Loki Season 2 Review – By far the best Marvel TV show in years | Tom Hiddleston

IIf there was ever a time for a second season of Loki, it’s now. The first film was a witty adventure through time and space in which Tom Hiddleston’s lovably narcissistic Norse god charms viewers’ pants. There were some wild cameos (Richard E. Grant as a weird Loki stand-in!). They had sizzling chemistry (bromance with Agent Mobius, played by Owen Wilson!). There was even a tender blossoming of love (with Loki’s Metaverse alter ego Sylvie – arguably the most touching romance a TV character has ever had with himself). So, unsurprisingly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe chose to follow this TV triumph with a series of disastrous failures, culminating in June’s Secret Invasion. This was a series of shows that felt like a death sentence for the future of television as a whole.

Fortunately, Loki’s action-packed return suggests that Marvel is more than ready to rise to the challenge of shaking off its track record of TV dullness. We are taken to the exact moment where the previous season ended. Shortly after Sylvie (Sofia Di Martino) kills He Who Remains, the shadowy figure behind the Time Variance Authority (TVA). There are slow-motion chases, flying vehicle crashes, and Loki constantly encountering statues of the Left Behind. One thing is immediately clear that he is. If you’re expecting any of the following to make sense, you can’t avoid Season 1.

A large portion of the opener consists of Hiddleston disappearing into an alternate timeline. His body momentarily transforms into something straight out of Stranger Things: Upside Down, and he sounds like the guy who ate scampi, which is pretty old-fashioned. “That’s terrible,” Wilson’s Agent Mobius quipped. “You seem to be born or die, or both at the same time.” Establishing a series-long plot about temporal loops, arcane chains of causality, and the stabilization of the “time loom” , and the explanation is so complex that the characters may as well be chanting the word “McGuffin” over and over again. It all feels a little too complicated compared to the simple thrills of the first season. It’s a disappointing, if predictable, direction choice.

The decision to do away with season one’s pounding heart, namely the surprisingly lovely romance between Loki and Sylvie, is less explainable. This time, Di Martino’s character is reinvented as a time-jumping assassin, and Hiddleston moves even further away from his character’s mischievous past, working with Agent Mobius to fix McTime Wotshit, an extremely are walking separate paths. This creates more intense exchanges between Hiddleston and Wilson, but it also robs the show of its emotional weight. And with Loki no longer the bad guy compared to Mobius’ good cop, that glorious comic chemistry has lost its edge.

Nevertheless, performance is as great as ever. Hiddleston is great in every mode, from innocent to monstrous to ashen after a brutal insult from Sylvie. Di Martino is a vessel of bubbling empathy, his eyes always wet with sadness, even when he’s not bursting with murderous rage. Wunmi Mosaku’s revenge for her role as a TVA agent is indescribably intense, from donning a tangerine ballgown to defeating fugitives to subjecting her goofy colleagues to a Paddington-esque glare . And Owen Wilson…Owen Wilson: A twinkle in the eye in human form.

Spreading its wings, Loki’s second season manages to be a lot of fun. By episode two, it feels like a time-travel thriller, with Loki and Moebius being driven on era-specific missions. There’s a retro spy action set in London in the 1970s, with our heroes donning suits like extras from Gangs of New York and going on a hot chase through 19th century Chicago, complete with retro cash registers and romantic scenes. At McDonald’s in the 1980s, the tension is high as he tries to track down Sylvie. The design is great throughout, especially in the exquisitely stylized TVA building, where every computer monitor looks like the great-grandfather of the microwave, hallways lined with tarnished aquamarine file cabinets, and IT personnel (played by Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan) even catches the eye. He’s wearing a Ghostbusters-esque boiler suit that drips with vintage cool.

After a few episodes, things are settling into a fun enough, if not super exciting, groove. Then there’s a huge cliffhanger that upends the story, throws the audience into an unfair trap, and widens the show wide open. The last two of his works aren’t available in previews, so it’s hard to say whether this will be the catalyst for the show to scale up to the heights of the first season. But either way, one thing’s for sure: this is without a doubt the best Marvel TV series in years.