Loki’s second episode is just as funny as the first, and while it suffers from similar issues of dramatic framing, its flimsy sentimentality is limited to a handful of scenes. The second episode of Loki's self-titled solo adventure hit Disney Plus on Wednesday, picking up with the God of Mischief after his introduction to the awesome power of the Time Variance Authority. The Marvel Cinematic Universe show takes place after the beloved villain's 2012 self made his escape in Avengers: Endgame.The show works best when it’s a comedy — or at least, when its more serious elements are tongue-in-cheek — and its latest entry doesn’t waste much time getting to the point.
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While the premiere was mostly set-up, the show’s second chapter immediately begins playing around with time. It opens in what seems like the Renaissance era, before a cheeky sliding-timeline text spins like a slot machine, revealing the setting to be a 1980s Ren Faire. Time may as well be historical cosplay to the Time Variance Authority; they see little difference between past and future when events are supposedly predetermined. However, they didn’t count on being ambushed at every turn by a murderous, hooded “Variant,” revealed last week to be a different version of Loki.
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The Loki we know (Tom Hiddleston) has taken up a desk job under the tutelage of Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), a sentient, clock-faced equivalent of Clippy from Microsoft Office. This setting resembles one of Takia Waititi’s dryly funny Thor shorts prior to Thor: Ragnarok, and it makes for an appropriately silly reintroduction, even though it skips over much of what Loki has actually been learning at the TVA. Subsequent scenes are forced to catch the audience up on what the characters already know about time travel, though these generally take the form of banter, rather than characters sitting around to explain things.
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The exposition moves smoothly along whenever the grandiose, self-serious Loki shares the screen with the laid-back Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), a disconnect that informs the show’s comedic premise. Loki is at the mercy of forces infinitely more powerful than himself — so powerful that he’s treated like a lackey, or a sideshow — so his usual bag of tricks won’t cut it.After a briefing that reveals a number of previous Loki “variants” — a Frost Giant, a Hulk-Loki, and a smiling Olympian — Mobius takes the God of Mischief out into the field, to the Ren Faire where the hooded Variant murdered several Minute Men. The show’s central Loki sports a beige TVA jacket, and he can’t help but resemble a hard-boiled detective, especially when he pretends to deduce the traps laid out for their unit, with Sherlock-esque cognition. Of course, Agent Mobius sees through this ruse, and lets the air out of Loki’s plan to get an audience with the all-powerful Time Keepers (if they even exist).
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Once the Variant reveals herself — this Loki appears to have taken the form of a woman (Sophia Di Martino), though the specific aren’t yet clear — she also uses the TVA’s own technology to create numerous branched timelines all at once. Loki, who had assumed the Variant’s plan involved joining forces with him, learns that he isn’t part of her plan at all. This narrative, in which he had desperately hoped to play the protagonist, casts him out and leaves him at his lowest point.
