Even when you think things couldn’t get stranger for this Loki series, we get episodes like Episode 5: Journey into to Mystery! Join me as I talk about the things that stood out to me in the episode!

The Devil We Know

Last week’s episode ended with Sylvie holding Renslayer at PrunePoint demanding answers about the TVA. Call me gullible, but I thought we would get some major revelations in this episode to set up for an eventual showdown with whoever the puppet master truly is. Instead we got Renslayer stalling for time and giving vague answers whilst pretending to not know what’s going on behind the scenes. When given the chance to come clean, she uses Miss Minutes to distract Sylvie long enough to give her time to call for back up. Her duplicitous nature really makes it hard to decide how much Renslayer is IN on all this. Do we trust the Devil we know vs the one that we don’t?

Interestingly, when Renslayer is talking to the disobedient Hunter B-15, she insists that even though we just found out the Timekeepers we not real she believes “The TVA need stability.” And should continue operations. When B-15 tells Ramona that she believes Sylvie’s mission of revenge will lead her to whomever is in charge, Renslayer shows concern, and prompts Miss Minutes to give her all the information about the creation of the TVA. So, what’s actually going on here? Is Renslayer aware of the “man/woman behind the curtain” and is doing her best to protect them as we suspect? Does she truly not know who her master is, and is going to use Sylvie to lead her to them as B-15 predicts? IS MISS MINUTES A SENTIENT GOD SENT HER TO RULE OVER THE ENTIRETY OF TIME WITH AN IRON FIST OF BLOOD AND ASH?! Ok, maybe that last one isn’t true, but you catch my drift, right?

Loki, This is Your Life!

Loki awakens in The Void, the place at the end of the time where all things pruned by the TVA end up. He meets several Variants of himself, including a Boastful Loki, a Kid Loki, a LokiGator and Classic Loki played by Richard E Grant. He debates with them, and in many ways his own nature, as he tries to get them to do more than just survive. Seeing Loki literally come face to face with different facets of his own personality was incredibly entertaining. For the first time, Loki got to see his selfish, lying and backstabbing nature from a different point of view and surprisingly he did not like it.

It’s crazy how much perspective THIS Loki has gotten from his short stint in the TVA. Something about seeing yourself die, and then being confronted with the worst parts of your personality really helped turn Loki into an antihero. We rarely get that kind of perspective in real life so it makes sense that he would change for the better. One of my favorite moments that shows this growth is when all the Lokis are fighting for the throne, constantly betraying and lying to one another. Instead of trying his best to come out on top, our Loki hides his face as if he’s watching a past memory of himself and is embarrassed.

He sees the lying nature of Boastful Loki, the ludicrous nature of LokiGator, the mercilessness of Kid Loki, and the cowardice of Classic Loki decides he is none of these things. Our Loki could have went down any one of these paths. The thing is, our Loki controls his path and he is on the path of being the greatest Loki of them all.

Easter Egg Hunt

This episode was a bit of a treasure trove of easter eggs from both Marvel Comics and the MCU as a whole and we were HERE FOR IT! Some references were “blink or you’ll miss them” but thanks to our eagle-eyed fanbase we have a short list of the ridiculousness of this episode. Firstly, the episode’s title Journey into Mystery is a reference to the comic series both Loki and his brother Thor made their debut in. Classic Loki looks to be ripped straight from the Silver Age of Comics, while Kid Loki is a nod to . In the background of the void we see the Dark Aster, the war ship used by Ronan The Accuser in Guardians of The Galaxy.

We see a statue of the Living Tribunal, as well as the remnants of a version of Avengers Tower (although this one had Qeng written on the side, another hint towards Kang The Conqueror). We see a Variant Loki that looks to be the version from the “Vote Loki” miniseries we covered last week, and the big threat to the Void, Alioth, is an actually entity in Marvel Comics making his debut in Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective Issue #1. We can see the helmet of Ant Man villain Yellowjacket in background shots, and live-action debut of the THANOSCOPTER. Last, but surely not least, we see Throg aka Frog Thor trapped in a jar labeled T365 aka Thor Issue #365 from 1966, which it featured Loki transforming Thor into a frog. There are probably many more, but it was very cool to see so many nod to the various forms of source material they used to make this series!

The Power of Purpose

Purpose is something I think every individual struggle with because we all seek meaning in this existence. One of the messages of this series is the idea that your past does not dictate your purpose. First, we see Sylvie prune herself so she can be with the one person with whom she’s had a happy memory. This is something she wouldn’t have done previously, having spent her life alone hiding from the TVA. She goes to great length to communicate the fact that she doesn’t have many friends but actively fights her nature to befriend our Loki. Watching her sacrifice really showed how Sylvie has grown as person and as a character.

