TV Review: Loki!

TV REVIEW!

Loki

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia Di Martino

Directed By: Kate Herron

SPOILERS

The still burgeoning small-screen Marvel Cinematic Universe has made some pretty big impressions since beginning earlier this years. From introducing us to “Agatha All Along” to bringing the shield of Captain America to Sam Wilson, the latest installments of the mega franchise have made some pretty small-to-medium size splashes in the pop culture sphere. But all that is about to change, thanks to a series starring the God of Mischief himself, Loki.

Freshly plucked from the timeline after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Loki finds the titular character joining the ranks of the Time Variance Authority, aka the TVA, to help investigate a mystery involving, well, himself. It’s those kinds of fun time travel aspects that help Loki to stand out from the other two MCU shows, and the “Doctor Who by way of Marvel” works in spades.

Like the previous shows, one of the strengths of Loki is the ability to give the spotlight to a character that hasn’t been able to take the stage for too long on the big screen. While certainly given more screen time than Falcon, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, and Vision, there hasn’t been this much character work given to Hiddleston’s trickster since arguably the first Thor film. Tom Hiddleston could sleepwalk his way through the role at this point, but he’s clearly having a ball playing this very specific Loki, one who is plucked from the timeline at his most arrogant, and has yet to go through the events of Thor: The Dark World, Ragnarok, and his death in Infinity War. When the character witnesses the upcoming events of his life when he first joins the TVA, Hiddleston brings a surprising amount of depth and character to the role, and makes you believe that a Loki can change.

Speaking of Lokis, there’s a whole lot of them in this show, and while some are scene stealers (hello, Alligator Loki), the one that makes the biggest splash is Sophia Di Martino’s “Sylvie”, who escapes the TVA as a child and has spent her entire life dodging them. Di Martino and Hiddleston have an easy chemistry that takes the show to some truly surprising places with the two, creating probably the most unlikely/likely romance for a character as narcissistic as Loki. But as weird as their kinda/sorta courtship is, it’s also really sweet, as the two characters bond over the fact that they are both lonely at their core.

There’s also another relationship that is arguably stronger than the one between Loki and his variant, and that’s with Owen Wilson’s Mobius. Probably the actor least likely to jump into the MCU, Wilson delivers the most surprises as a jaded TVA agent who believes in Loki’s ability to change and help them. Like Di Martino, Wilson and Hiddleston have a great chemistry together that makes you wish for just one more episode with the two of them investigating the timeline for variants. They’re basically the new Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, but on a more mundane, albeit cosmic, level.

If there’s one area that Loki stumbles, it’s in the pacing in the middle of the series. Like the other MCU shows that have come out, a little more planning would have helped work out the kinks in the middle portions of the series, especially now that the who season story has been released. The third and fourth episodes are both exposition dumps and could have been condensed into one episode, especially if it meant more time with Loki and Mobius. On the flip side of that, I also would have liked to spend more time with the various Loki variants we meet in the void, but I also fully admit that if we had gotten more of them, we might have gotten sick of them.

Loki is the perfect mix of Wandavision and Falcon & The Winter Soldier in pretty much every way. It has the great character work of the former, and the high stakes and building blocks of the latter. But of the three, I’d argue this is the most important, giving viewers the best hints at what is to come for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For some, that may feel like homework, but if the homework is this fun, I’d gladly take the assignment.

VERDICT: A