If the premiere episode of Loki, Marvel's third MCU show on Disney Plus, is any indication of what we'll see the rest of the six-episode season, we're in for an incredible ride.
The first episode had it all: comedy and witty banter, nostalgia, deep character-building conversations, cool gadgets, and a mystery to solve, with a villain lying in the shadows. I even felt a sense of great acting, which isn't common for MCU entries (not to say acting is bad by any means). Most importantly, there's a huge sense of connection and build-up to future MCU projects (for better or worse; more on that later).
The show begins right where we last saw Loki during Avengers: Endgame, when he disappears with the Tesseract. He apparently didn't get very far after he crash lands on the other side of Earth (as opposed to say, I don't know, anywhere else in the universe). But the Time Variance Authority - our new government agency of sorts - arrests Loki for creating a dangerous variance in the timestream. To be clear, he was arrested for the things he was going to do in his future, not necessarily just because he was going to "time travel." The TVA acknowledges they don't step in every single time someone hops around the timeline (as the Avengers did in Endgame, of course; all you haters of Captain America's deviation with Peggy can chill).
As Loki is brought into the TVA headquarters, we get the most perfectly contrived information dump to set the stage for what's going on. Loki watches a cartoon video while walking through an empty prison line like he's listening to instructions before going on a roller coaster. The video explains how multiple timelines were vying for control of the universe until a trio of Time Keepers (almost a nod to the Trinity; more on that later) created the singular "Sacred" timeline through which all events flow. We've seen the concept of the timestream before when The Ancient One explained it to Banner/Hulk in Endgame, but now we know there's a history behind it (I'm not counting what comics have to say about this, nor do I really care). We undoubtedly will see these supreme Time Keeper beings at some point in the future. Marvel is good at maintaining the audience's sense that something else is out there pulling the master puppet strings.
Comedy is at the forefront of the episode's tone, and what a relief that is. The entire sequence when Loki gets processed after arriving at the TVA - from the paper printing out every time he speaks to the robot-screening jokes (why just robots, by the way?) - was hilarious. Loki's sudden realization that his powers don't work in this time realm was timed well.
Perhaps the best decision to help facilitate this comedic tone was the casting of Owen Wilson. He plays Agent Mobius, who is a time detective specializing in the pursuit of the more dangerous "variants." Wilson's banter with, and ability to hold his own alongside, Tom Hiddleston makes them the perfect match. Both actors can be hard to take seriously, even when they aren't trying to be funny. Wilson's quips and jokes are delivered with a quiet confidence, fitting for a character who apparently is not easy to surprise and has been around a long time. His indifference to Loki is condescendingly comical; he treats Loki as if he's a boring, run-of-the-mill bad guy, a stark contrast to Loki's grandiose perception of himself. I have a feeling, though, that Mobius is not just a regular lackey for the TVA. His mere involvement with Loki is against protocol, but it might be for the greater good (think Qui-Gon Jinn's defiance with the Jedi Council in Episode I: The Phantom Menace).
Mobius questions Loki to try to understand him better, and he even shows him his future (an uninventive way to remind the audience of Loki's highlights to this point in the MCU). But this leads to some deep revelations about Loki's motivations and the possible trajectory of his character arc. I really appreciate the continuity of Loki's character. He's bent on ruling, and still beating the drum of "Freedom is life's great lie." This plays into the Time Keeper's role in all of this. Loki is unwilling to believe that the Time Keepers can predetermine everyone's future. I know there are some religious concepts about predestination out there, and Loki definitely is tussling with that notion. Predestination is a dangerous line of thought, though, because people think that it renders every decision of theirs meaningless, and that's no way to live. I also really hope the show stays away from implying that the Christian Trinity (God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit) is up in Heaven ready to cut the branches of peoples' lives every time they take the wrong turn at life's many forks in the road. If you think I'm reaching here, just search online and you'll find some terrible comparisons out there. Besides, I don't think it's a reach. Loki even goes so far as to say freedom and choice is a total illusion.
