Marvel Archives - Page 7 Of 43

July 9, 2021July 11, 2021

“Black Widow” Review!

Black Widow’s story has always been one of regret: both in-universe and on a meta level, because all I felt after watching Black Widow fling herself off a cliff in Avengers: Endgame for the sake of the Soul Stone was regret that this amazing character, one whose incredible empowering backstory and dark potential had only ever been touched on in passing throughout seven Marvel films, was dead and gone before she got the chance to take center stage in a solo film of her own. Black Widow’s self-sacrifice, if it had to happen at all, should have been a triumphant moment. Instead, it plays out like numb resignation to a fate that might have felt more earned if the films had actually given her a consistent character arc.

And now, two years after Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) gave her life in service of the Avengers and received a moment’s worth of mourning from the coworkers who had the audacity to call themselves her only family, we finally have a Black Widow prequel – a kind of consolation prize for sticking with the character even as one director after another, from Favreau to Whedon to the Russo Brothers, reduced her to hypersexualized eye-candy for the male gaze. But unfortunately, Black Widow doesn’t help to make Natasha’s death more bearable or more understandable in hindsight: if anything, in trying to right one of the MCU’s greatest wrongs, it introduces elements that seem to contradict Natasha’s motivation for killing herself in Endgame (which is fine by me), yet does nothing to offer a convincing counterargument for why she’s no longer around to continue her own story, all while halfheartedly rushing to fling together explanations for the mysteries she left in her wake; explanations that are underwhelming at best.

Black Widow‘s screenwriter Eric Pearson recently revealed that the first draft of the film’s script was completed in just eleven days…and by the end of the movie when things start to come irreparably unglued, it shows. I’ll be honest, the first and second acts are mostly quite good, and achieve a perfect balance between strong character development and the kind of visceral action we expect from a movie about elite assassins: we get to learn more about Natasha’s childhood (with Ever Anderson playing a young, blue-haired Natasha), and the film plays with some potentially intriguing concepts and themes there, but when the film jumps back to the present (well, 2016, so nearer the present at any rate), it deftly ratchets up the tension by explaining that while Natasha worked under the aegis of the Avengers, her enemies in the Red Room feared that going after her would expose their position – but now, with the Avengers broken up in a post-Civil War world and Natasha on the run, she’s got no protection.

There’s a weird and unnecessary MacGuffin in the form of a mind-control device, and a general lack of direction at points, but all of this stuff is genuinely entertaining – and the first act provides a strong jumping-off point for what could have been a more grounded, intrigue-heavy, mind-bending psychological thriller like the one promised in Black Widow‘s dark and disturbing opening credits sequence. Scarlett Johansson does some excellent work on her own, imbuing her performance as Natasha with the kind of dignity, respect, and disregard for the male gaze that one can sense is freeing for her: and when Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) enters the picture, the two women share an electric connection that carries the film through some of its weaker patches. Pugh is a revelation in this role, and one of the only upsides I can see for Black Widow taking as long to make as it did is that Pugh arrived on the scene at just the right moment to embody this character with equal parts humor and heart.

During the second act, we’re also introduced to Natasha and Yelena’s adoptive parents, Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz): the Soviet Union’s first and only Super-Soldier, and the Red Room program’s most ingenious and terrifying chemist, respectively. Neither character is actually all that important to the story, but I was surprisingly invested in their subplots, and impressed by the level of detail that Marvel put into their backstories and personalities. I had been worried about Harbour, whose “Red Guardian” was mostly used as a punchline in the marketing, but I’m pleased to report that many of his cringiest line-readings in the trailers appear to have been alternate takes, and even the controversial joke where Melina tells him that he got fat is followed up in the movie itself by a far more effective line where she comments that his body looks good.

But the vivid characterizations of Natasha and her found family inadvertently highlight one of the film’s glaring errors – the blank slate that is its villain, Taskmaster. Going into the movie, I felt certain Taskmaster’s unique and formidable ability to mirror their opponent’s movements and fighting techniques would be crucial to the plot. It’s not. We’ve already seen most of Taskmaster’s fight scenes, and all but one or two of their surprise attacks (the Black Panther-style retractable claws, for example), in the trailers. But beyond that, there’s really nothing to this character except a twist that is meant to hit the audience in the feels – except it doesn’t, because we literally don’t know Taskmaster from a hole in the wall. You never told me who I was supposed to think they were in the first place, so finding out who they really are means nothing.

