Loki Episode 4

Let us begin, as the show itself does, with a quick recap of the story so far:

Avengers Assemble Loki (Tom) breaks the MCU continuity and picks up the magic Tesseract stone during Avengers Endgame, thus escaping Thor 2 and 3 as well as Avengers Infinity War but not escaping a black-clad SWAT team from the Kafka/Gilliamesque Time Variance Authority (TVA) time cops who Don’t Approve of That Sort of Thing.

Tomki is saved from callous and disinterested disintegration at the last minute, by TVA Agent Mobius (Wowen Wilson), who needs his help to track down another MCU canon-unfriendly Loki.

This they then do.

Said Loki turns out to be… dun Dun DUN… a GURL (Sophia).

Sophki and Tomki escape the TVA by fleeing across time and space to a purple-grey moon called Lamentis where, in a refreshing break from the SF trope of things crashing into planets, a planet is about to crash into them. 

This it then does.

Cue cliffhanger ending.

While the back and forth between Owen and Tom has been fun to watch, thanks mainly to both actors’ ability not to overplay their hands and let the vulnerability and humanity of the characters shine through, I’ve found the plot a bit shapeless and meandering, probably because the writers’ instincts seem to be to treat the narrative like a mystery that must be kept from the audience, rather than a superhero action flick where all is on display.

Given that Disney-Marvel-Pixar-Lucasfilm is three quarters of the entertainment world these days, I think it’s great that shows like Wandavision and Loki are starting to experiment with the boundaries and possibilities of the superhero genre. However. I think mysteries have their own conventions. To put it as stupidly and crudely as I can (and I am exceptionally stupid and crude), in act one you set up the mystery, act two allow your protagonist to follow the clues and decode the mystery, then in act three reveal and confront the antagonist.

This they have not done.

Instead of being upfront with the mystery or conflict or issue it is trying to resolve, each episode of Loki answers one mystery, only to immediately set up a new and completely different mystery, meaning I don’t feel there’s any forward momentum or progress being made. Instead, we get a similar set of plot points and near-copies of various scenes cycling around and around like the show is its own little time loop.

So as we open on the doomed moon, Sylvie (Girlki) gives us her sad, touching flashback origin story (which probably could have fit into episode 3 instead of the pointless toing and froing), in which we confirm that the TVA are actually the bad guys, not poor Sylvie. Boyki is touched. They hold hands. And Wowen appears at the 11^th hour to rescue Tom. Again.

On a side note, I think the show breaks its own rules in order to get the couple (does falling in love with yourself count as narcissism if it’s technically a different person, or incest? Hm) out of a jam, as the whole point of going to an impending apocalypse was that, since everyone is about to die, non-canon people can do literally anything without affecting the timeline. Here, we are told that two gods of mischief potentially making a bit of mischief beneath the sheets, wink wink, would create a “Nexus event” though quite how—since they were 2 seconds away from a fiery death—I do not pretend to understand.

In any event Loki is captured, again, and interrogated by Mobius, again. Tom reveals Loki’s bad-boy brashness is a cover for his insecurities, again (actually for about the third time so far, I think). Tom also tries to convince Owen that he’s working for the bad guys. Mobius goes to talk to his boss, Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw and that’s too good a name not to spell out in full), again. She informs him Tom and Sophia are scheduled for execution.

Which seems like another one of these pointless scenes to me. Instead of saving people you intend to kill from certain death, you could, and I apologize if my reasoning here is a little complex but bear with me, you could—you know. Just. Not.

Anyway, the chat with his boss is enough to raise Owen’s suspicions, so he decides to do a bit of snooping.

This he then does.

With astonishing speed Owen discovers his entire life is a lie. He saves Tom only he doesn’t—instead Own gets caught and disintegrated by Renslayer’s goons. OR DOES HE? 

That’s the trouble with killing off characters in a show entirely built around time travel, particularly a post Endgame Marvel show about time travel: We all know the show is going to cheat. Sure, sure, show, Owen Wilson is dead. Sure, we believe you.

So the net effect of this sequence is to subtract one Owen from the show, but Tommy and Sylvie are still destined for the chop. They are brought before the Time Keepers, the supposed leaders of the TVA, break free thanks to an oddly useless bit of help from one of the time cops now sympathetic to Sylvie (earlier Nice Cop breaks Sylvie out of prison, only to put her straight back in again, only to throw her a weapon at the dramatically appropriate moment), and a rather awkward stick fight breaks out.

In the fight, one of the Time Keepers gets their heads knocked off, revealing they are actually a brainless android. “But who created the TVA?” cries Tom. Ooh a new mystery, how lovely, how delightful not to know who the antagonist is two thirds of the way through the series. Certainly this has never happened before in a Marvel show and certainly not Wandavision.

Anyway, Tom is about to confess his feelings for Sylvie, again, when he gets disintegrated. OR DOES HE?

No. No he doesn’t.

Cut to a mid-credits scene that I nearly missed because none of the first three episodes had ones (yes, very sneaky, fuck you too show), where Tom awakes in a post-apocalyptic New York and finds himself face-to-face with Comic Book Loki (Richard Grant), Kid Loki and His Pet Alligator Loki Complete With Horned Crown and Hammer Loki Or Something Look I Don’t Know He Was On Screen For Like Two Seconds. Another mystery. Great.

It may be that when all of this is over and the final shape is revealed everything in this show will turn out to be perfectly placed and paced and all fit together as seamlessly as Tom Cruise and his Motorcycle, but the actual process of sitting through it is just a tad frustrating. Unless audiences have been conditioned to spend the entire time not quite understanding what the fuck is going on.

The mid-credits scene is a pretty good encapsulation of my beef with the show. No warning or foreshadowing or set up we were going to have a mid-credits scene. No hint that being disintegrated by the TVA means anything other than being wiped out of existence. Not even a whisper as to who all these other Lokis are and what they’re doing hanging out in the ruins of a New York City. You’re just presented with a series of baffling moments and expected to be happy because this show thinks that pulling the rug from under your audience and going “TADAAA!” is somehow synonymous with good TV.

There’s a danger in playing too much to the audience’s reaction, I think. As someone much smarter than me once remarked—and I won’t credit them because nobody likes a smarty pants—it’s the difference between Olympic wresting and WWF wresting. Olympic wresting can get the audience on their feet, but that’s not its sole objective. Whereas the only reason anybody in WWF does anything is to get a reaction. Now call me an elitist snob or whatever you will (it’s okay it’s the Internet I can’t hear you) but I for one do not think it’s healthy if all your entertainment is as hollow as professional wrestling.  

The phrase ‘subverting expectations’ has much to answer for. Our current Lost/Game of Thrones/Rise of Skywalker fetish for keeping people guessing at every point in the story means the audience is reduced to vegetative spectating, a kind of lumpen potateriat.

Even a mystery, I think, has to be clear about what the friggin mystery actually is. Be clear about what is unclear. We in the audience have to know what it is that we don’t know, so that we can look forward to knowing. Suspense requires anticipation. I can’t anticipate this show because I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen from moment to moment. So there’s no suspense. I have no idea what mysteries are going to be solved because I don’t even know what the mysteries are.

Ah, makes me want to get a stiff drink and watch Mad Max again.

This I then did.