By Jennifer Ariesta
Here at the end of time, Loki finally meets his glorious purpose. But it isn’t what he’s been thinking of all along. Is that a good or bad thing?
Having finally learnt to control his time-slipping, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) goes Groundhog-Day style exploring all the ways to fix the Temporal Loom. This sequence is literally a visualized presentation of Doctor Strange going through the fourteen million, six hundred and five possibilities to find that one way to beat Thanos. But, despite his new god-tier ability and no matter what he does, the end stays the same. Eventually, he is forced to make a hard decision.
At 50-minute plus runtime, the final chapter is concisely told, if way too crowded with expositions, like the rest of the series has been.
“It will make sense”
It’s the mantra that Loki keeps telling audiences. Eventually, it does. Intellectually, the machination wraps satisfactorily. However, by the end, you are only left with admiration for the logic of the story and lose the all-important humanity that once made Marvel heroes lovable. It’s epic, but hollow.
That last impression defines the entire series. Loki is indeed one of the best MCU series (the best remains WandaVision). Next to WandaVision, it is also the rare one with actual consequence in the grand scheme of things. Just like how the multiverse was created at the end of season 1, season 2’s ending irretrievably changes the future of MCU by opening the possibilities of the multiverses colliding with Loki literally holding it all together. The plots check the boxes and bring audiences to the intended finish line. However, by the end, you don’t particularly feel attached to anyone but Loki, despite their terrific performances. Morbius, and Owen Wilson, is supremely underused throughout the whole thing. Sophie Di Martino is saddled with the most frustrating Sylvie. Loki gets a neat ending, though its beauty as a culmination of Loki’s 12-year journey is just an opener to the next chapter in the MCU. This is where the problem lies.
It says a lot when MCU’s current best does not elicit the same excitement as even mid-tier Marvel movies once did. The problem lies with the interconnectivity of it all. The MCU projects, movies and series, are now tightly wound together. It’s not enough for Loki to just be good, because it’s essentially just one arc in an infinite series that is MCU’s saga. The way things are going now with these projects having uneven quality – that trends downward, if we’re being honest – it’s disheartening how even Loki writers’ best effort to make things make sense, which they did, is done in service of a wobbly big picture.
The Multiverse Saga so far just isn’t working.
You can feel the machination behind the plotline as opposed to it being organic. There is also something quite detached about them – what with half the characters being either variants or Kree impostors or pale imitators of the old guards. Marvel is desperately asking audiences to care by slapping what’s familiar. But what’s left is just a shadow of the past. Loki wraps its arc with panache, but in this crisscrossing timeline, where the same weekend sees a film setting up its continuation (The Marvels) being screened, you can’t help but feel the impact of the ending diminished.
