2023 UPDATE: Season 2 has fixed most of these problems for me now!
So the new Loki series came to an end a few weeks ago, and I’ve since been allowing it to “sink in” with me, before finalizing all my thoughts. That said, with Marvel’s What If? right around the corner, I thought now more than ever would be a good time to express all of my gripes that I have with Loki. It probably goes without saying, but this post contains spoilers. You’ve been warned…
Also, quick disclaimer: I didn’t hate the show. I definitely have some issues with it now in hindsight, but overall, I still enjoyed it as it was going on, and I can still appreciate the acting all around, as well as the wacky sci-fi aesthetic, among other factors. Out of all three MCU shows that have aired thus far, this is probably the one I’m most likely to eventually go back and watch again (I also liked the other two shows as they were ongoing, but each finale kinda killed it for me).
All that aside, here are the Top 5 questions that Loki left unanswered:
1.What was the point of Endgame?
No, seriously! What the actual fuck?! So you’re telling me that whenever a timeline branch happens, the TVA shows up and basically “erases” that branch? If that’s the case, why did Captain America need to go put all the stones back? Those timelines all still count as off-shoots, don’t they? Hell, the 2014 branch (the one where they got the purple stone) is now missing Thanos, Gamora and Nebula. So at least that branch definitely got pruned by the TVA, right? I suppose this could serve as a new explanation for how Old Man Cap was able to show up at the end, since maybe the TVA bumped into him while he was on his little adventure and put him back on the sacred timeline. But still, all of this makes his “death” feel even more meaningless than it already was.
2.How exactly do the TVA people not age?
Okay, so let’s walk through this one step by step. Sylvie escapes from the TVA when she’s a little girl and spends the next 20 years or so hopping around from one apocalyptic event to the next. And since all these moments are still on the timeline, she still ages. But the TVA headquarters and “the void” and the citadel all exist outside of the timeline, which is why the TVA people and the other Loki variants and Kang never age, right? Okay… But here’s the thing: Don’t the TVA people still spend most of their day-to-day hopping around the timeline, to clip the branches? If so, shouldn’t they still be aging, just little by little? Renslayer says at one point that she and Mobius have been friends “for eons.” I don’t know if you guys are aware, but an eon is a pretty long fucking time! So it’s kinda hard for me to believe that all of these people are still as young as they are. Renslayer I can believe since she’s a judge who probably spends most of her time at her desk, but all of the others? I guess I can just write this one off as artistic license, but still…
3.How is there even an alternate TVA at the end?
As I mentioned above, the show clearly establishes the fact that the TVA exists outside of the timeline… So then how is there an alternate “bizarro” TVA at the end? The main episodic director of the show hinted that this was something that was decided upon at the last minute, during reshoots. Sounded like she wasn’t too happy about it, which would explain why she isn’t returning for Season 2…
4.How exactly does “timeline resetting” work?
So when Lady Loki/ Sylvie was deemed a variant and plucked from her timeline, did the TVA reset it all the way back to before she was born, so that Loki could be born male instead of female? That young version of Sylvie looked to be about 10 years old, so did the TVA seriously reset an entire decade of the universe, just like that? And did she seriously not deviate at all until that very moment? I get that little girls and little boys are pretty similar to each other until they get to their “tween” years, but still! Same question applies to Old Man Loki (aka Classic Loki). Richard Grant is about 25 years older than Tom Hiddleston, which means he was probably in hiding for about that long after the Thanos attack, right? So the TVA reset an entire quarter of a century of the universe? Just like that?! And then how far back did they reset our Loki’s timeline to? I assume just until right before he picked up the tesseract, so only a few minutes. I guess some nexus events are more “intense” than others, but still!!
5.What exactly is Kang’s motivation?
Seriously, what’s this guy all about? I get that he and all of his different variations each want to “conquer the multiverse”… But why?! Cause he’s smart? Cause he can? Cause he feels inferior and wants to be the only Kang or something? I put this one at the bottom cause it’s not a huge gripe, but STILL, why can’t all these different Kangs just, I don’t know… Leave each other alone?! What does one universe even have to do with all the others anyways? And why did he create the Time Keepers as a smoke-screen? What purpose did that serve? Felt to me like the showrunners just needed something to pad the show out and preserve the Kang twist. But if he’s as self-indulgent as he seems, why would he even wanna hide himself like that?
Alright I’m done ranting about Loki, for now. Listen, I get that not everything has to always make total sense. Just look at Star Wars, after all. That shit hasn’t made any logical sense since Day 1, and yet we all still like it (or at least I still do, for the most part). And like I stated earlier, there are still aspects of this show that I do enjoy. That said, I still felt the need to bring all of this up, cause I see most people overlooking all of these details. Sure, one or two plot holes can be hand-waved away as “creative liberties,” but once they start to stack up, the whole thing starts to “collapse in on itself,” and that’s certainly how I felt about this show (or at least this season of it, as I’ll try to keep an open mind for Season 2).
And I know I’ve said this before, but it’s weird how stuff like Star Wars gets nit-picked to death (at least since the prequels), whereas shit like this from Marvel always seems to get a pass. However, maybe things are starting to change. The finale of this season, as well as the finales of the other two Phase 4 shows thus far, were all pretty divisive, as was Black Widow (which started to tank financially after my last post). So maybe now Marvel is starting to receive the same level of scrutiny that Star Wars always gets. Not that scrutiny is a good thing but, you know, “an eye for an eye,” as they say.
The infinity saga was basically the MCU’s equivalent of the original trilogy, the only difference being that Marvel took what Star Wars did in three movies and figured out how to stretch it across twenty-three movies. But now it’s over, and the MCU is in its equivalent of the Star Wars prequels, sequels and spin-offs. It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Either way, I’ll still try to enjoy What If? and treat as it’s own “anthology” type of thing…
Sorry for getting off-track there at the end! Those of you who already read my blog regularly know how I am, tangents and all…
Peace!
PS: Oh yeah, and how exactly did Loki and Sylvie’s moment by the lake cause a nexus event? Aren’t apocalypses supposed to cover up, well, everything?! Is it just cause Kang wanted it to happen that way?…
