Loki recap: Loki finally figures out what the hell he wants
At last, Loki strides back into center stage with real desire in his heart
TV Reviews Loki
Listen: Loki Laufeyson has come unstuck in time…again.
Amazingly enough, it turns out that last week’s apparently apocalyptic installment of Loki did not result in the complete and total destruction of the multiverse–presumably because, if it did, Kevin Feige would start sending very pointed emails to not go around blowing up the fictional universe he’s spent the last decade-plus of his life creating. Instead, the results of the Temporal Loom detonating itself in “The Heart Of The TVA” are much more mundane (at least at first), as all of the Variants of the Time Variance Authority apparently just got blown back into their proper positions on whatever branched timeline initially produced them, and Loki himself starts time-slipping all over again.
After blowing a couple of minutes on Fun With Time Loops, “Science/Fiction” gets down to the business of using Loki’s resumed hops and skips as its overall framing device, as he finds himself pulled to points in time–Alcatraz in 1962, New York in 2012, Cleveland in 2022, Pasadena in 1994, and, for a fleeting moment, a McDonald’s parking lot in Brockton, Oklahoma–populated by his friends from the TVA. That’s not a coincidence, points out frustrated science fiction author A.D. Doug, Ph. D. (a.k.a. O.B., with Ke Huy Quan in familiar, but welcome, territory as a slightly sadder multiversal version of his TVA self), who quickly notes that Loki must be driving the jumps somehow, even if his efforts to consciously go Quantum Leaping through time produce nothing but an amusing new minute for Tom Hiddleston’s ever-expanding comedy highlight reel.
In what feels like a weird beat for the character, Loki rejects Doug’s early assertion that it should be the “fiction” side of the science-fiction synthesis that can save the day, though, insisting that there must be a scientific process to save the TVA. (This is as opposed to trying to drive and understand his personal story to gain control of the jumps; the episode has to pull this to set up the basic rug-pull it’s working toward in its last moments–and the idea of Loki refusing to look closely enough at his own motivations holds–but Loki’s embrace of science over narrative feels like an odd choice for a guy who’s, y’know, literally a wizard.)
And so we go a-questin’, as Loki jumps through time, convincing his former friends to come together to let him “scan their temporal auras” and help him save the TVA. The biggest focus of these scenes is, unsurprisingly, Don the Jet Ski salesman (Owen Wilson), whose frankly sad existence (and horrible sons) do not appear to have much diminished his love of life or the many merits of personal watercraft. Hiddleston and Wilson are always good together, but they find some interesting new notes to play together, Loki going warmer than usual toward his only friend, and Wilson letting a wary huckster show through the easy smiles. (These scenes also produce the best bleak comedy bit of the episode, as Doug pops in to reveal that exposure to the TVA Handbook has caused him to lose his job, and his wife, as he spent 18 unseen months building a makeshift, highly bulky TemPad.)
Loki saves the most painful reunion for last, of course–and runs into one of these moments of blind stupidity the show occasionally sticks him with when it’s hiding a pretty clear plot twist: Obviously Sylvie, who adopted her life in Product Placement, OK, rather than being plucked from it by the TVA, wouldn’t be operating under the same memory restrictions of the rest of the cast, even before you get into the god of it all. She’s just been doing exactly what she always said she wanted to do: living a life, equally free of Asgard and the TVA’s temporal policing. (She also held on to her TemPad, which Loki never seems to do in these situations because…well, she’s smarter than him.)
The subsequent conversation between the two Variants highlights an issue Loki keeps smacking its head into in its second season, though, pretty much every time it tries to run its more heavy emotional complexities directly through the lens of its science-fiction high concepts (mixing up its “science” and its “fiction,” to use the terms of this week’s installment). Science-fiction-as-metaphor is a fine and long tradition, of course, but it has to be used with some care, lest your whole story dissolve into strictly figurative soup. To take an example from this episode: Sylvie is in no way wrong when she diagnoses Loki with mixed-up motivations for his jaunts through time, ultimately pushing him to admit he’s less interested in the preservation of the timelines, or the TVA, than he is in holding onto the first place where he’s ever felt like he has friends who accept him for who he is. Said speech is metaphorically spot-on, making some very trenchant points about Loki’s blinkered devotion to the TVA (and, for someone who literally started last week’s review by asking what the hell Loki wants, was pretty dang satisfying to hear a character put into words). But since the plot side of that speech also advises totally ignoring the CGI Space Wedgie that exploded last week–and which is now, apparently, turning every timeline into so much temporal spaghetti–it runs the risk of re-casting her very fair points about Loki’s motivations as potentially lethal distractions.
