f13.net

https://youtu.be/nW948Va-l10

I don't know if a whole series of it will get old, but I like the idea of the Owen Wilson / Tom Hiddleston scenes. Loki has only really had to interact with idiots up to this point.

I'm cautiously optimistic--it looks fun. Makes me wonder how this will go along with What If? and the 2nd Doctor Strange film. I'm good with multiversal/time-travel elements as long as they don't start to get so messy that the main universe becomes incoherent.

Never read any comics with TVA in them but I think Avengers Forever (written by Kurt Busiek, so it's good)  had them in there somewhere.

I suppose this is as close to a live action  Agent of Asgard as we'll see so I'll take it.

As an aside Agent of Asgard was great (my favorite iteration of Loki, including MCU Loki) and you should read it asap.

My daughter and I both loved Agent of Asgard and I really so vastly preferred the Loki character it was depicting to boring Evil Loki (which I think? owed something to the MCU and Hiddleston? I would have to check the timing).

The TVA I think appeared first in Walter Simonson's really really weird run on Fantastic Four? Then Busiek has to reference it in his masterful but doomed attempt to make everything involving Kang and Immortus make sense.

That's the only thing that gives me pause in all of this: Kang as a character and time-travel/alternate realities as story-engines have had an ultimately incredibly destructive impact on Marvel storytelling over the years. I really, really hope they're careful with this--it can create an incredible mess.

I haven't read any of the comics you guys are referencing but I get a bit of a Quantum Leap vibe from this trailer. Like Loki disappearing screwed things up and now "variant Loki" and Owen Wilson have to fix what once went wrong.

What I wonder is if they'll follow that to what I view as the ultimate conclusion which would be that this Variant doesn't belong in the universe of the MCU. If they're brave they'll make this a one shot like Wanda Vision which will end with variant Loki willingly ceasing to exist to fix the timeline.

I think Hiddleston is a good Loki, but he does miss some very Loki behavior on the regular.

The part that bugs me in the trailer is when he's called out for stabbing people literally 40 times or whatever, his delivery of the line 'Well I wouldn't do it AGAIN' was very Hiddleston but not very Loki. Hiddleston is far better at the tortured Loki trying to be good (which is an important component of the character), but he misses the darker undercurrents. He under- or over-shoots them almost every time.

In the trailer, a better delivery to round out Loki and give him that Han Solo Episode 4 edge, would be putting a sinister grin over an innocent face on 'again', with knowing look, head turning down to gaze intently at (I think it was Wilson).

It's a small beat, but it's almost entirely missing from Hiddleston's portrayal. But the fact that he gets the rest down really well (esp in Ragnarok, maybe my favorite Marvel flick thus far), I can give it a pass. Just sticks out like a sore thumb when he misses a great chance to be more Loki.

I should note that Loki is kind of a thing for me, he is my patron. The brilliant yet bored mind that gets into mischief but then manages to save the day (from his own trouble, but never mind that). Classic me in the band years (not that I'm brilliant, other than relatively speaking)  :grin:

40 is also at least an order of magnitude or two too low for the number of people he's stabbed in his very long lifetime. On the other hand earlier trailers imply he does try to take advantage of his situation for his own benefit so we'll see.

The fun Loki though in Marvel comics, pre-MCU, is recent. Mostly Marvel Loki is just jealous and sulky and motiveless in his evil beyond "I want to be king!"--he's a bad combination of Stan Lee AND Jack Kirby's worst story-telling impulses. (Everybody who wants to constantly tell the story of Kirby the Greatest Comics Hero ignores that Kirby was capable of laying a turd or two plus he and Stan together sometimes reinforced their own worst characterological instincts, it's just that Kirby had art to redeem his work). It's really only with Walter Simonson that Loki started to be fun AND more capable/visionary in his powers and his vision, but even then, he's still "I want to be king and I want Thor dead/humiliated" in a rather boring way.

I think the moment where the character really began to evolve was Loki standing with Thor and Odin against Surtur in the big conclusion to Simonson's original arc on Thor where Thor cries out "For Midgard!" and Odin cries out "For Asgard!" and Loki cries out "For myself!" but it's also clear that he's actually kind of into standing alongside his brother and his father in that moment.

Before Hiddleston, Loki was a D-tier character. Like, even most people who followed The Mighty Thor weren't that invested in his chief nemesis, who was much more mustache twirler than Xanatos Gambit chessmaster in most issues he appeared in.

Hiddleston elevated the character, and he owns it now. Oh, and I think it was 40 times in 1500 years Loki *literally* stabbed someone in the back with a blade after gaining their trust. And his "but I won't do it *again*!" is deadpan farce. Even Loki doesn't expect that it will be believed, it's just part of the meta.

--Dave

Ya, I read a bit of Mighty Thor when I was a kid and Loki was an extremely one note Character back then.  I read the description above and was going "who the hell is THAT guy?"

Yeah, I chuckled at Hiddleston's bit there and I think it might just be an aesthetic difference of opinion. Loki putting on an innocent face with a sinister grin (I guess you're describing a Solo style smirk there?) and winking at the camera would have oversold it. It did not come across as tortured or in anyway remorseful and I think intentionally farcical is probably a good way of describing it.

Also I agree that I think you're describing a character who exists more in your head than in the comics, I haven't really read anything in the last decade and wasn't a huge Thor reader but I don't remember him being much more than a straight up villain. Certainly not a vaguely whimsical, good time guy who's schemes were more for their own sake and certainly not someone who you'd expect to come good at the end. Much more Dr. Doom type villain who just wanted power.

Read something from Hiddlestone where he mentioned that because this Loki is from directly at end of avengers, he sees Loki as full on bad guy at the start of this show. Then the show gives him another opportunity to develop Loki towards a more ambiguous character via a different path.

By IW Loki was way past ambiguous, his arc ended with a heroic sacrifice.

Loki as a pure villain is very much a thing of the past - he's been a fairly ambivalent character for at least the last 15 years in the comics. Some of it is a result of new creators, some of it is explained away by the character dying and being resurrected, etc. The movie Loki has been much more in tune with the current character than the previous one, but Hiddlestone's portrayal has most certainly affected how the comics have utilized him (and he's been a she at times too).

Basically Fun Mischief Loki explained it as "we've been through so many Ragnaroks and reboots and I more than most, I want to live and not become Dull Evil Loki again".

The thing is in Norse sagas, Loki only becomes Evil Loki out of accumulated resentment of the other Aesir, out of a sense that they don't give him his due, out of annoyance with Thor and maybe a little Odin in specific, out of a kind of underappointed and undermobilized capability for cleverness and malice--he's a trickster with a dynamic character arc who goes sour the closer things get to the end of everything.

So making comics Loki someone who just wants to be king is way underestimating the character's potential. Kudos to Hiddleston for pushing them towards something more.

That said, I would not be entirely surprised if this all ends with Loki becoming Kid Loki in the Young Avengers or Loki being in the Thunderbolts under Zemo's command.

People are speculating, based on casting,  that kid Loki, Lady Loki, and Old Loki (presumably from AoA run) are all in this. I'm curious who Lady Loki will be though. Will it just be Loki as a woman or Loki taking over Sif's body?

