Main cast: Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Sophia Di Martino (Sylvie), Wunmi Mosaku (Dr Verity Willis), Eugene Cordero (Frank Morris), Ke Huy Quan (AD Doug), and Owen Wilson (Don)
Directors: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
In the previous episode—okay, I’m going to spoil that episode, so avert your eyes now or forever hold your peace—when it ended the way it did, I had a few thoughts about the most predictable and hence lamest way the rest of the show would play out.
- Everything goes FUBAR, but somehow Loki is still around.
- In the previous episode, Sylvie railed at Mobius for not even peeking at his other variants in other timeline, so I know this will come up in this episode.
- Since deaths are now cheap and pointless as we can just pull out another variant from infinite numbers of timelines for plot purposes, Loki would seek out the variants of his allies to try once again to undo the damage. Now, I don’t know why he won’t seek out, say, Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, or even that Ant-Man guy and his family along with OB to get things done, but I guess the budget has been eaten up by the previous flop shows or it’s too expensive to have both Tim Hiddleston and Owen Wilson on the same show, so now Loki has to make do with his bro, his braindead girlfriend-or-maybe-it’s-complicated, an overweight TVA agent that hasn’t done anything useful all season, a clerk, and OB.
- Naturally, it doesn’t work because look at the people he is stuck with.
- Loki at the last minute discovers that he has the amazing powers to control time all along, just in time for the finale.
The whole thing sounds super contrived, so I told myself, nah, no matter how terrible the MCU has been so far… wait, I remember Secret Invasion and my confidence sinks. Surely, they won’t…?
Yes, they did.
The people behind this show are of the same tier as me when it comes to plotting a show, and that is scary because they are the ones getting paid big bucks to do a show while I’m typing away at my keyboard for a website that I pay out of my own pockets every month to maintain. Why aren’t Disney knocking on my door to give me a contract? Is it because they are racist and—let me look into my pants just to be sure, as sex and gender are really confusing these days—misogynist?
Anyway, Loki Quantum Leaps his way into various timelines and we learn that Casey was a prisoner that managed to escape from the Alcatraz, Mobius is a salesman at Piranha Powersports, Hunter B-15 is a pediatrician, and OB is a professor in theoretical physics that is trying in vain to write a sci-fi novel that will sell. Oh, and Sylvie is Sylvie.
Again, this is a watchable episode. Owen Wilson and Ke Huy Quan steal every scene they are in, as they clearly are having fun playing for once characters that are unlike what they had been doing in the last few episodes. There are also many colorful CGIs and dramatic music to accompany these scenes. This season has the aesthetics of an acid dream on vivid technicolor, and it’s quite nice to look at.
I just wish that I am engaged with this season or that I care.
Now that I think of it, Science/Fiction would have been a great opening episode for this season, with the next episode spent fleshing out these new variants and letting them bond with Loki before introducing Timely and the rest. Ravonna and Miss Minutes could have been re-introduced in the first or second episode, and then we can have these people hash out the TVA drama in a manner that is better paced with ample room for character development.
Instead, I am at the brink of the last episode of this season, and I still can’t muster up even an iota of concern for Loki and the gang.
Oh well, this season is almost over. Let’s just get it over and done with.
