By Dante Spado
Spoilers for episode one of Loki
I’m baaaack. Like Loki himself, you may have thought I was gone, but I’m here to make a glorious return in the form of a new blog. I’m hot off watching the Loki series premiere and I thought it was only fair to write a blog about it, just like I did for the other two Marvel shows.
Instantly, I get WandaVision vibes from this show. It’s weird and a little confusing, but in a good way. Fresh off of stealing the Tesseract (name a more iconic duo than Loki and his favorite blue cube) during the events of Avengers: Endgame, Loki is apprehended by the Time Variance Authorities (TVA), the governing body of the multiverse and its timeline. There have been LOTS of rumors and speculations about the multiverse coming to make its debut in the MCU, especially since such emphasis was put on Steve Rodgers needing to return the Infinity Stones to where they belong lest another timeline pops up. Additionally, the next Dr. Strange movie has the word “multiverse” in its title and there have been rumors for the better part of a year about a few ex-Spider-Men joining Tom Holland in his next movie.
All that aside, this is the first time within the MCU that they’ve finally acknowledged a multiverse. In true MCU fashion, they were able to make it seem like a natural thing. Like DUH, of course it’s always been here. Instead of displaying its power and importance in a big, spectacular way, it was portrayed as a bureaucratic, DMV-like office.
Loki, of course, only ever does big, spectacular things, such as leading a full-scale invasion on Earth or faking his own death and impersonating his father to rule Asgard. As you might suspect, the TVA, with its ticketing line and paperwork, wasn’t exactly his style. It takes all of five minutes for him to get the controller for his time-warping collar, escape from the room he was being held in and get the Tesseract back from the evidence drawer.
There was only one problem: the evidence drawer housed several other Infinity Stones from Variants like Loki who broke away from their timeline. It’s only then that Loki realizes how powerful this place really is; if the Infinity Stones have no power in the TVA, what could he possibly do?
Loki was also humbled by learning he never conquers Earth, or any place, really. He just ends up dying at the hands of his old boss, Thanos (I’d love to see Thanos’ reaction to learning the Stones aren’t as all-powerful as he thought).
Sidenote: I thought there were a lot of parallels to Thor: Ragnarok when Thor landed on Sakaar. He also was taken captive in a weird place, stripped of his identity and restrained by a device on his neck. I guess it runs in the family.
As the god of mischief, Loki has lived up to his name and gotten himself into a lot of precarious situations over the course of his outings in the MCU. From fighting with frost giants, the Avengers, dark elves and the goddess of death (his sister), Loki has interacted with some strange things. However, none may be stranger than helping the TVA track down and apprehend ANOTHER Variant version of himself. Will Variant 2012 Loki, the one who has yet to go through the character transformation of main-timeline Loki, be helpful and play ball with the TVA? Or will he team up with the other “bad” Loki to cause even more mischief and mayhem?
After all, the only thing that’s more troublesome than one Loki is two Lokis.