Change of date, now starting on 9th June, and episodes every Wednesday (https://youtu.be/mNyLzc3MU_E)

I like to think of this as a middle finger to Odin.  :why_so_serious:

This was fun. Slower and more earnest than I expected - pushed way harder and more explicitly than I would have thought on trying to make the TVA make sense and addressing the who is loki question. But Wilson and Hiddleston were both great in the centre of it.

I'm very glad they didn't try to make the villian into a big mystery.

Loved this, would not be surprised if Loki does end up burning the whole thing to the ground by the end of it. We are getting a multiverse somehow. Loved the small details like the drawer being mostly time stones.

Yeah this is "Loki: Agent of TVA", complete with one version of  Loki seeing Odin tell another Loki that he loved him, and (eventually I'm guessing) Loki vs. Loki. Evil Loki is almost certainly Lady Loki (else why hide him? Although I suppose Old Man Loki works as well). I really like to know what set this version off.

I think I would have liked this more if I hadn't seen the trailers. I feel like I knew the major story beats ahead of time.

BTW in case any non comic book nerds are wondering, in the comics the infinity gems (stones in the movies) don't work outside their universe of origin.
Was that Martha Jones' sister as the judge?   :Love_Letters:

I recognized her as the girl from San Junipero.

I never watch trailers for something I'm already 100% going to see. No upside in it. Either I don't understand what I'm seeing, so why bother, or I do, in which case I'm spoiling it (if the work is trying to make it look like a character might die, a trailer scene with them in it that hasn't happened yet ruins the tension).

--Dave

Welp this is good. It took like Wanda Vision like 6 episodes to get this good (and i skipped like 3) and  Falcon/Winter Solider 4 episodes to build up enough momentum to be as good as the first episode of Loki.

Really liked this episode.

There's stuff on the internet claiming to know the true identity of the variant the TVA is after

. I don't know if that's true or not. Honestly it's the first I've heard of this character. But what I really want to talk about is the assumption I made that the variant would be "evil." I've come around to the possibility that the variant may actually be "good" and the costume sort of suggested that.

Well, if you want to get philosophical about it, the TVA is the most rigid autocratic dictatorship *possible*. Literally every action by every being anywhere and any time has to be exactly what the TVA wants, and if some poor schmuck accidentally engages in free will, they vaporize the dumb bastard.

You don't have to be the God of Mischief, pathologically driven to "write your own story" to think that's all kinds of fucked up.

--Dave

I liked it.

I'm not gonna speculate this time, just because I'm always wrong anyway.

RoxxonMart seemed to have pretty much all the same products as WalMart today, how about that. I guess we really stagnated for good in 2020.

Still loving Wilson and Hiddleston sitting and chatting. Unsure how I would feel about an episode without them together.

They really undercut the reveal by hammering those pronouns for 45 minutes beforehand.

Feels like a super long directors cut version of a movie more than TV show. I can't quite decide if it is over indulgent or great.

This show has been excellent so far!  Acting from everybody involved has been pretty top notch, and plotting remains tight.

I only have one minor quibble with it (which doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment at all because rule of cool):  For as powerful and mighty (as Loki even noted) the TVA is supposed to be, they do a really bad job of projecting that on screen.  Like, they're just some random dudes in riot armor with batons.  They get beat up and stabbed to death pretty damned easy.  They appear to have no real special powers or technology to help them much, other than a magic stick they need to hit somebody with to do anything.  How the heck are they supposed to do deal with a variant Hulk?  Thanos?  Ironman?  Or even a random redneck with a shotgun?

I don't mind it because 1.)  You can instantly change that with one line of text saying they carry magic guns that can erase anything no matter how powerful, instead of sticks that do the same.  So it's not hard to imagine them just doing that.  2.)  Everything about the TVA is heavily stylized and anachronistic, so it's just fun to nod along with it all.

Since we seem to be heading for a multiverse, maybe it will turn out that there's not very many beings who commonly generate 'variants' and the TVA doesn't even try to deal with some of them but leaves that to others (aka Earth's Sorcerer Supreme and the Time Gem--the Ancient One told Hulk/Banner a story rather similar to the one the TVA tells...).

I have my suspicions on that score anyway given the name of the head TVA honcho--that the whole thing is an elaborate fake but that some TVA agents believe it's all true. I kind of think Loki thinks the same thing.

I think they've been pretty clear on what's what.

They really only have a problem because the Variant they're currently pursuing is aware of them and their strategies.

A variant Hulk, Thanos or other would be much easier because of the surprise factor. Wait around a corner, zap.

I'm sceptical they are going to reveal anything like this in one of these TV shows. I think they are going for optional backstory to the films, at least for this round.

I would guess we'll get as far as the time keepers not being a real thing. Otoh at the moment I doubt the TVA will survive the show - though I hope they keep Owen Wilson knocking around as a Coulson type figure.

On the TVA not seeming strong enough, my reading was that they are a bit sclerotic and only get away with the shit they do because noone has being seriously challenging them.

Put me in the camp that just doesn't see how they handle a variant Thanos or Hulk. Come to think of it, wouldn't Gamora be a variant now since she's from 2014?

I also don't see the TVA surviving but I am curious how this series will go. So far it's not as entertaining to me as Wandavision was but is better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier so I'm having fun watching it but wondering where it will go. Is this another limited series? Do we know? I could easily see it ending with variant Loki being destroyed and the TVA also being destroyed except maybe Owen Wilson's character. They almost have to be destroyed considering the probably plot of Doctor Strange 2.

That's not how it works, you only become a variant when you do something that you are not supposed to do according to the "sacred timeline". If that's what Gamora was supposed to do then she's fine. I'm in the camp of they wouldn't have trouble dealing with anyone that doesn't even know they exist.

They covered this in a line of dialog.

The endgame time travel is baked into the 'sacred timeline', it was 'supposed' to happen.

The thing is, given the premise, I'm not clear on where all those Loki variants are coming from. We've only seen ONE source of variant-creating events, which is the events of Endgame. If Gamora's time-jumping is "supposed to be" and this Loki is not, how come? Gamora's death was as heart-rendering a source of motivation for the "supposed to be" characters as Loki's death was for Thor. I'm sort of surprised this Loki hasn't tried that argument (which of course is another tip-off that the TVA isn't what it appears to be). But at this point we also have zero other possible ways variants could be created except for the Time Gem. So if there's a zillion Loki variants, how come? Where's that coming from?

I kind of hope the whole thing turns out to be a con game meant to get Prime Loki to do something he wouldn't have done otherwise.

Loki has made the argument that the choice of which variant is correct is arbitrary already, and it is clear he regards the sacred timeline as the sort of con that he would pull. He views the TVA has taking away exactly the freedom he repeatedly says regular people cannot deal with.

Moebius reacts in way that I think is meant to talk to his character - either it is bouncing off his brainwashing, or he realises the TVA is bullshit he is smart enough not to engage the question.

As for how splits happen, universe is a big place I guess. But I read it as mostly the spontaneous creation of an alternate timelines.

