Even one of Marvel’s most successful projects wasn’t safe from their downward trajectory, with Loki suffering from a sophomore slump. But worse Loki is still better than most of their stuff and they definitely stuck the landing to salvage the show’s reputation.

With Marvel dipping their toes into the world of television, Matt Waters brings recaps and reviews of each new episode (you guessed it) every Monday. Check out the full column.

Quick Review

• Marvel’s first follow-up season was definitely inferior to the debut outing, thanks in part to the loss of Kate Herron and Michael Waldron, but it’s still a (mostly) good time.

• Despite some compromises, the show’s acting, visuals, audio and set & costume design remain stellar and dependable in a jam.

• The combination of adding in too many unnecessary elements and some shaky pacing/writing came at the expense of what was already working, particularly when it came to distribution of screen time.

• Loki’s two-season journey is overall a successfully told story that says farewell to one of the franchise’s most popular characters.

• It doesn’t so much set up new things in the MCU as reaffirm things we already knew, leaving them with a lot still to do with their compromised future projects.

Marvel’s First Second Season

For all of the project logos they’ve thrown on screens, and doing far too many TV shows in the last few years, this is the first of their series that has gotten a second season. It won’t be the last, as there are rumours they’re going to move away from limited series and into multi-season shows, but nothing else from the existing lineup seems like a sure thing to come back. Yet even with Loki ending its first season with explicit confirmation it would be returning, they got off to a rocky start with the loss of Kate Herron and Michael Waldron as creative voices and the milkshake ducking of Jonathan Majors after already being committed to him.

Kate Herron was the most concerning of these elements, as her firm guiding hand gave Loki S1 a cohesive feel that in my opinion elevated it above all the other Marvel shows. She had a vision and she kept them on track. She booked the gig in the first place by preparing a 60-page pitch document, with Feige et al acknowledging her clarity of vision winning them over. The first season never really wandered off into redundant pockets like many Marvel things can, and Herron’s direction ran rings around all the other shows to date. So hearing that not only was she out, but Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead of all people were taking her place was a huge bummer. One more time for the people at the back: I hated Moon Knight.

I was pleasantly surprised by the direction, even if I overall preferred the style of Herron. They had a clear preference for dimmer lighting and more frantic camera movement, and at times this was effective, such as conveying the urgency of situations like the Temporal Loom collapsing. It did mean the TVA, a series of practical sets that were a huge strength of the first season, didn’t get a chance to shine quite as much because we could barely see them. I really enjoyed Loki creeping around the building while Miss Minutes seized control and how they could have gotten a lot more mileage out of that, because it played to Benson & Moorhead’s horror-infused sensibilities. But they also robbed some of the intimate conversations of their energy by keeping only a single actor in frame at a time, leaning into shot/reverse-shot. Much of what made Season One so good was shining a light on their tight group of heavyweight actors, so unintentionally recreating the feel that none of the performers are in the same room from most MCU movies was unfortunate.

Changing from Michael Waldron to Eric Martin was slightly less concerning, as Martin had served as head writer on set after Waldron got the Multiverse of Madness gig, and penned my two favourite episodes of the first season, but I still think the writing was of a lower standard this time around. I believe Martin’s desire to make the show smarter often led to it feeling dumber. Silly things like Loki obsessively asking Sylvie to explain actions she’d yet to take, hyper-focusing on ‘Who pruned Loki in the future?’ when it was obvious it would be himself, and actors generally behaving in a manner counter to their best interests. Martin seems extremely into the idea of trying to portray Galaxy Brain metaphysical concepts in as artsy a way as possible, and some of it was genuinely engaging, but it came at the cost of its predecessor’s extreme sense of focus and narrative weight.

There’s not much more to be said about Jonathan Majors. It sucks they’d already filmed his scenes when the allegations broke and couldn’t reshoot due to the two strikes (not to mention the extreme cost.) They’re invested heavily in his participation in the MCU and it would be lovely if they could find a way to pivot away from him, but it is what it is, and I begrudgingly think he was good again.

Ben, my Marvellous Journey co-host, put it quite nicely: When all is said and done, Loki will be looked back on fondly as a complete set of 12 episodes, even if the quality level is lower in the second season.

The Stuff That Worked Before Still Works

Even with steps back in direction and writing, the successful elements of the first season are still mostly in place and kept the show treading water when it might have started drowning.

