I said I wasn’t gonna do any type of recap or anything on Marvel Studios' Disney+ show Loki, but here I fucking am. Because this show is really good so far, I have shit to say about it; and because I no longer have a Twitter account to blurt my thoughts out, they’re all just pent up. So here we go. You are welcome for this thing that nobody asked for. But this won’t be a recap. Because what is the point in a recap for you, the person who ended up here because you’ve already watched the damn episode?!
The first thing I’ll say is this. I like that Loki doesn’t look nor feel like either WandaVision or The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. A big issue for me when it came to the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies was that directors weren’t always able to put their own stamps on films, resulting in many of them looking the same. So it’s been nice to see that this hasn’t carried over to the shows. Allowing directors to put their own visual flairs and cinematographic style into their work seems to be a thing Kevin Feige is allowing in Phase 4 of the MCU, and it’s awesome to see. Especially in the space of 6 months, in which we’ve already gotten 3 shows.And whilst we’re on the subject of how things look, lemme get all of this shit out of the way. Loki’s production design is really striking. The colour palettes, the lighting, the overall feel. You really do get a sense that you’re stepping into this whole new corner of the MCU that's different to WandaVision, The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, and all the MCU shit we've seen before. The visual design and language of Loki isn’t just pretty, but tells a story in and of itself. Loki’s story starts outside of the timeline we’ve seen of the MCU to date, and in a sense, outside of the MCU itself. Therefore, the Time Variance Authority should feel new. But it also has a sense of familiarity that grounds it in a reality, which enables us to make some sense of what it is. The TVA is clearly a bureaucracy. Everything in the TVA has a 70s aesthetic, which is widely known and considered timeless. There’s lots of repetition in patterns and geometrics, which gives the sense of everything being by design and a sense of order, in addition to the concept of infinity. There’s a great balance between something new and unfamiliar, and something we can identify with - which tells us things without the show having to actually tell us anything.
The look of the TVA itself and how scenes are shot is like a cross between some Stanley Kubrick shit, Se7en and Mindhunter - which isn’t far off from some of the expectations I have of this show and the directions in which I feel it could go.
Then there’s Loki. Tom Hiddleston as Loki is always a joy to watch, and that hasn’t changed. You can tell that he genuinely loves and cares about this character. And interestingly, something that I’ve not seen spoken of, is that Tom Hiddleston is an executive producer on the show. So the grass is as green as Loki’s outfit for Tom right now. Still playing the same character after 10 years, despite dying 3 times in the movies, and now getting a spin-off show that he has a producer credit on. And also a show, that even at this early stage, seems like is going to have a far wider reaching impact on the MCU as a whole than WandaVision and The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.
Okay. Now let’s get into this ACTUAL episode.The whole timeline and multiverse situation can cause things to get so messy, that I figured Marvel Studios wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole - but they’re fucking doing it. Where-as WandaVision had us thinking we’d be getting multiversal shenanigans, Loki makes it clear that that’s EXACTLY what we’re getting here. The first 10 minutes of the episode is literally the show saying ‘Yes. This is a story about fucking with time. Yes, there are multiple timelines. Yes. We doing multiversal shit here’.
But despite multiversal shenanigans being highlighted at the start, much of episode 1 is focused on world building, and getting us fully acquainted with the TVA - and it does a great job of bringing us up to speed on who they are, how they operate and the type of relationship they’re going to have with Loki going forward. The Loki show is also perhaps the first MCU show we’ve gotten where the context of where this story sits and how it links to the MCU is the most explicit. The opening of Loki is literally the moment in Endgame from when Loki is apprehended at Avengers tower, and then Hulk’s temper tantrums sends the time heist sideways, which leads to Loki’s escape. The show follows on DIRECTLY from there. And interestingly we get a couple of different shots that we never got in Endgame. This doesn’t seem to be the most significant thing. But it is the only show to display what the jumping off point from the films is explicitly. And I also think that Loki may be the one Marvel show where you’d need to have watched the most amount of MCU movies going into it. I’d recommend having watched Thor, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers Assemble, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame prior to going into this, because it references moments from each of these films. Episode 1 does a great job of cleverly giving the best hits of Loki’s life which plays moments from the films he was in. (WHEW. That neck snap sure was louder than it was in Endgame. The sound guy really cranked the volume up on that shit). But knowing the full context of these moments will give you a greater level of not just enjoyment, but an understanding of Loki’s history within the MCU itself - and really help fill in the what’s, who’s and why’s which the show itself will pile on unto itself, separate from the films. Trust me. You'll be doing yourself a favour.
Episode 1 may be a little slow for some, but…- This is our third time on this rodeo, after slow first episodes from WandaVision and The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.
- I honestly can’t see how this episode could do what it needed to without feeling like it’s breezing through moments that we need to sit in.
From the very beginning when Loki is captured, we see that the TVA have an insane amount of control over time and the manipulation of it. And then 15 minutes into the episode we get a Hanna-Barbera style bit of propaganda on who the TVA are and what their purpose is; in which we get the words ‘Multiverse’ and ‘Madness’ used in the same sentence. *Scoffs* Doctor Strange 2 reference. Airhorns.wav. Loki also watches his own episode of This is your life, and then finds a bunch of infinity stones in a desk drawer, all of which are powerless.
