loki season 1 review - partial spoilers
A glorious turd.
Loki is a tedious, meandering and painfully slow attempt at raising the profile of a side character that works best as a side character. Just as noted in my review of the series premiere, Loki implicitly acknowledges the MCU at large as far more interesting than Loki himself by relegating him to bystandter status throughout much of the proceedings (especially after the introduction of the first Loki variant aka Sylvie). Even in his own show, he barely stands out and feels like a co-star. I kept waiting for the Loki characterization to find a groove or rhythm and it never happened. Tom Hiddleston, charming as he is, feels lost and the writing fails to provide him with any consistent traits beyond being smarmy. His Loki, in stark contrast to Disney+ stable mates Wanda, Bucky, and Sam, has no clear motivation or meaningful arc to speak of. The satisfying conflicts and storylines of previous MCU offerings are replaced by endless inane dialogue, non-threatening smoke demons, unearned romantic sub-plots, fan-service Loki clones and a Time Variance Authority concept so ill-defined I’m not sure they understand their own purpose, glorious or otherwise. The whole thing just comes across as goofy.
The greatest magic on display here is Loki’s bewilderingly high viewership numbers that somehow surpass both WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. There may be some recency bias at play. Time will tell. For me, Loki is a dud of a show that was a struggle to finish. If the glorious purpose of the show is to tease the next phase of the MCU with the pomp and circumstance we’ve grown accustomed to, it largely succeeds. In that regard Loki ends on a positive if underwhelming note. Faint praise. The already announced second season would do better to write Loki in such a way that he feels like more than a bit part.
loki series premiere review - full spoilers!
It’s perplexing that after a single episode anyone would describe Loki as superior to WandaVision. One is an entirely unique and genre-bending feast for the eyes with tantalizing appeal for both comic wonks and general audiences and the other is Loki. In fairness, I don’t have the same level of attachment to the Asgardian trickster as to Marvel mainstays Captain America or Hulk. The character lacks true menace both in comics and on screen and Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal is far more goofy than dangerous. Perhaps a character defined by a love of trickery and pratfalls is destined to be silly. “God of Mischief” is also a curious title choice if the intention is to instill fear in one’s adversaries. Loki comes across as a weak and ineffectual Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) villain in a sea of weak and ineffectual MCU villains. After watching the debut episode of Loki, my position is unchanged.
This review might come across as a Loki hit job. It isn’t. When Loki was announced my initial reaction was equal parts surprise and “meh” because the character doesn’t jump out as demanding its own show. Loki works fine as a tertiary character and there is nothing wrong with that. Hiddleston’s big screen Loki benefits from working alongside the wildly popular Avengers. With Loki he has the air of yet another property Marvel stays curiously committed to in the face of lukewarm interest from all but the most ardent fans (looking at you Inhumans/Externals). This is not to say I hated the series premiere. It’s quite good and wholly entertaining. It’s the character of Loki that falls flat. Everything else about the show feels like a perfectly serviceable MCU film. Loki is a supremely fun watch and the full-budgeted, cinematic production values we expect from the MCU are in full bombastic effect…but I’m here to politely calm the talk of this offering as “best MCU show yet.” There is a strong case that the star of the show isn’t even Loki. Not yet, anyway.
The two most interesting developments in the series premiere are the introduction of a time cop authority group with the surprisingly hefty, MCU-shifting responsibility of safeguarding the entire multiverse, and a wickedly fun flashback sequence revealing that Loki was/is the infamous DB Cooper. The former revelation is huge for the MCU while the latter is entirely superfluous (while still a fantastic easter egg for true crime historians). Neither development does much to advance the Loki character. Loki the show is far more concerned with the MCU at large – Loki the person is just there reacting to stuff. It’s hard to assign a sparkling, fully throated recommendation to a series debut where the main character barely factors into the plot. Perhaps future episodes will change the dynamic. Loki episode one goes a very long way towards establishing time variance policing in the MCU and little else. MCU stalwarts will find the proceedings perfectly fine but that group is not making watch or do not watch decisions based on reviews.
I especially enjoyed the expository sequence at the tail end of the episode where Loki admits he never cared for villainy but manufactured that aspect of his personality in order to seem more dangerous. Loki is neither anti-hero nor sympathetic villain, he just doesn’t take the work very seriously. His words, not mine.