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Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, Review, TV | Tagged: disney, loki, Marvel Studios, mcu, owen wilson, Review, tom hiddleston
Loki Season 2 Ep. 2 Review: A Perpetual State of Self-Contained Chaos
In its first two episodes, Marvel Studios' Tom Hiddleston-starring Loki has hit the ground running in some darkly fun & MCU-threatening ways.
So far, Disney+'s Loki has the rare distinction of not depending on the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe to connect its two seasons together – but instead using it as a backdrop, a much better option. We're two episodes into the second season, and it's refreshing not to feel like we needed to do a ton of MCU "homework" between seasons. Which, as we all know, can be quite intimidating considering how much Phase IV has attempted to establish the narrative of the multiverse. The second season picks up directly after the events of the first season in the season premiere "Ouroboros" & "Breaking Brad" being predominantly about Loki's (Tom Hiddleston) search for his counterpart variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). The following contains minor spoilers.
The season one finale found Sylvie assassinating He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) despite his warnings about how he's keeping his far more dangerous variants at bay. One of which we find during the events of 2023 Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, which (thankfully) is not required viewing. Loki finds himself being systemically pulled apart by time, with his body warping before randomly jumping back and forth in the timestreams. Jumping through various realities, he seeks Mobius (Owen Wilson) to help with his predicament once he warps into the proper dimension. It gets convoluted here, folks – but in a way that works for the series.
To help bring some form of a band-aid solution, we're introduced to Ke Huy Quan's Ouruboros (or OB), a TVA engineer who's as brilliant as he's resourceful the best way we know Quan's been reliably playing these types of roles for the better part of close to 40 years. Perhaps his Oscar can translate to better roles with more range, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. It's hard to ever root against him as Loki allows the audience to understand the technobabble better by spoonfeeding us. Season two is far less action-oriented to start and more problem-solving, giving the season premiere episode a vibe more in lien with Star Trek.
The second episode, "Breaking Brad," plays more like a crime procedural as a pun on AMC's Breaking Bad which focuses on a person of interest named Brad Wolfe (Rafael Casal) with Wilson and Hiddleston doing their best rendition of good cop/bad cop. Despite the more risqué darker elements allowed to play through, this is still Disney, after all. You get PG-13 language, but you're not going to get anything overly violent. Stunt work and fight choreography are expectedly top-notch, but the bulk of the action takes place in the second episode's climactic moment.
Hiddleston & Wilson deliver all the familiar notes. Di Martino delivers with minimal screen time – but that appears ready to change with the third episode. We do get an increased presence from holdovers Wunmi Mosaku (B-15) and Eugene Cordero (Casey). Another notable new face is Kate Dickie's General Dox, who represents the more rogue elements of TVA going to extremes when it comes to pruning the branches of the timeline. It reaches the level of Avengers: Infinity War dark but in a far more sanitized "tell me rather than show me" way.
There's a bit of irony here in the way we're reintroduced to Sylvie since it was basically spoiled when McDonald's started their ad campaign tie-in with the Disney+ series. The cynical and chaotic MCU series is hardly for kids, given how less likely they'll understand the plot of the series. But I guess if I were a corporate fast-food conglomerate and had the built-in history and rapport that McDonald's and Disney already have, it would be too good to pass up that product placement opportunity. So, unless Marvel plans to pull a surprise bait-and-switch with the main villain, we're building up again to a potential faceless enemy, which is in some ways confusing since Phase IV has been doing everything they can to build up Majors's Kang the Conqueror/He Who Remains as the big bad. His recent legal issues could leave you second-guessing as far as how the series is addressing the character, and it will be interesting to see just how much Majors's "Victor Timely" will factor into all of this. We still have four more episodes to go, and creator Michael Waldron isn't messing around when it comes to managing his time on the series.
Writer Eric Martin produced a stacked first two episodes of the season, with directors Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, and Dan DeLeeuw stringing both episodes together. Hiddleston & Wilson show again through their chemistry that they should both star in a proper procedural. Loki streams Thursdays on Disney+.
Loki Season 2 Episode 1 "Ouroburos" & Episode 2 "Breaking Brad"
8/10
Two episodes into Season 2, Marvel Studios & Disney+'s Loki has the rare distinction of not depending on the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe to connect its two seasons together - but instead using it as a backdrop, a much better option. We're two episodes into the second season, and it's refreshing not to feel like we needed to do a ton of MCU "homework" between seasons. Which, as we all know, can be quite intimidating considering how much Phase IV has attempted to establish the narrative of the multiverse. The second season picks up directly after the events of the first season in the season premiere “Ouroboros” & “Breaking Brad” being predominantly about Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) search for his counterpart variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino).
Credits
Directors
Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead and Dan DeLeeuw
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