I think it's safe to say that my mind has been completely blown after this series. What a mad way to end one of the craziest outings that the MCU has given us thus far. It's no secret that we're going cosmic, on a far larger scale than in the Infinity Saga and Loki has just further cemented that by going all-out multiversal. In recent months and weeks, the MCU has delved into more grounded stories with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as well as Black Widow (check out my review if you haven't already) but Marvel Studios' latest Disney+ series is pulling out all the stops to let viewers know that nothing will ever be the same again. Without further ado, let's dive right into the crazy timey-wimey shenanigans of our titular hero.
SERIES RETROSPECT AND REVIEW (SPOILER ALERT)
Introduction: Compared to the previous Disney+ series, it's a little harder to place Loki on a specific spot in the timeline because of the otherworldly nature of the series' events as well as the constant time travel. We can sort of say it takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame since it picks up right after the Avengers' botched 2012 time heist, wherein they lose the Space Stone (in Tesseract form) to the past version of Loki, who teleports away. Right after his great escape, Loki inadvertently gets captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), who label him as a "variant" and drag him to their base of operations as well as destroy/"prune" the reality he came from (henceforth referred to as Earth-TRN732 as per the Marvel Database). Instead of being pruned himself though, Loki is recruited by TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius to hunt down another Loki variant who's been a thorn in the TVA's side for some time now. Embarking on various time-hopping adventures, both our heroes and the audience soon learn that nothing as it as it seems with the TVA, and the MCU is about to get a whole lot weirder.
Series vs comics: Get comfortable before reading because this is going to be a long segment. Rather than talk about everyone's favourite Asgardian god of mischief himself (or rather his Earth-TRN732 counterpart), since we've already gotten a pretty good idea of his origins from previous MCU films, I'll instead be touching on two of his variants. The first is Sylvie Laufeydottir (Sophia Di Martino), Loki's female variant from Earth-TRN866. Prior to the series' airing itself, no one really knew who she was supposed to be playing and even as we progressed through the show, people continued to speculate about her true identity and which character from the comics she was supposed to be. Was she Sylvie Lushton, a young girl given magical abilities by Loki who then takes on the moniker of Enchantress? Was she simply a take on Lady Loki or a mix of both characters? Well I think it's pretty clear by the end of this series that Sylvie is a very different take on Lady Loki.
In the comics, Lady Loki isn't an alternate reality's Loki at all but is simply Earth-616's (the mainstream Marvel universe) Loki in a different body. The Ragnarok storyline saw the Agardians stuck in a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth, with the entire race constantly reincarnating into new bodies after every Ragnarok. Instead of returning in his own body, the trickster god would return in the body meant for Lady Sif, which is why we see him returning as a female and become known as Lady Loki. The series has changed Lady Loki's character completely by not using that name at all and making her an alternate universe counterpart to Loki. Due to an unknown reason, she was declared a variant and taken away by the TVA, who then pruned her timeline and everyone else she loved. She would quickly manage to escape and spend her formative years till the events of the series on the run and scheming to take down the TVA for ruining her life. It's also made known that she was indeed christened Loki by Odin and Frigga but changed her name to Sylvie while in hiding.
The second variant I'll be talking about is Earth-TRN868's Loki aka Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant). This is an older version of Loki who was able to cheat death at the hands of Thanos during the events of Avengers: Infinity War by casting an illusion over himself, tricking the mad titan. After drifting through space for a long time, he decided that death and destruction followed him everywhere he went, and that it would be in everyone's best interests if he were to live in self-exile. That's exactly what Classic Loki did for the rest of his life, living on an isolated planet all alone until he starts to miss Asgard and his brother Thor, all of whom believe he's dead. Just as he's about to leave his planet though, the TVA show up and prune him. Classic Loki's costume is more or less ripped straight out of the Silver Age comics, having the ridiculously bright green-and-yellow garb as well as the classic horned helmet, hence the character's name.
