I just need to get a few opinions out of my head and onto the digital page, in regards to the final episode of Loki that aired in the middle of last week. There may actually be spoilers below, so if you haven’t finished the latest Marvel Universe series on Disney+, either do so before reading on, or consider yourself warned.
Not that I’m really keen on spoiling the episode or series per se. But after five episodes of strong narrative inertia, fantastic character development and dramatic build up, the sixth episode felt like hitting a speedbump. Or a garden wall.
I literally looked at my friend in the middle of the episode while we were watching it, both of us having watched and loved the first five episodes, and I asked her if maybe Episode 6 had a different writer than the first five. Sylvie felt as though she completely threw out all of her character development from the previous few episodes. Judge Renslayer simply stopped making sense as a character entirely. And even for a diehard Marvel geek like myself who pretty much “knew” who He Who Remains was, sitting through 30 minutes of intentionally-melodramatic monologuing before he actually revealed who he was… I thought it was a little much. And the ending, with Loki’s return to the TVA followed by him being unrecognizable by Mobius, was something I had to go online to look up and figure out. Which is something I don’t always mind, but was just another out-of-place interruption to the flow of the series.
That all being said, Loki and Episode Six in particular did a phenomenal job of setting up both the next major Marvel supervillain and pretty much the entirety of the next half-dozen Marvel movies. In terms of set-up, it’s an amazing Episode. But there is a disconnect somewhere between the first five episodes and the finale. And that is what threw me off, and made me altogether not like the finale at all.
I’m feeling better about it, now that I understand what it is. But I feel as though the writers of Loki had an excellent series that could have had an immensely satisfying ending, but they sacrificed that satisfaction in the name of setting up the next five years of Marvel movies. Which is fine, and in some ways a great thing. But in terms of storytelling prowess in the scope of Loki itself, was very much not a great thing. In my opinion, of course.
Loki: 9 / 10 (Episodes 1 – 5), 5 / 10 (Episode 6)
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Bill Gates and Genghis Khan
The past and future both collapse!
Bill Gates and Genghis Khan
Converse, while old Mercator maps
This strange phenomenon.
Will Stephen Hawking and Monet
Jam out with Dr. John?
Where will they find the time to play,
When time itself is gone?
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Written while listening to I’s Between Two Worlds (2006).
The Artist and the Engineer 