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Complaining about Loki
So I watched all six episodes of Loki, and that's 6 hours of my life I'll never get back. I enjoyed parts of it (especially episode 5) enough to hope I might end up liking it at the end. Spoiler: I did not! So expect much complaining and squee-harshing under the cut.
- Time travel/dimension travel in fiction is total nonsense. This is a given; there's no explanation that is going to make it less nonsensical or keep it from occasionally violating its own stated rules. Every time travel canon is like that. Therefore, what I want from a time travel canon is easy. I want it to give me a few stupid, arbitrary rules about how time travel/dimension travel works in this canon and then try not to break them (much). A canon that can't even manage to do that, and breaks them freely in every direction, is going to annoy me to death. Ultimately I ended up just metaphorically throwing up my hands in the last episode and going with whatever the show said because there is absolutely no way to predict from moment to moment what effect any given action is going to have on the timeline because it's 100% running on "because we say so."
- I was deeply, thoroughly annoyed that they took a catnippy premise like "Loki meets alternate universe versions of himself" and squandered it (mostly) on a nonstop series of easter eggs for comics readers.
Look, most of the AU versions of Loki that we saw made no sense based on how time travel rules are supposed to work (there is no way most of those Lokis were the results of a few minutes/hours/days of timeline divergence) but if they're going to go for that level of variation, there were tons of far more plausible AUs that we never saw. We should have had at least a few Frost Giant Lokis. We should have had Thor!Loki, and Loki as a king, and Loki who was never adopted. We should have had WAY more Lokis that were basically our Loki with one small decision different. Given both this Loki and Ragnarok!Loki's tendency to go hero more or less at the drop of a hat (or at least with half a movie/a couple of episodes' worth of character growth), and considering that being a hero is one of the main things that would get him pruned, there should also have been a lot of hero Lokis. But we didn't get any of that, because the show was mainly sticking to comics variations on Loki and sight gags like the alligator. Which was funny! I liked the alligator! But ...
One of the main things I love about AU doubles is that they allow us to learn more about the canon character. A good alternate universe story can take the characters we love and use them to stab us in the heart and show us all their best and worst qualities.
But doing it this way, we aren't really learning anything about MCU Loki. We mainly learn about comics Loki, because that's mostly what they're showing us, and comics Loki is a very different, considerably more classically villainnish character. The comics have vanishingly few hero Lokis because he just isn't like that. So we didn't see any because comics AUs was what it decided to give us.
Plus, I kept feeling like the show is pushing a version of Loki that is both depressing and pointedly conflicts with at least some of what we see on screen - a sad sack loser, batted around by life, who never wins or can really end up a hero because he self-sabotages. Early on, I felt like the show was setting up this premise only to knock it down in the back half once he gets to start making better choices. Instead, it wobbled back and forth between undermining it and propping it up. Every once in a while the general theme of making yourself who you want to be (you don't have to be a villain, you can choose to be the hero this time) rears up and then gets undercut by the show. There was just enough of what I wanted that I couldn't simply hate the show in peace but enough backpedaling that it was a constant Lucy-and-the-football dynamic, never knowing if the show was going to outright go where I wanted it to, or kick me (and Loki) in the face.
And, I mean!! Loki DOES have aspects of that! And some versions of him are going to embrace it wholeheartedly. He does even deserve at least SOME kicking while he's down! I just felt that the show leaned way harder into sad-sack loser Loki than I want from a protagonist, even if it's not inconsistent with his previous characterization.
- Kang the Conquerer was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. His giggly I-know-better-than-you manner worked my last nerve every minute he was onscreen. I HATE that he's almost certain to be a major part of the MCU over the next few years. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the new multi-movie big bad -- the new Thanos -- and while Thanos was boring and occasionally irritating, at least I didn't find him unwatchable. Kang alone may be enough to turn me off from watching every movie he's in. I find him unbearable.
