It’s weird to be writing a post like this on a Wednesday considering the 15 weeks I spent preparing recaps for both WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But Disney+ was kind enough to release their latest series Loki two days earlier than planned, allowing me to spend a Wednesday watching and writing about the latest episodes. There’s been a ton of hype surrounding the show already, and with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki being a fan-favorite, that’s probably to be expected. But does the premiere episode of Loki live up to the hype, or is it just a floundering start to what could be a middling series?
And as always with the Disney+ recaps here on GeekAnything, the following contains tons of spoilers for the first episode of Loki. Proceed at your own risk.
The episode, titled “Glorious Purpose,” opens with a recap of where Loki stands in the MCU, bringing us back to the moment in Avengers Endgame when 2012 Loki, just after being defeated by the Avengers during the Battle for New York, is taken into custody. Through the time-hopping shenanigans of the 2023 Avengers, Loki gets the Tesseract and disappears. Loki shows up in the Gobi Desert and just as he declares dominance over some inhabitants, a quartet of armed soldiers teleport in and place him under arrest by the order of the Time Variance Authority. Loki is confused, but the soldiers subdue him in a humorous use of slow motion.
Loki is brought back to the TVA, stripped of his clothes, and forced to face a bureaucracy that would break even the most stoic person. He, and the audience, are given a crash course in the role of the TVA through a cute, animated sequence starring an anthropomorphic clock named Miss Minute (voiced by the inimitable Tara Strong). The scene is reminiscent of Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park and is sure to have any JP fans smiling at the homage. Anyway, Miss Minute explained that competing timelines early in the universe’s history threatened the existence of everything, so a trio of beings called the Time Keepers organized those timelines into one almighty timeline, called the Sacred Timeline. Any threats to the Sacred Timeline, called Variants, would be handled by the Time Variance Authority, which is how Loki ended up how he did.
Just as Loki is ready to go on trial for his crimes, we meet Mobius (Owen Wilson) who is off in 1549 France investigating the brutal death of two TVA enforcers. A young kid stumbles on the scene, and Mobius asks them who did it. The kid points to a stained-glass window showing the visage of the devil, and Mobius promises the kid, “we’re gonna take care of him.” Mobius notices the kid has blue teeth and asks what it’s from. The kid shows him a package of blueberry gum, an artifact clearly out of place in 16th century France. Interestingly, the package of gum has a logo on it that looks similar to another Marvel Comics character, that of Nightmare, so perhaps this is either an Easter egg or foreshadowing to a later reveal.
Mobius learns that Loki has been apprehended and sits in on his trial. Just as the judge is ready to pass judgment, Mobius asks to take the prisoner for reasons he doesn’t yet reveal. The judge allows it, and Mobius escorts Loki to his office. On the way, Loki is transfixed by the scenery through the window, a mysterious world built by a mysterious race. Loki thinks that it must have taken magic to construct it, but Mobius reminds him that magic doesn’t work where they are, which makes Loki deny its reality. Loki claims, “This is a nightmare,” which further bolsters the theory that Nightmare is somehow involved.
Much of the episode involves Mobius trying to get into Loki’s head. He wants to know why Loki does the things he does. Why someone with so much power and “range” only wants to rule. Whether he likes hurting people and bending them to his will. Loki, being the arrogant god that he is, doesn’t think Mobius would understand his motivations. Though the scene is mostly back and forth between the two men, it gives us the great scene from the earlier trailers in which Loki is DB Cooper. While it’s a fun scene and gives some background to the character (Mobius asks why he did it and Loki says he lost a bet to Thor), it doesn’t really add anything to the story. I would think implanting Loki in a true, historical event would factor into the series plot somehow, but it just became a throw-away sequence.
Anyway, Mobius continues to chisel away at Loki by showing him how after he was defeated by the Avengers, he was held prisoner in Asgard, and led to his mother’s, Frigga, death. Mobius wants to get to the center of Loki’s motivations, to understand why he does what he does. This is the first thing Loki shows any emotion besides anger to and leaves him slightly disarmed.
After an outburst, Loki gets the upper hand on Mobius and escapes the office. He finds a desk jockey he met earlier to get the Tesseract back. As the office worker opens a drawer containing the Tesseract, Loki sees a collection of Infinity Gems alongside it. The gems are powerless in the building, left inert by whatever power suppresses Loki’s magic, and for the first time, he realizes the scope of the TVA.
He goes back to Mobius’s office and watches the sequence with Frigga again. Then he watches as Odin, the All-Father, dies, as seen in Thor: Ragnarok. Until finally, he watches the moment we saw in Avengers Infinity War when Thanos snaps his neck. Loki witnesses his death, and knowing his true destiny, he decides to try a different tact. When Mobius returns, Loki tells him he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, that it’s merely a method for the weak, like him, to instill fear. It’s a moment of self-reflection and honesty, and shows the audience that Loki isn’t really a “bad guy.” Mobius is impressed by this and tells Loki that a fugitive variant is killed the TVA soldiers. Loki asks why Mobius wants his help, and Mobius says, “the variant we’re hunting is you.”
After Loki’s visible confusion, the scene cuts to Salina Kansas in 1858. Some TVA soldiers appear in an open field and find an artifact they identify as being from the third millennium. They assume someone traveled back in time to make money, but a cloaked figure in the distance proves otherwise. The figure breaks a lantern, setting the field on fire along with the soldiers. We never see the figure’s face, but we do see it steal a device the TVA uses to reset the timeline, leaving us to wonder what they plan on doing with it.
There’s a lot to be impressed with the first episode of Loki. Firstly, seeing Tom Hiddleston back is always fun. He does great with the character, and it’s plain to see just how much fun he has with the role. He has a good sense of comedic timing and offers great inflection that suits his delivery. I’m looking forward to seeing future episodes when this plays off of Owen Wilson more, an actor who is best known for his comedic roles.
I also loved the design of the TVA itself. The outside city or world or whatever it is was not only breathtaking, but the simple design inside the TVA itself was clever. For an entity so technologically advanced, most of their hardware looked like it came right out of the 1970s. The aesthetics offer an interesting dichotomy to the functionality of the tech itself, tech that’s far advanced from anything we currently have.
The twist itself was also very nice. The episode played the big, bad villain close to the chest, careful to not reveal too much beforehand. While this is easy to do, the suspense at the end of Mobius revealing who he is chasing to Loki was just enough to make not only Loki confused but us as well. While the audience would expect another Marvel villain to be the show’s antagonist, it’s a nice twist to have Loki chase himself, even though there’s probably more to that reveal than what we currently know.
All in all, I’m excited for the rest of Loki. While the first episode was a little slower than I’d like, it set the stage for bigger things to come, as well as accomplishing what it set out to do. It needed to set up the TVA, the Sacred Timeline, and break Loki down so that he’d help in a way that wouldn’t seem out of character. And it did all of that well in the forty-two-minute run time. Based on that alone, I expect great things out of the rest of the season.