I can talk my way into it. Prime Loki maybe is enough of a fucking wizard that he's already done some magics in his life that have created variants--he's tried to absorb the Hulk, he's changed genders, etc. and he doesn't remember that he did it because the TVA has pruned those branches such that he doesn't even know it. At the very least as soon as this got sold as producing order, you understood why Loki would be Variant Champion #1. But yeah, as eldaec points out, Loki's speech to the crowd in Avengers indicates that he doesn't think *most* people should be able to act chaotically; "you are meant to be ruled". So maybe that's the con--getting Loki to stooge for someone by reminding him of why he said that, given that every other time we've seen him, he's really not been all that into ruling people in the sense of making them do things to satisfy some purpose. As Fake-Odin, he was really a rather indulgent ruler of Asgard, he just staged self-aggrandizing entertainments and had a generally good time.

I mean, I'm pretty sure we are supposed to think the whole sacred timeline thing is absolute bullshit at this point. At best it's an evil cult, most likely a plot by someone to control the universe. I don't think at any point while hearing what the TVA does and how it works you are supposed to think "ok yeah, that sounds legit". They are blatantly the big bad here.

I thought the line about how many Loki variants there were was just meant to illustrate how chaotic Loki is compared to literally ever other being in existence.

Well, he is the only being with serious power of some kind that we've seen that doesn't always do the same schtick. The Collector collects; the Grandmaster stages gladiatorial fights. Ego wants to be the only thing in creation. Thanos wants to eliminate half of everything living in the universe. Surtur wants to burn Asgard down. The Dark Elves want the existing universe wiped out. 

Odin, Loki and Thor actually change their motivations over time, so it's not just Loki. But Loki especially.

Yeah I think I caught on in Episode 2.

The whole TVA is just a cover for some plot by Kang. Wizard of Oz type of shit.

I think by now we should know they are not going to whip out some completely previously unknown big bad out of nowhere. It might be Kang, but if it is we won't find out during this show. This is going to be Loki vs the TVA and that's it, the main big bad is probably the San Junipero girl.

Revonna Renslayer is literally Kang's wife in some appearances. We may not see Kang himself in this show, but the TVA is definitely his show. Even having the MinuteMen look like future stormtroopers is probably quite deliberate.

Mobius pretty much told us this when Loki asked what happens at the end of the timeline.

The TVA and the sacred timeline is a method for achieving an end that hasn't been shared with the TVA as yet.

It's just possible that the TVA and the Timekeepers are what they were in the comics, which is Kang's enemy (and also humanity's enemy, in that they fear the spread of superpowered humanity throughout the universe). Revonna is sometimes Kang's wife, she's sometimes his unattainably tragically dead romantic obsession, and she's sometimes his enemy. So there are twists and turns possible here.

Oh, I'm 100% sure it'll not follow any of the comics exactly and expect at least one surprise that has nothing to do with the source material. I do expect Kang to be involved some way, shape or form, even if it's just a Thanos on a rock in space appearance. I wouldn't even be surprised if he doesn't show at all, but is just merely mentioned and not even by name. I suspect at least one of the set of variants they are hunting down are all Kang's, since he spent a lot of time in the comics hunting his own "inferior" versions.

I'm more curious how the multiverse shows up in future movies like the Eternals.

If the multiverse isn't in the Eternals I'm going to be disappointed a bit.

I honestly just have no read whatsoever on what the Eternals is going to end up being. The trailer was pretty but absolutely bereft of useful information of any kind. As amazing as both WandaVision and Loki have been post-Endgame, I'm struggling to see where they go with the universe minus 2 of the big 3 Avengers.

I'm with Haemish. I still can't even figure out what the Eternals is meant to do in the tightly planned MCU. It doesn't feel to me like it should have any multiverse shit in it but who knows.

Don't get me wrong though, there are few titles that I wouldn't go watch from the MCU trailer unseen. They have certainly earned a little faith that whatever the hell they have planned, it will be entertaining.

Sure. Their worst movie to day has been at least modestly watchable, so that's a pretty amazing run.

Started rewatching MCU films on bit of a whim. There is a really bad dip around IM2, Thor2, IM3 all of which I honestly couldn't finish.

It is still an amazing run. But there are films they only got away with out of individual performances and banked goodwill.

Relevant to this thread, Thor 2 might have been OK if it had had far less Padme and Thor in it, and much more Loki.

I enjoyed IM3. IM2 is....well, it's a movie. And it's better than almost any DCEU movie. Thor 2, I like the parts with Thor and Loki but once Loki "dies" the movie takes a big dip in my opinion.

Eternals is probably some more world building with a fun story if I had to guess. It'll lay down the ground work for eternals, deviants, and celestials and who they are. Giving the viewers a glimpse of where the next big bad is coming from.

Yeah, it's going to be an MCU cosmology primer (Celestials, First Firmament, Cosmic level powers like Galactus at the periphery).

--Dave

I hope they wait til fantastic 4 in 2023 or 2024 to introduce silver surfer / Galactus. I don't think the universe can handle the power creep prior to that. It renders all current characters moot.

It's not like Galactus is The Big Bad, the dude only eats worlds, individually. He's inexorable and kinda sucks if its your world, but as far as the universe goes, he's basically a bottom-feeder. Also, I'd imagine they want to do the Surfer with modern graphics, but I could also see them using Terrax or some other Herald.

As far as TVA and Hulk, c'mon. Dr Bruce 'Don't Vaporize Me Bro' Banner. Zap. And I think the drawer full of Infinity Stones show they can handle a Thanos-level power (at worst, they could slap together a gauntlet-style device many times over).

Eternals, meh. But the comment earlier about the Quantum Realm is nice, more Paul Rudd is always good, those are some of my favorite Marvel movies. I actually liked IM2 more than 3. I thought the Extremis thing was cheesy but Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell were great in IM2.

I liked IM2 more when I watched a few months ago more than when I did years ago.

Except that Thanos even without the stones is a huge threat. Look how he handed Iron Man, Thor and Captain America their asses without a single stone. I just don't see how these fairly incompetent time cops could handle a variant Thanos.

He also was vulnerable to misdirection, even while wearing the full gauntlet. Someone who has knowledge of the time stream would find it pretty easy to find a vulnerable point. Dude wasn't exactly subtle or devious. It's not like Thor was the one to outwit the TVA here.

In the MCU, I think only Dr Strange has a chance against them. He's one of the few characters who has shown the wit level of Loki.

This is the thing about cosmic Marvel (in the comics). The really big guns are:

a) Forces of nature or abstractions who act consistently and have some complicated constraints on what they will do even if their power is effectively infinite by the standards of ordinary superheroes; they mostly exist either to give superheroes clues or to remind the supers that there are scales of action and power that make them unimportant; if they really are going to do something super-bad there's usually a cosmic-level counter to it
b) Ultra-powerful beings with a glaring weakspot about a thousand times bigger than the exhaust port on the Death Star: they need some McGuffin to do their shit, they have tunnel vision on some crazy objective that anybody who has taken Psych 101 can fuck with them on, they'll quit if the one person they care about goes against them, there's one perfect counter-McGuffin that fucks them hard; (Thanos, Annihilus, Dormammu, Ego, Magus, etc.)
c) Really powerful beings who nevertheless can be beaten if the heroes really really work together and have a top-flight plan and maybe make a heroic sacrifice or two; (Kang, sometimes, when he's not being a stupid punching bag; Ultron)
d) Powerful bad guys who are nevertheless pretty on par with the heroes in power levels at least on paper but who are top threats all by themselves because they're smart and capable and deploy their power/influence/etc effectively (Dr. Doom; Loki though he's arguably "c")
e) Massified enemies who are scary only at scale (Skrulls, Kree, AIM, etc.) and only when the writers decide to play them as actual threats

What I think make the best stories? D), far and away. But I don't think the MCU has a great D film yet except maybe Loki in Avengers. They wanted Zemo in Civil War to be that but he just wasn't.