In general, I have vanishingly little interest in watching another season of this. I'll probably just spoil myself and watch any fun-looking scenes in gifs or on Youtube. Because there WAS stuff I liked! Hunter B-15, for example. I love her. I want that actress to be in everything from now on. I want to watch a whole show about her and Loki running around the timeline. There were times when I liked Mobius (still can't get over Owen Wilson as a DILF; this is all kinds of disconcerting for me), even though there were also times when Mobius and Loki's relationship really hit some unpleasant abusive-parent vibes. (The blend of controlling/imprisoning Loki + torturing him in his memories, combined with the "but you BETRAYED ME" *disappointed look* and "but we're FRIENDS" hit me so, so wrong. But the hug was sweet.)
And the show gave me surprisingly many Loki and Thor feels for being an AU offshoot from back when he was still a villain + Thor not being around at all. I'm willing to take crumbs, because I was expecting nothing, and instead I got some very satisfying tidbits of Loki loving and missing his brother.
I also love that - at least for now - the end of the season makes every AU canonical; the Agents of SHIELD universe, the Agent Carter universe, the Netflix shows, realities in which the Snap was undone or never happened at all, and realities in which Loki survived the fight with Thanos are all out there.
And the fifth episode was just generally a lot of fun! I found a lot of the rest of the show draggy and nonsensical and sometimes depressing, with occasional bright spots. But that episode was nonsensical in a really fun way. Look, I am willing to forgive a lot of nonsense if I'm being entertained and getting good character stuff (I forgave a lot of nonsense in Falcon & Winter Soldier, for example, because the fun parts were so fun for me). And the fifth episode was really fun! It made me like Mobius! It made me enjoy the AU Lokis despite my skepticism! It gave delightful teamups like Sylvie + Mobius and it had that AMAZING scene with "our" Loki watching with an absolutely indescribable expression while his AU doubles brawl. It was exciting and tense and dramatic, and the protagonists got to really protag instead of being batted around like chew toys. I would have really enjoyed a whole show like that.
Edit: And then I read an article about how the guy who wrote Loki - formerly a Rick & Morty writer, which explains a lot all of a sudden* - is going to be one of the key voices guiding the next phase of the MCU. Noooouuuuuuuu. Well, I guess I can go back to ignoring the future movies in peace then.
*There's nothing inherently wrong with Rick & Morty. My husband loves it. However, it's a show that I very emphatically do not get on with. I dutifully watched a couple of episodes and absolutely hated it.
This is my basic problem with the current MCU in a nutshell, though. Rolling all their properties together and forcing them to conform to a single creative vision means that if you don't like that vision, you're out of luck.
- Time travel/dimension travel in fiction is total nonsense. This is a given; there's no explanation that is going to make it less nonsensical or keep it from occasionally violating its own stated rules. Every time travel canon is like that. Therefore, what I want from a time travel canon is easy. I want it to give me a few stupid, arbitrary rules about how time travel/dimension travel works in this canon and then try not to break them (much). A canon that can't even manage to do that, and breaks them freely in every direction, is going to annoy me to death. Ultimately I ended up just metaphorically throwing up my hands in the last episode and going with whatever the show said because there is absolutely no way to predict from moment to moment what effect any given action is going to have on the timeline because it's 100% running on "because we say so."
- I was deeply, thoroughly annoyed that they took a catnippy premise like "Loki meets alternate universe versions of himself" and squandered it (mostly) on a nonstop series of easter eggs for comics readers.
Look, most of the AU versions of Loki that we saw made no sense based on how time travel rules are supposed to work (there is no way most of those Lokis were the results of a few minutes/hours/days of timeline divergence) but if they're going to go for that level of variation, there were tons of far more plausible AUs that we never saw. We should have had at least a few Frost Giant Lokis. We should have had Thor!Loki, and Loki as a king, and Loki who was never adopted. We should have had WAY more Lokis that were basically our Loki with one small decision different. Given both this Loki and Ragnarok!Loki's tendency to go hero more or less at the drop of a hat (or at least with half a movie/a couple of episodes' worth of character growth), and considering that being a hero is one of the main things that would get him pruned, there should also have been a lot of hero Lokis. But we didn't get any of that, because the show was mainly sticking to comics variations on Loki and sight gags like the alligator. Which was funny! I liked the alligator! But ...
One of the main things I love about AU doubles is that they allow us to learn more about the canon character. A good alternate universe story can take the characters we love and use them to stab us in the heart and show us all their best and worst qualities.
