Welcome back to the blog readers. Loki's second season is exceeding all expectations two-thirds of the way in, with last week's episode being the icing on the cake. A fantastic episode that quickly became my second favorite of the year, it will be hard to top. Now we look to the future, as we are in the endgame now. Two more episodes to keep up this crazy wave of momentum we are on. Could we keep up that pace with this episode, titled "Science/Fiction," directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and written by Eric Martin? Stick around and find out.
NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.
After last week's brilliant episode, I was a bit hesitant about how this episode would be, especially off the heels of an episode like that. What we wound up getting was an intense character study of Loki, with some branched timeline visiting and a shocking new reveal that can literally change the landscape of the MCU as we know it. And what sucks is that there is one episode left after this.
For the last four weeks, I have been doing nothing but singing the praises of Tom Hiddleston as he is in the midst of giving a career-best performance in my opinion. Unfortunately, I only have one more episode to do so. Basically, the point I was trying to make is that he is continuing to give a career-best performance. And I truly believe that this episode in particular will get him an Emmy nomination. Come on guys, it has to. We get into so much depth in this episode with Loki, and we learn what he truly is fighting for. His interactions with Mobius (or Don in his timeline), OB (or A.D. Doug in his timeline), and Sylvie in her timeline are proof of this. Most importantly, his scene with Sylvie at the bar highlights the acting prowess of Hiddleston. This is the only time other than his death in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) that I felt genuine emotion for Loki, and those tears definitely were real when Sylvie finally got him to admit that he wanted his friends back and was afraid of being alone.
I also really love the structure of this episode. With the Temporal Loom exploded and the TVA destroyed, everyone in the TVA was sent back to their lives before the TVA took them. We see Mobius as jet ski salesman Don, B-15 as pediatrician Verity Willis, OB as physics teacher and writer A.D. Doug, and Casey as famous Alcatraz escapee Frank Morris (This one, I think, is a nod to Loki apparently being D.B. Cooper in the first season). I love us getting to explore the lives of these people before the TVA took them in, and A.D. Doug in particular for being the smartest of the pair and getting the events going. Loki also time-slipping to these timelines is a power that could be harnessed.
Speaking of A.D. Doug, I continue to be in love with Ke Huy Quan in this series. He just brings a puppy-dog energy to this series that I am attracted to. I also love how Doug is the smartest person to help Loki as he is a physics teacher. His underappreciated comment of him working on the TemPad prototype through a job firing and a divorce was nothing short of comedic brilliance. I also love how he was the driving force of this episode, and the clear cut soul of it. His comments to Loki allow him to discover something about himself that he never knew he had: the ability to control his time-slipping. That right there is absolutely fascinating, and a power that I think he could take advantage of in the future to recruit heroes to his fight against Kang.
And then we go to Sylvie. Since her decision to kill He Who Remains, I think she has owned up to this decision and accepted that he was right, and that this is all because of her inability to let go of the past and give in to reason. And all season, she has expressed how little she cares about the current conflict, something I think Sophia Di Martino has excelled at with her character work. I also love how we see a little more of her life since her actions, as she is a regular (and they made it known that she is the only regular) at a vinyl store. Remember when I said she cared little about the TVA and its destruction? Well, she got a real reality check when the entire timeline that she made a life in spaghettifies and she finally realizes the consequences of what she has done.
Now we have to talk about the end of the episode. After gathering all of the variants of his friends, he is despondent over his failed attempt to get Sylvie. After she comes upon her timeline spaghettifying, A.D. Doug's timeline, and everybody including Sylvie, do the same. Loki finally realizes he can control his time-slipping by focusing on a single person, and decides to focus on Sylvie. This brings everyone back, and Loki realizes that he can "rewrite the story." He time-slips again, this time he goes back to the TVA right before the explosion. I cannot fucking wait to see where this goes and how this crew decide to end the season. There are literally so many possibilities now that Loki can bend space and time to travel wherever he wants. This also makes reference to a comic story that got pointed out to me by some content creators where Loki becomes the God of Stories. Like I said, this is fascinating to me.
Thank you all so much for reading, and I cannot wait to review this finale for you.
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