Glorious Purpose indeed.
Okay, so let’s talk about Loki. No preamble,
let’s get right to it.
Episode 1: Glorious Purpose
We open with the familiar 2012 attack
on New York. We see most of the big beats, Avengers capture Loki, Hulk is
forced to take the stairs, a time traveling Tony tries to steal the Tesseract,
but it’s bungled by Hulk coming out of the stairwell, and Loki getting his
hands on it and escaping.
Loki teleports across the world to
the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. He crashes into a sand dune. He’s able to get his
little muzzle off and dust himself off. Some Mongolians find him, and he gets
up on a rock to give a speech about his Glorious Purpose. He’s interrupted by a
door shaped portal opens and several armored figures step out. Loki, sensing
danger, goes for the Tesseract, but the group keep him from it. The lead member
arrives, noting that this is a standard “Sequence Violation.” She arrests him
for crimes against the Sacred Timeline on the authority of the Time Variance
Authority. Loki isn’t impressed… until the lead TVA agents hits him and
somehow reduces his speed to 1/16th normal but keeps his pain in
real time. She casually puts a collar on his neck. They haul Loki away, setting
a small egg timer to the ground. It goes off, somehow resetting the area to as
it was before Loki landed.
A God is being shown behind the curtain to see
how small he really is.
Loki is taken to the TVA headquarters.
He gets free and tries to run, but they use his collar to loop him back to his
captors. The lead hunter, B-15 gives the Tesseract to the front desk guy to be logged
as Evidence and Loki is pushed into what looks like an elevator. A robot with a
smiley face powers up, strips Loki and then drops him into an office a level
below, arriving in a TVA prisoners jumpsuit. A Desk jockey pushes a stack of
papers towards him, telling Loki to sign and verify this is everything that he
has ever said. Loki responds “What?” and “Oh, this is absurd.” And suddenly a
pair of sheet prints out, with those words written across it. I’m with Loki, though,
as at over 1000 years of age and given his gift of gab, that stack of papers seems
awfully small stack. He finally signs.
He’s dropped to another layer, doing
his best to not speak against out of spite. He’s asked to confirm that he’s not
a self-aware robot by a small attendant. Loki does, but is too curious to not
ask, Loki wants to know what would have happened if he IS a self-aware robot
but doesn’t know it. The attendant says that machine would melt him from the
inside out. Neat. Loki goes through the device and is given a card of his “Temporal
aura.” He’s walked to a DMV looking area and told to take a number. He does so,
despite only being one of two people there.
I can't be the only one who was expecting the
lords of time to be more... crablike, right?
Loki then meets Ms. Minute, an
animated personified Clock voiced by Tara Strong. She sounds like a 1970s cartoon.
She explains that she’s going to give him a rundown on history of the TVA. She
explains that a massive Multiverse broke out eons ago. The fighting destroyed
multiple realities until almost nothing was left. A trio of beings, called the “All
Knowing Time-Keepers” reforged the remains into the Sacred Timeline, and then
created the TVA to ensure that history happens as it’s supposed to. Sometimes,
Nexus events happen, and someone stops following events as the Timekeepers
dictate, becoming a Variant. The fear is that too many of such events, which
can range from starting an uprising to just being late for work, can create
enough unique timelines that will snowball into another multiverse war. The TVA
track Nexus events and arrest and ‘prune’ Variants to ensure reality happens as
the Timekeepers say it should. Since Loki has been taken out of the timeline,
he’ll now be put on trial for his offenses. We then get the TVA’s moto, For All
Time, Always. Loki then gets an object lesson as to why he should keep his
ticket as the other guy in the room is ‘pruned’ and erased for not having one.
We then cut over to Owen Wilson… I
mean Mobius. Mobius, a high-ranking TVA investigator, is in Aix-En-Provence in
France, circa 1549. Another agent tells him that a Hunter and their Minute Men
were jumped here. The groups reset charge is missing and the bodies have stab wounds.
This is the 6th attack on the TVA agents this week. Mobius goes to
speak to a witness, a child. He draws a stick figure on his TemPad and asks who
the guy who attack the people was. The child points to an image of the devil.
