Main cast: Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Sophia Di Martino (Sylvie), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Ravonna Renslayer), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15), Eugene Cordero (Casey), Rafael Casal (Hunter X-05/Brad Wolfe), Tara Strong (Miss Minutes), Kate Dickie (General Dox), Liz Carr (Judge Gamble), Neil Ellice (Hunter D-90), Jonathan Majors (Victor Timely, He Who Remains), Ke Huy Quan (OB), and Owen Wilson (Mobius)
Directors: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Well, the gang along with Victor Timely are doing their best to fix things from going kaboom in the TVA, but they are at the same time under siege from… Bitchface and a cartoon clock.
Said cartoon clock turns out to be a general of He Who Remains in the distant past, commanding his armies to conquer the multiverse, and it tells Bitchface that He Who Remains has always wanted her to run the TVA. Instead of asking why then she had to toil as a judge for so long if that were the case, Bitchface—whom I’m convinced is mentally handicapped in some significant manner—says okay and the two of them then manage to kill all the extraneous side characters that show up now and then. I’m sure there are at least two people out there that care about these deaths.
The Heart of the TVA, everyone.
These buffoons are all so incompetent. Tell me again how they managed to “stabilize” the multiple timelines out there prior to this show?
This episode is an alright one, but it also hammers home my issue with this season so far. Things just escalate from, say, 50 to 9,999,999 in a matter of one episode.
The antagonists here pop up in the previous episode, having morphed into characters so unlike their season one counterparts, and then they are just as quickly taken out by the end of this episode. They are here just to cause things to go FUBAR, and the FUBAR-ness of it all sure seems exciting, what with all the colors and explosions and ooh, until I pause to wonder why the TVA is so defenseless and useless to the point that a Bitchface, a cartoon clock, and a useless actor-wannabe can do so much damage.
Sure, there are magic-suppression mechanisms to keep Loki and Sylvie from doing one-shots on everyone, but how about the TVA itself?
Meanwhile, I’ve completely lost track of what happens when timelines are messed up. These people simply kill off one another with impunity, driving home how introducing multiverses is a big mistake as the dead ones are “merely” variants and hence other variants can be dragged into the scene if needed for plot purposes. In other words, deaths have no finality and hence no weight or gravitas anymore in this setting.
It’s an issue facing the MCU on the whole, not just this show, mind you, but oh well, that’s what Kevin Feige gets for relying on cheap diversity hires with more smugness and sense of entitlement than talent to run his personal version of the MCU. It turns out that the bald emperor really has no clothes.
Also, given that they are facing a reality-shattering threat here, shouldn’t Loki and Mobius at least try to, I don’t know, get some outside help? Doctor Strange, maybe? He’s the current go-to guy for woo-woo stuff, after all. Freaking She-Hulk: Attorney at Law could afford to rope in and humiliate Wong, and they couldn’t give this show the budget to rope in some cameo appearances?
Anyway, yes, things happen and colorful things galore in this episode. Despite how critical I may seem in this review, this show is still the most watchable Disney+ MCU show in this current phase. I know, that’s a low bar, but I’d even go as far as to say that the episodes of this show to date are better than the most of MCU movies that they have recently released.
Yes, a low bar indeed, but when it comes to the current state of the MCU, even small victories are far and few, so I guess they should be savored whenever I stumble upon them.