The issue here is that Loki is obviously far more interested in solving what Doug would call “the fiction problem,” sketching out the steps required to get Loki to a place where he realizes that all he wants in life is the power to protect his friends (which includes, as it turns out, watching them all get existentially linguini’d, in a series of legitimately disturbing effects scenes). But we in the audience still have to stick around for the many scenes devoted to the “science” side of the plot, i.e., caring at least a little bit about the mechanics of exploding Time Looms, temporal auras, etc. By aiming relentlessly for the metaphorical truth, Loki sometimes cuts its own practical storytelling to shreds.
Honestly, though, the mere fact that we’re in the weeds a bit on this concept suggests that “Science/Fiction” is playing with some pretty heavy, and pretty successful, stuff. (An episode of Marvel TV that’s actually about something! Wonders never cease!) As an episode, it doesn’t hurt that it’s mostly a series of two-handers, which is the space where Loki often does its best work. (Hiddleston plays well with everybody, but his chemistry with Quan is really a joy to watch.) And, gods bless it, the episode even manages to take a breath from time to time–most notably a scene of Sylvie blissing out to the Velvet Underground right before reality all falls to shit that’s genuinely beautiful, Sophia Di Martino ably selling Sylvie’s enthrallment by the music.
We end with Loki finally taking control of his own narrative, jumping back to the moment right before Victor Timely got himself so disastrously unraveled last week. How much agency he actually has remains an open question–one suspects they included that bit where He Who Remains says he’d plotted everything out in the “Previously Ons” this week for a reason–but after a season where Loki’s main character has often seemed like he was permanently playing catch-up to other people’s more aggressively sketched-out ambitions, it’s thrilling to see him stride back into the center stage with a real desire in his heart.
Stray observations
- The Loki title sequence is always a treat, but seeing the letters briefly blink out of existence before flipping back to the complete logo in this episidoe was a nice touch.
- The episode implies the TVA itself was blown up last week; in which case, where on the timeline is Loki at the start of this episode, when he’s running around a completely empty version of its facilities?
- A.D. Doug’s books include The Zartan Contingency, which has been showing up in the closing credits sequence all season, as well as The Sons Of Yoren. He might be able to find you a copy!
- “You can’t. That’s impossible. But don’t let that stop you.”
- Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead (who do a typically lovely job tonight, filling the episode with ominous, beautiful moments) also briefly cameo as (I think) a couple of the guys hanging out in the Jet-Ski shop
- Don’s parenting style appears to be largely based around limiting his children’s access to matches in exchange for dogs.
- Interesting to see that Doug has, presumably unconsciously, built himself a lab space that closely resembles his lair in the TVA.
- Casey and B-15 both get short shrift, but do each get a few nice moments, B-15 (a.k.a. Dr. Willis) as a pediatrician and Casey (Frank Morris) as a bank robber.
- Given all the story talk, it’s worth noting that one of the most celebrated run of (semi-) recent Loki comments was entirely about him rejecting his title as God Of Mischief or God Of Lies and embracing his role as God Of Stories, instead.
- Sylvie’s life in Brockton seems genuinely great, with a cool record store and a bar where she’s a beloved regular (at least, once you divorce it from the McDonald’s-centrism.)
- Idle thought: Has it ever been addressed why the TVA seems to be made up entirely of human Variants from twentieth/twenty-first century Earth? Loki and Sylvie went to an alien planet in the first season, but He Who Remains appears to have stuck close to home when staffing his personal army of timecops.
- I’ve noted it before, but episodes like this make me really wish Loki had longer episode orders to work with; the creative team does lovely work recreating the different eras, and it’d be great to see what they could come up with if the show could lay off the ticking clock for a few episodes and just unwind.