As you can probably guess, hardcore Taskmaster fans are going to be let down – because this version of the character has virtually no relation to the one from the comics, which is actually a problem with a bunch of characters in Black Widow. If Melina Vostokoff is supposed to be anything like the Melina Vostokoff who goes by the alias of “Iron Maiden” in the comics, then there’s really nothing to indicate that beyond what looks like a metal face-mask on a shelf in her armory – which she never picks up, much less wears. Yelena never obtains her own iconic face-mask, which in the comics is modeled after a spider’s with a bunch of glowing eyes. And most egregiously, the character of Ursa Major (Olivier Richters), a giant humanoid Soviet bear who we’d all been excited to see, is literally just a tall hairy guy. These all feel like disappointing callbacks to the days when Marvel was afraid of its source material’s most outlandish aspects.

Blasts from the past aren’t always unwelcome, however. Black Widow‘s fight scenes – in the first two acts, mind you – borrow heavily from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, still the MCU’s best action movie, although they feel less inventive and a bit less visceral, perhaps because of a certain plot device that feels purposefully contrived to prevent characters from dying. But director Cate Shortland gave us what could be my favorite shot of Natasha Romanoff in any of her Marvel appearances, as the heroine, clad in her all-white uniform, suspends from a helicopter during a Siberian gulag ambush and soars ahead of an avalanche like some kind of avenging angel.

But unfortunately, Shortland makes no effort to try and save a third act that’s written with about as much finesse as the Incredible Hulk rampaging through New York. Any waning hope for a redemptive final action sequence is crushed when the movie suddenly disintegrates into a sprawling CGI showdown that feels completely inauthentic to Natasha’s character and devoid of any real narrative purpose. Something needed to explode, I guess, so it might as well be an entire flying fortress so that we can watch a descending battle through the falling rubble that’s over as abruptly as it begins, giving the audience no time to enjoy what could at least have been a cool set-piece if not an emotionally satisfying conclusion to a story that feels like it’s been mangled to fit the old Marvel Movie formula.

It’s incredible that Black Widow was originally intended to kick off Marvel’s Phase Four instead of the more zany, imaginative WandaVision. Although I once worried that the rearranged release calendar would disrupt all of Marvel’s carefully-laid plans, I have to admit Kevin Feige made the right decision by giving us a taste of what’s really in store for the MCU before showing us…this. It’s not that Black Widow isn’t good, because to be honest it probably still lands on the top half of my MCU rankings regardless of its faults, but it’s more of what we’re used to from Marvel: the sloppy CGI third act battles, the in-name-only cameos from fan-favorite comic characters, the wasted villains. I can only hope that the success of Marvel’s Disney+ shows convinces the studio to apply the storytelling techniques that make their shows so popular to their future films, because I feel strongly that there’s a sweet spot somewhere between the creativity of the shows and the bigger budgets of the films that Marvel just hasn’t found yet.

And so we circle back around to the same place where we started: that inescapable feeling of regret. I’m not unhappy I watched Black Widow, but I am sad that Natasha Romanoff’s story doesn’t get to end on the resounding high note I and many others think she deserved. Because this is it. The film doesn’t provide an out for her to cheat death and return somewhere down the line – although the Multiverse could conceivably bring back any deceased character in the MCU, and we know Scarlett Johansson will return to voice Natasha in What If…?.

But this whole prequel is basically just a What If…? scenario anyway: what if Marvel had given Natasha an actual storyline outside of her irregular appearances in Avengers movies and crossover events? What if they’d done literally anything to flesh out her personal life? What if she had led her own trilogy like other Marvel heroes, and this was just the beginning of her story, an effective launchpad for something that could have been great? Well, I guess we’ll never know!

Rating: 7.5/10

July 8, 2021

“What If…?” 2nd Trailer Review!

In a franchise that has historically been very strict about what is and what is not canon (nobody knows that better than Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans), the medium of animation provides Marvel an incredible opportunity to expand upon the potential of Loki‘s Multiverse shenanigans and explore alternate universes branching off from the so-called Sacred Timeline – in an anthology series named What If…? that will remain (at least as far as we know) entirely separate from the live-action MCU. But although you might think that would narrow its appeal with hardcore fans who tend to get obsessive over the canon debate too, the broad variety of stories being explored in What If…? will likely make this a must-see event.

