TV Reviews: Loki (Season 1)

***This review contains some spoilers***

Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube

With quirky characters and odd locales, the first season of “Loki” follows a Loki that finds new life thanks to the Avengers time-traveling shenanigans, and ends up on an adventure that zigs and zags a bit too much for its own good. The series struggles with pacing, veering into new directions just as interesting plot points are introduced and character pairings begin to click, killing the show’s momentum.

The plot is relatively simple, yet somewhat absurd: By stealing the Tesseract when the Avengers time traveled in “Avengers: Endgame,” Loki is arrested by the TVA for interfering with the proper flow of time. He avoids death by agreeing to help hunt for a dangerous enemy that turns out to be another Loki. However, this isn’t quite what we get. After just a few episodes, the show takes a sharp turn as the Lokis are forced to team up to stop the TVA…and then takes more strange twists the closer they come to finding answers. The series also has just a little too much flash and not enough substance. A talking animated clock, retro-looking technology, a dwarf that scans temporal auras, and Loki as DB Cooper are examples of things that are just there to be zany, and really don’t mean anything to the overall story. Things wrap up anticlimactically, and there’s no resolution to the story because they need to set up other Marvel films and “Loki” season 2.

Fortunately, the show has some fun characters played by great actors. While some, like Hunter B-15 and Judge Renslayer hint at something deeper to their characters, neither really ends up revealing that much more by the end of the season. Loki is as you would expect him to be, but the “unreformed” version of the character they promised barely last through the first episode before he’s on the way to becoming the anti-hero from the version of him that died in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Meanwhile, the Loki variant that is setup to be the big bad ends up being somehow both a force to be reckoned with and kind of a screw-up at the same time. It’s their interactions with our Loki that makes them endearing, but a lot of that is because we care about “our” Loki. At the end of the day, the show’s MVP is Mobius. Owen Wilson is masterful in giving him a folksy charm, while still letting us know that he’s a skilled manipulator. He works well with anybody he shares the screen with, but his chemistry with Loki is fantastic. It’s too bad this this pairing doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of time that it should.

The show looks great overall. While the set designs are mostly for flash, the design is captivating. However, some of the locations they visit aren’t as well realized. The effects look great, and are movie quality. Surprisingly, except for a few exceptions, the flight scenes are mediocre. And considering Lokis have magic powers and super-human strength, they can’t seem to overcome what should be ordinary folks.

Overall, “Loki” season 1 is ripe with potential and fun to look at (and not just for all the easter eggs), but weak pacing tends to spoil the fun. But the great characters and a few strong pairings are what are worth sticking around for…even if they don’t usually spend as much time together as you would hope.

*** out of *****

Movie Review: Black Widow

Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube

A solid solo film for Marvel’s Black Widow that introduces some fun new characters, but wraps the story up in a bit of a mess. While this movie is hindered by the fact that it’s a prequel and we know Natasha will survive, the rest of the supporting cast’s fate is up in there air, so there’s still some high stakes. Even though this is the perfect time to fill in some blanks in Natasha’s past that have only been hinted at, we only get a few details, and even then it’s more tell than show. While the general plot is predictable from all the trailers, the film takes quite a few twists and turns as it slowly makes its way from point A to point B. Thankfully, they this time is used to flesh-out Nat and her dysfunctional family. There’s a fun dynamic here, and while David Harbour’s Red Guardian can be hard to sympathize with most of the time, Florence Pugh’s Yolena steps up and becomes the heart of the story. She shows not only incredible strength, but also vulnerability that steals the show. The Taskmaster is a suitable villain, but a controversial alteration from his comic book origin and surprisingly short and underwhelming action sequences prevent the character from reaching his potential as a bad-ass Marvel foe. The final act is all over the place, starting abruptly and quickly devolving into CG-fueled chaos that mostly ignores physics and just feels rushed. As expected, there is a post-credits scene that springs from one of the Disney+ Marvel shows, and seems to tee up another.

*** out of *****