“Loki” Episode 1 Recap and Review - Ti-i-i-i-ime Is On His Side (Yes it is!)

By Rob LoAlbo

Photos courtesy Marvel Studios

For what seemed like an eternity since it was first announced, Loki finally makes its way to Disney+ as the third series in Marvel’s newly launched television venture. What made the wait somewhat unbearable can be attributed to not only the titular character’s popularity but also to lead Tom Hiddleston: the character and the actor have both grown in considerable popularity since first appearing in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, a casting choice to which we can thank Sir Kenneth. (Branagh had previously worked with Hiddleston in a smaller capacity but had the faith and foresight to see great potential in the classically trained actor.) 

Now that Loki has become a fan-favorite and household name, Marvel-ites have been rabid to see him again, especially since his death in Avengers: Infinity War at the hands of Thanos. However, if you head back to its sequel Avengers:Endgame, you might remember that when Tony Stark traveled back in time to 2012, Loki mischievously popped up and changed his fate, a fact that the show goes to great lengths to remind us of in the opening scenes. So, does this new/different version of Loki work for the fans and does the show follow through on its promises of time-y wime-y goodness and tomfoolery? Let’s find out!

The episode starts off with previous footage from Endgame where Loki takes off with the tesseract, finally revealing to us the results of his sudden escape to the deserts of Mongolia. This Loki is a deviant from the timeline, and must be dealt with immediately. Wasting no time, a portal opens up, and we are introduced to the Time Variance Authority (TVA) who archaically charge Loki with a sequence violation for crimes against the timeline, whatever that means. Regardless, Loki is brought in, slapped down, and fitted with a control collar. Poked about and stripped by machines, he enters a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where he must sign mountains of paperwork, maneuver through endless turnstyle ropelines, and be subjected to a groovy ‘70s aesthetic which includes a cartoon character who explains to us what this all means.

Miss Minutes leaves us with the information that there was a war between the multiverses years ago, and to keep everything from chaos and destruction, the Timekeepers blended multiple timelines into a single one. The TVA’s job is to preserve the current “sacred” timeline, and since this version of Loki is already changing his fate, he is labeled a variant who has caused a nexus event that could create a multiverse war. (Yikes!) 

What makes these moments so enjoyable is that we are seeing them through the Loki who never had his character arc of redemption but instead through the evil-glee, hubris-filled Loki of Phase 1 of the Marvel timeline. So to see Hiddleston’s outrage and need for world dominance diminished down to a frightened Loki who frantically waves his deli ticket around just as the person in front without one is incinerated is a riotous juxtaposition

After much fanfare and Office Space tedium, Loki is placed in front of Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s judge Ravonna Renslayer (a Marvel character with a rich backstory and deep connections to future MCU big bad Kang the Conqueror), a figure who will play a large role in this series. Still not grasping the gravity of the situation, Loki attempts to use his powers, revealing that not only is magic unusable here but that he still thinks his ascent to the throne of the universe is nigh. It’s only upon sentencing that Agent Mobius steps in with an idea to team up with the trickster god. 

Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson), a sort of time detective, has been hunting down a murderous trickster variant in 1549 France who hands out Kablooie blue mouth gum. When asked who did this, a witness points to a stained glass painting of the devil, the heretofore unmet big bad of the series. That it resembles Mephisto, we are told by the showrunners, is simply coincidence, or so we’re told at this point. Mobius later claims that it’s another, more evil, Loki variant. And a final shot of a shadowy antagonist doesn’t give us any further clues. Time will tell, no pun intended.

Mobius is ten-thousand steps ahead of the clueless Loki who is clearly out of his element, something that we’ve only seen in Waititi’s Ragnarok. Fiege and friends have been learning quickly that this approach is one the fans relish the most, and every quip and moment between the two crackles with chemistry and comic energy.

Loki: “I’m going to burn this place to the ground.”

Mobius: “I’ll show you where my desk is: you can start there.”

Despite a lot of conversation in the episode, it’s never dull. The give-and-take between the two is tightly scripted and played to perfection by the acting veterans. The dynamic is well-conceived with creativity and panache, and what lies ahead for the buddy-cop duo excites us with anticipation based on their successful banter here.

With delusions of grandeur, Loki is caught up to personal speed by Mobius when playing the last 10 years or so of Marvel movie history, since this Loki is from 2012. Hiddleston plays him with a broken character arc stymied by arrested development. He’s entitled, bratty, and dripping with condescension until he sees his mother’s death on screen and melts into a puddle. A previous problem with the character was that Loki never seemed to be held accountable for his destruction (other than being held in a jail cell on Asgard for a brief time), and having his conscience on display humanizes and endears him to us. The showrunners deftly take an irredeemable character and make him the hero, sort of. But come on: did we really want him to be a perfect gentleman?

So, he escapes but doesn’t get too far. He manages to torture those who held him, which is of course the Loki we know. But now instead of being a real threat, he’s surrounded by irreverence. He threatens to gut the desk clerk like a fish, but the clerk doesn’t know what a fish is. He opens a drawer filled with Infinity Stones, but none of them actually work. He’s an all-powerful being in a powerless environment, neutered and helpless in controlling his destiny while clutching onto a glowing, inert tesseract. Giving up, he is charged to help the TVA capture...himself? Next week should explain what exactly that means. 

It’s a lot to take in, as the episode is stuffed to the gills with side references, subtlety and nuance, and implications that aren’t made clear just yet. Even after watching it a second time, I still don't feel like I’m catching everything that’s being thrown at me. I wonder if, like WandaVision, I won’t really grasp it all until the series-end, which makes it hard to judge the show’s effectiveness and tricky to rate it at this point. What’s great is that like that first show with its not to vintage television, Loki is nothing like what we’ve seen before, or at least it’s reframing what we already know through a distorted lens. 

With so many what-the-hell moments, it’s a lot of fun that sets us up for a great ride through the prism of the TVA, an introduction that should resound through the show and MCU quite well, especially with the upcoming Doctor Strange and the Multiverse and Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s a real testament to the writers that almost 15 years into the MCU, they can still surprise us.

Next week: Can we move at 1/16 the speed but feel all the joy of this show in real time?

Star City Rating: 4 of 5 (I think?)