The kid also has a pack of gum. Mobius takes it to run for sequence period and
hints of temporal aura. He knows they won’t get anything from it, but figures
they need to try. They have to leave as their branch is approaching the ‘red
line’ according to their instruments. As a reset charge is placed, another TVA
member comes in and Mobius is told that Loki has been captured.
We then cut to the trial of Loki,
Judge Ravana Renslayer presiding. Loki Laufeyson variant L1130, to be exact,
for the sequence violation 7-20-89. Loki, still smug, points out that the
Avengers are the ones to blame, as he wouldn’t have escaped without their
meddling. He figured it out as he could, quote, “smell the cologne of two Tony
Starks.” He assumed they did it in a last-ditch effort to stop him from becoming
a God-King. Oh, the ego on Early Loki. He offers to eliminate them as Mobius comes
in. Renslayer isn’t going for it, though, telling Loki that the Avenger’s
meddling was supposed to happen, his escape wasn’t. Loki wants to speak to the
Time Keepers, but Renslayer says they’re busy. Loki pleads “guilty… of this!”
and tries to escape, but his powers don’t work in the TVA building. Sentenced
to be reset.
Mobius asks for Loki to be turned
over to him, which Renslayer begrudgingly allows. They have a great interaction.
Loki, “I’m going to burn this place to the ground.” Mobius, “I’ll show you to
where my desk is, you can start there.” They walk buy a window, and Loki looks
out on an alien world. Buildings stretch out in all directions, including
hanging from above, with a Time Keeper statue in the middle.
Loki Lysmith Laufeyson, this is you life!
Mobius takes Loki to an
interrogation room. Mobius explains that time passes differently in the TVA
when Loki asks the very simple question of how long he’s been doing this. Loki
is still flabbergasted at the idea that the TVA controls the fates of Trillions
at the behest of three space lizards. But Mobius isn’t ruffled by his comments.
Mobius sets up a device while Loki watches. He asks why he hadn’t heard of the
TVA before, with Mobius telling him that he didn’t need to until now, as he
lived life in his set path, which pisses Loki off. Loki tries to attack Mobius,
but he uses the collar to reset him again. They begin the interview. Mobius explains
that he specializes in tracking dangerous Variants. When Loki tries to add
himself to that number, Mobius dubs him a ‘pussycat.’ If Loki answers a few
questions honestly, Mobius will see what he can do for him.
Question one, what will Loki do if
he is released? Loki will rule Midgard, Asgard, space in general. Mobius, a fan
of Loki, wants to know why he wants to rule. Loki does his ‘freedom is a lie’
thing from his early days. Mobius seems entertained but unimpressed. He plays a
video of New York to Loki via hologram. Points out for some that is destined to
rule is always losing. Points out the last person to talk like that to him died.
Mobius brings up Coulson, pointing out the Avengers literally came together to avenge
him. Question two: do you enjoy hurting people? Shows Loki’s greatest feats of
Torture. Doesn’t see much mischievous about his actions. Points out he’s good
at doing awful things, then escaping. Mobius plays his favorite, where they
reveal that Loki was DB Cooper, and that he escapes capture by having Heimdall
bridging him out. He apparently lost a bet with Thor, which is why he did it.
Loki tries to leave but is looped back to his seat. Mobius wants Loki to be
honest about why he does what he does, what makes Loki tick. He refuses to
believe that the TVA dictate that he does so.
Mobius goes for the heavy hits,
revealing what happened had he not taken the Tesseract. Reveals how his mother
died, and how he caused it. Mobius repeats that this is how things are supposed
to happen and demands to know if Loki enjoys killing people. Loki throws a
chair at Mobius, who loops him back, making Loki crash into the group.
Apparently, the Time Twister affects him, not the objects around him. He wasn’t
born to rule, he was born to cause pain and to help others achieve the best
versions of themselves. Mobius helps Loki to his feet as B-15 comes in, telling
him there’s a situation. B-15 tells him they lost another unit. Mobius goes
back in to find Loki gone and the Looper missing from his pocket. He dubs Loki
a Mischievous Scamp.
All of time to model their organization off of
and they chose 1950s DMV for the TVA?
How sad.
Loki loops himself back to the
entrance. He sees the front desk guy and follows him. B-15 wants him pruned on
sight, but Mobius thinks he can still help them. Loki finds the front desk guy,
Casey, and tells him to give him the Tesseract of he’ll gut the man like a
fish. Casey doesn’t know what a fish is. TVA guys are weird. Loki get’s the
point across. He gets the Tesseract, but sees that evidence also has Infinity Stones.
