment.”
It actually kind of does, though. That’s how multi-season television works.
“but the very idea that someone says “pick Door A or Door B” and any variant of Loki’s character doesn’t come back with “oh weird, I seem to have found Door #247” is dull storytelling and also a betrayal of both premise and character.”
Not really. Both Loki and Sylvie are faced with untenable choices – there is no good, “right” answer, but each has to make the choice nevertheless. And they do. I don’t see how that’s dull, or how that’s betraying either character. When there isn’t a right choice, the choice a character makes says a lot about them. Like another character once said, “If nothing that we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. Because that’s all there is.”
It’s kind of similar to what Jonathan Hickman did in his Avengers run a few years back with the Incursion storyline – present the heroes with a problem they can’t solve, watch how they react. It’s illuminating (small, obscure pun intended).
Here, in their choices, we see the distance between Loki and Sylvie. It’s a legit storytelling choice, not a betrayal. It’s the culmination of the whole season.
“The early aside with Miss Minutes is probably relying on predestination paradox thinking, but it reads more like a plot hole: If Kang already knows how this whole ordeal is going to turn out, what’s the point in tempting Loki and Sylvie with life together in a different timeline?”
It’s not a plot hole. Keep in mind he’s been manipulating them in order to prepare them to make the choice he offers at the end of the episode. He’s still manipulating them at this point.
“The opening of this episode involves a cacophony of quotes to symbolize… the multiverse I guess.”
The director has said it was an homage to the opening of Contact. Which seems like a legit choice – moving through time here rather than through space like in Contact.
“Marvel is forcibly intimating that its brand is as inspiring as real people who did real things.”
Some people find do find the Marvel characters to be inspiring. I know some of them helped me get through some rough patches when I was younger.
I dunno, it wasn’t a perfect season, but I got a lot out of it. Looking forward to the next one.
@45: “Miss Minutes is basically delivering the Last Temptation of Christ; which fits with the apple-munching of He Who Remains.”
That is a perfect comparison!
“Supposedly a scene where King Loki wields Mjolnir to the adulation of Asgardian crowds was deleted from the final episode.”
It was cut from an earlier episode, when Loki was being shown the montage of his life. (Also cut: Loki fighting Frog Thor! I’d love to see that!)
Agree with what you say in your post. And lots of great observations! Thanks!
“Maybe time will be kinder to this series in some reviewers’ eyes.”
I hope so.
I still think that if this had been the launch series for the MCU on Disney + then this would have got more appreciation, the same for Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the problem is Wandavision set the bar very very high and it’s no surprise other shows that have followed so quickly have not quite reached that bar.
I do think that this has been the weakest of the three series yet released, it sagged in the middle but I think it came back a bit in the final two episodes, I also am still not convinced by the casting of Sophia Di Martino, (although it’s not as horrible as the miscasting of Ray Winstone in Black Widow to be fair)
It’s possibly a good thing we have a decent break between this and Hawkeye now, it may have time to address things like pacing ad structure that Loki and Falcon have had. ( I know What If is soon upon us but I think that is a different animal entirely)
mark of out of 10 for this series? 6.5
(I gave Wandavision a 9 and Falcon and the Winter Soldier a 7)
It was a fairly entertaining series overall. I liked Owen Wilson’s performance as Mobius far better than I thought I would from the trailers. And I liked it that they stuck with the Endgame time travel model where changing history merely branches off a parallel timeline rather than the hackneyed and nonsensical cliche of “erasing” the original timeline. I was so afraid that they’d throw out the movie’s time-travel rules as soon as they became inconvenient, but instead they stuck with it. Instead of the cliche about trying to prevent the rewriting of a single timeline, or put it back once it was “changed,” we got a story about taking on the guy who was preventing parallels from diverging as they naturally would.
They even got the physics more or less right, in that the branching off of an alternate history is something that propagates outward from the point of divergence through successive interactions, so if you halt the propagation by destroying everything in the vicinity, it halts the branching.
But the final reveal was underwhelming. So this big dark secret, the real truth underlying the TVA… is exactly what we were told it was in the first episode, just with one guy in charge instead of three? So what?
As for other female Lokis, I think the redhead on the right in this shot of President Loki’s squad is female:
Although it’s unclear whether they’re all Loki variants or not.