As we know, Loki is a masterful sorcerer in the comics, possibly one of the most powerful magic users in the entire Marvel universe. He's capable of casting grand illusions that can fool entire cities and even the ancient fire demon Surtur as well as manipulate the minds of those around him with no known limit. Illusion-casting and mind manipulation are also abilities that Loki has demonstrated in the MCU, albeit on a far lower level, and these powers are dialed up to eleven with the two other variants I talked about above. Classic Loki's magic mastery is far more developed than any other Loki variant thus far and demonstrates powers that're quite similar to his comic counterpart, being able to cast illusions so realistic that he can even fool an Infinity Stone-powered Thanos. He can even create duplicates of himself that not only trick his other variants but also engage them in combat, something that Loki does all the time in the comics. Perhaps his best showing was recreating a large-scale illusion of Asgard, enough to distract the temporal force known as Alioth.
Sylvie on the other hand, demonstrates a far more attuned form of psionic control, referred to in the series as enchantment (although the term bore a different connotation in the comics). Through physical contact, she's able to latch onto the minds of her victims, either forcing them to act on her behalf or access their memories. This is something we've seen the original Loki do in the MCU but apparently something that Earth-TRN732's Loki had yet to accomplish (although he does do so eventually). Sylvie usually has no problem enchanting normal minds but requires a lot more concentration and power to enchant someone with strong wills, such as her male counterpart or Alioth itself. As we know, Loki didn't have to make physical contact to mess with others' minds in the comics whereas Sylvie has to, making that the main difference.
The next character I'll be talking about is Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the somewhat secondary antagonist of Loki. In the comics, she's the daughter of King Carelius, a ruler in the 40th century Earth (Earth-6311), whose kingdom was the last part of civilisation left unconquered by the villainous time-traveler Kang the Conqueror. Kang had fallen in love with Ravonna and thus spared her people, vowing to make her fall for him. What happens next is extremely confusing because it involves branches all over the timestream so I won't touch on that but her allegiance to Kang flip-flops all the time, sometimes with and sometimes against him. At times, she's adopted the alias Terminatrix, wearing body armour and using futuristic tech that allowed her to alter her appearance as well as project herself into others' dreams. She also wielded various weapons including concussion blasters and vibro-knives. Ravonna does end up reconciling with Kang and travels to the past with him (specifically 1903), where she adopts the name "Rebecca Tourminet" (don't forget this name) but most recently, she was seemingly killed during the destruction of Chronopolis (Kang's base of operations) and has yet to resurface.
The series has changed Ravonna drastically, turning her into Earth-TRN870's variant of Rebecca Tourminet (what a nice callback), an Ohio school vice-principal who gets taken by the TVA for an unknown reason. Her memory wiped, she would go onto join the TVA and become known as Hunter A-23, being the agent responsible for incarcerating a young Sylvie and pruning her timeline. Eventually, A-23 would rise up the ranks to become a TVA judge, going by the name of Ravonna Renslayer. She's very loyal to the TVA and believes that serving the Time-Keepers is the only way to keep the universe from descending into chaos. Unlike in the comics, she has little relation to Kang and operates on the basis that the TVA is doing the right thing, blindly following the Time-Keepers' orders even if it means killing innocent lives. The series shows that Ravonna is a skilled martial artist, having received proper military training by the TVA, capable of holding her own against the physically stronger Sylvie as well as easily disarming Mobius. She also clearly knows her way around a sword.
Guys, there's so much else I can talk about with regards to differences between the series and the comics but I'll end off this segment with one last character, or maybe he should be considered a few characters. Confused? You should be because that's exactly the nature of the man known as Nathaniel Richards. A distant descendant of Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic, Nathaniel was born in the 30th century of Earth-6311, a universe where humanity never went into the dark ages. Sounds simple enough? Don't worry it gets complicated very fast. As a result of constant time-traveling, there're various versions of the same Nathaniel, all hailing from Earth-6311 albeit at different points in time and all going by different names. Iron Lad, Pharaoh Rama-Tut, Scarlet Centurion, Mister Gryphon, even Doctor Doom, there're at least 9 different iterations of the same character and countless more that were killed off to clean up the timestream. In this post though, we'll only be focusing on two, the aforementioned Kang the Conqueror and Lord Immortus.
