Loki season 2 has usually felt extra like a whimsical staging floor for Marvel’s next big crossover event than an extradimensional character examine of its eponymous trickster god. From its very first episode, although, Loki’s made clear that for all of its timeline-hopping and timey-wimey-ness, it has at all times been a narrative about Loki lastly discovering his true function after a number of lifetimes of not understanding who or what he wished to be.
There’s a solemn finality to the best way Loki’s second season involves a detailed that very a lot makes it really feel like each the collection’ conclusion and an indication of a serious, lasting change that can have far-reaching penalties for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Considered in a sure mild, it’s exhausting to see this season’s finale — “Superb Function” — as a completely satisfying conclusion that ties up all of Loki’s mysterious threads relating to the Time Variance Company, Kang, and Loki’s fellow variants.
However whenever you have a look at the finale as Loki’s approach of spelling out a number of the massive concepts that had been first teased all the best way again in its collection premiere (whose identify this episode shares), “Superb Function” works as a surprising bookend to this chapter of Loki’s life, and it opens up a complete new world of prospects for what’s coming subsequent.
This assessment incorporates spoilers for the primary season of Loki. For our preliminary assessment, go here.
Loki’s first season largely saved its focus fastened on Loki (Tom Hiddleston) himself as he launched into extradimensional journeys of alternate self-discovery. However the present’s second season has felt like way more of an ensemble present that’s making an attempt to spotlight what retains individuals like Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosako) going even when it looks like actuality itself is coming undone.
Season 1 revealed He Who Stays (Jonathan Majors) because the true supply of a lot of the chaos threatening the bigger MCU and established that his loss of life would result in the top of all issues. However there was no actuality during which Sylvie (Sophia DiMartino) would relaxation till she had her revenge on He Who Stays for orchestrating her apocalyptic upbringing, and Loki couldn’t deliver himself to cease her — partially as a result of they’re variants of each other, but additionally as a result of they appear to be in one thing vaguely like love.
Within the wake of He Who Stays’ Kang variants making their massive debuts in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it initially appeared like Loki’s second season may need been constructing in the direction of a future the villain was both hiding or didn’t find out about. This was very true as this season launched an excellent, bumbling, and technologically-limited Kang variant often called Victor Well timed, whose altruism made him look like the one model of Kang able to saving the TVA with out having any apparent ulterior motives.
Extra so than his uncanny resemblance to Kang and He Who Stays, what made Well timed such an interesting a part of this season was his reference to the TVA’s eccentric technician Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan). Regardless of Well timed being destined to turn out to be a Kang — the MCU’s subsequent massive unhealthy — Loki framed Well timed and Ouroboros as two genius minds who had been in dialog with each other throughout time, house, and totally different realities in a approach that shouldn’t have been attainable.
The query of how an earthbound Well timed’s research from the nineteenth century might have immediately led to Ouroboros writing the TVA information guide (which then traveled again by means of time and first gave a younger Well timed the inspiration to pursue his innovations) raised the fascinating chance of the 2 of them being extra deeply, existentially related. Loki spent a lot of its first season hammering house how, regardless of their bodily variations and distinctive backgrounds, there was an plain form of kinship between Loki and Sylvie that spoke to their each being diversified expressions of comparable core experiences like feeling exterior of 1’s household.
In its latter episodes, Loki’s second season virtually gave the impression to be implying that kind of relationship may additionally exist between Well timed and Oroboros, which might have been a notable beat by itself, however particularly so contemplating the rumblings about Marvel considering a Kang recast following Majors’ legal troubles. However relatively than pivoting to a brand new Kang, and even bringing Kang correct into the image in any main capability, “Superb Function” as an alternative goes out with a bang meant to remind you whose present this has at all times been, forthcoming tentpole motion pictures be damned.
Narratively, the best way “Superb Function” zooms in on Loki — who can now management his time-slipping to leap backwards and forwards at will — as he slowly realizes there’s no option to save all the branching timelines and the Temporal Loom conveys the reality of what He Who Stays informed him in season 1. Regardless of what number of jumps Loki makes to particular moments within the timeline the place his actions might change destiny, and make the unimaginable attainable, actuality begins to unravel simply moments after he arrives.
All through each seasons, Hiddleston’s executed a few of his strongest performing as Marvel’s god of mischief, however there’s a poignance to Loki and Sylvie’s reunion again on the Finish of Time the place he jumps to cease her from killing He Who Stays that feels distinct. The episode’s repeated revisiting of the identical scenes from barely totally different views rapidly drains the momentum out of the sequences the place Loki and the gang are scrambling to ship Well timed off to save lots of the Loom. However every time Loki tries and fails to cease Sylvie from killing He Who Stays on the Finish of Time, it turns into clearer that “Superb Function” is making some extent concerning the futility of making an attempt to alter the attitude of somebody who doesn’t wish to be modified.
“Superb Function” additionally highlights how Sylvie’s been fairly direct and constant about eager to dwell out her days after killing He Who Stays, even when that meant solely having a short while in the beginning about her new actuality ceased to exist. However relatively than casting Sylvie in a nihilistic mild, “Superb Function” holds up her resolve and a form of mirror for Loki to see how he, too, can select to observe his coronary heart, understanding that he may not succeed.
Whereas the thought of Ouroboros perhaps being a Kang variant is a neat one, “Superb Function” follows Well timed down the gangway making an attempt to save lots of the Temporal Loom sufficient instances to make it appear like Majors may be round for a bit longer but. However inside the context of Loki, it looks like there’s no situation during which Well timed’s the one to save lots of the day as a result of, once more, that is Loki’s story.
As delicate as this season has been in exploring the character of free will, it was very clearly going out of its option to keep away from suggesting that perhaps Loki, an Asgardian god, may be higher suited than Well timed, a human man, to go on a cosmic spacewalk to improve a chunk of equipment. However when “Superb Function” will get round to dwelling as much as its identify and giving Loki his massive hero second, it lands despite its abruptness due to how powerfully it speaks to Loki’s self-professed want to guard his mates and his concern of being alone.
This season featured far fewer whimsical Loki variants than the primary, however “Superb Function” makes up for its lack of Richard E. Grant’s Traditional Loki as Loki trudges down the gangway to magically comprise the Temporal Loom’s explosion. At a time when Marvel’s VFX output has been wildly inconsistent, seeing Loki go massive with a change sequence set towards the backdrop of a glowing, dying multiverse stuffed with decaying timelines and completely nail it’s a delight. It’s a bit exhausting to grasp simply what precisely is happening and why Loki’s immediately in a position to carry out a feat so huge you’d virtually count on to see it occurring in a movie. However it’s attractive, and its common which means is pretty simple.
“Superb Function” establishes that, by grabbing maintain of every of the multiverse’s timelines and weaving them collectively upon the ruins of He Who Stays’ throne on the Finish of Time, Loki has apparently turn out to be a brand new form of Time-Keeper. The finale doesn’t clarify what position Loki — whose magic is what brings the timelines again to life — performs of their continued existence past performing because the nexus that connects all of them collectively. However because it returns to a TVA that now focuses on preserving tabs on all the Kang variants scattered throughout the multiverse (Lokiverse), it looks like this will probably be an enormous a part of the MCU’s new regular for a minimum of some time.
There are many reminders on this episode that all the pieces that’s occurred this season is inevitably going to result in the outbreak of a battle that none of Loki’s characters — save for He Who Stays — are able to be pulled into. However relatively than hyping up the subsequent Marvel challenge, “Superb Function” closes out on Mobius and Sylvie to emphasise how their freedom, for now, is inexorably linked with Loki’s sacrifice.