This is still a tremendously likeable cast who are entrusted to do Capital-A Acting, letting them have intimate conversations that enrich their characters and create emotional stakes, rather than exclusively delivering quips and exposition. Generally speaking I think the acting was less of a clear slam dunk, but some of that may be the material. Tom Hiddlestone still absolutely brings things home strong near the end, with perhaps his best work outside of The Avengers coming in the finale. Owen Wilson was a little less whimsical and a little more melancholy, but always charming. Academy Award Winner Ke Huy Quan was a welcome addition to the cast, deftly tackling the high concept sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. They were either very good at adapting the scripts to fit his voice, or the part was written for him. Much as it pains me to praise him, Jonathan Majors has still got the goods.

Natalie Holt’s music was always really good, to the point I feel guilty for not highlighting it more last time around, but I also think she steps things up in the closing stretch of the show, incorporating Norse whispers, and delivering an emotional score that turbocharges Loki’s triumphant sacrifice. I said in the finale how the sequence is somewhat difficult to follow, but you go with it anyway because of the vibe, which is 50% her.

The other half is the visuals, which miiiight be the best in the entire MCU? They’re obviously spending way too much on these TV shows in general, and there are some shakier moments like the fight scene at the end of episode two, but given how often we complain about Marvel VFX, this is a welcome reprieve. The CGI was solid in the first season, but even better this time. From the spaghettification effect to the much-lauded Yggdrasil scene, it was a pretty season of television.

Perhaps the VFX only felt better this time around because they didn’t lead with the production design as much. I already talked about how Benson & Moorhead’s direction style doesn’t lend itself to showing these elements off, but you do always feel like you’re in a real place, in a lived-in world. They didn’t play up the anachronistic feel of the TVA as before, but they still use visual storytelling with things like new uniforms being present during the ending to indicate changed priorities, and a blend of worker-types in ‘The War Room’. The interrogation room had a quirky vibe fitting with what came before, and O.B.’s workshop (and the re-dressed version in Episode 5) was gorgeous.

Even when things were lagging, it was still a fundamentally good time to see Loki and Mobius share a slice of pie in the TVA.

But It Happened AGAIN!

I don’t know how many more times I can talk about them starting with one story, getting distracted in the middle with worse episodes, only to remember what they were doing originally. Yet here we are again.

If you break the plot of this season down to the basics, it sounds good and makes sense. Killing He Who Remains allowed more timeline branches to flourish, but it’s putting too much strain on the Temporal Loom, so they have to find a way to fix it before total multiversal death. I have zero qualms about that conceptually, and bringing in a younger He Who Remains Variant, delving into the secret history of the TVA, and having Loki go on a journey through multiple points in time, ultimately becoming The God of Stories, are all good and logical ideas to supplement that larger story.

HOWEVER, they added a bunch of superfluous bullshit that really hurt the season. It started with the addition of X-5/Brad and Judge Dox. Hey, it’s a new season, you’d expect to grow the cast, right? Buuuuut what was actually achieved with either element? They laid Brad being the new villain on really thick at the start, with him holding Mobius in contempt, and having a creepy relationship with Dox, who represented the ‘Keep Things the Same’ part of the TVA inner sanctum. It made sense somebody would be fearful of changing their mission, but it was just a big pile of nothing. Both actors were good, and the characters had the chance to be interesting if taken further, but in execution they just distracted from the main plot.

I haven’t encountered a single person who didn’t find ‘Breaking Brad’ jarring, feeling like an episode was missing to explain how we got there. They threw in a single line of ADR to try, as Loki was looking for Sylive and Brad is his best lead, but Brad’s screen time and importance to the season are completely out of sync. Hell, if you’re going to make him such a big deal – standing up to Loki’s interrogation, holding a grudge against Mobius and betraying his staunchest ally (presumably, they never bothered explaining that either) – why didn’t he get ANYTHING to do at the end? Sylvie forces him to prune Renslayer, and then we never see him again. No redemption arc. No extended villain antics. Nothing. WEAK! Brad and Dox were established and then captured. Then we went on a lengthy adventure doing other stuff, seemingly forgetting all about them. Then they seemed to remember they existed, threatening to delve back into them… only to kill them off immediately. DOUBLE WEAK!

While I accept they were committed to Majors as Victor Timely, I do think they could have re-edited his big focus episode to split the material up into multiple episodes, instead of essentially giving an (alleged) abuser a 40-minute showcase. The Chicago World’s Fair could have been one, and the race to his workshop could have been the other. Fill the extra time in each with more scenes back at the TVA with B-15, Brad and Dox.

I also believe they went to Sylvie way too early and should have instead held her back until near the end. She turns Loki away when they’re reunited, tries and fails to kill Timely, and then spends the rest of the show acting as One of the Lads, chiming in with generic dialogue in group scenes. When they go to Hiddlestone and Di Martino talking quietly, it still works, but Sylvie’s extensive inclusion feels more by contractual obligation than narrative necessity. I think they would have been better served deploying her as an ace in the hole to help Loki gain new perspective, with him only meeting her again in Episode 5 as he tries to reunite his friends.

