I’m not sure if I liked it, but I didn’t hate it. It was different to almost anything I expected.

 

Spoiler

So we did indeed get Kang, or ather a Kang. Now that he's dead and the multiverse is unchained the MCU can do whatever it wants.

 

This "multiverse war" could actually work. Starting off everything with a massive high stakes war in which entire timelines get destroyed and people like the X-Men are refugees in main timeline.

 

It's a great way for writers to get away with just about anything.

 

I enjoyed that episode alot.

However, I have a few questions.

Spoiler

Kang is just a human right? Yes, he's a super scientist on par with Tony Stark or even better but he is still a scientist.

So how is he able to negate the power of the Stones, which are a part of reality itself? Just because you can control time, does not mean you should be able to control the other infinity stones, right?

The head TVA lady, what has her deal? Her zealous belief in the TVA wasn't portrayed that well, so I still don't understand her actions.

Is Sylvie stuck at the end of time? Or can she freely use Kang's technology to jump through various timelines.


Lastly, this was the second time Kang has mocked Sylvie before she kills him. The first time, the timekeeper in the middle mocked her, and Kang sort of did the same.
So I am guessing she's also integral to the cycle somehow.

Anyway, fantastic show, I enjoyed it from start to finish due to Woody and Tom.

 

Solid ending, good set up for whatever comes next. Far, far better than Wandavision or FWS, though not perfect by any means. I felt it struggled a bit with pacing, and didn't do as good a job of explaining what was going on as it could have done. But definitely highly enjoyable.

 

Man, that was legitimately great.

Spoiler

The guy they got for Benevloent Kang is just super fun to watch. He sucked up all the energy on screen and that was with Tom fucking Hiddleston in the mix.

 

Man...I'm just gonna say...the villain of the next phase is gonna be amazing.

Spoiler

That acting was top notch. So excited for Majors to be the villain

 

I'm disappointed in main Loki, falling for the whole whatever comes next might be worse spiel.

Fem!Loki is now the one true Loki.

 

For anyone not into the comic book lore, I would recommend the Marvel Studios subreddit. They have some good threads in the characters and plots etc.

 

Interesting.

Spoiler: Thoughts

So the one thing I didn't think could happen because it would break the rules of storytelling happened, and they made a real effort to make it feel like less of an ass-pull for the people watching who don't do out to read articles and watch YouTube theory videos after every episode.

Sadly, while He Who Remains was fine, and the possibilities he sets up are exciting, it was still felt like an ass-pull. Would it really have hurt them to sprinkle in some mentions/hints that actually mean something rather than going to all that effort in the final episode to explain to us why he's so dangerous? I guess the answer is probably 'yes' because of the aforementioned theorising. Any hint more solid than a throwaway Easter egg (Qang Tower) will be pored over and revealed in a dozens of articles and videos. It presents an interesting problem. Do you follow the rules of good storytelling, and make sure every payoff has a setup, or do you skip the setup in order to preserve your surprise payoff? Loki went for the second option, trying to put the setup after the payoff with a lot of explanatory dialogue.

Still, it confirmed the theories, so fans are happy at least. It's interesting to compare it to WandaVision which did actually do the work to set up its villain (though Agatha is a less interesting villain than Kang), and which was raked over hot coals for not dropping in a 9th hour villain with no foreshadowing with the name.

As I thought, Loki's arc for the season was completed last episode, with episode 6 only really cementing the change he's experienced. Sylvie's curiously static arc throughout the season was, it turns out, an intentional choice, so that she can be the one to do the last episode betrayal shocker. Presumably the next season sees her mirroring Loki's journey in this one and learning to trust. While probably not quite as frustrating as if it had been Loki who'd returned to form, it still felt a little manufactured.

We got our final battle between free will and determinism, but it was a bit of a strange one. Sylvie, falling firmly on the side of free will was portrayed as emotional and irrational, while Loki, seemingly the measured and sensible one in the exchange, was fighting for fate and pre-determination. A bit of a dichotomy there; the end point of his character is in realising his own freedom and ability to change, to then immediately come down on Kang's side of the argument.

I wouldn't say I was disappointed by the way they chose to end it, but maybe disheartened is the word. It seems that the way forward for Marvel is no longer the path of mostly independent movies which crossover, and is now quite simple: Everything is important.

You must watch all the movies. You must watch all the tv shows. If you do not, you will feel lost. Give us your money.

