this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Truth be told, this is the last MCU thing I'm really looking forward to that's been revealed currently. Season 1 was so solid and actually stuck the landing (at least for me, I know some didn't like the last episode being so exposition heavy), so I hope the second will do just as well.
I liked it overall but thought the ending was fairly meh; it didn't feel satisfying to me. Though I've been disappointed with almost all the finales of the Disney+ Marvel shows, even of the shows I mostly liked overall. It wasn't really about too much exposition, just that I didn't feel like it really wrapped up the season properly. I'm getting a bit tired of every show ending in a way that teases what comes next instead of just giving that story a proper conclusion.
Really what I was hoping for was for Loki to pull off some kind of satisfying plan after feeling pretty out of his depth the whole season. I get that's sort of the theme of the show, that the TVA and Kang situations are above even Thanos and Asgardians, but he's still a thousand-year-old trickster god whose whole thing is schemes. There were a few times I expected him to have something more going on, but the payoff never really happened. But I digress a bit. I'm still looking forward to season 2; Tom Hiddleston is fun to watch.
You’re really driving at something that I’ve struggled to express about the show. I’m not sure you quite nailed what I felt but you’re really close to articulating something I can’t quite put my finger on.
While I actually really loved the ending (there's no way they can go anywhere but down after that), I agree with @jake_eric that it really doesn't feel like Loki at his normal potential, and it bothers me. It's nothing like a bad show, but the character they're pushing out of their depth is the one single character who's whole point is that they're literally never out of tricks.
That is who he is not just as a Marvel villain, but in mythology. The entire purpose of him as a god, historically, is to keep everyone on their toes. It's a near-impossible sell and would require some very skilled storytelling to make palatable because this kind of sweet, helpless behavior destroys who he is at his core.
The only take I've seen that made me more ok with it in the sense that it was at least believable was a psychology video focusing on him. I could have sworn it was cinema therapy and can't find it anywhere in YouTube at all now, driving me crazy, nevertheless go check them out anyway, they're amazing.
Anyway, the only way out of being ridiculous is that video he's forced to watch. He spent his whole life chasing acceptance and acted out for lack of it and in response to betrayal. That video not only showed him images of himself as a flashy savior before his own heroic death, it showed him his family accepting him, which was something this Loki never got to hear.
It's fully believable it would heal something. It's the kind of thing that always made him go good for a split second before he went right back to Preemptive Strike mode.
Problem is, I don't think it would heal this quickly and drastically. Not thousands of years of bad habits over the course of a half hour, before a heartfelt sharing session with captors whose proven superiority sets off every fiber in him.
They simply don't have the kind of time it would take to cross that kind of bridge, so seeing the badass bastard Loki everyone came for turn very quickly into a flustered sensitive boy with a Hallmark love interest feels contrived and more than a little frustrating. I'm watching for trademark grandiosity, sick fight scenes, and surprise turnarounds that almost never happen, but snuggling does.
This IS technically the point — they've diverged from the static dictates of who they're supposed to be in a way that crashes the narrative. One of the crimes was literally wanting to be a lawful servant because a god of mischief can't be good. As soon as they go Hero, they leave or they die.
And it's such an interesting take that I can't even say I dislike it. But by intentional design, it's not really about Loki Loki any more than "what if James Bond retired and took up flower arranging and never did spy stuff ever again" would be a James Bond movie. Understandably, fans would be impatient.
I can't WAIT for this to come out. I'm slobbering to see more of this and I should probably re-watch it sometime. But I want my damn Loki for a few minutes.
This is a great take! It's very close to what I was getting at, yeah.
I think Loki being good now was rushed, but isn't entirely unbelievable given that Loki does tend to turn good every so often anyway. But even if he does decide to be the good guy for a bit, he's still Loki — like you said, we're expecting "trademark grandiosity, sick fight scenes, and surprise turnarounds," and we didn't really get that, I totally agree.
One of the scenes that frustrated me in the show was when Loki got kicked off the train on Lamentis. First of all you'd think he'd be way too powerful to lose to train security, even drunk, but you can handwave the power levels for whatever reason; more importantly, it just felt like a dumb move so the plot could happen. I thought he might have some kind of plan behind what he was doing, but it seemed like he didn't, unless I missed a reveal somewhere?
