Ocean’s Eleven, The Sting, American Gods. I love a good con story, and I was hoping Loki would deliver something similar. A good con story at its heart a magic trick, a story within a story that fools you, then shows you how it was done. The character of Loki is a natural fit for this kind of story: a trickster god, a master of illusion and misdirection, the kind of guy who prefers a knife to the back over a standup fight. The series went in another direction.
Spoiler warning
I predicted that the big reveal at season’s end would be Loki freeing himself from the TVA through some intricate con taking advantage of time paradoxes and multiple versions of himself. A trickster god showing everyone how to out-think your opponent when facing overwhelming power. Instead we got a story about choices and free will. There were interesting and amusing points in the storytelling but my big question at the end of the series finale was “Hey show runners, why is this a Loki story?”
To be fair:
If we’re going to see Loki in new Marvel movies, we need to transform New Loki from sniveling villain into someone closer to Loki Prime, the remorseful hero who died in the Avengers movie. There’s not a lot of space to show this character development, and while the writers bent my credulity with some of New Loki’s decisions they never broke it.
The Marvel Multi-verse idea also needs introducing. (Wandavision was supposed to do this with a Doctor Strange/Mephisto cameo but they scrapped the idea.) Why introduce a multiverse? It unties the screenwriter’s hands for further projects, allowing for things like alternate character stories or casting different actors in familiar roles(Natalie Portman playing Thor, for example). It’s a neat trick for doing story reboots without having to call them such, or replacing actors in roles without having to contort story cannon to do so (right, Doctor Who?)
Fair or not:
Loki gets a love interest. Sure it’s a version of himself and Agent Mobius rightly points out how narcissistic this is, but I thought it was a perfect solution to a potential pitfall. Now I don’t think Loki needed a love interest, but it makes the story more appealing to broader audiences and Disney wants the largest audience possible. I didn’t mind the Sylvie character; she seems to be closer to Loki Prime in temperament than New Loki and is way more fun to watch. The other thing this subplot does is give New Loki a reason to change. Whenever he’s making the heroic decision, it’s usually because he’s doing it for Sylvie.
Totally Unfair:
I don’t recognize this New Loki at season’s end. He’s somehow the most conservative version of himself, ultimately arguing for order over chaos, relying less on subterfuge and more on fighting his way through a scene. The most disappointing part of this series is Loki is constantly reacting to each situation like he’s one step behind everyone else when it should be the other way around. I’m trying to figure out where the trickster god went. I hope Loki’s transformation isn’t complete, and we’ll see a more interesting Loki emerge in later stories.
The Climatic Finale?
The last episode involved a lot of talking and info-dumping and not a lot climatic problem solving. It makes sense in the larger MCU meta story, but doesn’t serve the Loki series well. One of the episode’s major criticisms is that the final episode’s big reveal made all the previous episodes meaningless by the (circular) assertion by He Who Remains that everything Loki and Sylvie have done has been pre-ordained. In short, every choice they made up until that point was no choice at all. Make no mistake: in a story about free will, this viewpoint has to be expressed.
Two problems:
- We invest in characters precisely because of the choices they make, or are prevented from making. The fancy term for this is character agency. When you take agency away, you don’t have characters, you have ignorant puppets wearing plot armor which makes them extremely hard to identify with and root for.
- If you’re going to have one character argue against free will, someone else in the story has to make the good-faith counter-argument. He Who Remains makes his argument against free will in 10 minutes of screen time. Loki and Sylvia demonstrate the opposing view by having a knife fight. That is not arguing in good faith. It might even be propoganda.
TL;DR: It’s an entertaining show that aspires to do too many things at once.
What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
