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Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, Review, TV | Tagged: disney, Jonathan Majors, Ke Huy Quan, loki, owen wilson, Review, sophia di martino, tom hiddleston, Wunmi Mosaku
Loki S02E06 Review: Did Season Finale Achieve Its "Glorious Purpose"?
Tom Hiddleston delivers a performance worthy of the gods in Marvel Studios' Loki Season 2 "Glorious Purpose" - but is this really the end?
Marvel Studios' Loki is one of those Marvel Cinematic Universe projects where you want to feel it has implications of a grander scale, but happier it grounded itself as a story than connective tissue for the next "branch." So the season two finale, "Glorious Purpose," shares the same title as its original series premiere in 2021 and finds our anti-hero Loki (Tom Hiddleston) at a crossroads trying to determine a multiverse-saving action while still trying to master his time-warping. The apocalyptical event involves the temporal loom going critical and incinerating existence as we know it, and the team TVA is helpless to stop it. The following contains minor spoilers.
Loki Season 2 Finale: Expected Less Predictability
This doesn't imply that Hiddleston's character ever intends to return to his nefarious ways, but he'll discover the ultimate futility of his actions. We get a bit of a 'Groundhog Day' scenario that continuously plays out with our hero going to the furthest lengths to make sense of his reality. As far as the lengths Loki goes, there's a bit of existentialism involved as the character and the audience are confronted with asking, "What is the point of all this?" You wonder why writer Eric Martin and showrunner Michael Waldron take us through this journey of nihilism and destruction where you almost get desensitized to it since no one has control of their destiny and must wade through a pool of razor blades like some trap from Saw.
Aside from befriending Hiddleston's character, all the auxiliary characters have no control over their fate or drive the plot, including Owen Wilson's Mobius and Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie. I'm glad they gave Di Martino some more screen time to remind us how little she factored in the series and Loki's final decision. While you can argue that every "friend" Loki made was another reason why the character was driven to fully redeem himself, I'd argue there were already other factors in play that made Hiddleston's character that, and he was featured in his own MCU franchise in Thor. Just felt a bit inconsequential given what the character's done that nothing of his old life played any part in his new one, and this is some self-enclosed story of destiny. While I appreciate the execution and talent the Disney+ series had, it could have been so much more if Loki shared his journey with someone else with a direct tie to his past along the way. The MCU could have Jaimie Alexander come back in a far greater capacity than Sif if they couldn't get Chris Hemsworth to reprise Thor to be that important tie to the past. James Mangold's Logan was a clear example of that working.
While I could see Kevin Feige having an interest in getting anyone from the TVA or Hiddleston back for future Phase IV or V projects, I don't see any real reason to. Given the ongoing controversy with Jonathan Majors Kang and his variants, it becomes an even bigger mess. Caring about the TVA in any future work is contingent on the MCU viewer being invested in Loki since it's not like they were ever sprinkled throughout the universe's long game. It's not like Majors' Kang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ever acknowledged the events of Loki since he's a variant who had zero interactions with "He Who Remains" and Victor Timely.
Loki Season 2 Episode 6 "Glorious Purpose"
7/10
Loki season two finale "Glorious Purpose" shares the same title as its premiere episode in 2021, which is poetic since it delievers a bit of finality to the character - with Tom Hiddleston delivering perhaps one of his finest performances - inside or outside of the MCU. Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Jonathan Majors, and more do their part to lob enough pitches to Hiddleston for him to knock them out of the park. The only thing that could offest this would be a season three to ruin this finale.
Credits
Director
Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson
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