I think they'll name drop or Easter egg him, but not introduce him. He's way too powerful, as you point out, for any existing character to even survive meeting (unless Love and Thunder gives us Rune King Thor).

--Dave

In the comics, Galactus generally is just a thing you don't fight (when you do, you get shut down right away)--you figure out something that makes him cry uncle, or you deal with the consequences of what he's doing. Ultimate Nullifier or the Watcher 'accidentally' preventing Reed Richards' mind from being read or whatever, or Nova evacuating a planet the Big G is eating and bargaining for a few more hours.

The only time Galactus has really been in a straight-up punchfest with superheroes was the famous Byrne story were he was basically almost dead of starvation plus ridiculous Infinity Gauntlet shit etc. plus the dumb Hickman thing about how Future Franklin Richards has Galactus as a Herald. If they're really going to do Galactus, it's not gonna be punching except or unless the Surfer or Terrax or whatever are used for that part of it. They're going to do some kind of McGuffin plot for G himself.

Loved Sylvie but this felt like an episode of Dr Who.

You make that sound like it was a bad thing.

It's certainly not bad, but it also wasn't as good as the masterful first two episodes.

It's an episode centered around two dishonest and manipulative people who may or may not be the same person in some ways. I enjoyed it in that aside from some of what Loki said that we know to be true we don't really know the full extent to which each one is trying to manipulate the other. Did Loki get drunk or accidentally break the gizmo in his landing getting thrown off the train? I'm not so sure. Sylvie's description of how her enchanting works is consistent with what they've shown but it's very likely she's holding something back. They're both smart enough to put in a lot of truth with their lies so trying to figure out where they're being honest and where they're trying to manipulate is fun to me.

One thing I don't get, and is possibly tied to the TVA being a bit of a sham (or Sylvie maybe not actually being a Loki variant), is that if there's one sacred timeline how could there be such a divergent variant of Loki with that different of a history? This doesn't seem like someone who just turned left one day when they should have turned right. It seems like a case where there would be a completely divergent timeline. I don't want to think too deeply on the logistics of time travel in the MCU but I'm still not 100% sure of what the base premise that the TVA is putting forth even is.

Two possibilities:

1) Lady Loki is a remnant from the Great Multiversal War that escaped the pruning of the TVA.

2) She's not a female Loki. Loki's core magic has always been illusions, we've never seen her use one at all. She's literally never claimed she is, in fact she gets mad when he calls her by that name.

I'm leaning towards door number two. She's some version of Silvie, Loki royally screwed her over and then she was supposed to be pruned out (and was reset from the timeline, so Loki doesn't remember).

--Dave

She said she's been avoiding them her whole life, which presumably has been thousands of years. In that time anything could have happened.

Sure but things like being told she was adopted, not being trained in magic, or barely remembering her mother seem like divergences that would have happened prior to being on the run from the TVA assuming we can believe any of it. I guess she could have been taken in by the TVA as a variant and put to work there when she was very young. It just seems odd that things could diverge that much before the TVA stepped in to try to do something about it.

Your second paragraph is where I'm at BUT I feel like they pitched  variant timelines being wild and different well enough.

It might just be one of those *we didn't want to make 2 Loki's that were only a little different* + *I get to write whatever I want.*

If she's been running from them her whole life that means they did step in ASAP, she's just avoided them for this long.

Or those are the parts where she's lying, playing along with the TVAs assumption she was a Loki and Loki's acceptance of that assumption. She's either from a wildly divergent timeline that predates (wtf that even means in this context?) the TVA, or she's Enchantress, created by Loki and immediately pruned, but she escaped.

--Dave

Come on, this was two manipulators purposefully trying to get info on each other. This is like two IPO-seeking Wharton grads on a weekend retreat with one another where they have to give up their iPhones and go for a six-hour hike with one another and both of them are pretending they ran out of water halfway through to see if they can get a leg up on the other one.

I feel certain that Prime Loki will reveal he's been casting an illusion around the dimensional dingus and it's not broken and Sylvie Loki will reveal she's been manipulating him all along (she got a brain lock on him early) and maybe the whole thing never happened. Or something to that effect. This was a character-development, not plot-development, episode.

That's basically what I said on the previous page, yes.

Edit: Just to say that we are in agreement.

Is the broken Timepad just an illusion?
Did Sylvie actually enchant Loki and this is just a dream?
Is Own Wilson going to find out he's a variant and try to use a infinity powered jetski?


Filler episode, like it still, but not very great.

Sylvie claimed that everyone working for the TVA are variants. That may not be true but we viewers got a chance at seeing her manipulate one of the agents, so we know at least that one had a life prior to being with the TVA. If that's true then perhaps "long-lived" variants don't cause red lines. Or everything we've been told about the TVA and the sacred timeline are basically lies.

I didn't really think much of the whole Kang is one of the Keepers theory but I'm warming up to it.

I liked it, but it felt like a completely different show.

Turned into Dr Who, MCU edition. Not just the production style but the dialog was properly hammed up.

So this goes all of a few ways.

A. The TVA is partially lying to their agents. Telling people that their lives and history have been effectively erased and then forcing them to work for you is a hard pill to swallow for most people so its more convenient to have them assume they "always" been at the TVA. But their job is real. I.E the TVA stops the creation of multiverses and ultimately prevent the breakdown of the universe.

B. The TVA is lying. The agents jobs aren't real. Now their theory on variants is real but either:
  a. the multiverse exist, is at peace and the TVA is pruning realities out of a religious crusade
  b. the multiverse exist, there is a war and the TVA merely picked a side, hence the Sacred timeline.
  c. the multiverse exist, there can be a peace but a war between the more violent realities that discovered time travel forced the time keepers to take a radical approach to prevent future problems.


C. Lady Loki is telling the truth but "her" truth, she is an escaped variant from a timeline that's been pruned and they have been chasing her ever since. She wants to destroy the Time Keepers because in her timeline everything was going great until the time cops showed up and killed everyone.

We still have absolutely zero explanation of what causes a variant in a universe that seems extremely well-policed against it. The single example we've seen is a direct result of the singular case of the Avengers doing time-travel and making a big accidental mistake in the course of it.

In the comics, variations happen ever single damn time anything happens and they happen especially, in profusion, when people travel in time. In Marvel Universe canon, hitting "post" on this message generates a variant who didn't hit "post". In the MCU? We have two sources (the TVA and the Ancient One) claiming that variants are a big problem and ZERO mechanisms for understanding how they happen.