As he always seems to do, Loki eventually gets the better of his adversary and finds a way to escape momentarily. Most of the remainder of the episode is merely a fun chase scene with more time gimmicks with the time twister device along the way. Later when Loki watches the rest of his "file," he relives his mother's death and his own death at the hands of Thanos at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War. I love the fact that Loki was saddened and angered once again by his mother's death since that's how he felt and reacted in Thor: The Dark World. Again, that really reinforced the continuity of the character for me. I also really appreciated Loki's realization that he can't go back to his timeline, especially after he just watched his future play out on film. Although Endgame taught us that the Back to the Future trilogy is wrong about time travel, I feel like Loki from 2012 going to the future with the knowledge he gained from that video would create a paradox (seemingly the reason why the TVA arrested Loki in the first place).
The final scene shows us a mysterious figure who burns TVA troops in a fire trap. Part of the reason Mobius wants to go against protocol and not just "reset" Loki is he wants to use Loki to help catch this figure. The reason? Well, this mysterious figure is Loki, of course! Who better to help track down the god of mischief than the god of mischief himself! There are plenty of theories to formulate (see my thoughts below), but the point here is the Loki show is going to get bonkers, and I'm here for it. I feel like the show will follow a similar pattern to that of WandaVision. The audience's understanding is limited right now, but the scope will pull back slowly to reveal pieces of the mystery until we can finally see the big picture. Loki only has six episodes (each about 40 to 50 minutes for a little under six hours total), so there isn't a lot of time to get these plotlines moving. Here's hoping that the six-episode arc for Loki is executed better than it was for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
Time to Theorize
Let's use the time turner (Yes, that reference mostly is for my wife) and do some prognosticating, shall we? First of all, it's hard to make predictions when Loki, by his very nature, is so deceptive; major twists are almost implied with him. And even he is convinced that the TVA headquarters is all just an illusion, a play for control. Is he right? Heck, are we even sure that nothing happened to Loki when he first went through the Tesseract portal and crash landed in a desert? Are we even sure that 2012 Loki didn't go somewhere else and a future version of Loki played a trick on the TVA by faking a crash landing on Earth at the same time to infiltrate their realm?
For the sake of argument, let's assume everything is as it seems. What this could mean is that Mobius is trying to figure out what makes the 2012 Loki tick in hopes that that knowledge will help him catch the time-hopping version of Loki. If this is the case, though, we all know that 2012 Loki will do whatever he can to help himself, which means he probably will try to trick Mobius into thinking he's being helpful when he's really just enabling this other Loki to continue with his plan.
The problem with any kind of twist like that is the diminishing effect it would have on the TVA. I mean, seriously, how can you fool people who know the entire future of everything and can somewhat manipulate it? What this implies to me is that Loki is really only trying to attack TVA troops in hopes of getting their equipment to use against them in the TVA's realm (outside of the normal timestream). The extreme end of this line of thinking could lead to Loki throwing the current timestream into complete chaos, which is what may need to happen if we're to ever see these Time Keepers in action. And where would Doctor Strange fit into all this? It seems he should be able to navigate the timestream in a similar fashion, so surely he would step in when the timestream is threatened, right? This show, more than even WandaVision, is getting me more and more hyped for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, though I hope there's enough mystique left by the time we get to that movie (I'm being dramatic; I know there will be plenty to unpack with that movie). Maybe Loki does throw the timestream in complete disarray by the start of that movie, and Doctor Strange will need to piece it all back together. On that note, that would be a perfect excuse to reset the MCU timeline should that ever be in the plans. I guess only...wait for it...time will tell (see what I did there?).
Notes:
-Loki's fall in the desert in the opening scene felt a little like an homage to Tony Stark in "Iron Man 1."
-Agent Mobius opens a soda during his questioning with Loki. I wonder if carbonation even matters in a place where time is so different. Probably not something the writers thought of.
-The sight of Agent Coulson got me giddy for one second. I sure hope there's some way they bring him (and the other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) back into the fold.
-The murders of the TVA units were discovered in different centuries of Earth's/Midgard's history. It'll be curious to see why Earth is such a hotspot for Time Variance shenanigans. If the murderer is, in fact, Loki, it would make sense since he wants to rule there.
-My astute wife made an interesting point: It was interesting how 2012 Loki knew that the Avengers traveled through time "in a last-ditch effort to stave off" his ascent. As far as the Loki in the 2012 Marvel's Avengers movie is concerned, Loki didn't really know about the Avengers, so how could he know what they were doing in the future? Perhaps this Loki we're watching isn't really the Loki from 2012 after all. Okay, that doesn't really make sense, but how else could Loki have known what the Avengers were doing at that time?
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