Maybe it's because I'm not as online as much anymore or something but I was super surprised that it's coming out so soon! Excited to see the Deadpool crossover into the MCU of course.
Maybe it's because I'm not as online as much anymore or something but I was super surprised that it's coming out so soon! Excited to see the Deadpool crossover into the MCU of course.
There some moments where story feels a bit slow and some moments where story going forward too quickly (I have similar feeling from first season), but I liked it. Liked more than (for example)...
There some moments where story feels a bit slow and some moments where story going forward too quickly (I have similar feeling from first season), but I liked it. Liked more than (for example) Marvels or Secret Invasion.
M-m-m... in my opinion its generally on the same level as the first season.
Exact opposite for me. I genuinely thought Season 2 was far better than the first season, and one of the best things Marvel has put out in the last few years. The acting was incredible all around,...
Exact opposite for me. I genuinely thought Season 2 was far better than the first season, and one of the best things Marvel has put out in the last few years. The acting was incredible all around, I loved the addition of Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros, I thought the pacing was perfect, and the ending, while sad for Loki himself, was super super satisfying and a fitting end for the character. Not that your opinion is invalid though. To each their own.
I completely agree. Loki season 2 is up in my top tier list of anything put out by Marvel Studios. No clue if it’s “mandatory” watching, but it was definitely satisfying watching.
I completely agree. Loki season 2 is up in my top tier list of anything put out by Marvel Studios. No clue if it’s “mandatory” watching, but it was definitely satisfying watching.
oh the acting was SO good! I love Tom Hiddleston and I think he makes the best possible Loki: so fun, so mischievousness, but also so tortured. He wants to be loved so badly that he puts on a...
oh the acting was SO good!
I love Tom Hiddleston and I think he makes the best possible Loki: so fun, so mischievousness, but also so tortured. He wants to be loved so badly that he puts on a persona which makes it hard for people to know him, let alone love him. I enjoy his portrayal of all MCU Lokis merged into one character, and to that goal I'm thankful the series exists. Partially, my frustration with the show is that I feel like viewers are expected to love and empathize with this Battle-Of-New-York Loki, when on screen the story dictates that this Loki hasn't had the opportunity for redemption and growth and depth as those other Lokis. The best, most self actualized Loki was the one in Infinity Wars, after all those events, the one who proudly declared himself Odinson, stood up to Thanos to save his brother, and died in space.... The Loki series Loki didn't do any of that: he wasn't Odin briefly, he wasn't on Sakar, he wasn't there when his mother and father died and Asgard destroyed - he just watched it on TVA TV.
Ke Huy Quan is a big part of why I decided to go ahead with Season 2. Love love love Ke Huy Quan. I feel like he's under-used in this series....compared to how differently he was able to portray three distinct Waymonds in EEAAO. His character is a little too much of the generic helpful squirrel nerd, and they even already had Casey for that role already :\
Sophia Di Martino did what she could....but it was like they forgot she's a Loki, and she's just the complicating factor / ex-girlfriend with different goals this season.
Owen Wilson has done much better work in Wes Andersons, for example. : )
I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed it and I do hope on-the-fence people will give it a try and take what they can from it.
Sure, but the movies Loki also didn't get to peek behind the curtain to see how utterly pointless all his efforts and scheming ultimately ended up being. Whereas Loki from the show did, and also...
The Loki series Loki didn't do any of that: he wasn't Odin briefly, he wasn't on Sakar, he wasn't there when his mother and father died and Asgard destroyed - he just watched it on TVA TV.
Sure, but the movies Loki also didn't get to peek behind the curtain to see how utterly pointless all his efforts and scheming ultimately ended up being. Whereas Loki from the show did, and also got to see how powerless the Infinity Stones (supposedly the ultimate power source in the universe) were to the TVA. They were using the stones as paperweights!