I would guess that it may likely be handwaved away as it being impossible to micro-manage the timeline down to each decision that each living thing in the universe does. Even for as many ramification as the smallest decision we make have, it's possible that most of the things most people do in their day to day wouldn't throw the timeline off the overall course it's supposed to be on, but sometimes (especially when time travel gets involved) one thing can mess up the timeline enough to create a branch

Kinda failing to see how it is well-policed against, unless you're just buying the TVA line. It's clearly all bullshit to achieve a specific goal.

That's kind of what I meant. If the TVA is actually about catching and eliminating variants, they've provided zero insight into what causes variants. If there are lots of variants to catch, it's already an indication that the TVA is a giant fake-out.

I'm pretty sure it's destroying all the timelines that lead to divergent Kangs (and the variants are only specific pivot points that eventually cause a divergent Kang even if they themselves aren't the cause) without the TVA knowing that's what its purpose is. The divergent Kangs are basically "all the other Kangs that aren't me who is masquerading as a Time Keeper."

I might have misunderstood what was said but it didn't seem unclear to me. Tbh they've done a better job of a time travel premise than any other IP I can think of. I was impressed by how they presented it in endgame and this builds on it.

They've said 'nexus' events  cause the timeline to split.

We know from Wandavision that certain individuals can cause nexus events and based on what we've seen I assume that points on the timeline also carry inherent risk of a nexus event - in the case of the show, a timeline formed with the tesseract skidding closer to loki.

The only thing they didn't show or explain is how the timeline continually rolls the dice, but as the TVA and presumably the timekeepers exist in their own time dimension it seems reasonable that nexus events have a probability of forming at a given point on the timeline in a given amount of TVA time. That leaves the TVA playing whack a mole as the timeline naturally diverges.

Once a timeline is split they've shown they can remerge it by nuking the region that has been impacted by the nexus. Anything that escapes that process is a variant and anything a variant does is logically going to risk a further split, though an event big enough to wipe out those differences means those splits might not matter.



As for the plot, Sylvie doesn't seem at all loki-like - doesn't have loki's powers, and given she isn't loki in the comics, I'd say she probably isn't loki. In fact not a variant at all would be my guess.

If she's related to the Sylvie of the comics,

I could see them changing that bit and that they're just using the name because it just makes things easier when you're dealing with multiple variants of the same person.

But why use that specific name, and did they really need another name when they made her appearance and personality so radically different?

I can imagine it going either way, but by the end of the episode I was 70-30 she isn't really loki.

You use that specific name because she shares some things in common with the comic book character and because when you're verbally trying to refer to a specific one of the two Loki variants.

Now I'm sure there's more to Sylvie's background here than she's revealing. The main reason I think they might not go with a similar origin than the comic book Sylvie though is simply because it's more convoluted. "Variant but very different Loki" is more digestible than "Loki can give other people powers, and he powered up a some random human, but the TVA thinks it's a Loki variant because reasons, and Loki did this because he has a plot to do such and such and for some reason he felt this was the best way to go about it".

Might let Loki Variant discover something he didn't know he could do with interesting consequences--"oh, I can empower people with magic and mischief".

Maybe Loki Variant actually creates Kang? Maybe that's who Morbius really is--Kang in Waiting, until Variant Loki gives him the juice. Maybe the whole thing is just a con to get Loki to MAKE Kang.

I mean, Wilson-as-Kang would fit in really well to the mood of an Ant-Man film--Stoner Executive Trying to Become Conqueror.

Kang has already been cast. It's Jonathan Majors (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3718007/), so it won't be Wilson.

There's definitely a Chekhov's Gun on the mantle in the form of the "other analyst", and Moebius M. Moebius doesn't feel like a one-shot character we're never going to see again after this series.

--Dave

Oh yeah re: Kang being cast already. Still, also yeah, Moebius doesn't feel like a one-shot character.

Speaking of Chekhov's gun, I'm wondering when 'Chekhov's explanation of the two different types of illusions you can cast' is going going to go off.

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

Yeah, Sylvie never touched the sparking macguffin. Wouldn't surprise me if it's actually fully charged, she seemed surprised it even *could* be out of juice.

Of course, it also wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was Sylvie doing head games, although that seems less likely (she said it builds the interrogation world out of memories). Yeah, both of them are liars, but if they start lying about exposition that's really aimed at the audience, the whole thing falls apart.

--Dave

If the answer is that shit the rest of the epsiode would have to be bloody amazing to bring me back on side.

Really? My immediate thought was that it was a fake broken goober, because it's Loki. I'll be surprised if it wasn't fake.

My guess is the other analyst is

Mid-season sneak peek, lots of spoilers obviously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgdWQBvS0_A

I have no problem with that being a plot point within an episode, but bad cliffhangers annoy me no end.

If the PoV character is hiding a broken thingy literally up his sleeve,  I want it resolved within the episode it is part of.

I get that. My thing is doppleganger bullshit. The newer BSG cylons, the 1st season of Jessica Jones with Tennant mind-controlling people. The whole 'is this person an alien/robot/mind-controlled/illusion/disguise' thing is weak af imo, but when an entire series is based on it, I'm out. Thus far they have been surprisingly good about this in Loki, despite illusion being his jam.

The two of them took the time to say "I can make illusions multiple ways" and "I can control minds" and they've already both done the key thing that they say makes illusions and control minds. If you don't like stuff where illusions get made and minds get controlled, ok, but it's not a sudden and unexpected intrusion into a plot in this case. It's like Superman saying "I am strong and invulnerable" and saying "I hope he doesn't punch a building and walk out of the ruins unscathed, because that's such a cliche".

I just replayed that scene with the broken macguffin about 10 times. There's a quiet "end illusion" sound when Loki turns to go talk to her. The macguffin is fine. He's going to catch up to her at a bar or something, get the expository admission he's really wanting, and then open a portal.

--Dave

I have no words for this episode except to say I really loved it. The fight scenes were just 80s tv bad but screw that, it's great.

There's an after credit scene; don't miss it.

Only thing didn't like is that the pruning right before the credits removed any doubt about whether the first surprise pruning of episode was going to stick. Also I don't understand where all the crazy timeline splitting at the end of episode 2 went to.

I'm very glad that almost every terrible suggestion made in this thread and elsewhere was wrong. Including my own.

I think at this point we should have enough trust to know they won't pull dumb bullshit like that or the whole pulling out a brand new villain out their ass in the last few episodes thing everyone seems to expect.

I was talking to eldaec about tropes we don't like. And I mentioned how well this show is handling a trope I don't like.

So...?

Well, that was good. Still think a show about characters who lie and misdirect might have a trick up its sleeve, but maybe the "pay no attention to the men behind the curtain" moment is enough of a misdirect in that respect.

Also, Crocodile Loki? Much respect.

I saw nothing in that episode to make me think there isn't a surprise "villain behind the curtain." I mean, we literally got our Wizard of Oz moment.

EDIT: Also:

My wife's response: "Why is that Loki wearing Depends?"

The only villain we are going to get is Ravonna.

