Loki

 Burdened with glorious purpose  (and the show achieved it)

(Spoilers for everything in the MCU leading up to and including Loki)

Hiddlestone does an excellent job recapturing the tone of 2012 Loki.

Loki has been a magnet for fan attention since his introduction in 2011's Thor. He instantly became a fan favourite, and the fervour of those adoring him has only strengthened following his subsequent appearances. As such, it comes as no surprise that when his death shook audiences in the first 10 minutes of Infinity War, those fanatics were distraught and clamored for his return in any capacity. That wish was promptly granted the following year with his apparent escape from established events in the 2012 portion of Avengers: Endgame. The new question on everyone's lips was "Where did he go?". Phase 4 was revealed, and along with it the announcement that Loki would get his own show. Questions... answered?

With promotional material and the promise of a mystery thriller genre, MCU stans were intrigued. With casting announcements such as Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant and, most shockingly of all, Owen Wilson, Marvel now had our undivided attention. The two preceding Disney+ shows, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, were both fantastic in their own right, but had set a confusing contradictory precedent. Let me explain. WandaVision rumours were rife, with Mephisto and Quicksilver conspiracies spreading like wildfire, alongside an assumed a given appearance by Dr Strange. None of these came to fruition, and left some (including myself) a little deflated and underwhelmed. With lower expectations set, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier blew many away with the satisfying rise of Sam Wilson to the new Captain America. This inbalance, along with the incorrect quoting of Kevin Feige claiming that the Disney+ shows were non-essential viewing; it led most to not expect anything too wild to happen in any of these shows. Big reveals, character arcs and explosive sequences would be saved for the silver screen.

Then along came Loki. That mischievous scamp.

The dynamic between Mobius and Loki is an immediately iconic pairing.

Diving straight into spoilers, Loki exceeded all expectations and defied suggestions that these shows couldn't top their cinematic counterparts. It gave us a new fan favourite character in Owen Wilson's Mobius, alongside Richard E. Grant as Classic Loki. There's an alligator, a smoke monster and a scene revealing Loki to have been the real identity of D.B. Cooper. All excellent. All unexpected. 

Then there is Sylvie. Sylvie is a variant of our Loki, who just so happened to be born female. Being removed from her timeline at a young age by the TVA (the Time Variance Authority), a bureaucratic company that monitors and 'corrects' multiverse divergence, Sylvie decided to abandon the Loki name and went on the run. Her goal throughout the show is to bring down whoever is in charge. Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Rennslayer? The mysterious Timekeepers? Or someone else, just behind the curtain? Sylvie, whilst initially set up as an antagonist is slowly transformed into a sympathetic character, and although her portrayal didn't necessarily win me over (and the blending of the Enchantress character into Sylvie's persona seemed a waste), I came to appreciate her mostly down to the way that our Loki views her. It's a strange asexual relationship that on the surface could seem incestuous in nature, but the argument can be made that Sylvie isn't even really a Loki anymore. She is a Loki only in her origins, and thematically the concepts of self-acceptance, love and personal growth is personified and validated in the dynamic between Hiddlestone and Sophia Di Martino. 

Episode 3, from which this picture is taken, holds the
strongest relationship development between the two.

Loki's journey in the show from Avengers villain to full blown (anti?)hero, whilst a little rushed in the first few episodes, felt a satisfying arc come the finale. Wilson's Mobius also had a solid amount of character development, and it seems he's a mainstay in the MCU's future. Richard E. Grant, whilst only appearing in one episode, arguably made the biggest impression of all with a comics accurate Loki outfit and a fittingly grandiose persona to match. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is serviceable as a secondary antagonist, though her development and arc in the series is next to non-existent. Here's hoping more time is dedicated to her in projects yet to come. Wunmi Mosaku does a solid job as Hunter B-15, but again, the show isn't about her, so the truncated runtime doesn't allow for a lot of character exploration there.

The big bad of the series (other than the TVA's aristocratic and ruthless approach to management of the timeline) is revealed to be none other than Jonathan Majors' He Who Remains, a variant himself of the long-standing Marvel villain, Kang The Conqueror. Majors was confirmed to be portraying Kang in 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but no one was certain that he would appear here, despite various allusions to him throughout the show. We'd all been burned by Mephisto conspiracies in WandaVision; fool me once... 

An inspired performance showed me Majors is instant top tier Marvel talent

The finales runtime is almost completely dedicated to a monologue from Majors, and as his debut he knocks it out of the park. Discourse with my family members I watched it with was mixed. Many found it underwhelming to not have a massive set piece ala Falcon and the Winter Soldier's finale, but once I, resident nerd, clued them in to exactly who this character was, and what his likely trajectory in the future of the MCU looked like, they immediately wanted to re-watch and found it far more exhilarating. This could be an optics problem with Loki Season 1 (as Season 2 is confirmed); those not in the industry news/nerd spheres are likely to not know this characters significance, and therefore find the culmination underwhelming. They don't know they just got introduced to the next Thanos. 

Loki was pegged as something completely new from Marvel Studios, and whilst I'm not sure it lived up to the pre-release promise of a crime thriller, it deftly took multiple strides into uncharted territory. For the first time in the MCU, even as a mega fan, Loki reassured me that I would have little to no idea as to exactly what direction Phase 4 is headed, and I couldn't be more excited (and a little bit horrified) to find out

SH.