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Episode Review: Loki 2x1 - "Ouroboros"

Welcome back to the blog readers. If you remember, earlier this year, I wrote a post that ranked the Disney+ series and specials of Phase 4, with the first season of Loki being very high on that list. I loved that season due to the performances (especially from Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sophia Di Martino), the action, and the story that has shaped this new Multiverse Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Writer Michael Waldron and director Kate Herron really elevated the superhero series, and I am excited to see what comes next. With that being said, would the premiere of the second season, titled "Ouroboros," directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and written by Eric Martin, continue that same energy, or would we end up lost in the Void? Stick around to find out.


NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode. And this should not have to be said, but you probably are not watching this episode if you have not seen the first season. So get on that shit if you haven't, it is brilliant.

 

Speaking of brilliant, I was hoping for a banger start to this season. And boy oh boy, did I get it. What a fucking way to kick us off. Tom Hiddleston automatically gives an Emmy-level performance in this episode, Ke Huy Quan is a fucking riot, and it makes up for in character in general what it lacks in action. As I have previously stated, an MCU series does not always need to have action to grip me. This was a damn masterclass in writing and directing.


Right off the bat, we are greeted by the immediate aftermath of the events of the first season's finale. Loki finds himself in another Time Variance Authority (TVA), being pursued by that TVA's Mobius and Hunter B-15. After a not-so-lengthy chase that ends in a confrontation with Casey, Loki suddenly disappears and finds himself in his TVA. But what happens in the other TVA makes Loki suspicious. A giant television fell, cracking the floor, and when Loki finds himself in his TVA, the crack in the floor is still there, leading him to believe that he was not in another TVA, but in the TVA in the past. That revelation is crazy especially as this is only 5 minutes into the episode.


In the meanwhile, our Mobius and B-15 are being questioned by a TVA judge and general, where they have to answer for their refusal to prune all the branching timelines. This conversation is meant to humanize B-15 after she found out that she is nothing more than a Variant last season. She realizes that these new branching timelines contain living, breathing beings, and that pruning them will kill billions, if not trillions or quadrillions of beings. I love how Herron and Waldron were able to begin to humanize B-15, and now Benson & Moorhead and Martin are taking that one step further.


Loki eventually reappears in the TVA in the present, and is able to catch Mobius, B-15, Hunter X-05, and the judge and general up on everything, revealing that B-15 and Mobius were telling the truth and Mobius is caught up to speed on everything that happened at the Citadel at the End of Time. Tom Hiddleston is utterly brilliant in this episode as he sells how dangerous Kang is and that he and his variants are going to start another multiversal war (hints of that were seen in the mid-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania). Mobius then takes Loki to the division of research to meet with its head.


What follows is just absolute gold. The agent in charge of research is named Ouroboros and nicknamed OB, which is what we will call him. And OB is played by Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan. Quan really won me over with his performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) that won him that Oscar. The only thing is there really was not a humorous side to him in that film. Well don't you worry kiddos, it is all here and he is a fucking riot. Quan absolutely knows how to blur the line between intelligence and incompetence. In fact, OB is so wacky and zany that I could not help myself. It only got better when Loki time-slipped into the past and we saw his interaction with the two of them across time. The icing on the cake for me is when OB tells Mobius they need a device, tells Loki the same thing and then tells Loki he cannot build it...only for him to build it. Then he tells Mobius he does not have the device they need and then just happens to find the one he built for Loki. He then tells both what will happen to them if they fail to do what they have to and when Loki comes back to the present, they wind up arguing over who would have it worse. This is fucking comedy gold right here, and I love how just natural it comes off. That really is a testament to how far the relationship between Loki and Mobius has come, and how much chemistry Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson actually have together. And adding Ke Huy Quan to the mix only made this ten times better. Please give me more of this guys.


It looks like this plan will go off without a hitch, but then Loki time-slips again, but this time it winds up taking him into the future. OB begins shutting the blast doors, which would leave Mobius trapped with the Temporal Loom and left to die. Meanwhile, in the future, Loki briefly meets Sylvie before getting pruned (which he was supposed to do himself) and is knocked into Mobius, sending them both into the TVA before the blast doors shut. All the while, the TVA begins a manhunt for Sylvie after the general ordered it during the hearing. This scene honestly had me on the edge of my seat and thinking Mobius was about to die. Thank goodness he did not, because he is too damn good to be gone.


But the big talking point is the mid-credits scene, which sees Sylvie seemingly after killing He Who Remains teleporting to a timeline where she ends up at a McDonald's in Oklahoma in 1982. She sees all the customers happy and decides she wants to try everything. I have so many questions about this mid-credits scene. How long has it been since she killed He Who Remains? What is with the sudden change in mood after basically creating this mess in the first place? Why was she all happy to see Loki after basically betraying him at the Citadel? I hope we get some answers soon, because the fan in me is desperate to get them after spending more than 2 years away from these characters.


I do want to talk a little bit about the direction in this episode. Some of the shots we see and some of the choices that are made really intrigued me. The big one was the stable shot that zooms in or out on someone. Those shots were a welcome change from the first season and make us feel more invested in these characters because of how up close and personal we are with them. These shots are only really seen in like small indie films and not a big-budget production like this. I do really enjoy how it feels similar enough to the first season, but has its own quirks that make it different. That is how you lengthen a good series right there, and I hope for some more crazy ideas in the coming weeks.


I know this is a longer post than usual, but I have one more point I want to make. That would be with the score. Not many times I talk about a score because some of the time it is only background noise. Natalie Holt returns from the first season to score this season and she absolutely killing it, even after one episode. This just might be the best score of Phase Five so far. Such a high bar has been set off this episode alone in terms of the score. I love how bombastic and epic it is in scale. Holt does an incredible job of completely immersing you into the feel of the action on screen in such an efficient way. I loved her score in the first season and I feel like that will not change now.


Again, I thank you all for sticking with me on this longer review. Normally the first episode does not go on for this long, but when you have a series as good as Loki then you talk about everything you possibly can. So thank you all again for reading this long as hell post, and i will see you all for the next one.

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