Lamentis is by far my least favorite episode. It has some pretty moments (his visually pleasing use of magic, the dance party), but nothing about that was either one of them being in control of absolutely anything.
And you're right, they're supposed to be the god that has the plan. Watching not just one but both of them run around like chickens with their heads cut off and lament (har har) their fate while everything they try repeatedly fails was original but annoying. The writers need to be pushing way harder into underdog than kicked puppy. Hopefully, now that they've got the Character Development ™ out of the way, they'll do that.
Also...what was the thing where he stops a building from falling with his mind? What was that? Where did that go? He's never done that before, to my knowledge, it's not really his kind of power. He never does it again. Nobody talks about it. He just lifted the larger half of a skyscraper by thinking at it, which is again visually cool, but I'm sorry?
Yes, exactly. I'm perfectly happy to watch fun characters semi-competently flounder through time and space (I enjoyed Legends of Tomorrow), but I feel like there are other characters that would be more suited to that kind of thing. Sylvie especially should be in her element, she's supposed to be a major thorn in the TVA's side since she was a child, which should be a significant feat. But she doesn't really seem to know what she's doing any more than our Loki does, and that's already less than you'd think he should.
I'd almost forgotten about the building thing; when I first watched it I thought it might be a hint that the whole situation was an illusion — Loki was tricking Sylvie, or Sylvie was tricking Loki, or someone else was tricking them both, and that would explain all the oddness — but that wasn't at all the case in the end. I had all these theories about what at least one of the Lokis might be planning and they never paid off. It's almost as bad as when Evan Peters' Quicksilver turned out to just be a guy named Ralph Bohner.
Th...that would have been amazing. And it would have totally worked. I have been robbed 😭
Sylvie is more in control than he is, but that really isn't amounting to all that much. You could say Loki's intervention has thrown a wrench in every plan, but uncertainty is still her entire sphere. The one good thing to come out of it was watching them try and fail to trick each other. This was one of the things I most enjoyed and it really didn't go on as much or as long as it should have because the writers needed to ship them in a manner that didn't have to be as obvious as they wanted it.
Two Lokis feels like a definite case for a slow burn. Nothing so attractive as a whole season spent unable to outwit or outperform yourself, which would build more of a semi-respectful rivalry of the two, but they made it obvious 2-3 episodes in. It's not awful, but it's heavyhanded.
To be honest I still find their whole romantic situation a bit weird. Not just that they're variants of each other and so are probably genetically related, but also that I didn't think Loki really needed to get into a relationship in the first place.
It's almost hard to remember why I actually liked the show at this point. I do think Tom Hiddleston is a good actor who does a good job putting himself into the role, which is one of the most important things about a show for me; some of these shows you can tell the actors are phoning it in and it kills the vibe. But the more I think about the writing choices the more I find them... questionable.
I'm hoping that they'll learn from the reactions to the more recent shows and movies, and put less effort into setting up a Kang war or whatever and just have Loki do more Loki stuff.
one of the episodes in s1 seemed much more like a doctor who story than a loki one. I know Doctor has been compard to trickster in a box, but still was odd run
This was a fantastic read, thank you.
I mean, his whole thing in the MCU is that he's a whiny daddy's boy who's jealous of his older brother. It's just occasionally he has good writers.
Loki is pretty much the best thing from the MCU since Infinity War. And kind of the only good thing since then. I hope they don't fuck it up
Moon Knight and Wandavision were pretty good aswell. Everything else though…
I liked Moon Knight but thought it fumbled the ending.
TBH, I loved the premise of MK. But I thought it fumbled more than it landed.
It's not really fair to compare, but I can't help but feel like Legion did a similar "what is reality?" premise about a million times better.
Honestly which ones didn't? Hawkeye?
Wandavision was dope AF.
Really, I've liked most of the shows. GotG, Spider-Man FFH and NWH Shang-Chi, and Doctor Strange 2 were really good too. Really excited for What If? season 2.
Overall I've been pretty happy, even if Thor 4 and Ant-Man 3 have been significant disappointments recently.
I also liked Black Panther 2.
Shang Chi and No Way Home were both dope
Shang Chi was awesome, but NWH was nothing but a well produced nostalgia trip