We hear how Classic Loki avoided death and detection by being a coward, but he does not let this be the end of his story. We hear how all he wanted to do was go back home, and in a triumphant scene, he becomes the hero of this episode by using his skills of enchantment to distract Alioth with an illusion of Asgard. The look of pure madness on his face as he faces imminent death was equal parts chilling and heartwarming. He sacrifices himself for the greater good even though his nature is to ensure his survival. Survival isn’t enough for Loki’s anymore. They seek purpose.

So what is our Loki’s Glorious Purpose? Is it in the Citadel that we see at the end of the film? Was it to become better at enchantment in an effort to be closer to is mother? Is it to “buck the system” and be the first selfless God of Mischief? Regardless, we all seek purpose. That might be what the entire thing has been all about. We choose our path. We pick our purpose. We choose our fate. I can dig that.

One Episode Left

One of the main reasons this article took so long to write was because I find myself growing more and more confused as to what this show is. Don’t get me wrong, I can watch Tom Hiddleston read a phone book and be entertained but as someone who went close to 2 years without MCU content, I have been anxious to get into the bigger threats to the Universe.

I can’t help but feel when this is all said and done this show will most likely resemble a one-shot, or miniseries, meaning it will introduce aspects that will be used later but will have no bearing on the MCU as a whole. The TVA being introduced (and I am assuming destroyed next episode), might start a chain of events that lead to bigger things but here we are 4 hours later, no closer to any of the answers to the questions we had in episode 1. I try not to be in a rush with these things, but with only 6 episodes in total spending all that time on Lametis feels like a mistake. With this being not even our Sacred Timeline Loki, so he could be killed and so long as he learned a lesson, this entire series can write itself off as a cautionary tale.

Then again, these Marvel series have a way of making me love them in the end. Maybe this last episode will give me everything I need and will help put some of the bigger mysteries to rest while laying the ground work for some big things to come ala WandaVision. I am trapped between thinking we have gone well past the need for purely individual stories given the immense worldbuilding of the MCU and simply enjoying what could ultimately just be an intimate look at a villain’s psyche. Let’s see how I feel about things next week!

That’s all for this week! Get ready for my final thoughts on the series next week and then a FULL RECAP AND REVIEW on the Major Issues Podcast the following Wednesday!

Remember you (yes, you) are Worthy!
G.S.

A "Low-Key" Loki Recap / Episode 1 : Glorious Purpose

June 9, 2021George Serrano1 Comment

Hey Guys! It’s George Serrano aka The Don here, and I’ll be doing my best to give you my thoughts and insight on each episode of the Loki series as it drops! The show itself has just started but there is already so much to get into. Let’s get started!

A Sign of Things to Come? (Multiverse of Madness)

Our series starts off with the familiar events of Avengers Endgame in which Loki steals the tesseract and disappears. We see the God of Mischief accidentally teleported himself to Mongolia, and once there, he is stopped by agents of the TVA (Time Variance Authority), who arrest him for his crimes against the timeline.

The TVA is massive not only in scope but in concept. Charged with maintaining the purity of the timeline, no one in the TVA seems impressed by Loki’s stature as a god or his accomplishments. They have the ability to reset timelines and protect the Sacred Timeline, a vast stream of time overseen by the Time Keepers that holds the multiverse in its wake. They are operating on a completely different level than we have seen before, a point made more clear when we see that they have a drawer full of INFINITY STONES LAYING AROUND!

What’s most interesting about our intro into the TVA is there is an orientation video that plays explaining most of these concepts, but goes so far as to say “Stepping off your path (in reference to Loki) created a Nexus event which, left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another MULTIVERSAL WAR!”

Last time we heard the word NEXUS was in those fake WandaVision commercials. Wanda Maximoff is already scheduled to appear in Dr. Strange in The Multiverse of Madness, so mentioning the “Multiverse” and how it can branch off into “Madness” seems to point at that happening in the MCU sooner than we thought. Could that Multiversal War be referencing 2015’s Secret Wars comic? I hope so.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: A TVA Production

We meet Mobius, played by Owen Wilson, who goes out of his way to recruit Loki for a TVA mission. In order to show him that the timeline is basically set in stone, Mobius uses TVA tech to project the events from Loki’s life in front of them. We not only see the events from THIS Loki’s life (like the time he became DB Cooper because of a bet with Thor, or when he took on the Avengers in New York) but we see the events of the OG Loki’s life as they played out in the MCU, including the death of his parents, and him reuniting with his brother Thor.