But more importantly he also got to see that on the sacred timeline he was always destined to fail, always destined to die at the hands of Thanos, and the only purpose for his existence was to act as a stepping stone on the other heroes' path to success. And most importantly, the Loki from the show also got to develop genuine bonds of friendship, respect, and love for people other than his family members, which movies Loki never really did. Both were always seeking "glorious purpose", but show Loki actually found the ultimate one; to help the multiverse flourish, and give his friends a chance to prevent Kang's multiversal war without relying on He Who Remains' solution of pruning countless lives.
So I would say you're selling show Loki's own totally separate character development arc short.
I like your analysis a lot :) it's why I still really like the first season's ep1-4 -- maybe that's what he's been missing all this time, a chance to be his own person away from all the family drama
I like your analysis a lot :) it's why I still really like the first season's ep1-4 -- maybe that's what he's been missing all this time, a chance to be his own person away from all the family drama
Thanks. I try. :P And yeah, I agree. I think the reason the show worked so well for me is precisely because it finally gave Loki the opportunity to develop as someone other than just a foil for...
Thanks. I try. :P And yeah, I agree. I think the reason the show worked so well for me is precisely because it finally gave Loki the opportunity to develop as someone other than just a foil for (insert hero or even-worse-villain here), or as just the black sheep in his family. I was satisfied with his ending in the movies, but I thought it was a much more profound and satisfying ending for him in the show. IMO it's possibly the best character send-off Marvel has ever done.
Wouldn't it have been even more awesome if somewhere in S2, he winked at Sophie and says, "hey check this out, I can control time slips now." She's better at he is with all things magic, and she...
Wouldn't it have been even more awesome if somewhere in S2, he winked at Sophie and says, "hey check this out, I can control time slips now." She's better at he is with all things magic, and she spent a whole lifetime running from things and slipping through cracks afterall. How long could it take her to also learn that skill, Michael, 10 years?
And then when he goes to his lonely throne, ready to spend eternity doing a thankless chore, there's an "on your left" moment, where Sophie, along with all the other Lokis (Aligator Loki!) of the entire multiverse, goes and joins him in their Glorious Purpose?
The time slipping wasn't a magical power that Loki could just teach to Sophie, it was a failsafe that He Who Remains designed into the loom when it started to break. And HWR would never have...
The time slipping wasn't a magical power that Loki could just teach to Sophie, it was a failsafe that He Who Remains designed into the loom when it started to break. And HWR would never have picked Sophie to get that power, since she was always going to kill him, no matter what anyone else did or said. That's the untenable dilemma that Loki faced when he went back and tried to stop her from killing HWR over and over and over and over again. Nothing he tried would ever stop her from killing HWR. She simply hated him too much. Whereas Loki might have been convinced to rule alongside HWR, which is why he was picked.
I also wish Sophie had gone with Loki at the end, but I don't know if that would have been possible. And even if she could have, she wouldn't have wanted to though... she just wanted to live a normal life. But in a way, I think all the other Lokis actually are with him on the throne, since I don't think he's just holding on to the timelines... he's feeding them with his power, keeping them alive, and likely gets to perceive and potentially even influence what's occurring in them all now. He has essentially taken the role of One Above All in the MCU.
Why does Kang, a mortal human, even have that power over the loom, and how is its time slip fail safe something possible to grant? Like, what mechanism enables powers like that to be transferable?...
Why does Kang, a mortal human, even have that power over the loom, and how is its time slip fail safe something possible to grant? Like, what mechanism enables powers like that to be transferable? Once Loki has it, what's stopping him from granting it to someone else?
Kang != He Who Remains, not strictly speaking, anyways. It's a bit convoluted, but HWR is a Kang variant, like show Loki, Sophie, and all the others Lokis we meet in season 2 are. HWR is simply...
