It seems like an eternity since Loki was announced as a series for Disney+. That eternal wait is finally over with the series premiere being released today.
Obligatory SPOILER WARNING! Do not proceed if you do not want to see what happened in this episode!
MAJOR POINTS
- There are two versions of Loki running around. The Loki we’ve known will be trying to catch the “new” Loki.
- The Time Variance Authority (TVA), much like its comic book counterpart, is responsible for making sure the timeline stays stable.
- Loki did indeed pose as DB Cooper.
As the trailers imply, Loki uses the tesseract to escape in 2012 and is immediately apprehended in a desert by the TVA. He is then is enlisted against his will by Mobius (Owen Wilson) to correct the timeline he messed up by escaping. The rest of the episode is almost completely devoted to introducing the TVA and what they do.
Loki tries to outwit and escape his captors but quickly finds out that he cannot use any of his powers because the TVA is able to nullify any magic. The Infinity Stones are also in the TVA’s possession. However, once Loki is able to see the murder of his mother Frigga from Thor: The Dark World he apparently comes clean and agrees to help. Mobius then reveals that Loki himself is the one they are chasing. How this will be done has yet to be seen but it’s a good hook for the closing moments.
MAJOR QUESTIONS
- The biggest question is how Loki is supposed to pursue himself?
- What if it’s not actually Loki they’re pursuing?
- What’s in it for Loki if he accomplishes his task? Freedom? Prison?
FINAL GRADE: A
Bottom line, if you liked the trailers you will like this episode. Most of the trailer footage we’ve seen has been taken from this premiere. Time travel may be a little overdone in sci-fi TV (don’t even get me started on Arrowverse shows) but the idea of Tom Hiddleston playing both hero and villain is a pretty cool one.
There are also a lot of comedy beats littered throughout the episode. The idea that The TVA can keep track of everybody’s history but somehow use an archaic dot matrix printer is absurdly funny. Similarly, events from elsewhere in time are shown via reel-to-reel film projectors.
As far as another Loki, or who we are told is Loki, being the target could play out in several ways.
- Probably the most likely scenario is that “Bad Loki” is a future version that has already messed the timeline up. It would explain why Mobius (Mobius M. Mobius in the comics) plucked him up at a point before he did any major timeline damage.
- Another possibility is this Loki came from another universe. We already know Marvel is introducing their Multiverse to the MCU. Going this route might explain why the events in Avengers: Endgame still take place.
- We know Kang The Conquerer will play a big role in the MCU. Jonathan Majors is not credited for Loki, at least not yet. However, that could just be something that is kept under wraps by Marvel. Even if Kang does not turn out to be the villain, it’s a pretty safe bet that all this time travel will catch his attention since time travel has always been integral to his history.
Needless to say, next Wednesday can’t come fast enough!