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But since the plot side of that speech also advises totally ignoring the CGI Space Wedgie that exploded last week–and which is now, apparently, turning every timeline into so much temporal spaghetti–it runs the risk of re-casting her very fair points about Loki’s motivations as potentially lethal distractions.The show seems to want to be this chatty, introspective hang-out show and a ticking-clock action-thriller. I’d noticed it a little in previous episodes, but it really bothered me in this one. I still enjoyed the show, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t yelling at the screen, “Just tell her that you want to save the TVA because the multiverse will literally unravel otherwise! Save the therapy for later!”, while that scene in the bar played out.Idle thought: Has it ever been addressed why the TVA seems to be made up entirely of human Variants from twentieth/twenty-first century Earth? Loki and Sylvie went to an alien planet in the first season, but He Who Remains appears to have stuck close to home when staffing his personal army of timecops.I suppose that the requisite TVA-onboarding memory-wipe doesn’t remove knowledge of modern technology, so he would want recruits closer to the tech-level of the TVA.
I still enjoyed the show, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t yelling at the screen, “Just tell her that you want to save the TVA because the multiverse will literally unravel otherwise! Save the therapy for later!”, while that scene in the bar played out.Yup, this stuck out for me too. The writing here undercut both Loki and Sylvie a bit — you’d think that each would be smart enough to recognize self-preservation as the immediate concern. (And really, you’d think Sylvie recognizing that her Tempad still worked would’ve gotten her to think of doubling back even sooner. But plot gotta plot.)
Another cracker of an episode, really excited to see what they do with the finale. This one cemented for me what I’ve been thinking since the first couple episodes with the reviewer assuming Loki had no clear motivation, that the whole show is a meditation on what you choose to do with your life, who you choose to be and how much agency you actually have. Because he himself really didn’t know, or didn’t want to admit, until this episode.
I didn’t mind Loki not having a motivation, it was clear to me that was the crus of the season, the issue for me is that for the first three episodes, the stakes weren’t really clear to the audience. We didn’t even know what the Time Loom did until last episode. Chasing after Brad would’ve been more meaningful if we knew everyone was going to turn to spaghetti if they didn’t track him down.
*crux
I find it weird that as they’re talking about where people want to be, it never seems to cross Loki’s mind to want to be anywhere other than earth, or the earth-centric TVA. The review noted that the TVA is made up of earth-folks, but didn’t point out that Loki never even seems to consider that he’s an Asgardian-adopted Frost Giant. It never occurs to him to visit Asgard, or to be with his adopted mother again.
I really like a lot of what the show does with its approaches to time and multiverses and whatnot, but the character of Loki seems almost completely unrelated to who he was in every other MCU outing. He hasn’t done any real trickster double-crossing, or really been anything other than a generic good-hearted earth-centric hero who can occasionally do some magic stuff in the right circumstances.
As a former printer, I do have to take issue with O.B.’s books not having a bar code. Any vanity press can get you a barcode and all that other crap that a book needs to be sold in a store. I worked for a very small print shop, and our vanity press arm (one person) was doing that 20 years ago. He needs to find a competent vanity press.
Oh, it had a barcode, just the book store didn’t have it in their system so it wouldn’t scan.I did take a whole lot of issue with the woman from the bookstore telling him that the problem was that his books were science-fiction, not that they were self-published books that he was trying to sneak into their shelves. Even though the genre was a lot smaller in the 1990s, it was still selling just fine.
Oh, I missed that.As far as science fiction selling, it’s been a reliable niche for 60 years or more.
Right? I get the point of the scene was to highlight Doug/OB as a person who doesn’t just write, but writes science-fiction, and is an outsider, but it was a weird take.
To be fair, he lives in an alternate universe. Maybe sci-fi is really unpopular there.
The Darkest Timeline.
I dunno, I figure in their universe Loki comics are all about pirates, so that’s a plus.
It has, but bookstores are often run by weirdos with very strong Views about what Should and Shouldn’t be in their shops, even if they sell well. The idea of some proprietor with a bias against sci-fi didn’t ring false to me.