The greater sin was perhaps that these elements all stole screen time from the likes of Wunmi Mosaku and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. I’d like to think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence both are women of colour. B-15 is physically present in every episode, but she doesn’t actually do anything. Just a whole bunch of standing around and reciting generic dialogue. She didn’t get a full recruitment scene in Episode 5. She didn’t join them on most of their missions. She just left Dox and her renegades to die. She didn’t get an extended goodbye. Cool that she’s part of the TVA leadership now, but a real waste of her.

Even worse was Renslayer, who doesn’t even show up until Episode 3, launches a poorly executed coup in Episode 4, and then makes only the briefest appearances in the finale. They talk about her in the first two episodes, but fail to impress on the audience why she’s important, despite being the main face of the TVA in the first season. Likewise, Mobius gets to tell a story about their mutual past in what sounds like a pivotal emotional moment in his journey. We couldn’t have shot that and have him talk over the top? I can’t help but think that Herron would have done more with the idea that she was equal partners with an arrogant man who betrayed her and erased everyone’s memory of her achievements. Instead she comes off as incompetent and unimportant.

In summary, you either need to do a LOT more with Brad & Dox, or not bother with them at all. The cast you had were already solid, and adding Ke Huy Quan was plenty. Sylvie arrived too early, Renslayer too late. B-15 was always around but didn’t get enough meat. There was definitely a way to keep the focus on trying to solve the Temporal Loom problem, as the larger plot felt incredibly wobbly from Episode 2 until the end of Episode 4, aka HALF the season.

The God of Stories Is Born

When they first announced Loki in the slate of MCU TV shows, it raised a few sceptical eyebrows. Hiddlestone had racked up a lot of appearances already due to his fan-favourite status demanding he return for each Thor movie, as well as serving as the lead villain of The Avengers. One of the key hooks of Infinity War and Endgame was they featured almost every major character in the MCU, so it made sense to bring him back one last time, and in fairness he got a solid send-off, dying at the hands of Thanos. Then Endgame did its time travel shenanigans, and suddenly they had their justification for how Loki would return, using the tesseract to escape captivity.

It still felt a little forced, but they had their out, and people liked Loki, so we went along for the ride, and were rewarded with the best Marvel show. Both seasons have shown Loki organically grow and change after picking him up not from his somewhat heroic ending in the original timeline, but from his most evil as a would-be-conqueror of earth. It’s genuinely impressive they managed to earn that rather than just waving a magic wand and making him good now. His burgeoning friendship with Mobius, his love for Sylvie, and finding a sense of purpose with his former captors at the TVA put him on the fast-track to becoming a good person in season one.

Season Two, for all its issues big and small, was successful in tying a bow on that journey, even if he was in autopilot in the first half. His failed romantic reunion with Sylvie gave way to her delivering words of wisdom about free will that he didn’t always want to hear, but he definitely took to heart. Admitting that more so than saving the world, he wanted to be back with his friends, ostensibly the first true friends he’d ever had, was heartwarming, and even if I take issue to who did and didn’t get full scenes, I enjoyed him reassembling the band from their original timelines. With help from O.B., he learned to master his Time Slipping by focusing on the Why, not the How. With help from Mobius, he gained new understanding of being burdened with glorious purpose and sacrificed himself to save everybody. With help from Sylvie, he learned to not accept the crushing inevitability of fate, and that while Loki’s may always lose, his loss could be the greater good’s win.

There’s something terribly romantic about Marvel’s biggest shitheel growing up and accepting a new role sitting on an ugly throne at the end of time, personally weaving and caring for the infinite timeline branches of his World Tree. Hiddlestone’s sad smiles as he says goodbye to his loved ones and then watches over them are triumphant moments while the MCU is at its lowest.

Episode Rankings

1. Glorious Purpose (Episode 6)
2. Science/Fiction (Episode 5)
3. Ouroboros (Episode 1)
4. Heart of the TVA (Episode 4)
5. 1893 (Episode 3)
6. Breaking Brad (Episode 2)

This is another one where there are pretty clear buckets/groupings in my opinion. 1 & 4 are good but not great, 2 & 3 are overtly bad, and 5 & 6 are good.

The first episode wasn’t stellar, but I remain surprised by how good it is in the face of the change of creative team. It’s a successful little exercise in setting the table and is satisfying as a self-contained episode.

From there, things got really bad, with all the unnecessary fluff of episode two, truly the worst episode of either season, and the like… Very Okay, but imperfect Episode 3. As I said earlier, they likely could have taken elements of the less good episode, re-edited/ordered them and made a few tweaks and gotten a better run out of it.

