Loki – Season One Review

Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the God of Mischief, steps out of his brother’s shadow to embark on an adventure that takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame.

There was once a point in time where mostly everybody believed that we would never get a film based on any sort of obscure superhero, mainly because superhero films back in the day usually only came out if they were following a highly popular and beloved character such as Batman or Superman. When Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man was released in 2002, it was seen as the first time that a lesser-known superhero was getting their time in the spotlight.

Of course, Spider-Man is a famous superhero but back then, compared to Batman and Superman, it seemed like a movie centered around the web-slinger would never happen. Fast forward to the world we live in today and we have two movies based around the character of Ant-Man as well as Black Panther, which is amazing.

And if you were to tell me a couple of years ago that at the start of the 2020s, we would get television shows set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I would have told you that you are mistaken – but alas, here we are. This past year, we had the emotionally devastating and thrilling WandaVision, which served as an amazing display of Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany’s acting talents, as well as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a semi-spy thriller set after the events of Endgame, telling a politically charged and relevant story.

Marvel Studios’ latest adventure in the streaming world is Loki, which tells a time-travel-centric story but gets much deeper and emotional than one would expect with that setup and with the lead character being one of the biggest villains in the first half of the MCU.

Loki isn’t like the other shows we have gotten in this universe so far. As a matter of fact, it may be one of the boldest and daring pieces of entertainment to come out of the MCU to date. Endgame certainly dealt with time-travel, but Loki handles the multiverse and variant characters in brilliant and exciting ways that will surely get massive fans of the Marvel realm excited to see what else the studio has up their sleeves in the future.

If you are somebody that will get confused with alternate timelines and the multiverse, then Loki is probably not going to be your cup of tea, considering how almost the entire show focuses on it in one way or another. Of course, each episode does contain the tried-and-true Marvel action scene, but each episode also deals with character variants and different timelines than the one that we are used to in the MCU film series.

It takes a little bit of brainpower to connect the dots in certain episodes but if you do the mental work, then Loki proves to be immensely rewarding. Before watching this show, I was a little bit upset by the six-episode count. I was really wanting another show like WandaVision that had a total of nine episodes to seriously ensure that the story the screenwriters wanted to tell got enough story development, but I have to say that Loki‘s six-episode count felt perfect.

There is never a point where Loki feels too long or too short either. Each episode propels the story along in a smooth and invigorating way, and I never felt as though the show was moving along too quickly. The pacing was superb.

It isn’t as enthralling as WandaVision, however. There aren’t any gigantic jaw-dropping moments except for in the final episode “For All Time. Always.” which contains easily one of the biggest MCU bombshell endings since Infinity War and Endgame. But while Loki doesn’t feel as grandiose or as exciting as WandaVision, I certainly appreciated the more laid-back and character-driven approach to the titular character instead of seeing him cause a bunch of mayhem again like we are used to. It’s not one of the best pieces of MCU entertainment out there, but it’s still remarkable.

Overall Grade: A

Certificate: TV-14

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Tara Strong, Owen Wilson, Sopha Di Martino, Sasha Lane, Jack Veal, DeObia Oparei, Richard E. Grant, Jonathan Majors

Directed by: Kate Herron

Created by: Michael Waldron

Network: Disney+