If you're familiar with comics you probably know who Kang is. The most well-known version of Nathaniel Richards, he's a time-traveling supervillain who, as his name suggests, conquers entire timelines. He started with the 40th century of his world and eventually conquered entire galaxies and intergalactic empires like the Badoon. Unsatisfied, he would attempt to conquer the past as well, traveling to the present day of Earth-616 where he would cross swords countless times with the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Most recently, Kang found himself embroiled in the Infinity Conflict and trapped in stasis by Earth-TRN802's Thanos, who had gained omnipotence. The time-traveler would then work together with Adam Warlock and Earth-616's Thanos to stop the mad titan's future self, something they succeed in and he would continue his time-traveling adventures to search for the green Soul Gem on behalf of Adam Warlock. Kang doesn't possess any innate powers (except for an increased lifespan) but is extremely intelligent, being able to command technology superior to Iron Man's or Doctor Doom's. He typically wears purple-and-green battle armour which gives him roughly superhuman physical attributes as well as allowing him to travel through time, among other things.
Lord Immortus is an older version of Kang who grew tired of conquering and adopts a far more neutral stance, oftentimes being considered an ally to the Avengers as both parties seek to prevent Kang's conquest. Immortus refers to himself as the "Master/Gardener of Time", "pruning" (well well well look what we have here) realities/timelines deemed dangerous by the Time-Keepers and thus preventing the multiverse from descending into chaos. Unfortunately, the character has been dead for almost 20 years now but his corpse has resurfaced in more recent comics as a source of manipulation. Much like his more villainous counterpart Kang, Immortus has completely stopped his aging, maintaining the appearance of a man in his mid-40s although he's really over 70-years-old.
This brings us to how the series has portrayed Nathaniel Richards, which is more confusing than you think. The time-traveler's first MCU iteration is introduced to us as He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), a 31st century scientist from Earth-TRN870 who discovered the existence of alternate universes and ended up interacting with various alternate versions of himself. Some were benevolent and wanted to share knowledge and technology with one another but others were violent and wanted to rule over other universes, sparking the Multiversal War. Eventually, He Who Remains would harness the power of Alioth and ended the War, isolating the "Sacred Timeline" aka Earth-199999 and creating the TVA to destroy any dangerous splinter timelines. He currently resides in the Citadel at the End of Time, from which he watches over the timeline and issues orders to the TVA through the Time-Keepers, who were essentially his mouthpiece robots. Much like his comic counterparts, He Who Remains possesses an immense intellect and doesn't age, having lived for millions of years. He's also functionally nigh-omniscient, knowing everything that occurred in the Sacred Timeline up till a certain point.
It's pretty clear that the MCU's He Who Remains takes inspiration from Lord Immortus, both of whom share the job of pruning unwanted timelines and ensuring multiversal order as well as sharing similar garb. That said, there's a character from the comics named, you guessed it, He Who Remains. In the comics, He Who Remains is the last TVA director and resides in the Citadel at the End of Time, the final reality of the multiverse prior to its heat death. He would first create the Time-Twisters, a trio of beings meant to teach the next universe but who started traveling to the past and destroying the universe they were currently in. After Thor and Jane Foster intervened by telling He Who Remains that his creations were destroying the past, He would terminate the Time-Twisters' existence and create the Time-Keepers, powerful beings created to protect time.
Evidently, the MCU's He Who Remains is a combination of Lord Immortus and the comics' He Who Remains, in terms of name, purpose and appearance. The MCU is choosing to present He Who Remains as a variant of Kang the Conqueror so we'll treat him as such, with the biggest difference being that the MCU's Kang variants are black whereas the comics typically depict him as white.
