Loki, Season 2 – at last, another good Marvel series!

Let me start by getting one thing straight. There are no Season 2 spoilers in this review. It does, however, contain Season 1 spoilers. When it comes to Season 2, I won’t be mentioning anything that hasn’t already been revealed in the trailers.

As much as I enjoy Marvel series such as Moon Knight, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision, I can’t shake the feeling that these perfectly solid shows are just slimmed-down versions of a potentially terrific Marvel movie. But that’s just one of numerous reasons why I’ve been struggling to muster up any enthusiasm over new Marvel movies and series lately.

Loki makes for the one glorious exception to this. Even in its first season, it managed to tell a story with an incredible amount at stake – the universe itself, in fact. And yet, it felt more personal than you’d expect of a storyline set against the backdrop of the end of the world. Intimate, almost.

«Even if Loki, Season 2 is only half as good as Season 1, I’ll still be very grateful,» reader ralf1973 commented on my October streaming highlights article. Well, ralf1973, my good man, having watched four of the season’s six episodes (that’s how much I was allowed to see in advance), I can assure you that Loki, Season 2 is better than «only half as good». Far better.

Loki, Season 2: the plot

Let’s recap. At the End of Time, there was He Who Remains. The only being who witnessed the end of the universe and all existence. At least, that’s how it plays out in the comics. In the series, he’s one of millions of variants of the man who waged an all-out, multiversal war against himself. Using a trick, He Who Remains managed to win the war, going on to create the TVA, the Time Variance Authority. This ensured only one timeline would continue to exist, wiping out every other variant of his evil self.

For aeons, this set-up worked well. But He Who Remains would eventually have to reckon with the fact that not even he has the power to impose his story – his Sacred Timeline – on the universe forever. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) eventually find him, He Who Remains is killed, taking his closely guarded, painstakingly built order along with him. The Multiverse is reborn. Chaotic, full of danger and containing countless He Who Remains variants.

But before Loki can face them, he has his own problems to contend with. Time slipping, for instance. That’s the never-seen-before phenomenon causing Loki to jump uncontrollably between the past and future. What’s more, it’s not just the Sacred Timeline that’s in danger of collapsing, it’s the Multiverse itself. The very fabric of time is on the verge of tearing in the face of what’s yet to come.

Still gloriously crazy

Oh, how I’ve missed Loki. The craziness of the series. The muddle of ideas and strange concepts I lost many a brain cell to during my episode analyses. I really did have to work hard to make sense of it all. And Season 2 doesn’t change that. Instead of indulging in a gentle start, it picks up right where Season 1 left off. Loki finds himself in what appears to be an alternate timeline, where Kang the Conqueror (the guy from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) is in charge.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell you what’s behind it all. That’d take all the fun out of guessing. After all, given the existence of the Time Variance Authority, Loki is the only Marvel series to create a world where nothing is impossible. A world that calls everything into question. Even the space-time continuum. Something that’s occasionally done in a totally off-hand way. That’s just how it is at the TVA. When push comes to shove, the organisation is nothing less than a cosmic power. An infinite bureaucratic agency that monitors the natural flow of time and reality – all from a stuffy, seventies-style office. This is just the sort of quirkiness that sets Loki apart.

It’s an office that once again includes Mobius, still played in a delightfully worldly manner by Owen Wilson. Casting him in particular was a real masterstroke in the first season. In the comic books, Mobius isn’t a terribly exciting character. In the series, however, it’s a different story. Not only because Owen Wilson can often win audiences over simply by playing himself, but also because he gives his character something the comic-book Mobius lacks: melancholy.

As we find out at the end of the first season, Mobius and the other TVA agents weren’t born and raised as Time Keepers. They were never supposed to be doing paperwork and signing documents for the TVA – so much for bureaucracy. In fact, at one point, each of them had a life of their own in the Sacred Timeline. Right before they were ripped out of it, had their memories manipulated and were condemned to a job for life. For a long time, Owen Wilson’s Mobius is unaware of this. But right from the start, his irrational, insatiable infatuation with jet skis and other 90s items contained a surprisingly honest underlying pain.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag in Season 2, Mobius needs to face this realisation. As does everyone else who works for the Time Variance Authority. Some are lamenting over the life they could’ve had. Others are realising they’ve spent aeons committing inhuman atrocities in the name of false gods, the Time Keepers. For with every alternate timeline they pruned from the Sacred Timeline like stray branches, they destroyed not only He Who Remains variants, but billions of human lives. This has to come to an end.