I think it will be clear there's somebody behind the curtain, but they either won't be revealed or it will be explicitly ambiguous that they might be another misdirect like the robot Time Keepers.

--Dave

Looks like I was right but not sure if the show goes uphill form here.

It did.

That was great. Richard Grant is always awesome when given something interesting to do.

Felt like that was Hogwarts behind the curtain.

Look, thematically, the best idea would be for it to be another Loki (seemingly) as a bid to divide the two Lokis, but for that at the last second to turn out to be yet another misdirect/lie by some OTHER liar or manipulator.

Immortus is classically an absolutely operatic liar in Marvel's comics history whom writers have used as a kind of hopeless continuity whore--it's almost a bloodsport now at Marvel where successive writers have to reveal that the last time we had all of Immortus' lies finally clarified we find out that all the clarifications are just lies of another kind. So maybe?

I mean, I'm not fucking nuts this time that the series is INVITING us to think there's a bad guy behind it all, right? It's inviting the nerds to shout KANG! IMMORTUS!

Introducing a new villain that only the 27 nerds who read comic books know about in the very last episode is such horrible writing I just can't imagine how anyone thinks its a possibility. There's no Mephisto, there's no Kang, there's no Immortus, it's Loki. Probably not even another Loki but ours from the future.

Could be one of a handful of other villains from earlier films, too.  Why not Thanos hanging out at the end of time with Dormammu?

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. The first thing every Loki variant (except Sylvie) thinks of is "Let's take over the TVA!" If one of them had succeeded, what would that look like?

The "surprising yet inevitable betrayal" riot of Loki's kind of has to be important.

--Dave

Somewhat unique among the D+ shows so far, it sounds like Loki was planned to go beyond one season. There hasn't been any official announcement but there were reports of S2 pre-production starting at the end of last year as well as some other details that suggested another season is going to happen and was planned from the start. This maybe gives them a little freedom that they wouldn't necessarily have if they were just making a 4-5 hour long movie. They could leave things on a cliffhanger here or introducing characters or ideas that aren't going to get fleshed out until next season.

In this episode, you got a monstrous cloud named Alioth devouring people in a void before the end of time. In Marvel Comics, he's a rival to Kang (and keeps Kang from conquering all time periods). Is that bad writing? Did anybody mention "Alioth" earlier? Shouldn't people be complaining that suddenly here's this new dangerous enemy that wasn't mentioned before at all?

Look, Kang is actually cast and is in an upcoming movie.

The bad guy so far that we've seen--and we've seen she is bad in the sense of treacherous--is a character whose name is strongly associated with Kang in the comics. Why do that if it doesn't mean anything at all? Just call her Imperious Bichoff or whatever.

The Time Keepers were set up as bad guys and they turned out to be the Wizard of Oz's phony projection. We just haven't seen the man behind the curtain yet.

There's certainly a lovely symmetry if it turns out it's another Loki (with maybe a post-credits scene that shows that yet again that Loki is actually the flunky for another bad guy, e.g., Kang). But since the whole show has been driven by "who set up the TVA" and "the seeming bosses are just a false front", I can't see how anybody could say "introducing the actual boss behind it all would be bad writing because nobody expects that". The whole show has been built around the expectation of a hidden manipulator.

No, because Alioth isn't really a character, it's a plot device. It doesn't need a backstory or motivations explained. It doesn't have a plan we need to understand. It's an entropic force that has a name and occasionally a face. It's sole purpose here is as an obstacle.

One other thing is that given that we know Kang is going to be in the next Ant Man movie in 2023, whatever they may or may not do with him here probably can't end with him being defeated by a couple Loki. In theory he should be getting built up as a threat, rather than people watching Quantumania and thinking "oh, it's that guy who got his plans blown blown up in Loki a couple years back". Given that I think it works better to hint at him, and possibly even mention his name, but not necessarily outright introduce him at this point.

All three of these so far have consistently produced a more satisfying plot than anything I've guessed or anyone else has written here. So I've stopped guessing.

This was the best part. They'd toss him a mediocre line and it would come out awesome.

Hell, they tossed him the goofiest fucking costume in comic book history and he made that shit look bad ass.

Good easter eggs in the episode also with stuff like Frog Thor and the Thanoscopter.

I had to go back to make sure that was Frog Thor, but I cheered. Richard Grant was just the best. Gator Loki has just convinced me that it's well past time for a Howard the Duck series.

There is no reason whatsoever to think they want show Kang in the final scene or even in a bumper credit scene, without ever naming him. I mean, they did it with Thanos - did we even hear his name prior to Infinity War? Comic geeks knew who he was but regular people didn't, and they had no problem introducing him without even the slightest real explanation.

It still wouldn't surprise me if there is a Loki behind the TVA, as it would certainly fit with the series' themes. The biggest question would be where would that Loki have gotten the technology to do it?

Thanos was named (and shown) at substantially greater length in the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Which would be another example of what I would guess Velorath would regard as bad writing--Thanos comes up as the prime mover behind what Ronan the Accuser was doing, his name gets invoked a few times (by Drax, by Gamora) but Thanos' motivations are at best murky--considering his power levels and his direct actions in Infinity War, it's hard to figure out what the fuck he was doing with Loki or Ronan, really, and we don't know anything in Guardians about what's driving his interest in any of this beyond wanting the Power Stone.

Though considering how incoherent Ronan's motivations are as well, I guess I'd agree it's bad writing. Good thing that Guardians is so much fun on the protagonist side, because Ronan is basically an inert slab of meat who is driven by rage over something we know nothing about (a war between the Kree and Xandar--at least we actually see Xandar in the flick, we have no idea what the Kree are like or who they are).

I would agree that the writing of pretty much all the villains in GotG was the sloppiest part of an otherwise great movie.

Captain Marvel makes Ronan a little better.

I wonder if they might link the last episode directly into What If.

It really isn't their style so far - but the premise of both shows would be obvious link.

At this point, I've just stopped guessing what they're going to do. I've been wrong far more than right on this show.

--Dave

I told myself that, then I watched the what if trailer and suddenly thought Aha!

And am probably still wrong.

I'm pretty sure its another loki behind the TVA

It definitely makes thematic/dramatic sense for it to be a seemingly successful Loki who made the whole thing to just keep other Lokis in line. (In fact, that would be a clever borrowing of the whole Kang-is-eliminating-other-Kangs storylines from the comics.)

And then at the last second for that Loki to be just another stooge for another off-stage ultimate bad guy could be even more delicious--revealing another flaw in Loki's character that hasn't really been talked about so far in Mobius' dissection of it, which is that he tends to second banana while pretending he's in charge, or when he's in charge he just does trivial or confusing stuff with no real goals.

Probably the most satisfying suggestion.

A bit info-dumpy but overall good. As I figured, having a season 2 planned (and confirmed in place of a post-credits scene) gave them a bit of leeway into how they wrapped this season up. Spoiler tagging just because it's so early after the episode released that someone could conceivably click on here without thinking.

I liked it.

But felt the characters were owed a little more resolution.

They'll get it. In season 2 and all the content to come for the next decade.

I'm not a fan of 'resolution happens in three years' as an argument.

Sure, you don't resolve everything in the setting, but you decide what this individual story is about and resolve that.