The format of the series is simple yet unique. One episode for each Marvel movie released thus far, but putting a twist on the version of events we know from our canon, and following the consequences of that twist down a winding rabbit-hole of endless possibilities. Until today, the marketing for What If…? had largely focused on just two or three storylines: one in which Peggy Carter took the Super-Soldier Serum during World War II instead of Steve Rogers and became Captain Carter (not Captain Britain, although the Union Jack is emblazoned on her vibranium shield); one in which a young Prince T’Challa was abducted from Earth by aliens and became a Ravager in place of Peter Quill; and one in which Bucky Barnes fights a zombie version of Captain America, in what I think might be the series’ Captain America: Civil War episode.

Everything beyond that had been just quick glimpses and unconfirmed rumors until today’s new trailer, which starts out in the back of an armored vehicle moving through the Middle East – yep, the same one where Tony Stark was ambushed in the opening of Iron Man and nearly got blown to bits by one of his own Stark Industries missiles, commencing his journey to becoming Iron Man. But this time around, something unexpected happens. Killmonger – as in Black Panther‘s Killmonger – leaps in to save Tony Stark’s life, effortlessly lifting the missile and tossing it into the sky. And from there, the trailer only gets weirder.

We see an armored Natasha Romanoff zipping through the battle-damaged streets of a city on her motorcycle, having been the only member of the Avengers to survive Ultron’s extinction-level apocalypse in Age Of Ultron. Pepper Potts, wielding some kind of high-tech gun, fights alongside Shuri and the Dora Milaje. Loki invades Earth, not with hordes of Chitauri aliens, but with Asgardian troops; while a tattooed frat boy Variant of Thor parties it up on the planet’s surface. Okoye hurls a spear at a levitating Wanda Maximoff. T’Challa and Yondu fight a muscular, cybernetically-enhanced Variant of The Collector from Guardians Of The Galaxy. Doctor Strange duels Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One. Howard the Duck is just…there, for whatever reason.

Before Loki, I was intrigued but bewildered by the concept of What If…?, but now we know so much more about the mechanics of the Multiverse in the MCU that we can kind of get a sense of what’s going on, and perhaps even why. These are all timelines that branched but never got pruned, Nexus Events allowed to spiral further and further out of control, leading to chaotic crossovers with other alternate timelines, and what Miss Minutes described as “multiversal war”. We can see some of that going on in this trailer: Variants like Captain Carter and T’Challa as Star Lord won’t be confined to single episodes, but will also join forces across time and space – leading to a clever recreation of the iconic Avengers group shot in the first Avengers movie that also includes frat boy Thor, a Gamora Variant who’s dressed in golden armor like her adoptive father Thanos and is even wielding the Mad Titan’s sword, and a character who is possibly Killmonger, wearing the Black Panther suit.

Of course, if the Time Variance Authority isn’t around to prune these timelines and prevent a Multiverse, it raises the question of why. My guess is that at the end of Loki, the God of Mischief’s efforts to burn the TVA to the ground are successful, finally freeing the universe from authoritarian control and allowing time to do whatever the hell it wants. Whether the characters in What If…? will discover that and try to hop over into the MCU’s reality remains to be seen, but that could precipitate the Multiverse Of Madness which we know Doctor Strange will be dealing in with his hotly-anticipated sequel.

The only person who seems to have any answers is an ethereal cosmic being known as Uatu the Watcher, who will narrate the series and preside over events, hopefully cluing in audiences as to what’s really going on. Will he always remain on the sidelines, watching but never interfering with time? Will he be mentioned in the MCU at any point? Where does he even come from? As Darcy would say, “don’t know, don’t know, and…don’t know.”

What I do know is that the animation on this series looks brilliant: crisp, clean, and richly detailed, allowing for the kind of spectacle sometimes unattainable in live-action except through extensive use of CGI. With the exception of Robert Downey Jr., the voice-acting is provided by the same actors who originated these roles in live-action, including Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, in what will be his final posthumous performance. And my expectations for the next wave of Marvel Disney+ shows are at an all-time high after the resounding success of Loki. I was always excited for What If…? because I’m a big fan of animation, but I’m sold on the concepts at play here too after this amazing trailer.

Trailer Rating: 8.9/10

July 7, 2021

“Loki” Episode 5 Review!

