Spoilers present.

Loki Season 2 is upon us, with six episodes for the next six weeks every Thursday on a computer near you. As someone who started out enjoying Loki and ultimately didn’t care for it, I will admit that this show out of most had me interested in a second season. Because I like answered questions.

First a catchup for those of you who don’t remember the MCU’s utterly moronic sequence of events by this point. Back in Loki Season 1 (2021), Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from Avengers gets pulled out of the timeline by the Time Variance Authority, a powerful organization created to keep the timeline straight by culling timelines before they can sprout. Teaming up with a woman version of himself, Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) discover that the TVA is run by He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) aka Kang the Conqueror.

He Who Remains reveals that he is the one preventing other versions of himself from coming forward, as the last time the timeline was allowed to branch uncontrollably it created a ton of even more evil variants of himself who just wanted to do war and shit. And since Marvel is on a misogynist kick where women are consistently stupid and ruin everything through their pension for being stupid or just horrible people, Sylvie kills He Who Remains and ushers in a new world where the MCU has even worse writing.

Let’s talk about season 2, I’ll be updating this article each week instead of writing a new piece.

#1: Ouroboros

The first episode of Ouroboros has my attention and my eager viewership for one reason; Ke Huy Quan, who plays the titular Ouroboros, a scientist at the TVA. I love Ke Huy Quan, and I’d watch probably anything he was in. I’m certainly not watching this for Sylvie, but to see Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) go on time adventures together. I’d say Sylvie would be better off manning a McDonald’s fry station but the show is literally doing just that.

Loki season 2 taught me two things; the season should have started with two episodes. Remember how Peacemaker’s first season started out weak but they released two or three episodes right off the bat? Yeah, the first episode really could have used a follow-up chaser because boy howdy is it boring. A whole lot of talkey mumbo jumbo about the timeline that I can’t imagine too many people care about or don’t already know. Also; Loki should have come out in 2022 when the idea of Kang was still fresh.

Instead we got two years of crap filling it in. What If?’s multiverse stories were mostly boring. Dr. Strange and the Multipass of Marbles introduced organizations capable of tracking the multiverse like the Illuminati only to make them stupid useless morons who get wiped out with no effort by Wanda in a film that was garbage. And then Ant Man: Quantumania brought in Kang the Conqueror only for him to be a stupid useless moron who gets wiped out pretty easily and the council of Kangs, who are all stupid useless morons for exiling the other Kang instead of killing him.

So we’ve had plenty of time to be disappointed by both Kang and the multiverse, and we know it’s not like Loki is going to stop Kang here or fix the multiverse. There are four more years of multiverse and Kang shit before Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027. Who knows if the MCU will even be alive at that point, given people are already tired of both of these plot devices.

Episode one has two things of note; Loki is slipping through time and then they figure out how to make him not. There’s no tension in this setup because we’ve seen the trailers, they’re not going to kill either Loki or Mobius in episode 1. Really it’s all a big setup so Owen Wilson can make a face while Ouroboros talks about his skin being ripped off. Because silly jokes are extra silly when people are making faces and repeating them.

#2: Breaking Brad

This is why I recommended having two episodes as the season premiere for Loki. Had this episode dropped last week alongside the premiere, I would have been a much happier boy. Episode 2 of Loki Season 2 was much more interesting than the first episode. Sure we had that whole plot of Loki slipping through time but hear me out on this; who cares.

Episode 2 deals with some higher stakes, particularly paying off the setup we saw last episode of all the TVA agents heading out on assignment. We had previously assumed as the show did that the agents were going out to catch Sylvie and throwing everything they could given she had killed like 400 agents over the course of time. Not the case. The TVA rogue agents led by Dox (ugh) were heading out to blow up the sacred timeline and reset everything again. And they succeeded. Crazy.

I have a feeling that the TVA being sad about the timelines being pruned won’t hold much weight with audiences, at least nowhere near what the writers are expecting. This isn’t like Thanos’ snap where whole worlds got screwed up on timelines that kept going. Removing timelines means billions of people never existed, unless you count their doppelgangers that still exist on the sacred timeline. And also this is nothing the TVA wasn’t doing literally two weeks ago, and we know those timelines with billions of faceless nameless people are going to come back in some form.

It is hilarious to see McDonald’s playing heavily into this season knowing Disney is flat ass broke and needs the product placement. But the show seems to be giving people what they want. Mobius and Loki being time traveling pals and solving time crime. Loki being intelligent and the star of his own show. A lack of Sylvie. Male characters that aren’t written to be stupid and evil so their female counterparts can shine because some of Marvel’s writers actively despise the audience and the properties (Jessica Gao). It doesn’t shit on legacy male characters and it isn’t afraid to get serious sometimes.

We also get to see Ke Huy Quan and Eugene Cordero being quirky nerds around each other, and I could watch a show about those two just doing nerd shit at the TVA. Where’s that spinoff? It’d have more viewers than the Agatha Harkness show whenever that dumb garbage comes out.

#3: 1893

Hard to believe the season is halfway over isn’t it? I have to say Season 2 of Loki so far has been far more enjoyable than season 1 was, even at its height. This week’s episode goes to the 1800s where a Kang variant known as Victor Timely is being groomed by Miss Minutes into becoming another He Who Remains. There’s a whole creepy bit where Miss Minutes reveals her thirst toward Timely, given her thirst toward He Who Remains, and asks for a physical body so they can bone.

