TV Review - Loki (2021)

This is the third series to premiere on Disney Plus to be a spin-off of Avengers: Endgame (2019), which is apart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU, the live-action adaptation of Marvel Comics and its characters that are mainly big-budget blockbusters. Disney has decided to bring that same big-budget blockbuster feeling to the small screen. It makes this show and the two before it look incredible and more specifically look expensive. The cinematography, the production design and visual effects look expensive, better than it would in a network television show. The one exception is Episode 3, which looks like CGI vomit. Nonetheless, it can also afford top talent in terms of actors. Therefore, the show on those levels will have no complaints. My only complaints are from a story standpoint and some character standpoints.

Tom Hiddleston (Crimson Peak and Midnight in Paris) stars as Loki, a magical being who has various powers like shapeshifting and the ability to create illusions, as well as super-strength and speed. As such, his nickname is "God of Mischief." He's the adopted son of Odin, the ruler of the planet called Asgard. He has the ability to come to Earth and other planets. He becomes obsessed with becoming the ruler of Asgard, Earth and other planets. He was in fact the villain in The Avengers (2012).

He's the brother to Thor, one of the Avengers who has the power to wield lightning. As such, Thor is nicknamed the "God of Thunder." Loki has always had a complicated relationship with Thor. Loki did a lot of bad things, but Loki redeemed himself and tried to save Thor from Thanos, the villain in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, Loki died when Thanos killed him in that 2019 film. However, as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) and even WandaVision (2021) has demonstrated, death doesn't matter in the MCU. Out of 20 or more films, Loki has been the only villain in the MCU that people have liked, other than Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger, so finding a way to give Loki his own series makes sense. The question is how. Do they resurrect him as they did the dead character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and WandaVision? Actually, the answer here is to use time-travel.

Owen Wilson (Wedding Crashers and Midnight in Paris) co-stars as Mobius, an agent at an organization called the Time Variance Authority or TVA. The TVA is a group of time-travelers. Specifically, the TVA works to fix any anomalies in the timeline that could result in a multiverse that could be a danger to everything. Despite having advanced technology that allows him to go to any point in time that he wants, Mobius comes across as a nonchalant, veteran detective. Wilson though infuses the character with his patented humor and charm, so he's a compelling presence here.

Mobius is currently working on a case that involves a person skipping around in time causing chaos, possibly death and destruction, generally messing up the timeline. Mobius is trying to find this person and stop this person whom he calls a variant. Mobius decides that Loki is the perfect individual to help him find this variant. First though, Mobius has to convince Loki to go along and help.

Fundamentally, my criticism of this series is that the makers of it decided that instead of making a simple series with simple stakes that doesn't feel like it has to juggle whatever is coming next in the MCU. It instead doubles down and goes even harder and even bigger. Avengers: Endgame was the biggest super-hero film that anyone could hope to put together with stakes that were literally as big as the universe and a villain that was so powerful, the most powerful being ever, that of Thanos. Trying to top Thanos feels like a fool's errand, but that's an issue for the upcoming blockbusters. It shouldn't be one for these TV shows. Yet, the makers feel as though they needed higher stakes than Thanos and his plan to wipe out half of all life.

My criticism is that by doing so, by making the stakes even higher than those in Avengers: Endgame, you actually end up making them lower or less consequential. You actually make those stakes and thus this show not matter. For example, there is a scene in the first episode here where Loki sees that people in the TVA have infinity stones. In Avengers: Endgame, those infinity stones were the most powerful objects or totems in the universe that were combined to make Thanos the most powerful being ever. Yet, here in this series, those infinity stones are treated as if they were paper weights or trinkets to be discarded in an office drawer. Yes, I get that this series is a comedy and is making a joke about what was the MCU's central MacGuffin.

However, this series wants us to take some things seriously, but it's unclear what we should take seriously. The TVA feels like it's supposed to be this absurd bureaucratic place. Some of the scenes and moments in the TVA feel like scenes and moments ripped from Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). There's some interesting visuals, an expensive production design, but nothing as striking as anything in Gilliam's Oscar-nominated, signature work. It's not as funny or as intriguing as something like NBC's The Good Place (2016), which was also about a supernatural bureaucracy. That series was also given more time to establish its characters and its setting. This series feels like it's rushing past much and not establishing much of anything.

Another series that is a super-hero show that focuses on characters who travel through time, trying to preserve the continuity is CW's Legends of Tomorrow (2016). It's not the greatest series, but it's better because it's a time-travel show that takes the audience to recognizable places or recognizable periods of time in order to play with them. Avengers: Endgame did a similar thing. It was a film about time travel that took the audience to recognizable places in the MCU's history, places the audiences have seen in previous MCU films or places that would be recognizable.

This series tries with a brief stop in Pompeii in the year 79 AD, for the eruption of Vesuvius. Pompeii is a recognizable place to the audience, as it was a significant historical event in world history. However, an entire episode is set in some place that isn't recognizable, not unless there's some comic book reference to Episode 3 titled "Lamentis" that I haven't read. Since it's not recognizable to the audience and there's no real connection to this place from the characters, it becomes a place and an episode that doesn't really matter in a series about time-travel. In a sense, that's the point. The characters pick a place that won't matter in terms of it affecting the the time line, but, again, going to places that don't matter only makes the show not matter.

Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 6 eps.

Available on Disney Plus.