As I'm caught up, this isn't too big of a problem, but it does mean the MCU has a timebomb built into it. Like the comics from which it came, it will eventually become too huge, and too sprawling for new or casual fans to get into. When that time comes I guess it will be time for Marvel to fire up its reboot gun. It's always so popular in the comics.

 

@Steelbadger I'm going to disagree a bit here on the foreshadowing.

Spoiler

Firstly Wandavision, the issue with Wandavision getting raked over the coals was because they did foreshadow another villain. There were so many little references sprinkled throughout that seemed to indicate there was something bigger than just agatha. For it to ultimately just be Wanda destroyed Wanda's morality and heroism. It's reasonable to assume there is something bigger going on than just grief...but it reveals Wanda as having weak moral character instead. There was no temptation that lead her down that path that she revoked.No great tempter. Just her own grief and inability to cope caused her to violate the minds of a whole town.

So it's reasonable for audiences to assume there is a bigger threat. Not to mention the fakeout that was Ralph. Wandavision fell into the same trap The Last Jedi did. It subverted expectations in a way that makes fun of it's audiences.

Return now to Kaang. He was foreshadowed and definitely not a villain out of nowhere. The whole mystery of "who is behind the TVA" existed from Episode 1. And we get those answers in the Finale. So IDK, I thought Loki foreshadowed things quite well.

 

Spoiler

Absolutely in agreement here - it was already an issue just from the sheer number of films, but adding in the tv shows to the continuity is going to be really offputting to a lot of people. I think time will have to tell on how important the shows are to the overall plot and so how much of an impact they have, but you're chosen term of timebomb is pretty much on the money.

 

I agree with you that WandaVision had issues which related to how it introduced its villain, and how it teased things. Marvel have a very difficult task here, trying to balance the 'in deep' fans and the casual viewer, but I feel that WandaVision and Loki have fallen on opposite sides of the tightrope Marvel needs to walk here.

Spoiler: Loki's Big Bad

Specifically regarding Loki, I really don't see how you can claim Kang was foreshadowed. Well, that's not quite true, but the 'foreshadowing' here is not classical foreshadowing.

It is fanfic foreshadowing. It is foreshadowing that only works for viewers who share a specific context (which is not simply the MCU), and which is meaningless for those who do not. Oh sure, we knew there was someone behind it all. That's obvious. That's not foreshadowing, that's common sense. My issue with it is that literally the only things which can point to Kang are secondary references:

• Renslayer is associated with Kang in the comics.
• 'Qang' on a building for a blink-or-you'll miss it moment.
• Alioth is associated with Kang in the comics.
• The TVA in general having comic ties to Kang via Immortus.

None of that has any meaning to people who don't either read the comics, or follow social media.

All those people could glean from the content available to them was two things:

• The guy in charge is probably a variant.
• The whole thing might be to stop a multiversal war.

The problem is that the reveal of He Who Remains is... empty when that's all you know. Yes, he fulfils those roles, but we didn't (and couldn't, because we'd never seen him) know he did until after he was revealed. All they needed to do was add a nexus event or two which involved him in a background role. They didn't even need to use the same actor. I keep coming back to the kid in the church in episode 1. What if that had instead been whatever time Kang is meant to hail from? What if he'd been a young Nathaniel Richards, and had some kind of identifying feature which allowed us to connect the kid being directly influenced by a nexus event, and the guy revealed to us at the end?

Suddenly lay viewers would have had some connection to the character, some understanding that he was important, or that the Nexus events were somehow connected to him. Realistically you probably need another moment to put him on screen, perhaps another non-Sylvie event where there's a teen who has been left panicked by the event, and who is holding tight to a Kablooie before being reset, which they see only when he drops it after returning to his 'sacred timeline' state, and is no longer able to tell them its significance. Then we can have He Who Remains offer Loki and Sylvie a Kablooie to create that connection in viewer's minds. Could set it up further by having Loki ask Sylvie why she gives Kablooie to people, and she can look at him and say she just gave it to the kid because she felt bad, making no reference to the second guy.

In the end, I still enjoyed it. Despite my complaints, I am one of those people who keeps track of social media around shows like this so the possibility of Kang was always on my radar, and I was excited to see it actually happen.

It doesn't change that fact that I also think it was lazy storytelling to airdrop him into the finale like they did.

 

Spoiler: Loki's Big Bad

Talking with casual fans who don't know the history, and yes this is anectdotal, they loved the villain reveal and are excited for the future.