Pros: My favourite thing about Loki is the chemistry between Loki (Tom Hiddleston reprising his role) and Mobius (Owen Wilson). Despite the fact that the pair don't really interact with each other all that often in the grand scheme of the series, they play off each other well. Even though most of their scenes together is just them talking, I loved their relationship and banter, it gave the show a lot more personality and made things fun. Hiddleston has been a long-standing part of the MCU and has the distinction of portraying one of the most well-loved characters in Loki, with many fans devastated by the character's death in Avengers: Infinity War. It's great to see him back in the role and he kills it, delivering his performance with gravitas and charisma. Despite the fact that this Loki variant is from 2012 and the events of The Avengers, he behaves quite differently from his more villainous portrayal from that film, showcasing a more vulnerable side and Hiddleston brings across that difference very well.
Mobius on the other hand is a far more laidback character and is generally quite chill, even when he's exasperated by Loki. That's an important point to bring up, exasperation, because Mobius and Loki are so exasperated by each other that it's hilarious, I really love their interactions. Mobius presents a very interesting foil to Loki as someone who's completely unaffected by any of the crazy happenings in the MCU, purely because he's part of the multiversal TVA, taking the "puny god" trope to the next level. For someone who really didn't know all that much about the MCU, Wilson's MCU debut is quite impressive and I really liked his portrayal of Mobius (who I'll talk more about in a later segment).
I also want to praise Jonathan Majors' guest performance as He Who Remains. Despite only appearing in the last episode and spending his entire screen time monologuing, he delivered his lines so perfectly and really cemented his character as one of the biggest forces behind the MCU in future. He Who Remains is a character who's spent so much of his life defending the timeline and being the lesser of all the evils by preventing any of his more chaotic variants from taking over, which of course leads to a very manic personality while also totally exhausting him. On top of that, He has become one of the few Marvel characters to be expert manipulators, completely coiling Loki and Sylvie around his finger even when facing imminent death. Majors portrayed all these aspects so well in the little amount of time he had and I'm very much looking forward to seeing him return in future (see The future of the MCU).
It's pretty clear that Loki ended up becoming more of a worldbuilding series and I can respect that, considering how huge Marvel is going with the MCU. The sheer amount of lore that's been expanded upon and the absolute scale of what they're doing was demonstrated with this series and it's only going bigger from here. I will say that this definitely helps to get people excited for the MCU's future, especially in a world where some complain of MCU fatigue or disillusionment.
Cons: Unfortunately, Loki isn't without its problems, one of which is its pacing. The first two episodes were paced pretty well, bringing us up to our speed with our main character as well as setting the stage for what's to come in the series. We even got to see our supposed main villain in Sylvie showing up and everything seems fine and dandy. Episode 3 then decides to be the slowest thing in the world, purely showing Sylvie and Loki stranded on the soon-to-be-destroyed moon Lemantis-1. That sounds fine but they spend that whole episode basically doing nothing much at all and it was so boring, I genuinely felt tired watching that one episode. Thankfully, things do pick up in the next episode onwards so it's not all bad. The odd pacing is still definitely something that could've been worked on though.
I was also really disappointed with the lack of Loki throughout the series. Don't get me wrong, we get him in spades but I'm pretty sure what we all expected was to see the proper return of the mischievous trickster we knew and loved from the MCU pre-The Avengers. Instead, we got a few films' worth of character development in a matter of a few minutes. That in and of itself isn't really an issue because Loki was still entertaining to watch on screen and Hiddleston was great but the series ended up being more about Sylvie and the worldbuilding than anything else. As we've discussed on this blog before (check out my Wonder Woman 1984 or Zack Snyder's Justice League reviews), worldbuilding is a double-edged sword, wherein a film/series gets so caught up in trying to set up a universe or a future storyline that we lose sight of our characters and whatnot. I said in the previous segment that I appreciated Loki's worldbuilding but at the same time, I would've loved to see more of Loki going on a bunch of time-hopping shenanigans with Mobius (which is what I hoped the series would be about).
