Loki Episode 5

Having exhausted all possible criticism, I find myself forced to choose between either repeating myself or actually being nice about the show.

Having exhausted all possible criticism, I find myself forced to choose between either repeating myself or actually being nice about the show.

Having … okay, well you get the joke.

Instead of recapping the show, let’s talk about what’s really important here: Me. 

And my opinions. 

To whit, my main trouble with the show is its kind of flabby structure, sort of aimless meandering between plot points without clear conflicts or objectives that would provide tension and suspense, favoring instead to keep the audience in a state of perpetual bewilderment in the hopes that people enjoy being outsmarted by their entertainment choices.

Even as a mystery I find it unfulfilling, as the show presents not one mystery, but a kind of series of Russian matryoshka nesting doll mysteries, in which mysteries are presented and then immediately solved in the next episode, only for another one to be presented.

This most recent episode was a case in point. When we left off last week, it was suddenly revealed that getting dematerialized by the time cops of the TVA doesn’t actually kill you—Boy Loki is supposedly disintegrated, only to wake up in a post-apocalyptic New York and find himself facing four different incarnations of himself: Homemade cosplay Loki (Richard E Grant), kid Loki (not Richard E Grant), black Loki with a hammer (still not Richard E Grant) and literally an alligator Loki (could be Richard E Grant, who knows, the man has a formidable range). So we are left with two mysteries: Where or when is this? Who are these other guys and what are they doing there?

Well we get our answers in the first ten minutes or so: It’s the “Void” at the end of time, which we didn’t know was a thing until we were suddenly introduced to it just now so there’s not much you can say to it except “oh, huh, okay”. It’s the place where everything the baddies at the TVA want banished is transported to, so that whoever it is can’t muck up the timeline anymore (being at the end of time, and all). The end of time apparently involves a beastie that’s kind of a cross between the balrog and the smoke monster from “Lost” that devours everything, which is also not a thing we were aware existed until just now. Eliciting another rousing, “oh, neat, I guess” from the audience.

The other Lokis are all, like our main Loki, “variants” that somehow accidentally changed the canonical timeline, got caught and packed off to the Void. What are they doing? Not a lot. Hanging out in an underground nuclear shelter, basically. Quite how they managed to find our Loki whilst evading an all-devouring smoke monster is a bit of a mystery, but whatever keeps the plot going I guess.

My point being, all the questions you had at the end of last week have now been answered. Since none of the answers have any grounding in anything that’s come before, you’re just left with a kind of dull acceptance. Sure. Why not.

During the meanwhilst, Girl Loki captures TVA Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and demands to know what’s really going on with the TVA—who is in charge? Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) appears to change sides, but doesn’t really. Cornered and desperate, Girl Loki disintegrates herself rather than allow herself to be captured by Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)—supposedly in the hopes that this will enable her to find Boy Loki, though she would have no reason to suspect disintegration does anything other than what it says on the tin, unless she’s read the script.

She meets up with Mobius (Owen Wilson) and then with Boy Loki and his merry men (viz himself, himself as a kid, himself, and himself as an alligator). There follows the one stretch of the show that’s actually pretty good, including some humorous bits between Mobius and Old Loki about whether or not the alligator is really a Loki (“Well, he’s green,” observes Old Loki, “although he could be lying.”) There’s also a nice quiet bit between Boy Loki and Girl Loki as they contemplate the future and what will happen should they win.

So I’ll give the show two points: One, the structure for this episode is clear and dramatic, the struggle to subdue or kill the smoke monster and escape the Void. Two, it really nails the character bits when it isn’t trying to push the plot from twist to twist. Owen x Tom has been gold from the get-go (though the sudden shift from hostility to best friends has been a bit sudden, but we’ll let that slide and assume a lot of time has passed off-camera), and here both Owen x Richard and Tom x Sophia are amusing and, dare I say it, even a bit touching. Though the beats between Tom and Sophia probably should have come in episode 3 and thus feel like a rehash. But I’ll take what I can get.

We end on a climax that is a bit of a repeat of the climax to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, in which our heroes join hands in the midst of purplish-black CGI smoke and use the power of friendship (or twu rub in this case, perhaps?) to make some glowing fireworks, find the emotional fortitude to overcome the enemy, and then triumph. The smoke dissipates, revealing a portal to a castle at the end of time and, presumably, the lair of who- or whatever is behind the TVA.

It’s a serviceable cliffhanger, I suppose, and probably the only one the writers could have gone with, since “Who really runs the TVA?” is the only mystery left unexplored. It’s not a particularly compelling one to me, as we weren’t even aware that was a mystery until last episode, so we’ve had all of 40 minutes buildup to it, and while we’re on the subject, from a structural standpoint not introducing your villain until the very last episode of the series feels like an extremely odd choice.

We are left with a main character who sort of staggers through the story, repeating the same beats, constantly bewildered, never exercising any real agency. It’s Girl Loki’s story, and the show would probably have been a thousand times better if it hadn’t been bogged down by the need to focus on a character (viz Tom Hiddle starring as Boy Loki) who isn’t all that central to the story, really.

In many ways then, with only one episode left and having only barely scratched the surface of its premise, this is starting to feel like Marvel’s version of the Netflix flop “Jupiter’s Legacy”, an entire season whose raison d'être is setting up either a sequel or some other piece of the MCU.

I know Marvel is addicted to trying to interconnect anything and everything so people feel obliged to watch every bit of product the content manufacturing machine churns out, but this is the first time I’ve felt that was the only reason for one of their properties to exist.