At various moments throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, certain things have occured that’s taken that ever-fluid status quo and given it a seismic shaking up. Be it the subtle notion of Tony Stark obliterating the notion of a secret identity by uttering three iconic words in the dying seconds of Iron Man to Captain America: The Winter Soldier up and trashing S.H.I.E.L.D., they marked moments in the long running franchise that denoted that things will never be the same again.
Well, hold onto your curling horned helmets, folks, because Loki’s fifth episode is about to do it once again by fully stripping away the notion of the multiverse like never before and giving us a rock solid nexus point to launch from in order for things to get really crazy. Like, way crazier than a space viking, a talking racoon and an ornate piece of comic bling that can obliterate half the universe.
Prepare yourself, my friends, to journey… into mystery.
Sylvie may have finally unravelled the secrets of the Time Keepers (totally robots) and prised open the shocking truth behind the TVA (entirely staffed by mind-wiped variants of pruned universes), but it’s come at something of a great cost as Loki has been pruned himself and thus has been wiped entirely from the history of the universe. However, after a quick threaten of Judge Revonna Renslayer, Sylvie learns something even more shocking; while the Judge has no idea who truly runs the TVA, she does know that pruning someone isn’t the end of them, at least not yet and all pruned material is actually teleported to a dimension at the end of time where it’s summarily disposed of once and for all.
Cut to Loki in the The Void, alive, well, but staring in shock at the sight of a cluster of Loki variants that are offering him shelter from the danger that this dimension presents. The quartet, Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Boastful Loki and… er… Alligator Loki, hustle our Loki to their bunker through a world packed not only will detritus from countless pruned realities, but one that is constantly being ravaged by Alioth, a giant cloud monster that preys on matter.
While Loki struggles to thrive in an environment that’s crawling with pruned variants of the backstabbing God of Mischief, Sylvie attempts to get more information from Renslayer and realises that whoever is pulling the TVA’s strings exists at the end of time and the only way to get there is through the Void and through Alioth. After a quick self-prune and a reunion with the pre-pruned Agent Mobius, Slyvie and the remain Lokis plan to try and find a way to circumvent a vast cloud of living death in order to locate the man behind the multiversal curtain.
Since its first episode, Loki has dedicated itself to being as brain-bendingly weird as it can possibly be – be it the Terry Gilliam-esque, bureaucratic retro futurism of the TVA or the eager dissecting of time travel as we know it. However, at times, the show could be accused of spinning its wheels a bit – especially that episode that had Loki and Sylvie wandering around a collapsing planet – but with the aptly named Jouney Into Mystery (the orginal title of the comic Thor and his adventures appeared in), Loki finally achieves the demented scale its superlative first episodes hinted at.
Now that that distracting conspiracy theory stuff about the Time Keepers has been put to bed, the show is free to dive headlong into how truly funky the Multiverse can possibly be with the hefty amount of Loki variants riffing on either the many storylines from the character’s rich, comic history, or just throwing in a random one in the name of eccentricity. Best of the bunch is Richard E. Grant’s classic Loki, a bitter, aged version of Laufreyson who survived Thanos’ fateful neck snap and went into hiding whose costume is so comic accurate, it made this old Thor fan legitimately want to cry. Elsewhere, straight out of the entwined runs of writers Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen, we have Jack Veal’s Kid Loki who has assumed command of this motley crew that also contains the lie spouting Boastful Loki (played by Deobia Oparei) and a Loki that takes the form of a surprisingly sensitive alligator in a horned helmet and as our first real steps into the realms of the Multiverse, we couldn’t have had a better introduction. As a bonus, we even have Hiddleston also portraying President Loki from the 2016 Vote Loki series and it this merging of delirious fan service and plot that makes this episode probably the best of the bunch.
While your eyes are frantically scanning the horizon for deliberately ludicrous easter eggs (a Thanoscopter, a giant Yellowjacket helmet and best of all, Throg: the Frog of Thunder!), it truly expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe in ways we didn’t think were possible, but it doesn’t do it at the expense of the characters. Loki and Sylvie continue building some much needed trust – something that’s previously been all but impossible up to now – and the return of Owen Wilson’s magnificent Mobius allows us to spend more time with the ever curious agent as he bonds with Sylvie and marvels over the existence to an alligator Loki. All this conversing with other Lokis with other experiences is invaluable for helping move Lokis gargantuan character arc ever further without letting up on the strange notion of multiversal doubles and it’s still good to know that after all this time, Hiddleston is still being given new things to do as the character he’s been portraying for the better part of a decade and when we get to the finale of the episode, he gets to add a new, heroic wrinkle to Lokis ever growing tapestry.
Ah yes, the finale. In a rapidly growing TV slate that’s so far seen witches battling above a small American town and the Falcon fighting helicopters through a maze of canyons, the sight of a huge, voracious smoke-monster getting bamboozled by a full-sized illusion of Asgard provided by a Classic Loki emboldened by a renewed sense of glorious purpose, is by far the largest the small screen entries of the MCU have ever gotten. Thankfully, the budget holds, but the massive theatrics on show here hint at a final episode that’s going to be something a little different than the usual superheroics that usually round up Marvel’s streaming excursions.
Rumours are abound that its going to be huge when it comes to far reaching repercussions in the MCU as a whole, but while we wait another week to finally find out what lurks at the end of time, we can take solace in the fact that Loki has confidently out-weirded everything we’ve seen from the connected universe so far.
Glorious purpose indeed…
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