Miscellaneous/little touches: As with previous posts, this segment will see me talking about some Easter eggs as well as references. The first I'll be talking about is Alioth, the temporal beast that we see guarding the Citadel at the End of Time and He Who Remains. In the comics, Alioth exists in Temporal Limbo and is the first being to break free from time's constraints, with his empire being twice or thrice as big as Kang's entire domain. In fact, Kang was afraid of Alioth and created a barrier to prevent the time beast from invading. This is clearly not the case in the series, seeing as how Alioth's power was harnessed by He Who Remains, who's a Kang variant in the MCU.
In the Void, which is where everything the TVA prunes goes to, we get a ton of Easter eggs that reference either stuff from the films and little nods to the comics. We got stuff like the Living Tribunal's head, a multiversal entity second only to the One-Above-All (aka Marvel's God), a giant Yellowjacket helmet from Ant-Man, the Dark Aster (Ronan the Accuser's warship), a jar containing Throg (a frog version of Thor from the comics) and most hilariously, the Thanos-Copter, which is literally just a yellow helicopter with Thanos' name on the side. It's actually from the comics so go check it out if you want a good laugh.
The future of the MCU: The end of this series has Sylvie sending Loki back to the TVA before she kills He Who Remains, fulfilling her life's mission of finding and destroying the person responsible for her suffering. Of course, nothing good comes out of this because not only does she not feel any catharsis, the multiverse starts to splinter on an insane level, with branches popping up everywhere. As Loki desperately tries to find Mobius and ask for help to save Sylvie, both our hero and the audience find out that we've somehow ended up in an alternate universe. Mobius doesn't remember Loki or anything that happened prior and most importantly, the statues of the Time-Keepers, which once overlooked everything in the TVA, have now been replaced by a singular statue of Kang the Conqueror (which looks quite comic accurate). Things couldn't be worse.
Like I've mentioned countless times before, Loki was a total worldbuilding series and this is primarily shown in the setting up of the multiverse. He Who Remains had warned Loki and Sylvie that if left unchecked, another Kang variant would rise up and start another Multiversal War, which is literally what happens after He dies. Kang has taken over the TVA and let the multiverse timeline splinters grow nonstop, something that his comic counterpart wants to happen so that chaos will breed "like a jungle". Following this series, we know that many Phase Four outings will take a look at the multiverse, starting with the next Disney+ series What If...?, which will start airing next month. In that series, we'll be taking a look at various alternate realities showcasing what would happen if the MCU went down a different path, such as what if T'Challa had been abducted by the Ravagers and become Star-Lord or what if Peggy Carter had become Captain America (or Britain in her case)? There're a ton of possibilities and all will come to pass because of the multiversal madness brought on by Loki.
Speaking of multiversal madness, two of the MCU's future films will be focusing on said topic, the first of which is this December's Spider-Man: No Way Home. We don't have a lot of exact information yet but what we do know is that Jamie Foxx and Alfred Molina will be reprising their roles as The Amazing Spider-Man 2's Electro and Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus respectively, characters from alternate universes. Rumour has it that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's versions of Spider-Man as well as many other villains from their respective films will be appearing, all seeking to drive home the fact that this film will be heavily embroiled in the multiverse. Doctor Strange himself will also be appearing alongside Peter in that film, lending to the multiversal nature of that film.
The sorcerer supreme will also be diving into the multiverse with 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which sees him teaming up with Scarlet Witch (fresh out of WandaVision, which teased alternate dimensions as well) and Ms. America, a character who comes from outside the multiverse. On top of that, we've known for some time that Jonathan Majors will be returning as Kang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania so we'll definitely get some crazy dimension-hopping plotlines there. It's pretty clear right now that things have been irreparably changed for the MCU and the multiverse is coming, sooner rather than later.
