(Photograph courtesy of Marvel.com)
Mild spoilers for “Loki” episode 1 ‘Glorious Purpose’ are ahead!
Ever since its announcement, anticipation for the Disney+ show “Loki” has been climbing, especially with both “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” being big successes for the streaming service. Both “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” were vastly different from each other, and “Loki” continues that trend for the Marvel shows with zero hesitation. While “WandaVision” focused more on grief and attempting to cope with it, and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” focused more on politics and human rights, “Loki” takes a completely different approach with its complex focus on a time travel-heavy plot that could potentially help shape the entirety of the next Marvel Cinematic Universe phase.
For fans that have been keeping up with the MCU, it should be no shock that the King of Mischief we get in the new show is not the Loki that the audience knows. That Loki met a very unfortunate end at the hands of Thanos in “Avengers Infinity War”. But after the Avengers lost to Thanos, in the following Avengers movie, “Avengers Endgame”, the heroes create a plan involving time travel in hopes of being able to defeat Thanos. The plan requires them to go back in time to 2012 during the events of the very first Avengers movie. 2012 Loki gets his hands on the Tessaract after the plan goes a little awry, and it causes a chaotic break in the timeline, in which the main timeline Loki is dead, but 2012 Loki is alive…causing a new branch in the timeline that was never supposed to happen.
The first episode makes it abundantly clear that there are “higher beings” who are not pleased with this new timeline and spends time explaining exactly how breaks in the “main” timeline work, and why they’re such a problem. It may sound complicated and a lot to digest, but viewers shouldn’t worry, because as a newly introduced character states in the episode “You’ll catch up.” The episode does a fantastic job at explaining to the audience just how all of it works, as it’s being explained to Loki himself.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the show so far is getting to see a completely different version of the fan-favorite character that the show is named after. This is Loki without all the character development that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has given him since “Avengers”. His moral compass is still pointing closer to a villain than it is a hero, and he’s completely without so much of the growth that we’ve seen in the character, especially in some of the Thor movies. All the closure we’ve seen the main timeline Loki receive has been completely erased. Even though 2012 Loki is not the same matured Loki that the audience has grown accustomed to, it poses a very important question: how do breaks in the main timeline end up affecting that timeline? Based on what the first episode reveals, it appears that this will end up tying in heavily with the introduction to the Multiverse in the MCU, especially with the next Doctor Strange movie being titled “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.
Despite the episode seeming like the show exists as a bridge to connect so much going on in the bigger picture of the MCU, it’s more than that. Right off the bat, “Loki” is fun and charming with exceptional pacing. While “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” end up making up for it later in the show, both start off a bit slower than what the audience is used to seeing from a project with Marvel Studios stamped across it. “Loki” doesn’t appear to have that same problem, and has a more comedic approach that’s still balanced out with emotional scenes as Loki takes a glimpse into his future, or what the audience would see as the past.
Overall, it’s a fun, strong first episode for a show, especially one as plot-heavy as “Loki” appears to be, and it’ll be interesting to see if Marvel can maintain its well-balanced pacing. The first episode alone opens up so many doors for the show, the character, and the overall arc of the MCU, and feels as if they have a lot of ground to cover with only a few episodes to do so. Luckily for Marvel, the first episode of “Loki” makes the rest of the series look promising as fans watch the multiverse develop in front of their eyes.
Written by Ashley Laney
Hi, I’m Lynn, and I Make.
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