They have lots of those at the TVA and they’re used as paperweights. This seems
to break something inside Loki and he asks Casey if the TVA is the greatest
power in the universe. The Hunters come in, B-15 almost pruning Loki, but he loops
back to the interrogation room.
With not much else to do, Loki
plays with the device to see his mother’s body, and to find out what happens to
him over the next few years. He sees Odin’s death and final message. Him reconciling
with Thor, and Thor’s belief that they’d fight side by side forever. And him
ultimately sacrificing himself in a failed attempt at Thanos. And sees Thor mourning
him. He scoffs and then laughs hysterically at the end of the file. B-15 joins
him, asks what so funny, to which Loki replies, Glorious Purpose. The two
fight, with Loki getting his collar off, slapping it on B-15’s neck and looping
her away. And back again, and away a few times for his amusement. She ends up right in front of Casey, but walks
off in a huff.
Mobius rejoins Loki, pruner in
hand. Loki knows he can’t go back anymore. He explains that he doesn’t enjoy
hurting people, that it’s part of his illusion of control. “It’s the cruel,
elaborate trick conjured by the weak,” points at himself, “to inspire fear.” Loki
holds up the Tesseract, admits he tried to use it several times in the room but
even an Infinity Stone is useless in the TVA. Mobius offers him not salvation
but something better. He needs help to track a dangerous Variant that’s killing
Hunters and Minute Men. Why is the God of Mischief integral to this
investigation? Well, because the Variant is another Loki.
Well. this Loki sure has the flair for the dramatic.
We cut to Salina, Oklahoma, 1858. A
group of minute men arrive, having traced an object from the 3rd millennium
to that point. They initially think its just some jackass with a time machine
come back to try to live as a rich king in the past… but then the Loki attacks.
The Loki kills most of the Hunters in a fire, stealing their Reset Charge, just
before the credits roll.
Alright, this was a very solid
opener for Loki. Sure, it was a bit exposition heavy, but they had to set up a LOT
of things with the TVA before they could get their “Attack of the Variant Loki”
plot started. The TVA is definitely an interesting element to add to the MCU,
as they’re a group that has clearly hit Arthur C. Clarke’s third Law, “Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I mean, they break the
laws of time so casually, warping around someone along their own personal timeline
and all that jazz, but that ability is clearly tied to things like the looper
collar and their TempPads. Some might think it overkill to make it seem like
they’re more powerful than the Infinity Stones, but in case you didn’t know, an
Infinity Stone’s power is limitless, but only in it’s home dimension. I could
travel to another Earth, collect all Six Stones and use it to rule as God King,
but the moment I try to step back, the stone will either shatter or become
inert rocks in my home reality. So, the TVA isn’t necessarily more powerful
than the Infinity Stones, they just know how to neutralize them. Oh, and massive
props to Tom Hiddleston. While I loved the character development that he went
through in Ragnarok, seeing him return to the smarmy, smug dick of the Avengers
and Thor 1-2 was just fantastic. I also liked seeing this Loki react to how his
life was supposed to go. He cried for his parents, seemed genuinely pleased
that he and Thor reconciled, and was visibly angry at himself for dying. A full
gambit of emotions. The scene did help to remind me at least that while he’s
very similar to… we’ll call him Loki Prime, and could potentially grow into
some one a lot like him, Variant Loki is fundamentally different having not
actually experienced the events that made Loki a better person. I think he and
the reincarnated Vision could have a lot to talk about. … Marvel, maybe include
Vision in Loki season 2? Think about it! Oh, and Mobius. God, I love Mobius.
Like many people, I was a tad skeptical when I heard Owen Wilson was going to
be in this series. Not that he isn’t talented, but he’s more known for his
comedy work than anything like most of the MCU. But I loved him from the get go
when I finally saw him. Mobius is funny, quirky, and insightful in a way I wasn’t
expecting. He understood Loki like no one but probably Thor ever did and largely
by just watching him. Their somewhat antagonist friendship is a big part of this
series and I can’t wait to talk more about it. But that’s all I have to say
about that. Have a good night, everybody!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/54159422
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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