Lastly, it was announced quite some time ago that Loki would be getting a season 2, explaining why the first season ended on such a cliffhanger with the multiverse spiraling out of control. We don't know when the second season will begin since it's only in the developmental stage but it'll probably revolve around how Loki tries to restore the TVA to some semblance of normalcy and assist in taking down Kang. We'll also likely see the return of Sylvie from the Citadel at the End of Time and find out what she's been up to after He Who Remains' death. Season 2 likely won't take place during Phase Four since the slate is already really packed so Phase Five is where we'll probably see the return of our Asgardian god of mischief.
Is the MCU in a separate multiverse entirely?: This question has been on many people's minds, myself included. Since its inception, the MCU has been considered part of the comics multiverse as Earth-199999, having even been visited by the Young Avengers in the comics. Any timeline divergences present in the MCU, such as Avengers: Endgame's time heists and alternate futures in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Runaways, have all been considered alternate universes in the greater multiverse (albeit designated as TRNs as explained in my initial thoughts post). However, Loki's advent makes it seem that the MCU is very deliberately distancing itself from the comics multiverse by introducing their own version of the TVA and concept of the multiverse. As I mentioned in my initial thoughts post, the TVA is a multiversal organisation existing in the Null-Time Zone, overseeing all realities at once and there's only one version of each TVA agent in the entire multiverse (meaning there's only one Mobius in the comics).
If the MCU was still considered part of the comics multiverse, that would mean that Owen Wilson's Mobius is the same Mobius that appears in the comics and the TVA would be the same. However, that doesn't seem to be the case as the MCU's TVA tentatively exists in Earth-TRN870, an alternate reality within the comics multiverse itself. That directly contradicts the fact that only one TVA exists in the entire multiverse and would only make sense if the MCU's multiverse is a distinct multiverse from the one in the comics. We could still assume we have one multiverse and use the Loki variant designations as evidence for this, with Earth-TRN732's Loki referred to as L1130 while Sylvie from Earth-TRN866 is L0852 (before being changed to L1190 in episode 6). I've found that there're no alternate universes in the comics designated as Earth-1130 or Earth-1190 (or Earth-852 for that matter) so if Marvel officially confirms this, Earth-1130 and 1190 could become the official reality designations for Loki and Sylvie's realities.
That said, as much as I try to reconcile both schools of thought, I'm willing to accept that the MCU no longer exists in the comics multiverse and has somehow managed to spawn its own multiverse outside of print. In recent months, MCU fans have also been debating about the canonicity of the TV shows prior to the Disney+ ones, especially since most of them have little ties to the films. The MCU being its own multiverse then frees up the possibility that all these older series were just alternate realities splintering off from Earth-199999, explaining why none of the films acknowledge their existence sicne they exist in different universes. As tough of a pill as it is to swallow for diehard followers of MCU canon (myself included), this seems to be the most likely path that Marvel Studios will take, especially since Kevin Feige isn't giving a conclusive answer to this question. Will the MCU hence be renamed to the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse (MCM)? It's a definite possibility but we'll see where we go from here.
Final thoughts: I have very mixed feelings about this series. On the one hand, I'm very excited about what's to come with the MCU with all this crazy worldbuilding but at the same time, it's worrying to see that many people are starting to complain about the declining quality of the MCU products. Don't get me wrong, I still generally enjoy the MCU because I've been a big fan of both the comics and live-action media for a long time now but at the same time, I can't help but wonder if the MCU is really descending into darkness. The first two Disney+ series and Black Widow have all been met with relative praise from critics but audience reactions are far more muted, with the same being the case for Loki. This is not a good start for Phase Four from a fan's standpoint.
All that said, I still think that the MCU's future looks bright. God emperor Feige is someone trustworthy and he hasn't failed us yet so with his next 10-year plan or so, I'm sure that things will return to standard. As of now though, if you're expecting the devious trickster from older films, you're going to be somewhat disappointed with Loki. If you're the kind of guy who's into worldbuilding, this is definitely the series for you. Thanks for reading.
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