I think most people again are missing the forest for the plants XD. Marvel is full of dorks and big business men who are dorks behind money…in fact we’re all dorks, if you think you’re cool you either cool or the 99% that’s really into a thing and is a dork by society standards. AKA marvel was unpopular at a time, scifi was considered dorky, both sold well, now they’re what people look for in something unique and different because of oversaturation of streaming at your fingertips people who watch shows are so much bigger than before…aka in the past watching 4 cartoons was amazing, today 20 in a year (keeping up with) via a binge is possible. New eps every click, no filler, skip along if bored, we forget how much someone saying i wrote a scifi book is in the past ok, and now Wow let me take a read. Marvel seems to be tongue in cheek lately with their audience (she hulk) and knows that no matter what they do people will hate the popular guy so ride it out, (big wigs aren’t about that, but that’s another issue). I assume they will throw everything at the wall or be smart and rest on their talent. Superhero fatigue exist as much as action movie or romance or prestige movie fatigue exist…it’s over if people tire of looking at screens with images and sounds for hours in place and crying somehow from it…which should happen in a few years XD.
With Loki able to control his time and location hopping, I feel like emotionally the show had to flange way out into his love for his friends (hard to build in just 10-ish episodes, but they did get there) so that later, with his new found power, he’s going to be Really Badly Tempted to cash in and reassert his Godly Villain persona.Also, with all this “rewriting time” stuff, the show seems like they could pretty easily swap out Major’s Kang with basically anyone. A couple buttons pushed on a tempad and bleep bloop, now Casey is Kang. Or Loki. Or Sylvie. Or O.B. Or any randomly cast actor in the Disney stable. Like behind the scenes if they are all “Brah! 5 alarm crisis mode!!” they really should just be like, “Don’t sweat it, Kang’s gonna change actors after every five hours of screentime – that’s their thing now.”
yeah seriously. They freaking recast two major heroes in phase 1 and no one cared. Unless Majors saw Feige kill a guy i really see no reason to cut him loose and save them their own Ezra Miller situation.
Given that Disney+ now hosts Doctor Who, where time traveling and recasting is a decades-old tradition, it can’t be far from their minds.
So…Douglas Bradley shows up at The First Doctor Redux on LOKI?
Will also add they’re going to have another recast with Cap 4. Majors is toxic to have, and I’m just boggled how they didn’t do a proper background check or vetting on him given his numerous complaints from previous productions.
The same way this always happens—the Producers don’t want to ruin a talented (male) actor’s life with unproven allegations ::blah blah blah:: you know how women are ::hur hur hur:: we found nothing beyond a reasonable doubt even though there’s a huge pile of allegations we’re sweeping under the rug by paying off the victims ::derp derp derp::. See? No reason whatsoever for Chartoff-Winkler, Bad Robot, Monkey’s Paw, or WB-Discovery to inform Disney/Marvel about Jonathan Majors! Besides, it’ll all certainly blow over before it becomes an issue, right…?
I’ve been saying for a while that even with Majors the big reveal would likely be the final, big bad Kang variant isn’t played by Majors.Which is how they would have been so effective, playing under the radar.
Heck, in the comics, the Council of Kangs included lizardmen variants. Kangs could be pretty much anything.
Loki?? More like Woah-ki!
Good episode.
It can’t be said enough: Ke Huy Quan is awesome.
You’d never believe he hadn’t acted in twenty years. He’s a natural. Maybe he’s just learned how to not over-labor his performance?
Or maybe just maybe studios and producers are typecasting Asian actors a lot less after crazy rich Asians.
After seeing his work in EEAAO and this seasons of ‘Loki’ it kind of bums me out that his career stalled for so long. We could have had a couple of decades of fun, quirky, occasionally really moving Ke Huy Quan performances.
Don’t sleep on his side plot in American Born Chinese.
I highly recommend everyone read Loki: Agent of Asgard, the book where Loki goes from God of Lies to God of Stories. It’s so good. I really hope they do the same thing with MCU Loki.
For sure. I’m definitely going to download that for free from the internet and read it on my iPad buy a trade paperback from my local comic shop.
If you’re looking for an easier legal compromise, my public library offers digital access through the Hoopla app, so it’s worth checking if you have anything like that.
Shout out to Andre and Jon at my local comic shop (apparently Iman Vellani used to go there too).
