Marvel’s new show Loki on Disney+ dropped its first episode last week and watching it made me feel anxious: drumming fingers, narrowed eyes, and a growing pressure in my chest as the episode went on. I don’t normally get emotionally involved in television stories and I’ve spent the past few days thinking about why this show hit me.
Here’s your spoiler alert, though I don’t think I’m giving away more than what you can piece together from the trailers.
Let’s start with the character himself. Loki: trickster god, agent provocateur, a charming, minor evil. His sole purpose in the Marvel universe is getting beaten down again and again in the service of providing his brother Thor and the other Avengers motivation to get off their butts and save the day. He wants to be the master of his fate but whenever he’s presented as the main villain, we find out there’s someone more powerful behind him pulling the strings. When he’s not the villian, he’s usually in prison. He’s the Daffy Duck of Marvel. As the movies unfold, Loki begins a redemption arc and of course just when he’s turned over a new leaf, he gets killed. (It’s an unwritten storytelling rule that once blood has been spilled, villains can only be tragic heroes. Sorry, Kikuchiyo!)
Now what makes this new Loki character interesting? Let’s call him New Loki. New Loki is a time-splintered copy of Loki from the first Avengers movie (Loki Prime) who gets nabbed by cops in charge of the time lines. Through a series of Kafka-esque experiences with the time cop’s justice system, he’s rendered powerless (again), and rages against the injustice of being arrested for a crime of happenstance by an ultra-powerful cabal. New Loki eventually discovers how Loki Prime’s life turned out and has to face the futility and failure of his life choices. (This gets him to the same mental place as Loki Prime rather quickly. Handy when you need to keep the story moving along).
So what made me anxious? Injustice. The idea that there are secret police from a self-appointed power that interprets the “true” timeline of the universe and erases those that stray from that path, ensuring no one will ever learn the “rules” of time travel. Sounds like entrapment to me. They also rigged their justice system: it recognizes no innocence, and the accused have to defend themselves while ignorant of the system’s rules. Why even go through the motions of a court proceeding? It was this expression of absolute power coupled with the cruelty of offering hope when none exists that got me sympathizing with Loki. I was there for Loki rightly questioning the identity of these time lords (Dr. Who crossover, anyone?) and their motivations. We’ve all felt powerless an impotent like Loki; one of the coming story’s themes will be about control and self-determination.
This could be a very interesting series. New Loki is evidently hunting another time-skipping version of himself (Let’s call him Bad Loki), which seems ripe for all sorts of continuity errors. It wouldn’t surprise me if we found out Bad Loki started out just like New Loki and turned against the time cops at some point. This assumes two distinct Lokis. A more interesting story would be a long con job by New Loki to free himself from the time cops, where Evil Loki and New Loki are actually the same entity playing time games that ultimately break the time cop’s hold on the timeline and open up the Marvel Multiverse.
What do you think?