Or does it?

What if the evil variants once again start a war so destructive that it annihilates the entire Multiverse? This would wipe out not just the branches, but the entire Sacred Timeline. The end of the world seems inevitable. It’s an almost Machiavellian moral quandary that Season 2 dives into, giving the series more depth than any Marvel series before it.

If there’s anything to criticise, it’s the length – or rather, the lack of it

What Loki lacks, however, is the time to properly explore this depth. This isn’t just a problem in this series, but every other show Marvel has created. Like the previous season, Loki, Season 2 only has six episodes, all of which are barely longer than 50 minutes, including the credits. This isn’t enough to give important twists or revelations the weight they deserve.

So as not to reveal any spoilers, let’s take an example from the first season: the moment when Mobius confronts his longtime friend Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). By then, it had already been explained to us viewers that the two were connected by a friendship spanning thousands of years. When Renslayer stabs Mobius in the back, we know something significant is going down, but we don’t feel it.

How could we? The series would’ve needed considerably more episodes involving the two doing things like solving cases together, always having each other’s backs. All the way through time. In the six short episodes, however, the two only appeared in one scene together in Renslayer’s office. Rather than being portrayed, their friendship was stated in dialogue so that we viewers would be aware of it.

Season 2 suffers from the same affliction in similar scenes. Not because the script is shallow or because the actors play their characters badly. The series just doesn’t have the runtime to tee these momentous events up properly.

Tom Hiddleston’s on fire – but it’s someone else who steals the show

And yet, precisely because Tom Hiddleston still gets as much enjoyment out of his role as he did during his iconic appearance at Comic Con almost ten years ago, the series’ lack of runtime doesn’t do any serious damage. Mind you, Hiddleston does still play his character as overly sly, cunning and calculating. It wouldn’t hurt for him to just let loose and do some magic again. At the end of the day, while Thor inherited the power and strength of his father Odin, Loki takes after his adoptive mother Frigga, a master of the magical arts.

Yet another thing that really hits the mark is the interaction between the characters. This includes the now firm friendship between Loki and Mobius, characterised by a great deal of mutual understanding of each other’s weaknesses. Even if they do still bicker like an old married couple. Their squabbles also serve as the perfect blend of Wilson’s mischievousness and Hiddleston’s British understatement. The two complement each other as if they’ve done nothing but stand in front of the camera together their entire lives.

Then there’s Loki and Sylvie, who’re technically one and the same character since Sylvie is a variant of Loki. In Season One, romance was brewing between the two. A romance between Loki and himself, basically. «It’s complicated,» Mobius quips dryly. Indeed. Even so, the series makes it work, as the little time available for interaction between the characters is perfectly deployed. This at least gives the characters the depth they need.

However, the true show stealer is actually someone else entirely: OB, a new character played by Everything Everywhere All at Once star Ke Huy Quan. OB is essentially the TVA’s janitor, electrician and all-round handyman, with Ke Huy Quan’s portrayal every bit as quirky and lovable as characters he’s played in films. In the beginning especially, his boundless energy ripples through the first two episodes, almost making you forget that he’s not the lead actor.

Yet another example of instinctually good casting, something the makers of Loki excel at.

Verdict: a must-watch

There’s no doubt about it. Loki, Season 2 is gripping, entertaining and still a hell of a lot of fun. Why? Because it remains unshakeably true to the strengths of the first season. To be precise, the sheer absurdity of perhaps the most powerful of all the cosmic forces in the Marvel universe, the TVA. Which, for whatever reason, is just a musty, 1970s office. What’s more, Season 2 sees the return of all the important characters from the first season. And with them, extremely well-rehearsed dynamics. The prime example of this being Hiddleston’s Loki and Mobius. Add to that Ke Huy Quan’s OB, an endearingly quirky character that could only exist at the TVA.

Amidst all this, nothing less than the universe itself is at stake. And rightly so. This is exactly what makes Loki one of the few Marvel series that doesn’t feel like a watered-down version of what would’ve made a much better feature film.

My advice to you? Watch it.

The first episode of Loki, Season 2 will be released on 6 October on Disney+. After that, we’ll get one episode a week. There are six episodes in total, each about 50 minutes long.