But doing it this way, we aren't really learning anything about MCU Loki. We mainly learn about comics Loki, because that's mostly what they're showing us, and comics Loki is a very different, considerably more classically villainnish character. The comics have vanishingly few hero Lokis because he just isn't like that. So we didn't see any because comics AUs was what it decided to give us.
Plus, I kept feeling like the show is pushing a version of Loki that is both depressing and pointedly conflicts with at least some of what we see on screen - a sad sack loser, batted around by life, who never wins or can really end up a hero because he self-sabotages. Early on, I felt like the show was setting up this premise only to knock it down in the back half once he gets to start making better choices. Instead, it wobbled back and forth between undermining it and propping it up. Every once in a while the general theme of making yourself who you want to be (you don't have to be a villain, you can choose to be the hero this time) rears up and then gets undercut by the show. There was just enough of what I wanted that I couldn't simply hate the show in peace but enough backpedaling that it was a constant Lucy-and-the-football dynamic, never knowing if the show was going to outright go where I wanted it to, or kick me (and Loki) in the face.
And, I mean!! Loki DOES have aspects of that! And some versions of him are going to embrace it wholeheartedly. He does even deserve at least SOME kicking while he's down! I just felt that the show leaned way harder into sad-sack loser Loki than I want from a protagonist, even if it's not inconsistent with his previous characterization.
- Kang the Conquerer was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. His giggly I-know-better-than-you manner worked my last nerve every minute he was onscreen. I HATE that he's almost certain to be a major part of the MCU over the next few years. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the new multi-movie big bad -- the new Thanos -- and while Thanos was boring and occasionally irritating, at least I didn't find him unwatchable. Kang alone may be enough to turn me off from watching every movie he's in. I find him unbearable.
In general, I have vanishingly little interest in watching another season of this. I'll probably just spoil myself and watch any fun-looking scenes in gifs or on Youtube. Because there WAS stuff I liked! Hunter B-15, for example. I love her. I want that actress to be in everything from now on. I want to watch a whole show about her and Loki running around the timeline. There were times when I liked Mobius (still can't get over Owen Wilson as a DILF; this is all kinds of disconcerting for me), even though there were also times when Mobius and Loki's relationship really hit some unpleasant abusive-parent vibes. (The blend of controlling/imprisoning Loki + torturing him in his memories, combined with the "but you BETRAYED ME" *disappointed look* and "but we're FRIENDS" hit me so, so wrong. But the hug was sweet.)
And the show gave me surprisingly many Loki and Thor feels for being an AU offshoot from back when he was still a villain + Thor not being around at all. I'm willing to take crumbs, because I was expecting nothing, and instead I got some very satisfying tidbits of Loki loving and missing his brother.
I also love that - at least for now - the end of the season makes every AU canonical; the Agents of SHIELD universe, the Agent Carter universe, the Netflix shows, realities in which the Snap was undone or never happened at all, and realities in which Loki survived the fight with Thanos are all out there.
And the fifth episode was just generally a lot of fun! I found a lot of the rest of the show draggy and nonsensical and sometimes depressing, with occasional bright spots. But that episode was nonsensical in a really fun way. Look, I am willing to forgive a lot of nonsense if I'm being entertained and getting good character stuff (I forgave a lot of nonsense in Falcon & Winter Soldier, for example, because the fun parts were so fun for me). And the fifth episode was really fun! It made me like Mobius! It made me enjoy the AU Lokis despite my skepticism! It gave delightful teamups like Sylvie + Mobius and it had that AMAZING scene with "our" Loki watching with an absolutely indescribable expression while his AU doubles brawl. It was exciting and tense and dramatic, and the protagonists got to really protag instead of being batted around like chew toys. I would have really enjoyed a whole show like that.
Edit: And then I read an article about how the guy who wrote Loki - formerly a Rick & Morty writer, which explains a lot all of a sudden* - is going to be one of the key voices guiding the next phase of the MCU. Noooouuuuuuuu. Well, I guess I can go back to ignoring the future movies in peace then.
*There's nothing inherently wrong with Rick & Morty. My husband loves it. However, it's a show that I very emphatically do not get on with. I dutifully watched a couple of episodes and absolutely hated it.