In the penultimate episode it was about the friends we made along away
Don’t go spoiling the ending to one piece in a loki article the fans might hear you. XD. Lets be real that’s gonna be part of that show’s ending even if fans are in denial. Big treasure, but what do you really want luffy. I wanna set sail with you guys again after this dope party…we beat the world in a war…and all my friends are hear and i brang the ones who died back to life and the goverment is disbanded…lets sail again so i can make profits off some remake or two piece disaster after that loses the heart and gets dragged through the mud for 200 chapters before the original author comes back and fixes it and it ends abruptly and sales keep climing of the netflix show which ended before the series due to the pacing. Yes my imagination is the future in the TVA.
I just don’t buy the “I finally found friends!” thing. It feels like he hasn’t known these people long. Other than Mobius and the one who somehow is him he didn’t spend a lot of bonding time with them.I mean he had friends in Asgard. At least I had the impression he was part of Thor’s social group. He was just an asshole who valued power more.
He was part of Thor’s social group but they all hated him. It always seemed like they kept him around because he was Thor’s brother. It felt like Sif and the Warriors Three tolerated him because Thor still believed in him for some reason, despite him constantly acting malicious toward them.In the first season of Loki the TVA punishes him by making relive a moment after he played a “prank” on Sif by cutting off her hair, which she retaliates for by kneeing him in the testicles. Not exactly friendly.The folks in the TVA are the first people, probably in his entire life, that Loki has interacted with in a positive way, without trying to betray them or somehow take advantage of them. He’s learned to be more human around them. So naturally he comes to think of them as his only friends, because up until meeting them he’s only ever treated people as objects to manipulate.
Ah see I remember it like they were all chummy and then there was a “wait, Loki is evil!?” moment. But yeah the Sif thing from season one does paint a picture.
I got the impression it was your basic situation of hanging out with your cool friend’s lame brother because your cool friend decides who’s in the gang. You accept the few positive attributes he has, like how he always has the best ideas for getting free sweets, and try to ignore his annoying laugh and the fact that he smells faintly of wee. Only with gods.
I think there’s even a larger societal factor to it. Asgard is a place that values boisterous heroism and combat, and Loki’s over here being all manipulative and sly and he just doesn’t fit in.
I just remembered when J. Michael Straczynski was writing THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and he had Loki ask Spidey for help. When Spider-Man said “But aren’t you evil?” Loki responded, “I’m not evil—I’m…complicated….”One thing recent comics and the MCU have done is give Loki’s villainous acts more of a context, and have him start to accept that he’s as responsible for what’s gone wrong for him as anything else. At the same time Thor has realized that he and Loki tended to be real jerks to each other, and that maybe Thor could treat him less like a bratty kid brother.
Yeah and a lot of the time he spent with them, they were using him or threatening to kill him.I guess it says a lot about his previous “friends” that he feels closer to people who interrogated him, tortured him, and sentenced him to death.
Between two of his buddies being Mobius and Ouroboros, I get the impression the reveal will more or less be that in attempting to save the TVA Loki essentially creates it. This whole season has been a causal loop.
Even the “death” of Timely will be revealed as the origins of Kang as a multiversal threat. When Miss Minutes taunts him by claiming he’ll never become He Who Remains, it provides the drive he needs to actually become him.It also would explain why the others would be kicked back to their own times while Loki didn’t. Loki’s timeline got pruned. The others so far have not. He simply found them in their original points and was the one who recruited them. They just don’t remember because it’s been a long time and seemingly many memory erasures ago.
Someone on reddit pointed out that timeline Mobius is basically Odin. Two sons: an older responsible one and a younger mischievous one. The older one wants a puppy (Fenrir) and a snake (Jormungand). And his is Don, which is pretty close to Odin.
I don’t think he’s actually an Odin variant, but it’s a nice allusion they snuck in there.
Next episode he gets poked in the eye
One suspects they included that bit where He Who Remains says he’d plotted everything out in the “Previously Ons” this week for a reason I think you and I have the same idea. My theory is that in order for HWR to exist and win the Kang time wars, he had to create a time loop. He must die, so that he can spawn Timely, so that Timely can spawn him and he can create the TVA, set Loki & Sylvie on this path to killing him, and die again, so that Timely can be spawned … etc . It’s an ouroboros.
Like I said it’s just a theory, but it could mean that the plot of Loki in season 3 (if there is one) will be about how to escape this time loop.