**SPOILERS FOR LOKI AHEAD!**

Journey Into Mystery, a sci-fi anthology published by Marvel Comics from the late 1950’s into the 60’s, was where Loki got his start as a Marvel villain in 1962, starting a wild ride throughout comics, movies, and now streaming television – which makes it all the more fitting that today’s episode borrows the iconic title for what ends up being not just a journey into the very literal cosmic mystery enshrouding the origins of the Time Variance Authority and the state of the universe beyond the end of time itself, but a trippy bacchanal celebrating the character and their sprawling mythology, with its deep-seated roots in zany Marvel Comics history and the even more outrageously fantastical Norse legendarium.

This is of course only possible because last week’s episode dropped Loki (Tom Hiddleston) into a vast, desolate region of time known only as The Void – where the TVA has been secretly unloading all of the alternate timelines and Variants it claimed to have reset or “pruned”, safe in the assumption that if a couple of Variants aren’t immediately devoured by the omniaudient and omnivorous dragon which encircles The Void – perhaps a reference to the Midgard Serpent, one of Loki’s own children in Norse mythology – they will ultimately fall victim to The Void’s harsh terrain, or violent weather. The place is like a sentient meat-grinder, and out of all the billions upon billions of Variants unceremoniously dumped there since the beginning of time, it seems only Loki Variants stand a chance of surviving for very long.

And while this provides Loki with a very clever opportunity to put dozens of Loki Variants onscreen simultaneously and revel in the pure chaos that results, it also serves a larger thematic purpose: allowing Loki to witness first-hand the worst of what he’s capable of and willing to do, but showing him that it’s possible – not easy, but possible – to break the vicious cycle and change. Physically, on a surface-level, he’s done that countless times: I mean, in this very episode we become acquainted with a version of Loki who lives full-time as an Alligator, though incredibly that was not what triggered the TVA to prune them. But to be meaningful and not merely performative, real change has to happen from the inside out. And that, in a nutshell, is what Loki is all about, and that is exactly why I love this show so much.

Because it applies to both individuals and institutions, and Loki illustrates that beautifully. We watch the God of Mischief – multiple versions of them, in fact – actively work to change themselves for the better, starting with their hearts, but we also watch the same thing unfolding within the TVA, which is rotted to its core, riddled with corruption, and ultimately built on a lie. If the TVA is going to be saved, it must first be dismantled down to the bare bones and rebuilt from scratch. The easy thing to do would be to swap out leadership, to declare that Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the problem, and that replacing her will magically fix everything. But she is merely the predictable symptom of a problem that has plagued the TVA since its foundation – that it is constructed on an inherently unjust guiding principle, and the longer that problem is allowed to fester, the longer the TVA will continue to cause harm.

You can probably understand why this message is so timely right now. This is the very same conversation we’ve been having about the United States of America, and the answer is the same in real-life as it is in fiction: this country is structurally unsound, and to repair it we have to begin again from the bottom up. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier tried to say something along the same lines, but ultimately lacked the conviction to demand structural change; instead going with the tried-and-true method of demanding that individuals in positions of authority do better while vilifying its characters who were trying to topple oppressive systems. Loki, on the other hand, has Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson), a flawed yet undeniably heroic character, say bluntly that’s he going to burn the TVA to the ground – despite having worked there his entire life, lulled into complacency by the TVA’s propaganda machine.

And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t yet fully trust that Loki won’t drop the ball in its final episode. If Renslayer is defeated and her downfall is seen as a total victory, so that the TVA can then proceed with exactly what they were doing but it’s okay because the heroes are doing it now…yeah, I’ll be massively disappointed. But I can’t imagine that will be the case, because the show is making a big point out of the fact that the root cause of the TVA’s problems lies in its far-distant past, with its anonymous founder. The mystery of their identity is what kicks off this tumultuous episode, as Sylvie Laufeydottir (Sophia Di Martino) grills Renslayer for classified information from the TVA archives, and it’s what concludes the episode too – as Loki and Sylvie defeat The Void’s guardian dragon and catch a glimpse of what I can only describe as the French Chateau at the End of the Universe, where the Sacred Timeline ends and…something else begins.

