![]() ![]() ![]() Waldron could perhaps have just hand-waved away Loki’s continued existence with some arch banter, but he instead opts to dive deep into the how and why of it all, resulting in a debut episode that might feel unbearably sluggish if Hiddleston and Wilson weren’t so enjoyable to watch. But when our title character only exists because of time travel - the “real” Loki died at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, and then this variant (from right after the end of the original Avengers movie) escaped into the time stream due to the bungling of the time heist from Avengers: Endgame - and then gets caught up in a plot involving the organization that polices the entire MCU time stream, it can be even harder to follow. Time travel in general can be headache-inducing. Without lead performers as verbally nimble and fundamentally appealing as Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson, this first episode would collapse under the weight of all the exposition required to revisit Loki’s backstory and explain what the Time Variance Authority is and how it functions(*). With great ambition comes greater potential to get tangled in one aspect or another, and the Loki premiere definitely struggles at times to shoulder the burden of everything writer Michael Waldron and director Kate Herron are trying to accomplish. And now Loki is, among other things, a time-travel epic, a buddy-cop comedy, and a psychological re-examination - or, perhaps, reformation - of the most entertaining villain the MCU has produced. While The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was basically just a very long MCU movie (and not always a good one), WandaVision was a fascinatingly weird mash-up of sitcom deconstruction and reckoning with grief. With the debut of Loki, the Kevin Feige era of Marvel TV is two-for-three on bold swings. A review of this first episode - with spoilers - coming up just as soon as I know whether I’m a robot… “Loki” premieres Wednesday, June 9, on Disney+.The Marvel Cinematic Universe keeps expanding into television, now with the premiere of Lokion Disney+. Being weird, however - especially in those moments when it seems to be mostly for the sake of that - has its drawbacks too.įor the most part, Marvel has proven exceptionally shrewd in capitalizing on the Disney+ platform to offer richer characterizations than the movies allow, while providing the streaming service with marquee titles that echo through the pop-culture space.Įarly on, the series asks a question at the heart of its appeal: “What makes Loki tick?” “Loki” clearly could have more tricks up its sleeve, since the format has dictated that these Marvel shows can only truly be judged at the end, not the beginning.Įven so, the clock is ticking on whether the series can rally enough during the remaining chapters to fulfill its promise, as opposed to simply killing time. On the plus side, “Loki” looks fabulous, creating a bizarre world that feels distinctly different from other quadrants of the Marvel universe. With the time element and buddy aspect of that, the opening episodes could be called “Tom and Owen’s Excellent Adventure.” There’s less to do for the rest of the cast, which includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Mobius’ boss. An early template would be “It Takes a Thief,” where a skilled cat burglar’s insights were employed to help catch other thieves. The program’s primary kick thus boils down to Hiddleston, as well as his interactions with time cop Mobius (Owen Wilson), who realizes Loki isn’t trustworthy but sees him as the means to an end. ![]() Thanks to the premise, the audience can think about little else, since the source of the drama (and considerable comedy) fixates on the threat that a glitch in time poses to reality itself. The problem with time-travel plots is that they tend to work best the less you dwell on the details. The result of that has left a Loki “variant” (a term with another distracting usage right now) on the loose, drawing the attention of an organization whose mandate is to police the time continuum. “Loki,” by contrast, initially exists primarily as a showcase for Hiddleston, picking up the string from a loose end in “Avengers: Endgame” and teasing it out (and out).Īs the introduction reminds us, Loki escaped into parts unknown during the events of “Endgame,” as the Avengers tinkered with the past to alter the future. Loki being gender fluid confirmed in trailer Tom Hiddleston stars in the Disney+ series 'Loki' (Courtesy of Marvel Studios). ![]()
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