So Mobius is a variant of Odin right? Two sons, one full of mischief who burns things (Loki is the god of fire) and the other the good one who has to control his brother and who loves snakes (we learn Thor loves snakes in Thor: Ragnarok). Odin, oh Don. edit: I see I’m not the first person to mention this and probably won’t be the last.
Fun fact – the bar where Sylvie takes Loki is run by some friends of mine. Good beer. Really good gig venue too.
Fun!
Neat! Where is it?
Alternate timeline VU albums don’t have enough Lou Reed on ‘em
The Doug Yule timeline?
I got all excited when I saw her with Loaded and that lovely camera move. I was so in the mood for a scene featuring the restorative power of the Velvet Underground. Then a cover started playing instead. BOOOOOOO
It’s officially the “Exactly Like Ours Except ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ is Side A Track 1 on Loaded” variant timeline
Anyone else get “Lost” Season 6 vibes with Loki travelling around trying to convince people that their lives were not what they appeared and they needed to get back together?
Loki: “WE HAVE TO GO BACK!”
It was weird to me that B-15 was a pediatrician in New York like… 8 months after the Avengers 1 Chitauri invasion, but they didn’t mention that. Like, I know they don’t have to, but having it in the same location and year is just an odd call.
Maybe in that branch, Kid Loki had already killed Thor and was no longer part of the timeline.
The show was in 2012 for like 30 seconds. At what point were you expecting current events to come up?
I am more surprised that they’d set it then at all rather than I am surprised that they’d set it then and then not do something with it. Like why not set it in 2014 Utica and avoid the point entirely?
2014 Utica would make you wish for Chitauri invasion
Who do you think swiped O.B.’s kitbashed tempad? I figure we’ll find out next week, but it’s fun to speculate.
I thought the universe was just disintegrating things, like it did with Sophie’s extra value meal?
That might be the case. I just hope it’s something more than that. I want more time travel hijinks!
It would be fun if Loki was stealing all those things – including the drink from himself.
Considering we saw everything (and everyone) get spaghetti-fied moments later, it seems clear that the tempad got spaghetti-fied as well.
The hot take that loki should have wanted to use magic to solve his problems or the take that loki should be the same character he was in avengers 1 while people still ask for movies to all be different then say that the movies are all the same then the movies and shows deal with wandavision depression, loss black panther 2, jokes hawkeye, satire shehulk, or asking if they can make less a year when we used to praise netflix for daredevil then so on…just seems like marvel fatigue is just people not admiting to themselves they dont like action shows on a basic level and want to just watch something like a drama…cause they sure aint paying attention to anything which is fair, who would if you are so tired while watching you have to take a nap.
You do know that Frank Morris was a real guy who escaped from Alcatraz, right? He was played by Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. It seems weird not to mention this.
The idea that loki should have been interested in using magic and people who say that are missing a lot of the plot and i think those people are the same that want loki to be a douche again. He saw his entire life and failures, he even when working for thanos felt like he was just doing it for attention, he is symbolic of a child that feels like the family doesn’t really love them and thor is that cool brother that’s great at everything and so nice you like him too. He likes his brother and hates him, and it conflicts…rewatch the movies…Lastly loki learned that he wasn’t all powerful, (maybe he even saw the future and doctor strange) so he knows that magic in their universe is as explained, science people don’t quite understand…loki saw a human make science that suppressed stones he fought for and was liked by the most powerful titan…now were to believe he should just be like whatever magic rules and this kang ain’t nothing ill blast him (that’s how people who say kang got beat 2 times seem like) In real life if someone said you want to fight a guy with 6 powerful stones that doesn’t have them all yet and can slip up and fail and can use the stones to a limit or it hurts him vs a man who said and has conquered all time and universes and has a threat that 100000 of him exist and will keep coming if you stop him and can go through time without causing paradoxes, and has tech and intellect surpassing anything you ever heard of…idk The whole marvel sucks now is fair it’s not amazing, but it is hyperbole that its that bad…also people are impatient thanos took 4 appearances or so and screen time was less than kang before the main movie. PS some marvel fans let DC fans spill in and non action fans and only prestige movie drama fans spoil the pot and make them think 2 flaws in a marvel movie make it the worst thing ever made…
I like your analysis of how much the plot and character mechanics were butting heads in this otherwise very lovely episode, William. It’s too bad the plot gets so much attention, because as far as characters and visuals this show is an A+. It’s just the plot mechanics are very C–y.
