[5.8/10] I don’t know, folks. I think I’m burning out on this season a bit, which isn’t a good sign for a 6-episode run. There’s just too many characters and too many storylines and too little focus to the whole thing. Season 1 wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty clearly centered on a limited set of characters and relationships and problems which gave it a certain throughline through the insanity of the premise. Season 2 is all over the place and it makes the whole thing pretty tedious to get through. We have a couple of bootstrap paradoxes. Victory TImely got the TVA handbook from O.B., but O.B. got the handbook from Victory Timely. And then the person who prunes Loki during his visit to the future is....Loki in the future. Okay...sure. Pretty standard time travel stuff. A little cheap, but fine.
But then we have everyone scrambling to do lots of crazy stuff. Victory, O.B., and Casey are trying to rekefargle the horolographer or whatever to fix the time loom through a bunch of technobabble. Renslayer and Miss Minutes are starting a coup. B-15 is trying to rally the troops to preserve the TVA. Loki and Sylvie are having ponderous conversations about who is or isn’t playing god and whether the TVA is worth saving. Brad is turning on General Dox and company. Mobius is...uh...getting pie? Getting yelled at for Sylvie for being myopic or blase? Oh yeah, and the universe is going to explode.
None of it fits together especially well. You never really get a sense of timing or progression ro connection between the various stories. Once again, Loki just kind of jumps from scene to scene without any sense of pacing or structure, and we’re left to wait for the inevitable big bang.
There’s a few smaller moments I liked. Miss Minutes’ degrading is a cool effect. Victor’s fascination and eventual delight with the hot cocoa machine was downright adorable and well-constructed. The scene with Loki, Sylvie, and the ringing phone was shot like a horror movie and drives tension. And something about Victor Timey getting shredded to ribbons from the temporal forces was unexpected and cool visually.
But man, I don’t care about any of the characters or what’s happening at this point. Loki is all over the place. There’s a ton of things going on, but none of them seem to matter because all of them are life or death. There’s little sense of clarity or motivation in most of the actions, just a bunch of thinly-drawn characters doing things for thinly-drawn reasons.
To the point, it’s at least intriguing that Renslayer was once the partner of He Who Remains, until he wiped her memory and everyone else's. The closest thing to potent commentary on this show in a while is the idea that he kept his paradise on the backs of their hard work. The imagery of two women (well, one woman and one clock) saying “We don’t need him. Maybe we never did.” and taking over is something, at least. But after that, it’s not entirely clear what they want. To take over the TVA? Okay, why? What are they going to do with it? How will taking it over TVA bring them what they desire?
At least with Brad, we know that he wants to go back to his branch and live the life of a movie star. His is weirdly the most compelling part of this, because he makes a queasy moral compromise, throwing all of his friends under the bus in the process, to selfishly feather his own nest. It’s not much, but he’s the person here whose choices and motivations are the clearest, and on top of that, his performance is good, so it weirdly makes Brad one of the most compelling characters in this whole confused milieu.
I won’t deny that the hook of the timeline exploding is a good one. It’s not every show that blows up the universe with two episodes to go. But true to the image of the glut of timelines clogging the loom; this episode, and this season, feels like someone threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall and put a frame around it. You can sort of trace things and find batters or throughlines here and there, but overall, it’s just a mess.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-11-11T05:17:35Z
[5.8/10] I don’t know, folks. I think I’m burning out on this season a bit, which isn’t a good sign for a 6-episode run. There’s just too many characters and too many storylines and too little focus to the whole thing. Season 1 wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty clearly centered on a limited set of characters and relationships and problems which gave it a certain throughline through the insanity of the premise. Season 2 is all over the place and it makes the whole thing pretty tedious to get through.
We have a couple of bootstrap paradoxes. Victory TImely got the TVA handbook from O.B., but O.B. got the handbook from Victory Timely. And then the person who prunes Loki during his visit to the future is....Loki in the future. Okay...sure. Pretty standard time travel stuff. A little cheap, but fine.
But then we have everyone scrambling to do lots of crazy stuff. Victory, O.B., and Casey are trying to rekefargle the horolographer or whatever to fix the time loom through a bunch of technobabble. Renslayer and Miss Minutes are starting a coup. B-15 is trying to rally the troops to preserve the TVA. Loki and Sylvie are having ponderous conversations about who is or isn’t playing god and whether the TVA is worth saving. Brad is turning on General Dox and company. Mobius is...uh...getting pie? Getting yelled at for Sylvie for being myopic or blase? Oh yeah, and the universe is going to explode.
None of it fits together especially well. You never really get a sense of timing or progression ro connection between the various stories. Once again, Loki just kind of jumps from scene to scene without any sense of pacing or structure, and we’re left to wait for the inevitable big bang.
There’s a few smaller moments I liked. Miss Minutes’ degrading is a cool effect. Victor’s fascination and eventual delight with the hot cocoa machine was downright adorable and well-constructed. The scene with Loki, Sylvie, and the ringing phone was shot like a horror movie and drives tension. And something about Victor Timey getting shredded to ribbons from the temporal forces was unexpected and cool visually.
But man, I don’t care about any of the characters or what’s happening at this point. Loki is all over the place. There’s a ton of things going on, but none of them seem to matter because all of them are life or death. There’s little sense of clarity or motivation in most of the actions, just a bunch of thinly-drawn characters doing things for thinly-drawn reasons.
To the point, it’s at least intriguing that Renslayer was once the partner of He Who Remains, until he wiped her memory and everyone else's. The closest thing to potent commentary on this show in a while is the idea that he kept his paradise on the backs of their hard work. The imagery of two women (well, one woman and one clock) saying “We don’t need him. Maybe we never did.” and taking over is something, at least. But after that, it’s not entirely clear what they want. To take over the TVA? Okay, why? What are they going to do with it? How will taking it over TVA bring them what they desire?
At least with Brad, we know that he wants to go back to his branch and live the life of a movie star. His is weirdly the most compelling part of this, because he makes a queasy moral compromise, throwing all of his friends under the bus in the process, to selfishly feather his own nest. It’s not much, but he’s the person here whose choices and motivations are the clearest, and on top of that, his performance is good, so it weirdly makes Brad one of the most compelling characters in this whole confused milieu.
I won’t deny that the hook of the timeline exploding is a good one. It’s not every show that blows up the universe with two episodes to go. But true to the image of the glut of timelines clogging the loom; this episode, and this season, feels like someone threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall and put a frame around it. You can sort of trace things and find batters or throughlines here and there, but overall, it’s just a mess.