1x02 The Variant

[7.7/10] Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson are fun together. That might be enough to power this show alone. Both are talky, smart aleks as Loki and Mobius respectively, but they have different energies. Loki is theatrical, comical, smirking, and sarcastic. Mobius, by is wry and sardonic with a workaday wisdom vibe to him. The pairing clicks in the contrast. They’re close enough to mesh but different enough to compliment one another, and it’s the best part of the show.

But I like the plotting in this episode! If the first outing for the series set the table, this one finally starts serving up dishes, as Loki and Mobius actually get a break in the case. Loki realizes that his counterpart, the Superior Loki, is hiding out from the TVA in pre-apocalyptic zones, because her mucking about won’t leave any “time variances” since they’ll all be washed away by the impending disaster. Mobius cross-references that with a candy bar found at the scene of the crime in the last episode, and it leads them to actually locating their target.

Look, it’s not much, but it shows how Loki could be useful and clever when pointed in the right. It shows how Mobius is good at his job and right, however fleetingly, that this God of Mischief could be an asset to their investigation if used properly. And it plays by the rules established by the show of how time travel and detection work, while preserving the timeline. In a way, this is all a basic cop show plot, but dressed up in temporal finery and 1960s drudgery, the results are tons of fun.

I’m also a fan of Loki and Mobius’s conversation in the lunchroom about life, the universe, and everything. I’m a sucker for those sorts of navel-gazing conversations on the nature of existence, but I genuinely enjoy the two of them bouncing off one another in these grand matters of creation and philosophy. Mobius is intriguingly zen, chalking up anyone’s existence to a certain weirdness, resolving that existence is chaos, and being grateful this slice of chaos gave him the TVA. Loki, on the other hand, is not content to just ride the wave. He wants to know how things began and how they’ll end and seem to reject the notion of the Time Keepers forging order from chaos and allowing all souls to meet at the end in peace. These cosmological conversations are well-written, both in terms of getting at the big questions of existence in a compelling way and rooting them in differences between characters.

There’s also a lot of pure fun to be had here! The show opens with a good gag when we see a medieval scene and expect the heroes or villains have leapt far into the past, only to reveal that we’re seeing a Renaissance fair in 1980s Wisconsin. The droll librarian retorting to Loki’s every file request with “That’s classified” is a hoot. And Loki himself, making goofy mischief in pre-volcano Pompeii is utter delight.

The one catch is that the show is less interesting every time Loki and Mobius are separated, more or less. I’m not wild about Mobius’s interactions with his boss, Renslayer, which has a very generic, “I get results, chief!” vibe with a 1940s screwball twist. I’m not averse to the vibe, but the execution is generic.

Likewise, the final setpiece in a futuristic ersatz Wal-Mart didn’t do much for me either. Superior Loki using her abilities to hop bodies is a trick, but none of her hosts are as good at spouting smug, knowing dialogue as Tom Hiddleston is. Her motivations are opaque, which is fine at this juncture, but still a hindrance for a series’s villain. And the action is choppy and mild, with none of the flair of the time-dilated dust-ups from the last episode. The one saving grace is that Superior Loki’s immediate ploy to massively disrupt the timeline is a promising hook. Setting up the TVA to work like clockwork, only to have a variant of our favorite Trickster God throw a cosmic monkey wrench into the proceedings promises entertaining disarray to come.

Overall, though, I’m still most compelled by just watching two superb actors and two stellar characters bounce off one another in a high concept scenario. The plot remains a little convoluted if you stop to unravel it, but works well enough on a scene-to-scene basis that it’s easy to get the gist even if the details are fuzzy. I do appreciate the “It’s not about you” kiss-off at the end, which may be a metonym for the series’s main theme, and there’s zing in what the narrative promises will come next, but after two episodes, I’m still mostly here to watch a pair of quality scene partners have fun together.

(Spoilers for Star Wars: The Bad Batch: I find it funny that in two months, Disney+ has released two shows with a setup of “Here’s a scenario featuring lots of different versions of a popular character only -- wait for it -- one of them’s a girl!”)

Catching a Loki...
This show feels claustrophobic. I don’t know if anyone else is getting that vibe but I feel like I’m trapped in a basement with no natural light nor air listening to two men talk about the same thing over and over again. It’s just so much dialogue ABOUT THE SAME DAMN THING. That’s my issue, that it is about issues we already covered, yes Loki is mischievous, conning, scamming, lying and he’s gonna betray them. WE KNOW THAT!
These two episodes feel like bottle episodes (when they concentrate on a set and on a few characters for budgetary or practicality reasons) and I doubt Disney/Marvel have budget issues? But probably the last scene was a set up for Loki to actually go outside and breath fresh air.
Also I wish this show was about Loki being THE variant and being chaotic through the years and we join him on his evil adventures and then this would be the set up for him to reincorporate himself to our timeline? This Lady Loki/Sylvie character seems cool but like I don’t feel she’s necessary cause my expectations for this show was watching 2012 Loki from that other timeline incorporate himself to this 2022 present timeline while making pitstops to other years and timelines and leaving chaos behind and fighting the TVA. Cause also this story of the bad guy working with an agency to stop another bad guy has already been done! It’s giving me AoS vibes, and Mobious is literally Coulson and Loki is like Sky.
We still have 4 episodes left and I’m very hopeful and excited! Probably next episode we will get more action and sets.
Also I have the feeling that the TVA agents (Rovona) don’t have any contact with the guardians, the way she said they were very involved in this case was kinda suspicious.