Marvel’s awesome ontological paradox

For a series that wears its multiversal complexity as a badge of honour and, indeed, is the fountainhead of the entire Multiverse Saga after the finale of Loki Season 1 saw Sylvie kill He Who Remains and allow the sacred timeline to shatter into an ever-increasing maelstrom, Marvel’s Loki Season 2 delivers a surprisingly linear story, at least from the erstwhile God of Mischief’s infinitely recursive perspective.

The season opens with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) uncontrollably slipping backwards and forwards through time around the TVA headquarters while trying to warn Mobius (Owen Wilson) of the multiversal threat of the variants of He Who Remains. A TVA technician known as Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) helps stabilise Loki and they set out to find Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and prevent the Temporal Loom from overloading and annihilating the entirety of the multiverse. Meanwhile, a splinter group within the TVA led by General Dox (Kate Dickie) sets out to preserve what’s left of the Sacred Timeline by destroying the branching timelines, wiping out billions of lives in the process.

While Loki Season 2 embarks on the highest of high concept sci-fi comic book plots, what stands out is how profoundly character driven it is, centring as it does on deepening and completing Loki’s character arc that started all the way back in Thor. Tom Hiddleston, given the opportunity to explore Loki’s long struggle with identity, destiny and his ultimate place in the universe, shines as the anti-hero turned, albeit reluctantly, actual hero and finally to a saviour of sorts as he seizes the opportunity to rise above all of the parochial rivalries and ambitions which defined his previous existence. A near-immortal, removed from normal time, is an intriguing premise and the series makes the most of the dramatic potential with a story that balances warmth and humour with drama, pathos and a healthy dose of quantum physics and temporal mechanics.

Loki is no one-man show, though, and the ensemble of Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino and newcomer Ke Huy Quan add layers of camaraderie and texture to the twisty, turny timey-wimey narrative. The visuals take another step forward from the previous series, giving breathtaking visual life to the complicated concept of the multiverse, the splintering fractal timelines and the weird quantum mechanics that all that entails. The TVA itself feels lived in and authentic, especially to anyone who’s ever worked for a large multinational corporation, for whom the glimpses of the labyrinthine layers of bureaucracy and self-defeating internal processes, procedures and politics will seem more than a little familiar.

The writing, led by Eric Martin, is sharp and engaging, weaving together the action, drama and humour of the situation although in making the deliberate choice to centre on Loki’s journey as the heart of the story, there is a sense that some of the wider aspects of the story suffer a degree of collateral damage, with the rich potential of a civil war within the TVA and the looming threat of Kang the Conqueror in particular feeling a little bit rushed and lacking in development, although this does, in retrospect, leave room for a TVA spin-off series (especially as the TVA is left reinvigorated with a new mission to track and monitor Kang variants, including a nice nod to Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania) which, even though I’m fully onboard with the recent Marvel production slowdown, would love to see.

With the Multiverse Saga barrelling ahead, and with Deadpool & Wolverine set to lean heavily into its rich potential, Loki season two leaves its title character – and the entire multiverse itself – in an intriguing and pivotal position and the distinct suspicion that this can’t possibly be the last time we’ll see Loki in the MCU.