Main cast: Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Owen Wilson (Mobius), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Ravonna Renslayer), Sophia Di Martino (The Variant), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15), Eugene Cordero (Casey), and Tara Strong (Miss Minutes)
Director: Kate Herron

I kind of like The Variant. I’d like it more of the lead character weren’t Loki. I know, dead horse, but the sight of him trying to swat a CGI clock-thing would be something his brother would do. Then again, everything about the Thor franchise had been reduced into a comedy, because Disney doesn’t like Kenneth Branagh, although to be fair to that evil corporation, I hear very few people actually do. Since then, the show had been mishandled and molested by people with only one-punchline-every-second as the cornerstone of their operation. Sigh.

Still, I tell myself that this is an alternate timeline Loki. I have to remind myself a few times of this throughout the episode, mind you, but yeah, I have to keep that in mind.

Since this is the second episode, and more things are revealed, I can share more information about what is happening. Here, Loki is now a reluctant part of the TVA crew, and his first mission—the one he is specifically drafted for in the first place—is to hunt down another time anomaly, or variant: himself. That’s right, there are many variants of this particular variant, and hey, I didn’t come up with the jargon in this series, so don’t look at me like that.

First things first, the bad: boy, the TVA hunters come off as incompetent here. How did they last this long again? Then again, considering how some of them, including their leader B-15, look like they are not built to be agile or stealthy, if you know what I mean, it looks like they have been raiding doughnut shops far more than doing what they are hired to do. Seriously, these people are just awful at their jobs, apparently unable to do anything other than to charge like an idiot and poke people with pointy sticks. Worse, the likes of B-5 are also mouthy and arrogant, acting like they know everything when their real expertise is more likely stuffing three doughnuts into their maw and swallowing them whole in under one second.

Of course, the TVA being incompetent is a cheap and lazy way for Loki to do that classic trope of that one newcomer that manages to upstaged supposed experienced and trained veterans without much effort. Lazy is lazy, though, and Loki would have come off smarter in a much more earned way had the TVC actually showed that they have more than a single brain cell shared between all of them.

Sadly, I have to include Mobius in this. He certainly made a good first impression on me in the opening episode, but here, he comes off as impatient and uncharacteristically dismissive of Loki when he does those things that he brought him onboard to do in the first place. I still like this character, but man, the intelligence downgrade is a big turn-off, even if this is the first time I find Owen Wilson to be easy on the eyes.

Also, this is a procedural episode in a sense, as Loki and Mobius spend a lot of time coming up with ideas and doing research on where the Other Loki is hiding, but unfortunately, the script drops the ball in this area. Loki just comes up with all these wild ideas that happen to be correct just because, and the whole thing ends up coming off like a script done by people that have no idea how to do this kind of episode. They can’t do good one-liners either, as all the lines that are clearly meant to be used as memes on social media just end up being a thud of a dud.

So, why do I like this episode? Well, Tom Hiddleston is doing a great job carrying this episode on his shoulders. Once I get used to this Loki being a different Loki, I find myself appreciating how vexed Loki is when he is constantly told that his opponent is a more superior version of himself. Loki has some good chemistry with Mobius, despite the script making these two say some really awful lines and Mobius having to be super dumb for the sake of elevating Loki as the only smart one in the room. The episode is well-paced, and it is over before I even notice the time. All in all, I have a pleasant time watching this show.

Considering how bad the script is, I’d say that the two main leads have done a really good job elevating the mediocre material they have to work with!