But what makes this final sequence emotionally resonant isn’t just that Loki finally learns how to access a part of his magic that he previously didn’t know existed – although that is indeed very cool, and reminiscent of Wanda Maximoff’s triumphant metamorphosis into the Scarlet Witch at the end of WandaVision. It’s that Loki first sees another version of himself, Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki, die to save his and Sylvie’s life from the dragon – and not because he thought helping them would work to his advantage in the long-run, not because he thought he could use it as leverage over them, but simply because he believed in them and what they were doing. That belief is what inspires Loki to fight harder than he’s ever fought in his life, because it proves unequivocally that a Loki is no more inherently evil than they are good, that his destiny is not determined, and that he can be anything – even an alligator.

I don’t know how the series will expand upon this idea in the finale, but I hope there’s still more emotional and mental growth in store for Loki. I feel as though the logical next step is some kind of resolution to the controversial romance (?) brewing between Loki and Sylvie. It proved essential to both their characters, as it allowed them to find qualities in themselves worth loving for the first time in their lives while learning how to feel and show genuine affection for others at the same time. Thematically, I feel like it makes the most sense for the two to go their separate ways at the end of the series, bringing the love and empathy they’ve learned through their relationship with themselves to relationships (romantic or platonic) with other characters.

Heading into the finale, I’m feeling pretty good about where we stand. I trust head writer Michael Waldron, director Kate Herron, composer Natalie Holt, and this entire ensemble cast, to pull off something extraordinary with the final episode while laying the groundwork for a multi-season narrative. Loki is supposedly getting a second season, and The Void alone offers endless possible storylines to be explored in depth, from the backstory behind the Thanos helicopter lying wrecked in a field, to the origin story of Throg, the amphibious Thor whom we find locked in a mason jar. With the dragon defeated and all of the surviving Variants now free to escape, expect more chaos on the timeline in the near future.

Episode Rating: 10/10

June 30, 2021

“Loki” Episode 4 Proves That Marvel Can Do Mystery Boxes

**SPOILERS FOR LOKI AHEAD!**

The “Mystery Box” style of storytelling used in film and television has become quite popular over the last decade or so, thanks to J.J. Abrams. Mystery Boxes, for those unfamiliar with the term as applied to TV, are stories in which the status quo the characters find themselves inhabiting is generally a mystery upon a mystery built upon yet more mysteries, which only continue to grow deeper and more complex as the series continues, until the overarching throughline of the story becomes untangling the many plot-threads and revealing some intricate kaleidoscope of “highbrow” storytelling where everything intertwines to create answers for every other smaller mystery along the way…at least in theory.

In execution, the Mystery Box rarely works as intended because showrunners very rarely plan out the entire course of their series from day one. Abrams’ own series, Lost, famously fell apart in its final season because the mysteries had become too sprawling and convoluted. Abrams’ Star Wars movies, The Force Awakens and The Rise Of Skywalker, also followed his trademark formula but had no cohesion, leading to an increasingly bizarre and unnecessary series of plot twists for the sake of plot twists.

And that brings us to Loki. Because while all of Marvel’s Disney+ shows have tried to follow a small-scale Mystery Box formula in order to drive weekly discourse, Loki is the first one that feels like it’s actually doing it right. In WandaVision, the trail of Mystery Boxes led nowhere, many proving entirely inconsequential for reasons that varied from intentional to accidental. But at least there the initial mystery was relevant to the plot. In The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, the looming question of the Power-Broker’s identity was handled so poorly, only working on a meta level, that it felt completely extraneous and distracted from the thematic heart of the story.

And Loki could still suffer from the same problems, but so far the thing I find myself consistently enjoying about the series is that Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the God of Mischief, is simply too chaotic a character to abide by the laws of a Mystery Box. He’s not the type of character to patiently form a pattern from a tangle of plot-threads – he’s the type to slice the whole thing to shreds. As a result, Loki never revolves around the mysteries themselves, but around their consequences; specifically how Loki reacts to new information, and how he grows. That’s what makes a mystery work: the answer to all of the questions has to be emotionally resonant to the characters and their journeys, not merely satisfying to the audience member who cracked the code.

Another crucial difference between Loki and the two previous Marvel shows is that Loki actually builds upon its central mystery progressively, throughout the first four episodes at least, instead of presenting the audience with the mystery of the season and expecting them not to figure it out within a week (Agnes is Agatha Harkness; well, no kidding). So for instance, up until today the central mystery of Loki had been the identities of the Time-Keepers – who were today revealed to be convincing fakes, a bunch of lifelike androids serving as figureheads for the Time Variance Authority. Heading into next week’s episode, that mystery has now changed to “who is actually running the TVA?”, because it sure as Hel isn’t the Time-Keepers, and never was.

