‘Loki’ Season 2 Goes on a Wilder Time-Bending Trip That Sets up a New Marvel Villain

Alci Rengifo

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become such an expansive, rather cluttered affair that following it was starting to feel like a real chore. MCU boss Kevin Feige’s grand design began with movies then branched out into Disney Plus shows, which then connected to the next batch of big screen adventures. The second season of “Loki” is a refreshing and dynamic time where it’s all leading up to the next Marvel standoff, but you can also enjoy it as just fun TV. Like its first season, this one continues the show’s visual inventiveness with a pacing that harkens back to the way television used to be heart-stopping. It’s not trying to be one of the movies, standing on its own while giving Marvel fans plenty of hints about what Feige is cooking up.

Last season ended with much time-bending chaos culminating in the introduction of He Who Remains aka Kang (Jonathan Majors). To the shock of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), He Who Remains revealed that it was he who created the Timeline Variance Authority. Sylvie, already desperate to get rid of the TVA, killed He Who Remains and set off chaos in all time branches. Loki returned to a TVA where Mobius (Owen Wilson) and B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) didn’t recognize him anymore. Now afflicted with “time jumping,” Loki manages to find the correct timeline where Mobius does know him and the two begin to scramble to save time. They have to find a variant of He Who Remains before he’s captured by renegades Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). The latter are keenly aware of who He Who Remains is meant to be, which Loki and Mobius also discover when they realize the TVA’s walls are a façade for emblems and carved faces of Kang. 

It’s an understatement to call the plot of “Loki” complicated. Like the comic books the whole MCU is culled from, it’s all intelligently-crafted mumbo jumbo. The point is to go for the ride with Loki and Mobius as they race to save time. Fans are aware the wider plot involving Kang is meant to connect to the evolving, grander MCU storyline where he will be the next cosmic warlord every other hero will have to face, like Thanos in “Avengers.” The character was already introduced earlier this year in the poorly-received “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” This show is almost like a good corrective, allowing the villain to have some mystery and build-up, even if Disney is now famously cornered by actor Jonathan Majors’ recent arrest and legal troubles. Nothing has changed in the presentation of the character and by the third episode, Majors is a key member of the cast. 

As it gets bigger, “Loki” still retains its appeal as the closest Marvel has come to making an engaging detective series. Filmed in rich tones and trippy visuals, like David Fincher meets psychedelia, this also remains the best-looking Marvel series since “WandaVision.” Sylvie disappears into the 1980s, where she wants to understand the joys of a regular life by working at McDonald’s. The nostalgia so common now in pop culture works here since the whole point is time travel. The character is given real meaning, because we can feel her need to escape and seek happiness in the little things. Loki, Mobius, Renslayer and Miss Minutes then all travel to Chicago in the 1890s, to track down a variant of He Who Remains at the World’s Fair. Richly lit like a Terrence Malick film, this whole chapter in the season works like a small period film. He Who Remains is introduced as a bumbling inventor who is a mere shadow of the Kang that will scorch worlds later. 

The writing becomes more archaic this season but it’s not a bore to follow. Wilson and Hiddleston make sure to give the dialogue a crackling energy. Ke Huy Quan, fresh off his Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” joins the cast as the fantastically-named Ouroboros, who is basically the TVA’s head engineer and explains everything that can go wrong. When necessary, he also provides the needed gadgets for dangerous walks towards raging time storms out in the cosmos to try and fix a crisis. For the committed fan, a notebook might be necessary to take notes of every time Loki jumps into a different timeline or bumps into a double of him. Beneath it all the show nonetheless brings back some of that special pathos that was always present in the better MCU titles. Mobius discovers he and everyone at TVA are variants of people living in normal timelines on Earth, yet he likes his job so much, he’s terrified of learning what the other him does for a living. Loki is constantly reminded by adversaries that he’s out of place as a time cop. Deep down he must realize he’s the villain we met in the “Thor” movies. Bits of that old Loki appear when he tortures someone for information. Tara Strong sounds like she’s having too much fun as the AI being Miss Minutes, who starts going insane when she and Renslayer find He Who Remains. He created her in the future, after all, so she’s madly obsessed, even in love, with him.

Despite increasing scoffs from those tired of all its archaic growth, when it works the MCU still captures the best of why comic books and pop art mean so much to its fans. Lately, some of the Marvel shows had been lacking in the lively creativity and dramatic effort of the better titles. Shows like “Secret Invasion” and “Hawkeye” were also starting to look rather stale. “Loki” has style, energy and as a puzzle works on its own terms. Being confused is part of the fun, because we all know where it’s going anyway with the Kang storyline. And when we’re not trying to connect the dots to the next big phase of Feige’s universe, we actually care for the characters. “Loki” at heart is about how time keeps slipping away, whether we like it or not. Comic books always knew how to tap into those ideas, while making sure you had a blast diving in.

“Loki” season two begins streaming Oct. 5 with new episodes premiering Thursdays on Disney+.