Show just felt like it was the end of a random episode.

At first I was like  :grin:
Then I was like  :drill:
Then I was like  :why_so_serious:

Kang is not just a loki villain. He's already announced for the ant man movie.

I stand corrected. Their actually crossing the streams.

And Loki season 2 apparently started production in November 2020, so it may already be in the can. They've put themselves in a box, this will either be a beautiful hat trick of plot, or a colossal trainwreck.

--Dave

Well I was completely wrong, they pulled it off well. Kinda sad this version of Kang is gone.

I watched the last part of this again, and I think the reason I didn't think they quite stuck the landing was that 'you can't trust and I can' t be trusted' moment didn't feel like the profound tragic conclusion it was supposed to be. 

It still felt like they were deciding whether to trust Kang, not whether to trust each other.

I am hyped for more loki and for more Kang though. I wasn't excited when we were told he is the new Thanos - but I am now interested in how he plays the alternate versions of himself.

Really enjoyed this whole thing.  Excellent setup for Phase 4, and if they have this much vision and planning for it, I'm actually a lot more stoked about this phase of Marvel than I was before.  Great way to introduce us to Kang, by giving us a more likable and actually somewhat good'ish version of him.

First off, don't assume this version of Kang is gone. He more or less tells you that. He's not Kang, he's Immortus, and Immortus is always a liar, on a scale that makes Loki look like an amateur.

Second off, where's the complaining about what bad writing etc etc this is? Some of you picked that hill to die on, after all.

I mean, for once I was right, at a point when I had started to assume I had to be wrong because the MCU people just didn't want to do the obvious when they did the obvious.

The only reason Feige wasn't down with the TV shows before is because Ike Perlmutter was in charge of the TV shows and he is a colossal dick that Feige hated. Now that Perlmutter is gone and Feige is in charge of the total Marvel product, AND has Disney+ for any non-movie stuff he wants, he will have no problem crossing those streams. Remember, every Disney+ sub is more money in Disney's pocket directly.


Kind of amazing that we've just seen a 6-episode origin story for someone who was not the titular character.  :why_so_serious:

Also, I called it.

They did the obvious and made it work by subverting every other expectation we had over and over for 5 hours of screentime. :slow_clap:.

--Dave

They mostly just seem to be sending the message that while they're not gonna cater to nerds by having Mephisto show up in the last act of one show, they are gonna cater to nerds by having Kang/Immortus show up in the last act of another show because the entire goddamn thing is built so that it's the only thing that makes sense. They're laughing I assume at people who said "Come on, they're not going to do that" and at the nerds who said "I guess you're right, I've been wrong so far".

Fuck, Immortus/Kang even made a one-off remark about how Alioth actually has its own motivation or whatever and he went ahead and turned it into a plot device.

Now, on the other hand, look: Immortus is a goddamn boring stiff, so being comics-faithful on adapting him is a terrible idea, but...I'm not entirely sure this version worked even as a "I'm the last survivor of a multiversal war and I'm a tired immortal who wants to die". Which may turn out to be the point--it may be that Immortus/Kang/Whatever actually wants the multiverse back or wants the multiversal war to start up again or has an ultimate agenda that his whole schtick was a deliberate misdirect from. That's the thing about comics Immortus--I can't think of a single appearance where everything he's told others with all sincerity has turned out to be completely true except maybe Avengers Forever. Maybe? But the way he was written just felt too light or underdeveloped.

Well to start with I didn't want to come in here immediately after a series I generally enjoyed ended and start nitpicking stuff but here we go:

First, I already explained my stance here.  The previous two D+ series essentially functioned as long movies which meant they had to bring things to a resolution and they had to do it in a way that made them work as a narrative unto themselves even if they have things that lead into other shows/movies. Loki is an actual show and was planned with at least a second season in mind (and while season 2 wasn't "officially" confirmed prior to today, it has been public knowledge for a while with production info being in an industry trade newsletter). As such, season 1 doesn't have the burden of telling a complete story, in the same way I don't expect it from the Mandalorian to give the example of another D+ show, or any ongoing series.

Whenever Loki ends its run, whether it's after season 2 or it runs longer, I do expect it to be some sort of cohesive whole and not to say, start up Season 3 with a *"See Ant-Man: Quantumania for the resolution of the Kang story" annotation.

That said, because they did do the villain reveal in final episode it was very exposition heavy. A good Jonathan Majors performance is mainly what saves from being the least exciting episode of the series. In fact, most of series only works because of the performances. The actual story is a bit of a mess if you spend any time thinking about, even beyond the fact that all time travel stories fall apart if you think about them. On top of that though there's an issue here in that the payoff at the end is that timelines are now allowed to branch, but it wasn't until this series started where we were told that they couldn't and there was one sacred timeline. It's a little odd because of things like Dr. Strange looking into a bunch of different futures in IW or Cap staying in the past where even the people that wrote the movie I think suggested he would have had to be in an alternate timeline before returning to the main timeline when he was old. Considering how closely Loki follows on Endgame it makes these inconsistencies stand out more, assuming they aren't explained at some point.

Perfect casting.
Perfect television.
Perfect segue into the next part of the MCU.

In 40 minutes they managed to make someone more compelling than Thanos.

My headcanon here is that Atticus from Lovecraft Country found himself reborn in the 31st century and became Kang.

Fight me.

I was just saying that since HBO isn't moving forward with another season of LC that I'd be more than happy to see Marvel bring in the entire cast. HBO/WB's deliberate loss should be someone else's gain. Misha Green has actually been posting some interesting tidbits on Twitter of what they had been kicking around had they gotten another season.


Edit: Also, I should note that most of my surprise with Kang/Immortus showing up here is that I had no idea Majors had been cast early enough for him to be in this. Word of his casting in Quantumania (a 2023 release) didn't get out until September of last year which was around the time Loki resumed filming (after Covid lockdowns). I had assumed there was no way the timing would have worked out.

That alone makes me feel totally comfortable with wherever they go in Phase 4. Other than the Falcon and Winter Soldier (and even that I didn't think was terrible, just mediocre in comparison to most other MCU stuff), every choice they've made has been fucking gold. It's been clear they have a plan.

It kind of makes me even more in awe of Feige. Even if he's not involved in the nuts and bolts of stories in anything other than an approval role, the clarity of vision and strength of story in the MCU has been consistent. Like the worst MCU movie/TV shows (F&WS, Black Widow, Dark World) is still as good if not better than all of the DCEU movies. Some will disagree with me on specific projects (some don't like Captain Marvel which I thought was decent, etc.) but taken as a whole, the goddamn line is well done. There are entire movie studios that haven't been able to say that ever, even over such a slice of time as a decade. God forbid Feige ever decides he doesn't want to do this anymore.

I've not always been fond of how they've treated directors like Wright, but I can't argue with their results.