This is my basic problem with the current MCU in a nutshell, though. Rolling all their properties together and forcing them to conform to a single creative vision means that if you don't like that vision, you're out of luck.
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formerly a Rick & Morty writer
This is an absolute nightmare scenario to me with any franchise I care about so uh. Yeah. Ouch.
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RIGHT?? I just edited in a quick little caveat that this is a personal issue on my end, but I can think of few things I want less than Rick & Morty's creative stylings applied to anything I actually care about.
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I watched exactly one epiode of Rick & Morty and spanged off it so hard I can't even remember the plot, but it left me with an overwhelming impression of the so-called kind of humor that provokes an emotional reaction strictly for the purpose of mocking the fact that the audience responded at all. It wasn't even cynical, it was just sort of mean-spirited. Horrible things happen! What a sucker you are for feeling anything about them! I noped out. [edit] I can deal with nihilism; I have no room left in my life for trolling.
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How disappointing!
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And the show seemed to rely on the viewer already having that information to understand it, as opposed to earlier installments of the MCU where you could catch some fun bonus info if you had read the comics, but you didn't have to have read them. In this case, you actually DO need to, for example, recognize Kid Loki's costume in order to understand what was going on there, as my husband didn't. This show felt, at times, a little too much like it was written by one of those obnoxious detail-obsessed snobby fanboys who judge you for not having obsessively memorized all those details too.
But there was good stuff, though! I agree about the Classic, Kid, and Alligator triad, and Classic Loki in particular was great; he felt like he could actually be a plausible continuation of Ragnarok Loki who managed to live a lot longer. And I also really enjoyed Mobius and B-15's rebellion; that was all really great and I wish we'd had more of them and less of Kang infodumping endlessly about the multiverse.
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And then I read an article about how the guy who wrote Loki - formerly a Rick & Morty writer, which explains a lot all of a sudden* - is going to be one of the key voices guiding the next phase of the MCU.
I have never seen a single episode, but from osmosis, OMGNO. :(
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I do wish overall that "Loki" had been more like eps 1 and 5 -- for me it was one of those shows that when it worked it really worked! Especially the references with Loki & Thor. And Loki Classic was amazing. And I enjoyed the TVA -- for me either I like time travel to follow strict rules, or else just go bonkers, and comic timelines are always bonkers, so the idea of anyone trying to control that complete nonsense is inherently funny to me. (Though the end dude -- so that was Kang the Conqueror? I know enough about Marvel to know the name but I don't think I've read any comics with him -- yeeeeeah he was not one of the highlights of the show. If he's actually going to be a major villain in the MCU he'll need a lot of retooling because he wasn't either intimidating or interesting.)
(...also it is annoying to have a show named after the protagonist, I keep getting confused about whether I'm talking about Loki the character or the show?)
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Also, the syncing of the show title with the character name is soooo annoying for trying to filter things on Tumblr, especially when I was avoiding spoilers. :P
I was very pleasantly surprised the show gave me such good Thor & Loki feels, and I did really love Classic Loki and Kid Loki! (Also the whole scene with the fighting Lokis will never stop being amazing.) And I don't know if it gave you fannish vibes or not, but I basically came out of it wanting aallll the fic about Loki getting back to Thor in various ways and in various timelines. I am predictable.
... somehow I have no Loki icon OR Thor icon! I guess I'll just go with Carol for my Generic Superheroes icon.
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The Thor & Loki feels were wonderful -- Loki Classic admitting that he got caught because he missed people and his brother, and Loki clearly understanding that too well, awww. They're not my fandom right now but they're forever one of my favorites, and I loved how most of the show wasn't about that relationship or anything, but they had just enough to make it clear how important it is to Loki.
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I liked Kang more than you - I thought the actor did well with what he was given - but no season finale should be a 30 minute long monologue. The one upside to Kang is that there are many, many different versions of him, so it is likely he'll be different in the movies. (A slightly more hilarious upside - he is possibly a descendant of both Dr. Doom and Reed Richards; I like to think they worked out their differences and got back together at some point in some timeline.)