These reviews have been highlighting the fact that there’s a McDonald’s in the show more than the show has, makes me wonder which one is actually doing paid product placement.
Yeah. It is the most popular restaurant in the world. I understand why the MCU tends to use fictionalized versions of real world companies, but showing characters work a McJob or eat Big Macs is more immersive to me than coming up with some alternate name that part of my brain then has to work out the code for.
But why isn’t it a shawarma restaurant?!
“Stupid Peloton! I mean, uh, Pedalon.”
– Homer Simpson
Did you not see the scene where Sylvie’s like “it all conveniently packs up to go”. They be definitely getting a tonne of money from McDon’s
The spaghetti effect of the timeline dying squicked me out a bit. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it was really hard to watch.
They put blink-and-you’ll-miss-it guts in there, so I don’t blame you.
i cant get over how much i love this series, than you so muchhttps://eghtesadjournal.com
So the main thing you complained about in these reviews (Loki lacking motivation) was just a reveal in a later episode. Damnit I hate new era A.V. Club. Hacky.
To be fair, online people hated that too…the new era of watchers binge so any mystery is lost on them and it all equals bad writing so as a new creator your supposed to answer all mystery by episode 1 to appeal to them otherwise its plot holes and bad writing youtube videos and nitpicks like cinema sins. People still hate marvel for not revealing all their cards in about half the time the prior phase did years wise skipping the break during the demic. They also hate if you try something more ambitious but at the same time want ambitious things but they must feel predictable and familiar while being unique and not cliche and they all need to include characters they like while not feeling like fan service and needs to have deep backstories while not boring you with back stories about characters you dont like also the characters have to be likeable without telling you why their likeable and they have to have unique fun personalities without all being one of the 4/9 basic personalities that are used that are easy to express as fun and likeable on a 20 minute watch they also have to appeal exactly to your politics all while not catering to anything i dont like all while teaching me something introspective but it cant be too introspective otherwise i wont get it and call it W. Also have minorities in it but dont at the same time cause i just want men or i just want women or i dont want humans or i….very hard to write for an audience that grew up on binge material, they saw more series in 10 years than most see in a life time…now they speed ran the critic era of becoming jaded by all movies or shows cause they all action wise generally follow the hero’s journey and that’s bad now…for some reason unique equals better than execution for them. This review sounds like it should be a C- the gen V review sounded like they just hated that the show tried to do anything. new fans are not my cup of T. seems like edgy teens who hate everything like that south park ep.
In a show that’s spent two seasons about wibbly-wobbly time stuff, Loki finally concluding that “It’s not about what, where, or why… it’s about Who” felt a little on the nose. 🙂
What, where and why don’t have a nose. But Who has a nose.
The McDonald’s stuff was product placement on a level I’ve never seen before in film. That bit when they’re like “it packs right up we can take it and leave”. They actually were inserting advertisement into the dialogue. I’m SUPER curious what McDonald’s paid for that level of product placement. I’d be willing to speculate that could have been the most expensive product placement in the history of film – and I’ve seen Josie and the Pussycats!!!
“what McDonald’s paid for that level of product placement”By all accounts, they’ve paid nothing. It’s not product placement, it’s a deliberate setting by the production design.If you have any actual information that says otherwise, you’d have quite the journalistic scoop.
Has anyone else pointed out how impenetrably dark some of the photography has been in this show, especially in the chase scenes? I couldn’t see wtf Timely was doing when he was running away in one of the earlier episodes.Anyway, it sounds like the MCU might ditch Kang and the young Avengers entirely or keep them in TV land…basically nothing has happened in the larger MCU except bad Wanda, nobody even remembers there is a giant dead celestial stuck in our atmosphere (ahem eternals), so Majors does not sounds like a Major problem, it sounds like (like DC) they are going back to the drawing board. They have a bunch of great and well-cast actors committed so that kinda sucks, but that’s show biz.P.S. I love Ke Huy Quan
The absence of a recap of the season/series finale has me worried the A.V. Club just got quietly gutted like Jezebel.