Loki Episode 6

Haha, hoho, here’s what I said at the end of my review of last week’s episode:

“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 Netflix’s “Jupiter’s Legacy”, an entire season whose raison d'être is setting up either a sequel or some other piece of the MCU.”

Boy, when I am right, I am right.

The whole thing did indeed turn out to have been an exercise in scene-setting, shuffling pieces into position and revealing the MCU’s next Big Bad:

Some Guy.

Yes, yes, I know, comic book fans tell me he’s supposedly “Kang the Conqueror” who is apparently not related to Kodos haha still killing it with the Simpsons references 20 years later, but within the context of the show itself, he’s Some Guy. He does no conquering, kanglish or otherwise. If you know nothing about the character, just as I don't, then there is nothing within show itself to make the reveal anything other than a baffling non-event.

We spent six weeks building up to Loki and Other Loki meeting:

Some Guy.

The two journey to the castle at the End of Time, and meet Some Guy. They sit down across a table from Some Guy and for the next 15 minutes he explains what exactly the TVA is and why he created it. To whit: If you have infinite (or nearly infinite) universes, then the bell curve and normal distribution of human experience says you will always have universes in which a ruthless, ambitious conqueror will arise and seek to dominate all of reality. The only way to prevent this from happening is to have only one universe, where said conqueror does NOT arise, and ruthlessly eliminate all other realities.

Some Guy then gives the two Lokis a choice: Let him live and go back to their lives in the one and only reality, or they can kill him, in which case multiple realities will emerge, and the law of probability says a power-crazed dictator will arise again. Boy Loki wants to let Some Guy live, revenge-crazed Girl Loki wants him dead, they fight, because the only people in the MCU who can threaten superheroes are other superheroes, Boy Loki sems to win Girl Loki over with the power of luuurve, but doesn’t really. She kills Some Guy, thus spawning the creation of multiple realities, a conclusion that everyone who knew the titles of the upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies was already expecting. Credits end with the announcement of season 2.

How to evaluate this then: As an episode, as a series, as part one of a larger story?

As an episode it is, quite frankly, one of the worst cases of tell-don’t-show I’ve witnessed in recent televisual entertainment. It’s mostly Some Guy sitting at a desk and telling his life story, only cutting away to inconsequential scenes with other characters every once in a while to obscure the fact that it’s mostly Some Guy sitting at a desk and telling his life story.

As the end of the series, it’s a startlingly dull climax. I know comic book fans are losing their minds over the introduction of Kang the Conqueror into the MCU, but for those of us unfamiliar with his kangic conquering, he’s just Some Guy. Yay, the MCU is finally going to feature Some Guy. By which I mean the Big Bad has been absent the entire series so the only thing we’ve seen him do is sit at a desk and tell his life story. Which by my reckoning is not, though I may be made of sterner stuff than the average television viewer, especially big, nor bad.

The basic concept, I dig, a sort of Darwinistic survival-of-the-most-ruthless multiverse in which wiping out other realities becomes not evil, but a simple matter of self-defense. Free will must be limited in order to ensure there is any free will at all. That’s an interesting moral dilemma, which is a shame, as we’re only introduced to it about 10 minutes before the end of the season.

As a result, it’s not a dilemma we’ve seen dramatized in any way shape or form on our screen. We’re just told that this dilemma exists. One revenge-crazed person gives it precisely zero thought and kills the guy preventing it from happening anyway. So the climax doesn’t even really work as the climax to the season.

As part one of a larger story? Hm. Television shows with story arcs that span multiple seasons are nothing new, so I suppose in hindsight it was maybe unfair of me to criticize the show for lack of direction and clarity, but this is the Internet so there’s no way in hell I’ll admit to that. Double down, my friends, always double down.

In all seriousness (okay, in a modicum of seriousness), one would not fault, say, “The Fellowship of the Ring” for not getting even halfway to Mordor, or to use more recent examples, season one of “Game of Thrones” for not giving us a winner to the thronic game, or season one of “The Witcher” for not resolving everything about Geralt and his adoptive daughter, Ciri. 

Taking the analogy further, one does not get angry at a chapter for not concluding the story, nor irritated with a paragraph for not ending the chapter, nor disappointed with a sentence for not ending a paragraph. 

I suppose the difference is framing and expectation—the way a storyteller begins to tell their story determines the boundaries we set on that nebulous concept of a "story", and sets our expectations for how much story we will get, and at what pace or speed. If you begin watching in the expectation the show will deliver an ending, at least to this particular arc if not the Lokis’ whole story, in six weeks’ time, then finding it was all just piddling about before the story actually gets going will feel like a bit of bait and switch.

In retrospect I find it renders the whole season rather hollow. It was all a bit of screwing around, stalling for time until the cliffhanger so that Marvel could reveal:

Some Guy.

Bad enough that the titular main character, Boy Loki, has been reduced to second fiddle tagging along with other, more interesting characters, but then even his more interesting Girl Loki self is revealed to also have been no more than a prop, a way of maneuvering this fictional universe into position to reveal:

Some Guy.

I’ve found this to be a trap some longer-running shows seem to fall into. “Vikings” didn’t seem to be about anything, just stuff happening to a bunch of Vikings (the Siege of Paris storyline being the one exception, and a standout because of it). I tried watching Netflix’s “Travelers” recently too and it had the same problem—time travelers from a “12 Monkeys”-ish dark future travel to our time to change our future/their past, and just, kind of, do stuff. They seem to accomplish their main mission halfway through the first season, but then the show just keeps going for another two and a half seasons as far as I can tell. Stuff keeps happening. Not stuff with any greater direction or point, just. Stuff.

You know what? I don’t buy it anymore. Maybe this makes me the old man being angry at the cloud, two Simpsons references in one post I'm just killing it here, but no, I don't buy it anymore.

An entertaining story should have some kind of point to it. A satisfying, entertaining story should not rely on half a dozen other bits of future, unreleased entertainment in order to be entertaining. Yes, season one of “Game of Thrones” was setup for the quasi-Wars-of-the-Roses style Lannisters versus Starks battle, “The Witcher” was setup for Geralt reuniting with Ciri, but they delivered clear conclusions to their mini-arcs. Likewise, “Dune” ends with Paul becoming emperor, “Star Wars” with the Death Star blowing up, or even “Phantom Menace” with the trade route taxation or whatever tf it was getting worked out. 

Entertainment can be part of a larger property yet still deliver a satisfying arc that has a definite conclusion.

It should not, in other words, be a six-hour intro for:

Some Guy.

But here we are.