**This review contains some minor SPOILERS**
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
Coming in hot from the conclusion of season 1, “Loki” season 2 takes a big detour to tell a seemingly more mundane story. Thanks to fun characters and the show’s trademark quirkiness, it’s a fun watch, but it lacks momentum and urgency till the final episodes.
Last season of “Loki” ended with the threat of Kang the Conqueror right on the TVA’s doorstep, but we pretty quickly find out that he won’t be much of an issue and the season focuses more on what seems to be a minor problem…which escalates to a season-long crisis. While each episode is entertaining on its own, the main plot feels weak, and they feel like they struggle at times to keep all the characters relevant to the story.
While this is absolutely Loki’s show, and the season finale proves this more than anything, his bromance with Mobius is still front and center. Mobius gets some decent material outside of his time with Loki, but the payoff isn’t as strong as they hoped it would be. Hunter B-15 and Casey return as strong supporting characters, but they struggle to give Renslayer anything meaningful to the plot. Her plan is murky at best, and really never leads to anything. The same can be said of Kang variant Victor Timely. He seems to be central to the big picture, but in the end he’s kind of a red herring. (Not to mention Jonathan Major’s distracting performance that detracts from the character’s appeal.) Miss Minutes returns and the show digs into her darker side. There’s some potential in her story, but in the end there’s no real conclusion to it. The show gains a spectacular new character with O.B. His offbeat personality really adds some fun to the series. However, the biggest disappointment is Sylvie. Despite the love story between her and Loki driving season 1, it’s a non-factor here and she’s mostly pushed into the background.
The show looks fantastic, with great set designs and movie-caliber special effects. There are some really cool sci-fi concepts at play, and some are executed really well.
Despite promising to start off with a bang, Loki takes quite a detour for a fairly mundane plot about stopping a different catastrophe. While this story seems to take some seemingly meaningless twists and turns, the finale truly feels like a payoff to this new Loki’s journey.
*** out of *****