Episode 1 is made up of lots of small moments to help establish how big the TVA is, the level of visibility that it has, and just how fucking powerful it is to be able to pull up on multiple people across various timelines and realities, jack their infinity stones, and then nullify them. And also wipe people and entire timelines out of existence. Loki is used to being able to adjust to his surroundings and turn things to his advantage; always seeking the greatest power or person in any given situation. And I'm sure eventually we'll see Loki manage this further down the line. But at this point, Loki can’t make heads nor tails of the TVA, and it’s causing him to question so much of what he thought he knew. This is a whole Asgardian who knows magic and thought he had seen it all, being confronted by this whole organisation who have the means to oversee all of time and change it to their will. And whilst Loki sees himself as a God of great importance, the TVA don’t see him as shit. He’s just one of many cases that they have to deal with on any given day.
Episode 1 of Loki was good. Easily the strongest opening episode of a Marvel show thus far. Some may take issue with the pacing being a little slow and feel that not enough is happening, but I had no issues with either or. Episode 1 perfectly set the tone for what I think is going to be a theme for the show, which is that time is never wasted. I also think it was necessary for the show to take the time to really establish the TVA, what they do and how they function - because the TVA is a character in and of itself, and it’s key that we see enough of it to form an opinion on it. An opinion which unanimously seems to be that it’s untrustworthy and nothing is what it seems. If the show sped through things too fast and didn’t linger on moments and questions long enough, then we’d have no opinion of the TVA at all, and I think the show will hinge on us feeling a specific type of way about the TVA from the start. Episode 1 also had to take the time to really allow us to get our heads around how time travel and time manipulation works according to the TVA (which we probably need to take with a pinch of salt) and really sell to us how powerful the TVA is without some lazy exposition. Show, don’t tell.
But most importantly, we really needed to see Loki go through some form of arc within this episode, so we as viewers can understand what his journey might be through this story besides a quest for power. All of the Marvel shows seem to have one thing in common, which is that each of these characters, Wanda, Sam, Bucky and now Loki, are all running from things which will inevitably catch up with them. And surrounding that is the whole idea of these characters wrestling with who they are versus what the world tells them they are. In a nutshell, all of these Marvel shows are therapy for these characters. We needed to see Loki go from ‘This TVA shit is all a joke’ to ‘Wow...this is actually some real shit’. We needed to see Loki confront his wrong-doings and realise that his consequences have actions. His thirst to see Thor fall and sit on the throne of Asgard got his mother killed. His desire to seize the tesseract resulted in his own death. But we also needed to see Loki break, and realise that the glorious purpose he thought he had was not for himself, but for others. Mobius lays it out for Loki, and I’m paraphrasing here: ‘Bitch. Your purpose was to be such a piece of shit that the Avengers formed.’ And just like that Loki has been read for filth and he has no comeback. So Loki is now set on a new path. The power he always sought doesn’t mean shit. His glorious purpose isn’t so glorious for him. It was also crucial that Loki was given time to come around and fully succumb to how helpless he is, in order for him to be at a place where he would willingly work for the TVA - because the Loki we knew would never just willingly work for somebody else unless his back was up against a wall, which it eventually is just before the episode ends. It had to be a journey to get him there. It wouldn’t have been the same if after 20 minutes Loki was suiting up in brown and orange and ready to go.That sure is a lot of stuff for an episode that didn’t do much.
Y’all be too fucking impatient sometimes.
One thing that I’m liking is now a staple at this point is the Marvel shows featuring bad ass Black women. In WandaVision we got Monica Rambeau. In The Falcon & The Winter Soldier we got Ayo and Sarah. And in Loki we get Hunter B-13 and Gugu Renslayer. And shout outs to the style team for showing variety with Black women’s hair and not just putting them in straight wigs. Nothing against straight wigs. We all live for a pressed lace front. But it's nice to see variants (BU-DUM-TSSSH) in Black hair. Afro's, curly, braids, high tops. I do, however, need to see a Black woman lead one of these shows. We know there’s an audience for superhero shows with a Black female lead. HBO’s Watchmen proved that. But we’re gonna have to wait until Ironheart to get it from Marvel, which is unfortunate and some way away.
So much of the good shit is in this episode is in the characterisation of Loki and the TVA, both of which are so amazing and intriguing, that the mystery of who is killing the Minute Men and the reveal at the end of the episode of 'That killer is you' barely feels important. Because you ultimately know in the back of your mind that the entire show isn't going to be about who this person is and why, but the mystery of the TVA itself, with this person linking into to that. This episode does such a good job of telegraphing the TVA as being a bit off (maybe too good a job) that you just know that this will be the focus of the show. A trip down the yellow bring road to pull the curtain back on the Time In short, episode 1 was really cool. The TVA is shady. And the score on this show is fucking amazing, and quite possibly one of the best scores in a Marvel Studios thing EVER. Natalie Holt is a beast.