I’ve been a bit behind on all the Marvel series recently, but you know seeing Tom Hiddleston with those dark, long locks again was more than enough for me to tune into the second season of Loki sooner than any other series they have to offer.
Admittedly, all of the Marvel stuff is getting more forgettable as the years go on and with a year and a half in between seasons, I did not remember much from Loki‘s first season. The brief recap at the beginning was good enough for me. Ultimately, Loki gets sent to the TVA as punishment, ends up befriending Mobius, finds one of his variants calling herself Sylvie, and they encounter the big bad He Who Remains. He Who Remains tells Loki and Sylvie that he stopped a multiversal war between all of his variants and is the true timekeeper. Sylvie thinks he’s taking away free will from the people so she kills him. Thus, this season we are treated to a whole bunch of different timelines.
I’m going to be honest with you, the multiverse gives me a bit of a headache, and it doesn’t help that most of the timelines we see are almost identical to the one we were familiar with all of season one. Anyway, Loki finds himself flitting between various timelines at the TVA trying to find his true timeline to warn everyone of what’s to come. When he does eventually get back, Mobius enlists the help of the TVA handbook author, Ouroboros (OB for short), to help. The whole season’s objective is to stop a time loom from overloading and destroying the whole multiverse, their own included.
Even though Loki is terrified of He Who Remains, he knows that his help is needed in getting to the loom to fix it. It takes a lot of work to get Sylvie back in the game, but her love for Loki and people in general ultimately outweighs her hate of He Who Remains. They eventually find one of his variants, going by the name of Victor Timely, at the 1983 World’s Fair, but they aren’t the only ones looking for him. Renslayer and Miss Minutes (a psycho) are also there to put all of He Who Remains’ plans into action. Look, I think this show makes another excellent case of why AI in general is a bad idea.
That’s all I am going to give away about the season, but I can’t say that all viewers will be satisfied with the ending. I can tell you that Loki does find his “glorious purpose,” but at what cost? At this point, a third season seems unlikely to me, though there is certainly room for spin-offs, which I’m sure are already in the works in some capacity. The additions of Rafael Casal, Kate Dickie, and Ke Huy Quan to the cast this season were delightful and they added some real dimension to the cast. There’s just enough humor to not make this series a slag, but it still isn’t my favorite Marvel project by a long shot. The future remains to be seen.