The first three episodes of Disney+’s Loki felt a little bit like the early moves in a game of chess. The pieces have been put in place and have been moving cautiously around the board sizing one another up. But now it’s time to start putting that battle strategy into action and to remove a few of the key players.
The Nexus Event finally sees Loki beginning to fulfil the potential only occasionally suggested by its meandering initial instalments and at least puts in perspective the rather frustrating and apparently time-serving third episode. Things are starting to happen now and the story has shifted gear from ‘this is quite pretty and clever’ to ‘ok, now I’m intrigued and genuinely interested.’ There’s still a slight sense of smug self-satisfaction about the series as it starts to crowbar in guest appearances and references guaranteed to bring hardcore Marvel fans out in a cold sweat but by the end of the episode enough has actually happened – big stuff, too – to suggest that the final two episodes might properly justify the entire show’s existence.
A quick flashback to Asgard shows the TVA abducting a young girl at play and taking her back to their HQ to stand trial. But this is the young Sylvie and she eludes her captors and slips away through a time portal where, as we know from episode two, she has grown into the wily adult Sylvie and been hiding in times of apocalypse ever since. Rescued from the doomed Lamentis-1 thanks to their growing romantic attachment creating a unique new timeline and thus returned to the TVCA, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) set about subverting the entire organisation by planting into the minds of its key members seeds of doubt about not only the TVA but also their own entire existences. In an eventful and refreshingly fast-paced episode we finally meet the ominous Time Keepers (or do we?) and witness both Mobius K Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) start to question the nature and purpose of the TVA. Mobius already feels uneasy; Hunter C-230 (Sasha Lane), kidnapped and enchanted by Sylvie in episode two, apparently died when returned to the TVA despite her condition not appearing especially life-threatening. He tries to reassert his resolve over a quiet drink with senior TVA judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) but ultimately Loki and Sylvie convince Mobius and B-15 that they are variants and that they have lived other lives in other times. Mobius suffers the ultimate fate – “prune him” doesn’t really have quite the ring of “exterminate” but it serves its purpose here – and after a quick fight with a troop of Minutemen Loki and Sylvie discover that the Time Keepers appear to be androids. The episode ends on something of a double cliffhanger with Loki “pruned” by Renslayer before she is taken captive by Sylvie who demands to know the truth about the TVA and the Time Keepers. In a mid-credits sequence, however, we see that Loki, although pruned, isn’t quite out for the count yet, his salvation apparently laying in the hands of a group of colourful variants, one of whom is played by a surprise guest star in a costume long-time comics fan will recognise at once.
Loki has been a difficult series to get a handle on because it’s so unlike anything else the MCU (or Disney+) have offered up so far. It’s a series that takes us far away from our familiar world of superheroes vs supervillains and introduces concepts and ideas that sometimes seem more at home in the world of Doctor Who. But this, of course, is the strength of the Marvel brand and we probably won’t realise quite how important Loki is in reshaping the whole MCU until much deeper into the cinematic Phase 4. But in reality (whatever that is) there’s a lot of very clever stuff here – this will easily be Disney+’s most rewatchable show so far – and Tom Hiddleston is clearly relishing the opportunity to add new layers to what had often been a fairly standard boo-hiss bad guy. This ‘new’ Loki is more in tune with himself, aware of the life he has led and the mistakes he has made and Hiddleston deftly balances this new ‘humanised’ Asgardian with the devious self-server we have come to know since he first appeared in Thor a decade ago. It’s a terrific performance and it’s enough to carry us through the show’s occasional indulgences and narrative frustrations.
Episode five beckons, then. Loki is again adrift in Time and Sylvie has the TVA on the backfoot. It’s taken a while but Loki has finally become a show where we’re looking forward to finding out where this is all going and where we’re heading next…
