This Is A Spoiler-Free Review Of Loki

It was quite the surprise when Marvel announced a Disney+ show for Loki. The show, Loki, isn’t quite what you expect. It even fooled me from the trailers. Right off the bat, you’re in a world that you’ve never seen before. Seeing as how this is from one of the writers of Rick and Morty (Michael Waldron), that show will feel very similar here. Now for people that hate Rick and Morty, there’s no belching grandfathers here, but the weird and wild worlds that show builds and shows off are what’s front and center here.

If you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame, go watch it, but you’ll get a quick refresher at the start of this show anyway. Loki gets the Tesseract, he escapes, and according to the TVA, creates a time branch that needs stopping. Simple enough.

Tom Hiddleston is joined by Owen Wilson as Mobius B. Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Judge Renslayer, Sophia Bi Martino as a character that would be a massive spoiler, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, and Richard E. Grant as an unknown role (we only got the first two episodes for screeners). Kate Herron directs with Michael Waldron as the head writer.

Now for the big comparison so far: WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s going to get really tiring comparing all these shows to one another. So, I’m not going to. They’re all different stories that somewhat interconnect through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so don’t compare them, just enjoy them.

The Weird And Wonderful On Display

Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) In Loki.
Courtesy of Marvel Studios

The opening section of Loki might be the most industry standard of the whole episode. From after that eight minute mark, you enter the world of the TVA. Without spoiling anything that hasn’t been seen in trailers, this first section with Loki being “booked” is hilarious. You get the full breadth of the character that hasn’t been through his “hero” phase in Thor: Ragnarok or his sacrifice in Avengers: Infinity War. So he’s still the God of Mischief that wants to make the Universe bend their knee to him. Of course, he later learns of his fate from Mobius, so you still get to see that change in his character.

The true highlight of the show outside of it’s excellent set design, world building, and writing, is Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston’s chemistry together. It’s feels like magic. Mobius understands Loki more than anyone else, and instead of just vaporizing him, he decides to use him against the force that’s going through time to create messed up branches. We’re introduced to Mobius in a scene involving the murder of a TVA unit. They’re in the 1500’s and a little girl sees them. Instead of going gung-ho like the big, burly TVA agent, he takes a different approach. It shows all you need to know about his character. It’s a great bit of writing that does the simplest thing for the character to make you care.

Owen Wilson is the one that brings the character alive, and I can’t think of another actor who would give this part the simultaneous power and light-heartedness that it needs. Obviously Tom Hiddleston is fantastic as Loki, he’s been great since the character debuted in Thor. This time around, especially if you look at some of the featurettes that Disney and Marvel have put out, he’s an encyclopedia on Marvel. He added Executive Producer to his title for the show, and it shows in his performance. He’s just a different Loki, that combines two versions of the character that we know.

The Mystery Remains With Loki

Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in Marvel Studios Loki.
Courtesy of Marvel Studios

You’re not given all the answers in the first episode. You’re not given really any answers in the first episode. So going forward, it’s a mystery who’s behind the attacks throughout time. All we know at this point is that Mobius and Loki are tasked with stopping them. It’s a fantastic mystery that’s revealed a bit more in the second episode, but not fully.

Through the first episode you have a bit of everything thrown at you. Hilarity, heartfelt moments, action, death, destruction, and time almost collapsing on itself. The show is heading down a super cosmic path. It seems like Marvel as a whole is getting a whole lot more cosmic and weird. We’ll have to see where that path takes us as the viewer, but in the first episode of Loki, it works extremely well.

You should be excited to see where Loki goes, because it only gets better from here.

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