But I agree that this show didn't lean into the fun parts of its premise (time travel! many Lokis! the amazing art design for the TVA!) and instead seemed to sideline or make passive its title character an awful lot. I was hoping for the MCU's answer to Legends of Tomorrow and all I got was alligator!Loki instead.
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Oh boy. I'm not an MCU person, but you have my sympathies. The Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks was also created by a R&M writer, and I bounced off it so hard. I think I have a pretty high tolerance for flawed media (I mean... *gestures at my fandoms*) and I was highly motivated to give it a fair chance, but what I watched of Lower Decks was just so unpleasant and failed so hard at doing anything interesting with its premise, I got through two episodes and really couldn't bring myself to go on.
I've never watched R&M because it didn't seem like something I'd enjoy, and that experience definitely didn't change my mind.
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I did like Loki's line to Sylvie, that she couldn't trust and he couldn't be trusted. Sad but true.
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This was exactly the feel I got from the couple of gifs I'd seen, and ultimately why I decided not to watch. Like someone said above the second-hand embarrassment factor is too high, and coupled with the rest of this post I'm definitely not the target audience for this.
Which is a shame, as I absolutely adored Loki (and Thor) in Ragnarok movie. It'll just have to stay my forever headcanon for the two of them. (What IW?!)
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Oh! I hadn't stopped to crystallize why the Loki and Mobius relationship wasn't really working for me (except for like a brief moment in episode 5), but I think that's probably why.
And also agreed that while the other Lokis in episode 5 were neat, nothing about them (except Classic Loki) felt like a proper AU scenario.
(Personally, I liked episodes 1-5 on the whole, and the finale just kind of made me go 'huh'. I guess I ended up with no strong feelings either way, but will probably tune in for season 2.)
re: Kang (whom I'm still making up my mind about -- I think I would've liked the performance fine if there had been considerably less of it XD) -- I've seen several YouTube places point out that if one disliked this particular variant, the version(s?) that shows up in the actual MCU movies are likely to be very different. So I hope that if he is the next phase arc bad guy, that one will be less nails-on-chalkboard-y for you.
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Maybe it's just because I've never seen even a second of Rick & Morty (and based on what I've heard, DO NOT WANT), but the vibe I got was "Tennant-era Doctor Who, with a bigger budget". I do agree that the whole thing didn't make a lick of sense if you stop to think about it for a nano-second. So, just like Doctor Who. XD
I rather enjoyed Kang's monologue; I found the actor pretty compelling, and he was certainly going all-out on the role. Probably helps that I have zero comic book knowledge so didn't even know he was A Thing until reading fandom reaction stuff.
The only thing I really could have done without was the Loki/Sylvie romantic relationship, since that pinged me as oddly mastubatory. I would have preferred a platonic relationship there, maybe with Loki finding himself taking on a Thor-like big brother role to a more Loki-like Sylvie.
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Thanks for the detailed review and sorry for those 6 hours :)
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But doing it this way, we aren't really learning anything about MCU Loki.
That was my biggest disappointment, too. I was hoping to learn a lot more about the other Lokis, which would in turn help our Loki to realize new things about himself. But we didn’t get any of that. Even Sylvie wasn’t explored as much as she could have been, and Richard E. Grant was criminally under-utilized.
For a show that billed itself as an exploration of identity, most of the characters remained ciphers by the end.
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(Me, yelling at people, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME TRAVEL AND TIMESPACE DIMENSIONAL TRAVEL)
Anyway.
I did like Human Lightning McQueen.
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I realise they had to make distinct visual differences with most Loki's just for practical reasons, and I can sort of force it to work in my head with Loki being able to shapeshift - for Sylvie, at least, I'm convinced her nexus event was that she decided to be female. But there should have been a dozen Lokis played by Tom Hiddleston, he would without a doubt in the world have been able to pull all the different nuanced versions. I'm particularly sour that we didn't get him facing a version of himself who stuck with Jotunn blue skin.
Overall I didn't mind it, right up till the end. I hate cliffhangers with an ice cold rage, and we didn't even get a reasonably satisfying final episode to keep up a good mood in the indefinite wait. Episode 5 was the best. Kudos to Tom Hiddleston for acting his heart out, and there were bits I liked throughout, but overall.... just a disappointment for something I had such high hopes for.
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