Disney +Loki Episode 2 Review

This week on Loki we follow Loki and Mobius as they hunt for an elusive other Loki variant.

Episode 2, titled “The Variant” begins with a scene where a group of TVA agents are attacked by The Variant, all to the sound of Bonnie Tyler’s classic, “I Need a Hero”. It’s actually a really fun scene to kick-off the episode with, I was hoping the rest would follow suit. Following on from the attack, Loki is finally brought on board with the team hunting The Variant and despite initially reverting to old trickster ways he soon proves himself useful by discovering how The Variant is hiding from the TVA.

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The episode was fun – keeping that fun momentum from last week. Mobius and Loki are a fun team, I enjoy seeing them interact. I think the biggest issue Loki is having, for me, is that the writers seem like the sometimes have to force motivations on Loki – or rather spend a lot of time making his motivations believable and in character. In MCU films, Loki is always either secondary or a villain and that’s where he thrives – because those roles allow for the mystery is there. Here, because he’s a central character the way he functions in the story is completely new. Maybe it’ll just take a bit of getting used to. There are still good moments with Loki – the scenes in Pompeii felt especially in character as well as being very entertaining. And the ending was definitely moving in the right direction in of the actions being very much what you’d expect. I said it last week, but hopefully this time it’ll actually be true – perhaps now the story is set up, everything will feel more natural.

The rest of the episode did raise some interesting questions – the true nature of the so-called “Time Keepers” and the Sacred Timeline being the main one. The mystery of this “Variant” being a version of Loki I had suspected wouldn’t be what we expected from the get go but the reveal of who they were felt a little odd – (**spoilers ahead) I don’t know if they expected us to be shocked just because it was woman or “Female Loki”? Was that the surprise reveal? I don’t know, felt rather weird to me.

I’m still enjoying Loki and expect things will get better from here on out, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?