For a moment, however, I was myself deceived by the Time-Keepers – and that was great, because it made my joy when they were revealed as fakes all the more cathartic, although I was suspicious of their authenticity when they asked to personally oversee the execution of the Loki Variants. I’d always been of the opinion that the Time-Keepers never existed, were being held hostage by someone at the TVA, or were three large skeletons gathering dust in a storage room somewhere, so I’m very happy that not only was the first of these theories correct, but that the answer proved meaningful to both our characters, particularly Sylvie Laufeydottir (Sophia Di Martino), and that this mystery was resolved with two episodes left to go: two episodes which can now tackle the big question of who’s really pulling the strings.

I mean, not to sound too predictable, but…it’s totally Kang the Conqueror, right? It just seems a little too convenient that Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Kang’s love interest in the comics, is the only TVA employee with unrestricted access to the Time-Keepers’ chamber. Speaking of Mbatha-Raw, her performance in episode one was okay, but she has quickly become a highlight of the show for me: watching the façade of weary charm and humor she’s built to mask her penchant for cruelty begin to come apart is truly chilling. As for other suspects who could be behind the TVA’s creation, Miss Minutes comes to mind – but somehow, I don’t think the show will veer in that direction.

That said, I also didn’t expect selfcest discourse to emerge from this latest episode, yet here we are. Yes, much to the horror and disgust of some fans, it was revealed – or at the very least, strongly implied with the potential to be a misdirect – that Loki has romantic feelings for Sylvie, who is meanwhile confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a Loki Variant who diverged from the timeline as a very young child for reasons still unclear to Sylvie even as an adult, although she tells Loki it might have something to do with having been born the Goddess of Mischief – and if the TVA pruned her because of her gender, the fact that they waited until she was around ten instead of soon after birth suggests that she could be coded as transgender or gender-fluid rather than having been assigned female at birth. Loki is gender-fluid in the comics and according to a dossier used as set dressing in the show, but this has yet to be addressed through dialogue.

However you interpret that, the fact that Sylvie is a Loki variant has provoked some heated discussion over whether it’s problematic to ship the two together, because someone has to get outraged on behalf of the alternative versions of ourselves with whom we’ll never interact, much less do any of the things that individuals on Twitter are legitimately concerned about. Personally, I find the topic conflicting – because on the one hand, I don’t ship Loki and Sylvie, but on the other hand, a narcissist like Loki falling in love with himself is arguably one of his milder offenses, if we take into consideration the fact that Loki is the same Norse deity who turned into a mare so they could seduce a stallion and have a magical horse baby.

Seeing as that latter fact has never made it into the movies or the new series, however, I’ll admit I didn’t expect Marvel to actually go in this direction with a controversial selfcest pairing. Nor was I prepared for the real kicker, which is that whatever Loki and Sylvie feel for each other, whether it’s mutual attraction (I don’t think so, given Sylvie’s confusion when Loki seemed tempted to kiss her), unrequited pining on Loki’s part, or something completely platonic like I’d prefer, it’s powerful – powerful enough to cause a Nexus Event in an apocalypse where Nexus Events were previously established to be impossible because nothing you do in an apocalypse has any chance of altering a timeline bound for total obliteration – unless you hold hands with an alternate version of yourself, apparently. Powerful enough, too, to bring down the TVA; or at least that’s what Mobius (Owen Wilson) says, and I believe him, even though I hope it doesn’t take a Loki/Sylvie kiss to do that.

And for the record, it’s totally okay to be disappointed or angry that the MCU’s first canonically queer and theoretically genderfluid characters are heavily implied to be falling in love with alternate versions of themselves, and that’s an important issue to raise. It’s a sentiment I largely agree with, and I hope both Loki and Sylvie find other romantic partners in the near future. But if your problem is specifically with selfcest in general, a thing that quite literally does not and cannot exist, and if you’re going around claiming it’s equivalent to real-life incest or calling the director and creative team perverts, then…I don’t really know what to tell you. Weird stuff happens in fiction sometimes, and Loki has always been a weird character in his mythological pantheon and in the MCU.