I personally like that this version of “Loki: This Is YOUR Life” shows the events of the MCU exactly as we have seen it in the movies. This means the TVA technology shows Loki’s life complete with the camera cuts and angles that we see when we watch those films. While some may view this as a cheap and trope-filled way of showing us things we’ve already seen, I actually want to take this a step forward.

My official headcanon is as follows. What we are watching every time we watch an MCU film is actually the events of the Sacred Timeline as recorded by the TVA for database purposes. We are watching the historical and chronological account of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it unfurls, character by character. Luckily, the TVA broadcasts in HD amirite? But seriously, to know that all of the events to ever happen are already recorded and available for your viewing pleasure makes the MCU feel more like a documentary of a foreign land than a fictional franchise.

A Grain Of Sand In The Hourglass

The single best moment of this episode, in my opinion, is after Loki escapes. Loki’s entire character is built around the rigid notions of purpose and fate, feeling his purpose was born to rule as a King, and has done everything in his power to fulfill that prophecy. Being the son of the King of Asgard, and the ruler of the 9 realms, greatness was always just an arms-length away from The God of Mischief, making his hunger for it more ravenous with each brush against it. In Loki’s mind once he ascends to the throne of power there is no bigger role or purpose to have but he quickly realizes that isn’t the case.

After breaking out and stealing the Tesseract, Loki finds the aforementioned drawer of Infinity Stones, and his jaw drops. The fact that the TVA is in possession of what he had perceived to be THE power in the known universe, and that they’re using them as paperweights, single-handedly put the entirety of his existence in perspective. For the first time in his life, Loki figures out that it isn’t all about him, and in reality, he is just a grain of sand in the hourglass of time. Loki, for the first time, is humbled.

It harkens back to moments before as he watches Thanos kill a version of himself he never became and breaks out in laughter. For eons, Loki had been committing atrocities all over the universe, under the presumption that he was destined for greatness, and these acts ensured his ascension. Surely if this results in him becoming King, all of it was worth it right? Except Loki never becomes King. Loki never rules. As Loki sees life leave his eyes in the projection, and tears pour down his very own, he realizes the only thing fate has in store for him, is for him to fail.

Confessions of A God

The recruitment of Loki for this mysterious mission hinges on whether or not Mobius thinks he’s fit for the job. For the majority of the episode, Loki is being badgered with questions that aim to dissect his mentality and make sense of his actions. He is asked what is end goal is and at one point is mocked for thinking so small. When asked why he chooses to hurt people, he first claims to do so as a means to eliminate the pain of the freedom of choice. In HIS mind his is liberating those he subjugates. Mobius calls him a murder, saying he seems to enjoy hurting people and making people feel small. Regardless of the string of questions, Loki refuses to engage truthfully until he realizes how small he is in the grand scheme of things.

After realizing the futility of it all, Loki finally admits that he doesn’t actually enjoy hurting people, but feels that he has to, or HAS had to. In his opinion, he hurts people so as to inspire fear and loyalty, even though he knows this to be a cheap tactic. It’s a method of control that has made him a villain to most and he is finally realizing that now. This moment of clarity and transparency marks a distinct moment in this Loki’s development, because it is the moment he no longer chooses to be evil for evil’s sake. It also convinced Mobius he picked the right man for the job.

If You Want Something Done Right…

So, the God of Mischief has a moment of clarity…so what? Why is Loki of all people, given his countless crimes against humanity, afforded this opportunity towards redemption? What does Mobius think he can get out of Loki that he can’t from anywhere else? Well my dear readers, this is when things get interesting. Throughout this episode we have been hearing and seeing evidence of a dangerous person killing people throughout time in brutal fashion. We have already been told that each deviation from the timeline causes branches that could send the multiverse spiraling into war, so the stakes are high, but they get even higher when Loki finds out that the person threatening the timeline is a variant of himself.

I love that hook as part of the show, even though it’s a bit Gemini Man. In a world where we’ve kind of adopted the character of Loki as an antihero due to his popularity, I do wonder what a more sinister and sadistic version Loki would look like when he lets loose. The presence of this increasingly dangerous variant will also create a juxtaposition against our main Loki, showing that by comparison, ours is just a mischievous scamp. This will allow us to cheer for one Loki, while rioting against the other, show the many facets of that complicated character.

As far as WHICH variant we could be seeing, I hope we get as many as we can. I wanna see Kid Loki, Lady Loki, even President Loki as hinted at by the trailers! Until then we will have to wonder which Loki wants to watch the whole world burn.

That’s all I got this week but what do YOU guys think? Comment below and let us know your thoughts, opinions and predictions before we get into Episode 2! Remember You Are Worthy!