I enjoyed Episode 4 more than 2 and 3, but it was such a lightning rod of the pacing and writing problems of the season overall, and that made it worse than it should have been. Many of the scenes as written and shot should be good in a vacuum, but are hurt by what came before.

But those last two episodes are legit good. I could be talked into either taking the top spot, and there’s a big gap between them and the rest. ‘Science/Fiction’ gives the ensemble more to do, while ‘Glorious Purpose’ is a hell of a sign-off from Hiddlestone. I think that powerhouse performance from him, paying off a two-season show about time travel by looping back on itself, the impactful visuals, the powerful score, and the touching endpoints for (most of) the characters tips it over the edge. I do like Episode 5 returning to the ‘characters having conversations’ aspect that made Season One so good though.

The Future

Very quickly after calling this the end fo his fourteen year journey, Tom Hiddlestone has been pretty open about the fact Loki will be back. And I’m torn about this, because on the one hand I like the idea of Thor, Loki and the other deity-like characters never truly going away… but I also feel they earned this genuinely lovely ending and a return would cheapen it a little. I can’t help but think we’ll get a scene in Kang Dynasty and/or Secret Wars where a group of overly quippy characters visit him and he gives exposition from his throne. Or whoever takes over Thor 5 from Taika Waititi will do a brothers reunion. I would actually have liked to have seen a Chris Hemsworth cameo (perhaps with Loki Time-Slipping back to a key moment, whether recreated from a movie, or something unseen from their younger days) and some poignant final words, but if we couldn’t get that, I think I would prefer Hiddlestone be done for good. Loki is out there. The audience know. We don’t need him to have a comedic conversation that undermines everything they pulled off here.

A few weeks before the end of the show a tweet went viral claiming an industry insider who had seen the finale believed they were fucked where Kang was concerned going forward. I don’t know if they mean that technically Jonathan Majors-played characters have done nothing but lose in the MCU, and therefore he’s an underwhelming villain, or if they simply misunderstood and thought the events of the finale contradict Kang rising up. If the latter, they’re dumb, because they explicitly say the TVA are now devoted to hunting down these Variants, who are only able to persist because of Loki’s actions. But if they meant that they think he’s weaksauce… well… for as much as I think they should drop Majors like a bad habit for his actions, Kang is still a good character in my opinion. Part of the threat is that he is legion, with thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of him out there, each with wacky powers and gimmicks. While Ant-Man did defeat him in Quantumania, it was by no means easy, and he came across as tremendously overpowered throughout the movie. I’d also like to reiterate that there’s an argument He Who Remains didn’t lose at all. He nearly converted Loki to his way of thinking, is potentially still alive, and his ‘rival’ is now off the board. He didn’t want an army of his Variants to rampage and they have, so in that sense he didn’t get what he wants… but we now have that army of his Variants to contend with.

Buuuut they’ve also dropped the writer AND director of Kang Dynasty and rumours persist they want to move away from him, so I’m sincerely fascinated how this all plays out, because despite not wanting Majors to return, I also think it would suck to just ignore what they’ve explicitly set up. It’s jsut very interesting how Marvel try to move forward with public enthusiasm at an all-time low. The events of this show and Quantumania laid the table for the nature of the threat the Avengers will face, but fans tore Ant-Man 3 to shreds, and nobody has any idea who the Avengers even are now. They have a delayed and poorly-testing Captain America: New World Order, a shaky-sounding Thunderbolts and a Fantastic Four movie we know suspiciously little about to try and get us from here to there, plus the events of The Marvels, which I won’t spoil at this stage. Though I will say it felt focused on explicit future planning in a way the movies haven’t been for quite some time. It feels like there is some degree of fan enjoyment in the Multiverse of Madness/Loki corner of their ugly overgrown tapestry, which is good for Feige given Michael Waldron’s involvement in both and Secret Wars, but everything else feels in an uncertain limbo.

One thing is for sure: It’s extremely unlikely this show returns for a third season, having told its story, and Hiddlestone seemingly walking off into the sun. All of the dangling plot threads can be resolved in Avengers 5 & 6, and going back to this well again can only result in failure. They’ve talked about a possible sister-show, and the only thing that comes to mind is Agents of the TVA, but personally I’d need them to tie a compelling hook to it for me to be interested.

Plugs

If you actually read all of this and STILL want to hear more of my thoughts on the MCU, check out Ben & Matt’s Marvellous Journey, a podcast series that will return soon to address Marvel’s 2023.

Between now and then, Ben and I continue to present Untitled BoJack Horseman Project every Wednesday. This week it’s Season 3 and BoJack on the Road to the Oscars.