I think there is something to be said for assumptions. Because you know Kaang is such a huge part of the Marvel Verse and knew to be on the look out for certain things that had depth, it meant more to you. And because it meant more to you, you're assuming it's somehow less for those who don't have that knowledge. And certainly I think it meant more for the fans who know who kaang is....but that doesn't mean it means less to those who don't know.

An evil villain beyond the Time Keepers was hinted at. Miss Minutes foreshadowed much of the reasoning for why this villain exists all the way back in episode 1.

Just because regular fans don't get the deeper hints and what not doesn't mean their experience is not good. It's not less than or more than...it's simply different. I don't think Marvel relied solely on Fan knowledge to foreshadow kaang. And talking with casual fans I know, they were blown away by it.

 

Well, that's nice for them I guess. The casual fans I know all reacted with 'Huh?', then when filled in, changed it to 'well, that's cool I guess'. So I suppose it cuts both ways. They did like the new guy. He played the part well, but there was no satisfaction at seeing him revealed.

The thing is that the villain reveal we got does drum up excitement for the future. It has created a new villainous option, and the possibilities it brings with it are many. What it doesn't do is add to Loki as a standalone TV show. I understand completely if you don't care, but I kinda miss the days when Marvel movies were movies first and bricks in the edifice of the cinematic universe second.

If you're all in on the MCU, and excited to see where the grand overarching plot is going to go then I daresay the ending of Loki was great. In a vacuum, however, it was weak. I realise Loki doesn't exist in a vacuum, but I don't think it would have been impossible to make an ending which was both locally satisfying within the context of the show, and which set up exciting greater opportunities.

 

Fair. I think that's what it boils down to. Loki is not a story in and of itself. It's a chapter in a greater anthology.

I can respect that as a critique.

 

I have one problem with how they set up the final villain.

Spoiler

Multiple Kangs fighting each other is pretty cool, but it takes away one thing that I really liked about him, his fight with his future self. Not a variant, but himself as he will be. The fight again his destiny and with a person he will become is in my opinion a better take than just having bunch of variants running around because it's closer to our own perception. I can't tell what I would do about some crazy variants that had events in their lives that completely changed them, but I would definitely argue with my past version about some things.

This is similar to a problem I have with Sylvie. Marvel wanted her to be her own character, even giving her a different name. That made the point of her being a version of Loki somehow less powerful to the point that they can have them be romantically involved. If they even kept the name, it would be a constant statement that they're basically the same person.

 

As someone who watched and even enjoyed all the movies to various degrees, I have to say, that I really didn't like Loki for probably the same reason why I didn't enjoy FWS. (Didn't watch Wanda, because I don't care about the characters.)

They shit over everything, that was established over the span of a decade. In both shows, I blatantly felt like I already wasn't part of the Marvel target audience. Every character from pre-Endgame felt ridiculously diminished and reset just to prob up everybody around them and spread some kind of message.

The Loki of the show, the 'big bad' of the first Avenger movie, managed to smack around Captain America without magic and much trouble. Later he would be smacked around by the Hulk and remain virtually uninjured and yet he gets bullied by these mall cops, which turn out to be regular humans with a glowstick, which is pretty much as dangerous as a very pointy stick.

This is the same Loki, that would go on to fake his own death, put a spell on Odin and send him to a care home on earth, just to rule Asgard in his stead.

Just look at the Infinity Stones, over ten years they were established as these unimaginable powerful devices known throughout the universe, just touching one could disintegrate you. In Loki they are used as paperweights by the TVA.

Spoiler

The final middle finger for me was the revelation, that Loki was now in a different timeline. It felt like Marvel telling the new audience not to worry about the old stuff, popular characters might be alive again, events might not have happened, the old stuff is pretty much irrelevant from now on.

 

Yeah I am genuinely baffled by how Loki gets ANY praise let alone a lot of it. They destroyed earlier Marvel stuff as a cheat to set up their show. Loki is literally a bad fanfiction version of himself. A stupid, weak, bumbling joke who is irrelevant once female Loki shows up and turns into even more of a goofy sidekick. The pacing is HORRENDOUS with the first 2-3 episodes mostly consisting of sitting and talking. The actor is great as usual but amazing acting can't save the show from horrific writing.

I'm glad people can enjoy it and maybe their obvious ploy of inserting references to much better Marvel stuff hits the nostalgia button, but if this were a fanfiction story (which it might as well be) I can't see myself giving it more then a 2/5.