Loki Episode 2

Well, we had some highs and lows this week.

The highs, or singular high really: The relationship between the two leads. Part father versus son, part by-the-book veteran versus young maverick, part crook working with the cops, it’s comfortingly familiar but that’s exactly what gives the actors room to play. Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki have one or two nice moments, one in particular that is revealing of Mobius’ character in a clear yet unvoiced, understated way:

See, company man for life Wilson keeps a Jet Ski magazine on his desk. He’s never ridden one, being a lifer, living to work rather than working to live. Loki presses him on it. Why jet skis? Well, they look great. The conversation then elides into the nature of Wilson’s job, and more to the point, what happens if he is successful: Order. Eternal, predictable order. Wilson really captures the air of a man repeating the company line with his best smile while simultaneously showing us how it’s crushing his soul.

Great scene, loved it, nice character-building work there. Hope it pays off at the end and Mobius gets the freedom he secretly craves.

The rest of it I’m less enthused about it, precisely because it lacks the clarity of the character byplay.

We’re two episodes in to this six-episode series, a third of the way through, and here is the sum total of what we know about our antagonist:

It’s a chick.

Motivations? A little fuzzy. Methods? Ya got me there. Goals? Search me, pal.

All we got is the surprise twist reveal that it’s a woman, which might have been more surprising or impactful if people related to the show had babbled a little less about Loki being genderfluid and thus given the game away to such an extent that even I was able to predict the twist.

What does Bad Loki do? Attacks a bunch of Minutemen, which incidentally is exactly what she did at the end of episode 1 so a bit of repetition there, huh show. Not really advancing the plot ya know. Anyway, she steals a time charge thing that erases stuff in a radius around it and kidnaps one of the time cops. She had also left a stick of “Kablooie” gum with a kid in medieval France in Ep 1, which now turns out to be part of a plan to lure the time cops to find her in 2050 Atlanta.

Wilson, Hiddleston and one of three women of color cast in secondary roles to make up for having two white men in the lead show up. Naughty Loki beats up Nice Loki. Then sends the time charge thingies to various points in history, which apparently screws up the timeline for some reason. Then she escapes.

Why does she need to lure the team to her hideout? Why do the time charges screw up history? Why does she even want to screw up the timeline in the first place.

Dunno.

Compare this to, say, InfinityWar: Boom, scene one, here’s the bad guy, here’s what he wants to do, here’s how he’s going to do it, let’s rock. Clear stakes, you know what the good guys need to do, I can now focus on the scenes before me rather than wasting time trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Good Loki is also a bit confusing. He gives every indication of thinking he can take over the TVA from the inside, in which case what is with the scenes of him moping over his dead mom, friendship with his brother or destruction of his homeland (another bit that is kind of a retread of character development from ep 1)? One more thing I’m hoping will have a payoff somewhere along the way, because as of now he goes from sobbing over the death of his people to putting salt on a salad in five seconds of show time.

So, for the second episode in a row, I mainly feel that the story is spinning its wheels, playing for time just as Loki does, trying to delay for as long as possible telling me what is actually going on. Repeating beats we already had in episode 1. There are a number of scenes were you just have to wonder what the point of it was—like Evil Loki beating up Good Loki, nothing is achieved other than wasting two minutes of show time and letting Tom Hiddleston pose dramatically under Red Alert lighting. Doesn’t move the plot forward or reveal new information. Just there to provide a bit of action since, as I mentioned last week, the writers feel the need to have a guy walk in with a gun every once in a while just to keep things moving along.

Another culprit is the character of Judge Renslayer, whose role in the series so far has been to pad out the timing and give Wilson somebody to react to for five minutes each week.

As a result, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be looking forward to next week. Girl Loki seems to have already executed her plan. Boy Loki has escaped the TVA but I’ve no idea what he means to do with his newfound freedom. Don’t know about you guys but a third of the way through a story I’m not sure I should be drawing a blank as to what happens next.

As for the rest. Well, the less said about the terrible, tiny, tiny set for “Pompeii” the better. Green screen work on par with the opening shot of the “Gobi Desert” and that’s not a compliment. Loki and Mobius figuring out Other Loki is in Atlanta makes zero fuggen sense. Kidnapped space Nazi going “It’s real, it’s real,” just more mystery boxing of the plot. Stop it, just stop it.