Never having read any comics with Kang in them, when he explained his backstory, I immediately said "oh, he's Rick Sanchez.  Okay."   :why_so_serious:

My assumption re: branching timelines is two-fold:

a) Whatever produces branching timelines is hard-wired into the structure of time and the multiverse, which is why Strange could look at multiple timelines. The Loki series suggests it's free will, which is a pretty conventional answer found in most time-travel stories (and was usually the story-telling rule that Marvel's What If? comic followed except when it occasionally operated more like the old 'imaginary stories' in Silver Age DC Comics where you could do any old fool thing that didn't have to identify a branching point where someone chose differently than in an existing story). Hence the TVA pruning.

b) Immortus/Kang may have been at his Citadel at the End of Time for a long time from his subjective position, but for all we know the Multiversal War he's talking about essentially ended yesterday from everybody else's perspective. That's time travel for you--Doctor Who's Time War functioned roughly the same way (from the perspective of the Daleks and Gallifrey it went on and on for eons, but its effects were felt simultaneously across all time and space and in some sense it began and ended at almost the same moment.) Maybe the timelines were branching constantly in the Multiversal War (the Ancient One talks about timelines branching in Endgame) and then they stopped for a very brief moment in the history of the MCU as we've seen it so far and 'now' (whenever that is) it's starting up again.

This is kind of why I didn't really want them to fuck around with Kang: he's a colossal headache as a character and he's never really had a consistent personality or motivation and he inevitably makes universe-building harder and more confusing and more "*To see the conclusion of this story, please watch Ant-Man: Quantumania".

I quite like sudden introductions of hidden bad guys behind the scenes at the end of a story--nothing could be more comic-book than that. But Kang, even acted well, is gonna make shit confusing no matter what they do. He's only beatable generally because he allows himself to be beaten--in the absolute best Kang story ever by Busiek, Kang's son comes to spring him from jail after the end of the story (in which Kang has among other things conquered Earth, gotten the Avengers to surrender to him, and destroyed Washington DC and most of its people with a weapon of mass destruction) and says, "Hey, I've spent some time rebuilding all of your armies, we're ready to invade again and kill them all this time seconds after they defeated you before" and Kang just says "Not how I roll, we don't do it that way".

Timey-wimey.

You're a terrorist.

But now that he's said it, I can't get it out of my mind.   :why_so_serious:

Yeah.

It also totally fits with the exception that Rick Sanchez isn't really a conqueror so much as a destructive force. He's more Galactus if Galactus ate shrooms instead of planets, but it left the planet destroyed just the same.

Did anyone else notice that the timeline surrounding Kang/Immortus's fortune was a complete circle? I'm pretty sure that was an intentional hint at a possible resolution or explanation (i.e. the TVA timeline is a closed loop).

I echo this. Loki was near perfect for a Disney+ show. I almost kinda want to say it's better than Wandavision.

Also strongly against time travel.

And now we know why.  :drill:

Waiting for The Council of Kangs in season 2 now.

I think wandavision was probably better in execution, but loki wins on degree of difficulty.

Making a time travel plot not shit is hard, and making the resolution one of the best bits is even harder.

Yeah, I'll actually edge Loki over WandaVision for my tastes, but only because it was more direct where as WandaVision was a lot more experimental and out there (still amazing, mind you).

I skipped 3 episodes of WandaVision and still don't have motivation to rewatch the ones I skipped. I was only slightly worried that Loki will take a turn for the generic in episode 4ish.

WandaVision and Loki both have some small missteps, but overall I think I'd give WandaVision the edge for Bettany and Olsen's performances. Not to say that Hiddleston and the rest of the Loki cast aren't great but some of those scenes between Wanda and Vision towards the end of WandaVision hit pretty hard.

i'm sorry you can't experience joy

I’ve said it elsewhere but I’ll say it here too, this was the best season of Doctor Who since Davies stepped down as show runner.

That's not hard since Dr who is hammy butt

I did come across something today that pointed out that the Eternals flick might be an ideal place to launch a Kang/Rama Tut cameo/endcredits scene--if you start a movie in  the distant past and you're trying to light up a story under a time-travelling conqueror, that might be a natural.

Might also provide a pretty good origin for the Ten Rings that Shang-Chi's dad has--they're some future tech that Kang's soldiers lost in a trans-time shipment for one of his conquest.

https://thedirect.com/article/loki-season-2-filming-start-date

The good news: shooting to start soon, wrapping up by summer's end.

The less good: new directors are from Moon Knight.

Given their anti-tie-in stance, it seems like an odd choice. I enjoyed MK well enough but it wasn't near the level of quality of the Loki show.

I'm fairly certain the anti tie in thing was entirely about Oscar Isaac not wanting to get tied up with another big franchise and nothing else.

Yeah. I think it might even have been a contractual condition: promise nothing at all about where this goes, so that it's Isaac making the decisions, not anybody else.

They've been beaming about it in interviews, the gist is that they're amazing because the show worked without tie-ins to the point they actively removed them from the script.

Isaac was secondary, Khonshu can recast the role at any time.

The only thing I heard was about removing tie in mentions with the new Thor movie as they had no idea when it would be out and the bad guy is a god killer.

Yeah, you can see the Olympians in the Thor trailer, so I would guess we're gonna see some gods get fridged. But hey, the Egyptian gods seem mostly already fridged, depending on how you interpret what happens when Ammit gets into the meeting room.

https://thedirect.com/article/moon-knight-mcu-connections-avoiding

Now, the genesis may be Isaac's contract, but they definitely embraced it as a positive, since they list that as a reason they even wanted to do it. Which was what came to mind when I read that bit about running the Loki show.

They really seemed to imply it was just the avatars, and killing the avatars doesn't take out the gods.  Mind you they really didn't go into exactly wtf the gods are doing or how they function outside their avatars beyond Khonshu, and he seemed fine with his avatar dying if need be.

It sort of seems as if the gods get pretty well sidelined if they get stuffed back into their little statues, though, and the guy who was Ra's avatar put Khonshu's statue in a pretty big collection of mothballed gods.

I'd almost forgotten how delightful this show is.  I don't even mind that it's complete nonsense.

Ke Huy Quan is a great addition to the cast.

Really good first episode.

This is just pure fun.

It was great.

Wow, not only was that just a perfect finale to a great show they completely solved the Jonathan Majors problem going forward. They literally can take it any direction they want now. That shot of Loki at the end was incredible.

I've been trying to figure out what that final shot of Loki reminds me of, mythologically speaking, especially given his line about what kind of god he's going to be.  The green timeline branches are kind of treelike, so Odin hanging from Yggdrasil is one possible reference, but I don't think that's what they were going for.

I absolutely thought it was Yggdrasil, entirely on purpose--that Loki has made himself "the god of stories"--a living loom through which all timelines pass, sacrificing himself in the process.

Yeah, I think it was totally Yggdrasil. It's the first thing I thought of when they showed the tree.

Yggdrasil is what came to my mind also.

They even turn the Loom from a horizontal to a vertical orientation.

It was a lovely, moving end to the 2 seasons and sort-of-not-really to the character. (I think we can all see that he's likely to be the Nick Fury of the 'Multiverse Saga' in both the Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars--the prime mover who recruits people but can't directly intervene.) I was surprised at how much it affected me.

Things could go that way although Hiddleston also said some things today that many are interpreting as him being done with the role:

He's done the arc from villain to hero twice now, short of a cameo because he likes money it feels like a natural stopping point.