By Andrew Martinez
Correspondent
“Loki” season two is now finally out. Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and written by Eric Martin, the show picks up where season one left off.
Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) team up with Ouroborus (Ke Huy Quan), B15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and Sylvie (Sophie Di Martino) to take control of the branched timelines and save the Time Variance Authority from the variants of He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors).
It's no exaggeration to say that Marvel has been in a funk lately. Their last projects like “Secret Invasion'' and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quintumnia” have not exactly resonated with audiences, and many people were hoping that this season would not be another lackluster disappointment. Thankfully, it certainly wasn’t.
It takes a little bit to get going, but once you get to episode two, it feels like the pace definitely picks up. Compared to other Marvel projects, this one doesn’t have nearly as much action or grand fights, but that definitely does not weigh it down at all. In fact, I felt it was a nice change because you were able to stop and analyze what is really going on with the characters as well as what they are feeling.
For example, a big theme of this season — as well as the entire show — is the idea of free will. You see characters like Mobius struggle with deciding on whether or not he should see the life that the TVA took from him.
Throughout the show, Loki starts to discover the meaning of friendship and how he's been impacted by the people around him since he’s been with the TVA. He starts to realize over the course of the show that he no longer wants to be or feel alone, and the audience starts to see just how far he is willing to go to save his friends.
His arc here in this show was phenomenal and one of the best character arcs for anyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ever since the first “Thor,” Loki was just some villain that always cared about himself and was obsessed with a title to a throne that he felt was his “glorious purpose.”
Now, you get to see him change from that narcissistic god of mischief to someone who is willing to sacrifice being with the people he cares about to save the multiverse, taking on that “glorious purpose,” but with a heavy burden.
Jonathan Majors as He who Remains did another good job at portraying Kang. I thought it was really cool to see how he was multiple steps ahead of Loki from the very beginning and how he planned to have Loki come back to try to prevent Sylvie from killing him.
One thing I will say is that the show can be a little confusing at times. When they were discussing Loki’s time slipping abilities in the first episode I felt that I had to really pay attention. Especially in the finale, when you see Loki using his powers to keep all the timelines intact.
Overall, I really enjoyed this season. As much as I really want to see more of Hiddleston as Loki, I don’t want another season. The wrap up of the finale was just so well done I think it would be a good thing if this is the last we see of this show. There’s no doubt that we’ll see more of the TVA crew like Mobius, but for now this is a good send off — which we rarely get from these Marvel projects. Perhaps ending certain stories is something they need to do more often to bring this struggling franchise back to life.