Look, it’s not so creepy in a show that has already toyed with Loki wanting to bang a variant of himself. If Kang didn’t want this maybe he shouldn’t have programmed her with a horny algorithm. To be fair I think I’d take Tara Strong’s voice in a mannequin over Sylvie in a human form any day.

I have a hard theory after watching Episode 3 and that is that Sylvie is a genuine moron. Or a die-hard racist. That’s the only explanation I can give to why despite being told numerous times that Victor Timely is the only solution to stopping the whole world, including her world, from being destroyed, she still wants to kill him. Either she’s so stupid that she really can’t comprehend the logical chain, or she’s just really racist and wants to kill all variants of this specific black guy. She also really wants to kill Renslayer. Actually Sylvie might just be really racist.

The whole multiverse timeline thing is still really stupid. So last episode’s reveal about the timelines being destroyed was supposed to be a big heart breaker, and nobody cares because you can’t imagine trillions of lives that were lost but not really but kinda but they’re dopplegangers but also the timelines got wiped so they never existed. This episode ruins what little pull that might have had by pointing out that the timelines are just coming back. Trillions of lives we will also not care about emerging from the trillions we didn’t care about.

Since Ke Huy Quan is here, I’ll remind you that Everything, Everywhere, All At Once did multiverse with impact infinitely better. Seeing Timely as an 1800s con artist was pretty funny, and shows the acting range of Jonathan Majors.

#4: Heart of the TVA

Wow. I can’t remember the last genuine “oh damn” moment I had with an MCU product, but the final moments of episode four left me saying “oh damn.” I’ve said numerous times on my Twitter that Skibidi Toilet has better pacing and tension than most mainstream movies and shows. Heart of the TVA kinda proved the show’s worth.

It’s very obvious from this week’s episode that we are in the last half of the season. Major characters are starting to die off, the stakes are getting even bigger, and the ultimate conclusion of the show is starting to reveal itself. Kinda. Almost as if responding to the complaints that the multiverse stuff is hard to empathize with, given the apparent loss of trillions of lives in timelines we don’t care about, the episode ends with literally everyone dying.

I normally don’t enjoy Disney’s attempts at subverting expectations, but having the whole intriguing buildup to setting up Victor Timely’s self-sacrifice and just turning him into time spaghetti the moment he walks out and then seeing the time loom explode. Well I’d actually say it’s the biggest oh damn moment since the ending of Infinity Ward. I suppose it’s partially just impressive when the MCU lets a moment stew in its own silence and weight without someone showing up with a sarcastic quip.

That being said, I do have a theory and it has to do with Renslayer. We know that Ravonna is not dead, as that’s not what pruning does. We’ve also seen strategic use of pruning to fix timeline-related issues in the past. So who is to say Ravonna getting pruned wasn’t part of some bigger plan? Alternately there’s the whole fact that we never really saw Dox and the gang die or the aftermath. Sure it’s implied but you can never trust what occurs offscreen in these shows/movies. I don’t trust they’re dead until the show really confirms it.

#5: Science/Fiction

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this episode other than that it once again throws in my biggest complaint about the season; Sylvie is an absolute moron for the sake of shilling McDonald’s. It’s pretty well established at this point that if the temporal loom splodes then all of time will be destroyed including the one Sylvie wants to live in because she loves McDonald’s. But instead of helping to save said timeline, Sylvie keeps sticking to this idea that the temporal loom should blow up because the TVA sucks. Up until she realizes it actually destroyed McDonald’s and now she’s willing to help.

Why do I get the bad feeling that Sylvie’s story exists wholly to keep bringing the camera back to McDonald’s?

One thing Loki has going for it is that I’m constantly wondering where the show will go next. Loki’s time-slipping is back but he can control it now and he’s going to use that to re-write the story. I have a feeling there’s something more insidious behind why Loki is even able to time slip, given how many times OB has said it’s impossible within the TVA. Maybe he’s secretly being controlled by another Kang variant.

I’d say maybe this is how Disney wipes out Jonathan Majors but apparently the show never had any reshoots. On the other hand we finally got Mobius selling jet skis, so that joke has come around full circle.

#6: Glorious Purpose

It’s finally over. Loki Season 2 is done with and The Marvels is out in theaters and my official stance on the overall MCU is…I’m still not that interested. The last episode had me kinda hoping Loki would go back and kill Sylvie. Not because I was invested in him stopping her screwing up the timeline but just because I’m so sick of her character being present and all of this is basically her fault to begin with. Sylvie sucks and I hope she has no place in future shows or movies.

But given the cast of characters and events of the show, I am sad to see Loki Season 2 done with forever. Will we ever see Ke Huy Quan again as OB? I don’t know. I hope so. Having Loki be the omnipresent tree of life is an interesting choice, given he can apparently now see in any time and place. The fact that the TVA is now apparently completely set on pruning Kang variants makes me wonder again if this is Marvel’s way of writing Jonathan Majors out of the series or replace him with a different actor. How did the TVA miss this variant? He’s white.

Tom Hiddleston got the finale Loki fans probably think he deserved and I’m sure he’ll be popping up here and there from time to time. I’m sure the whole tree thing is something out of the comics, but who cares. It doesn’t really set much up for future installments other than the meta knowledge that time is a big tree and not a thread set up by Jonathan Majors. Also Sylvie sucks.