If you have been lounging at home, bored out of your mind, chances are you have checked out Loki. Out of all the Marvel madness going on, Phase four seems to have really gotten it right with Loki. From more fleshed-out characters to plot twists too bizarre, nothing about Loki is predictable, quite like himself. So, before we get ready for the madness that will be Episode 5, here’s a long recap of it all. Beware; this article contains spoilers of the highest degree. Proceed with caution.
Until now, we have had four episodes of Loki, with just two more to go. The ride has been positively bumpy from the start, with twists and turns without expectation! Loki has managed to outdo all its predecessors in the TV series category of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And with every episode turning out better than the previous ones, the only way to go it seems is up. The series follows Loki, the God of Mischief’s prolific exploits through time, focusing on one specific instance. And if you haven’t watched the series yet, this shall be your final warning. There are huge spoilers ahead.
Episode One – The TVA.
The show begins where Avengers – Endgame left off Loki’s story. If you don’t remember, here’s a small revisit. Infinity War establishes that the Loki we see throughout the MCU dies at the hand of Thanos. So, that Loki’s story is over. However, in Endgame, the Avengers go on what is essentially a time heist and fail in one of their missions. In this mission, to paraphrase, Loki ends up getting the Tesseract. And when Endgame ended, we thought that that line of storytelling ended there. But guess what, it didn’t. Loki manages to get away with the Tesseract, but he isn’t alone. He is followed by these absurdly competent soldiers that seem to be intent on catching him. He makes it to Mongolia before he is captured and taken. Taken where exactly?
Well, he is brought to a place called the TVA – the Time Variance Authority. According to Ms. Minutes, the TVA oversees all the events going on in the universe. It also maintains the proper flow of time. The TVA classifies Loki as a Variant. A variant is someone who has disrupted the correct flow of time, and is to be ‘dealt with’. Everything is quite unclear, but its Marvel so you believe everything.
Mobius. M Mobius.
At this point, Loki is thrown in front of a judge, is very close to being ‘convicted’ for his crimes, and is saved by the bell by Mobius. Who is Mobius? Well, as far as we know at this point, he is an employee of the TVA sent out to investigate unforeseen happenings that disrupt the Sacred Timeline. And he seems to be very intent on talking to Loki. As a watcher, you start snowballing at this point. Nothing is familiar, the story is completely alien to what Marvel has released before, and you are just going with the flow. Mobius reveals to Loki that there is someone, who has been going around, killing soldiers of the TVA and stealing what is essentially their rewind buttons. When Loki asks, why he was being told all this, its revealed to him and us, that the killer, is another Loki.
End scene. And that’s episode one. Now onto Episode two.
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Episode Two – She-Blonde-Loki?
The second episode is a bit of a filler episode. The story is, of course, vital to the plot. But along with that are scenes filled with quips and jokes that are reminiscent of the Loki that we started our journey with. Owen Wilson is wonderful as Mobius, and the camaraderie between him and Loki goes from a grudging partnership to a detective duo much like all the crime-fighting shows of the 90’s. They uncover the reason as to why they have been unable to track the other Loki’s locations until too late, and manage to figure out where they shall find them next.
It’s the year 2050 in a supermarket called Roxxcart, and a huge storm is about to decimate the market to the ground, leaving no survivors. Mobius, Loki, and a few of the other hunters make it there in time, and start looking for the rogue Loki. It turns out, this Loki has the power to enchant minds and has been possessing refugees in the market to place rewind buttons (actually called reset charges), all across the supermarket. What this intends to do, we do not know.
Our Loki manages to find the rogue Loki and elicits conversation. What follows is a reveal of the decades: The rogue Loki turns out to be a woman, blonde, and somebody with way more knowledge about what exactly is going on than Loki. As she triggers the charges and opens a portal to the TVA, our Loki runs after her, managing to make it in the nick of time. And yes, he does leave Mobius behind. This episode then ends here, with no mid or post credit scenes.
Episode Three – Lamentis and a Singing Loki
Despite being a pivotal villain in the MCU, Loki was always shown as someone who created chaos and destruction and seemed to have no value for anyone. While this is an aspect of Loki’s character, a certain levity that possesses the actual personality was never explored before Loki the series. Loki, for the first time, is shown as someone who simply wants to cause mischief. And pain and destruction aren’t his motives, just byproducts sometimes.
This is especially poignant in Episode 3, where you see what is basically a stand-off woven into a comedy of errors between our Loki and the rogue. Oh and just to make things simpler, rogue Loki’s actual name is Sylvie. Loki and Sylvie manage to strike up something akin to friendship by the end of the episode, and almost make it out of the doomed planet. But they don’t. And the third episode ends with them giving up on leaving the planet. With episodes coming out once every week, the cliffhangers leave so much to speculation. And speculate we do. It is impossible to escape spoilers with this series, and I enjoy the hype and attention Loki is getting.
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Episode 4 – A Nexus Event, Moping Mobius, and a Whole Lot of Stuff That Nobody Understands.
The episode starts with a young Sylvie being picked up from the steps of Asgard’s palace for no reason at all. She is then sent through the same process that we see our Loki go through in episode one. It’s heartbreaking to see the fear and confusion on her face. The little genius that she is, Sylvie manages to escape the hold of the hunter and makes it to onto a foreign land, forever running from then on. She is grown up when she meets Loki, and we are back to the present.
Loki and Sylvie share a moment of understanding, and right before the planet crashes into Lamentis-1, the TVA makes it to their location. Turns out, their brief ‘moment’, created a nexus event that could easily be picked up, regardless of any apocalypse. They are subsequently arrested, and taken to separate cells to be interrogated. A brief stand-off between Loki and Mobius leads to Loki telling Mobius that all of the TVA’s soldiers are just like him: variants.
At first, Mobius doesn’t believe him. But after noticing some odd behavior from his boss when asked questions about the Loki catastrophe, he decides to do some digging for himself. In the meantime, one of the hunters, that had previously been enchanted by Sylvie takes her back. Back to where, you ask? Back to Roxxcart. There she asks Sylvie if the memories from the enchantment were real, and she nods in affirmative. Sylvie then shows the Hunter a few more of their memories, and they make it back to the TVA.
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Too Many Twists To Count.
The story after this is too convoluted for me to condense into a hundred words. The only things I can say are, don’t miss the mid-credits scene or you shall be a crying mess. Episode Five of Loki The Series comes out today and I can’t wait!! The comment section is a non-spoiler-free zone, so you could go crazy with your wildest theories!!