But whether or not Mobius was right about Loki and Sylvie causing a massive Nexus Event by falling in love, this theory doesn’t get tested out before the TVA, alerted to Loki’s presence, comes to arrest both Variants: solidifying my biggest complaint about last week’s episode, that the cliffhanger, while epic, felt like it would be easily resolved. An intriguing Marvel Easter egg flits by in this sequence, as Mobius runs through a list of Variants brought in by the TVA at one time or another – including vampires, who have never appeared in the MCU to date. It’s not much, but it feels like pretty solid groundwork for the Blade movie we’re supposed to be getting soon.

Alone with Mobius in the interrogation room, Loki tries his best to tell the agent about the true intentions of the TVA without sacrificing any of his leverage. It’s significant that ultimately Loki’s care for Mobius’ safety outweighs his own desire for freedom – and he tells Mobius that he and everyone who works at the TVA are Variants, something it’s clear Mobius has always known on some subconscious level he’s been too afraid to access, but Loki’s words put everything into perspective for him. The same thing happens to Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), who defies all of her training to break Sylvie out of prison so the enchantress can show her a glimpse of her past life. I would have liked to have seen Hunter B-15’s memories and learned her real name instead of just watching her talk about what she’s seeing, but Mosaku is such a good actress and sells the heartfelt scene so well, I’ll give it a pass.

For both characters, waking up to the reality about themselves requires trusting someone they’ve been taught to demonize. And both characters also take steps to undo the damage they’d caused by fighting back against the system that had been using them – though their actions come with sacrifices. B-15 gets knocked unconscious while battling her fellow Hunters, while Mobius sets Loki free and is almost immediately thereafter pruned out of existence by Renslayer and her bodyguards, after a brave showdown between the coworkers that ends with Mobius defiantly embracing the past life that was stolen from him with the most iconic final line (temporarily final line, most likely) ever uttered: “I might have had a jet-ski.”

As compelling as this material may be, I do think this entire sequence of events could have been tweaked slightly to make the episode’s first half flow more smoothly, because the pacing is a bit slow. Between the slightly redundant and disconnected scenes of Mobius and B-15 learning about their pasts; the frustratingly brief flashback to Sylvie’s childhood that feels as though the creative team only had the budget for a single establishing shot of Asgard; and the fun but eventually tiresome scene of Loki trapped in a TVA-designed mind prison with a timeloop of a vengeful Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) that feels like an extremely random and inorganic way to bring back the character, this episode isn’t quite as polished as last week’s, and a couple of scene transitions feel clumsy.

But towards the end, the episode finds its groove and settles into it very snugly, just in time for a major action scene in the Time-Keepers’ chamber. After beheading one of the Time-Keeper animatronics, Loki and Sylvie are left confused about what to do next, and the plot could easily have trailed off at this pivotal moment – but Loki takes advantage of this quiet scene to try and confess his feelings to Sylvie. He’s interrupted by what has to be the most shocking twist in a very twisty episode: Renslayer stabbing him in the back with a Hunter’s baton, pruning him just as she did Mobius before being disarmed by Sylvie.

But for Loki, his story is just getting started. In a mid-credits scene, the series’ first thus far, the God of Mischief awakens in a desolate area surrounded by the ruins of New York City, prompted by an old man’s voice. The moment I heard that voice, I guessed what we were in for when the camera pans around to reveal who’s talking, but not the scale of the reveal: for it’s not only Richard E. Grant standing there, dressed from head to toe in a wonderfully hideous comic-accurate Classic Loki costume – it’s also Kid Loki (Jack Veal), a popular member of the Young Avengers team, and Boastful Loki (Deobia Oparei), an original character who has no clear precedence in the comics, but who carries a large hammer: perhaps because, like Thor in the MCU, he is his universe’s only being worthy of carrying Mjolnir, something that would certainly explain his boastfulness.

These humanoid Variants are also joined by one very peculiar new addition to Marvel canon – Loki the Alligator, a toothy reptile companion to Kid Loki who wears an adorable miniature gold helmet. I’m not sure if this is a version of the shapeshifting god who just prefers living as an alligator for reasons, or if he was born in an alligator in his timeline, but one thing is clear. Wherever Loki is now, is wherever the TVA has been discarding all its Loki Variants every time one gets reset; some kind of Loki Limbo. And that means plenty more deep lore and obscure references for us to examine next time we catch up with the trickster.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10