Loki Is Very Very Horrible: An Honest Rant

 

You probably clicked on this because of my very clickbait-y title and I’m very proud of myself for doing that. The title isn’t so clickbait-y because I do think Loki is horrible, well....it became horrible. Breath in, put on your reading glasses and refrain yourself from insulting me till you’re done reading. 

Spoilers Ahead

Before I proceed, I would like to state the following, to begin with, I have forgotten a lot about this show even if it’s quite recent so, everything I say in this my coming rant will simply be from a place of how it made me feel so I might suck with specifics (yes, I’m proofing myself from diehards) and in addition, this post is totally not biased in any way as I did genuinely want to love Loki and I really really enjoyed the very first episode. Now, let’s begin.

I think my biggest issue with the new mcu shows is how they all have very interesting beginnings (and sometimes middles) but, the endings are just so bloody awful. If I were to rank them in terms of which had the better endings it would be, Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Wandavision and Loki but, don’t let that fool you, they’re all gutter tier endings with the only difference being that one gutter requires a few scrubs to clean up its stench and the others require hundreds. 

Back to what I said earlier though, I really loved the first episode of Loki and I think that’s mostly due to the interesting premise which could basically be summed  to the 2012 super proud and arrogant version of Loki is captured by all powerful time corporation and humbled. I was so entertained through out and I especially loved the dynamic between Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

 The problem with this show started showing even as far back as that and don’t worry I will tell you the problem with this show. The problem is (drumroll) it’s a massive Easter egg/Referencing show pretending to be a deep dive into the character of Loki. It just becomes a continuous and honestly irritating compilation of setting up the future of the mcu and look, I get it, it’s a cinematic universe, it’s all meant to be cohesive. Things are meant to lead into other things, trust me I understand, but, when you’re more interested in set up than the current story, it becomes a story. They speed past important things like Sylvie’s origin (which they showed so stupidly it hurt to watch) because they don’t care about that, they just want to get you prepared for Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness and possibly Spider-Man: No Way Home, yayyyy!!!!

Speaking of things that hurt to watch, I do not understand how and why they made Loki become more stupid with each episode. I think what hurt me more about the whole thing is knowing that these writers and show runners  were doing this intentionally because in the big multiple Loki episodes they reference how stupid it was for Loki from infinity war (the one from the normal mcu) to have tried using a knife to kill Thanos and then they let this Loki do stupider things through out the series. The diehard mcu fan reading this is probably saying “what stupider things”? Well, we need to talk about how he uses his powers on this show. This guy, a literal god got thrown off a train by a bunch of mere men and this same guy, on that same planet stops a huge structure from hitting him and Sylvie with only his mind. They’re a lot of inconsistent power scaling issues that are very prevalent in this series and are are reminiscent of Wanda and Vision; two of the most powerful beings being saved by Captain America and the very human Black Widow and Falcon.

Power levels asides though, this Loki becomes more dumb every episode. You could argue that this is due to him seeing his fate and being very conscious of that or, him developing a (initially cute but later quite weird and lifeless) relationship with Sylvie who very unsurprisingly betrays him for the only simple reason of setting up the next mcu movie and nothing more. The whole thing went from interesting to a little cute to just boring, creepy and incredibly annoying all within three to four episodes. I have no hate on the actors or characters though, they’re forced to act and are written that way simply to further the overarching narrative. This isn’t usually a problem but it appears no deep level thought was taking into doing the set up. While I did watch the show in its entirety, I hoped with each episodes for it to have higher highs but as it progressed that just never happened. The whole thing just being a big Easter egg and nothing more argument became cemented with that ridiculous finale and no, I don’t mean ridiculous in a good way. 

The final nail in the hammer, the pile of trash in the gutter, the finale. The episode before the finale which felt like a filler teased final real answers to the questions we’ve been asking and minus the cool classic Loki performance by the amazing Richard E. Grant, I’d say that whole episode was just unnecessary and just for moments like “hey look, recognize that Easter egg? its the funny thanos helicopter from old comics, look, it’s here”. 

The finale brought me possibly my new worst marvel character; Jonathan Mayor’s “He Who Remains” who’s essentially a variant of Kang The Conqueror, descendant of Reed Richards and the man who’s being set up to be the big bad for phase four. I already stated how I don’t hate any of the actors and this is because they were pretty much great. I had no issue with Jonathan’s acting and I saw it was very good, my problem was how he was portrayed. Dear Marvel, making everybody and every moment some joke isn’t quirky, sometimes more Thanos like villains are needed. I don’t need a big fight, I just want some more serious characters. He felt like a bad version of BVS’s (yes I love BvS) Lex. I know being so isolated and everything can make someone crazy and all hyper but still, the person could also be cold menacing and calculating. I know he’s a variant, I know he’s not THE Kang and I know we’ll eventually see that version but man, it’s so frustrating how the mcu tries so hard to spoil important moments with shoehorned comedy or comedic like performances. I didn’t like him at all, I thought he was boring, I thought the set up for the multiverse was boring, I hated how long the boring conversation they had was but I guess I did enjoy when the timeline finally got shattered, that was cool to see but that’s it. The real pain now is knowing that it’ll probably get nominated for multiple emmy nominations like WandaVision (which deserved one or two at most), characters like Ms Minutes will probably never be explained and that season 2 of Loki will probably be the same thing; Two cool episodes and the rest leading up to the next big marvel movie. 

Okay so, that’s my rant on why I think Loki was horrible. You may proceed to insult me now, Goodbye and....Thank you.