Kang != He Who Remains, not strictly speaking, anyways. It's a bit convoluted, but HWR is a Kang variant, like show Loki, Sophie, and all the others Lokis we meet in season 2 are. HWR is simply the Kang variant that ultimately wins (or simply survives) the war that all the Kangs inevitably always start, which devastates the multiverse and very nearly ends all life on all the branches, and at every point in time. And after the war, HWR designed the loom, outside of time, to harness the power of and control the flow of time, and founded the TVA to prune any branches, in order to maintain a "sacred" timeline in which no other branches exist, so no other Kang variants would arise again. It's a nearly endless loop (Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail) designed to stop the inevitable war between all the Kang variants that always pop up again in a multiverse, but at the expense of the countless lives of every other variant living on those differing timelines. And HWR also wasn't really "mortal" either, since even if that version of himself died, he would always essentially reincarnate again after the inevitable war ended once again. "Reincarnation, baby!"
However, HWR also knew that with the sacred timeline in place, everything could also get to a point where he was no longer in total control, after Loki and Sophie finally reached him at his palace outside of time. And if he didn't stop them from killing him (which he could have done at any point but chose not to), he actually didn't really know for sure exactly what would happen after that. Which is also why he designed the failsafe into the loom for after Sophie killed him and the timeline started branching again, to give Loki a chance to bounce around in time trying and failing to fix things without HWR, so he could learn to see everything how HWR sees them, as inevitable, and the sacred timeline as the only solution.
It's why in the final episode of season 1 HWR suddenly gets all serious and says "We just crossed the threshold... so I fibbed. I fibbed earlier when I said I know how everything is going to go. I know... I knew everything up to a certain point, and that point was 7-8-9-10 seconds ago. Now I have no idea how the rest of this is going to go."
And it's also why in Season 2 HWR simply stops Sophie from killing him once Loki finally asks him why he never stops her... since at that point HWR knew Loki wasn't actually experiencing that moment for the first time either, so the failsafe had obviously been triggered, and he was now speaking to a more informed/experienced Loki he could talk to about the dilemma they were in. Which is when HWR finally explains that he's tired, doesn't want to keep doing this alone anymore, and made his sales pitch to Loki about helping him rebuild the loom and TVA, restore the sacred timeline, and rule alongside him.
However, Loki instead decided to ignore HWR's warnings about the inevitable war between all the Kang variants, and destroys the loom, essentially sacrificing himself to free the multiverse, and keep all the branches alive to give his friends a chance to stop the Kang variants multiversal war, without them having to rely on pruning. Now, whether that will actually work out, or whether HWR was right about another war being inevitable, with another HWR reincarnation surviving afterwards to restart the whole sacred timeline thing all over again too, remains to be seen.
At least that's my understanding of it. As I said, it's a bit convoluted, and hard to wrap your head around the Jeremy Bearimy (Good Place spoilers), wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey, paradoxical nature of time, time travel, and multiverse stories. So I could easily be wrong about a bunch of things. :P
Kang isn't a mortal human (at least not in the normal sense) since he has, essentially, travelled to every branch of the multiverse and "recruited" himself. That's why Loki and the team had to go...
Kang isn't a mortal human (at least not in the normal sense) since he has, essentially, travelled to every branch of the multiverse and "recruited" himself. That's why Loki and the team had to go back to the instance before Kang ever became aware of himself as "Kang". He also created the loom which is why he has the ability to control/contain it. His ultimate goal is always to preserve the "sacred" timeline.
Loki isn't granted the power over the loom, per se. The loom is destroyed which starts to unravel each of the branches and, as they unravel, they die. Loki, being an actual god, simply grabs them and imbues them with magic to keep them alive. That cements him as the "God of Stories" (one of his many titles in the comics) as opposed to just being the "God of Mischief" (as we first meet him).
I’m fully expecting a “Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe” story out of this one. Would give them a great chance to reboot everything with different actors and have it make sense in the story. I’m...
I’m fully expecting a “Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe” story out of this one. Would give them a great chance to reboot everything with different actors and have it make sense in the story. I’m pretty sure Hugh Jackman only came back on the promise that his Wolverine dies.
No, but it seems like a built-in solution to the burnout happening around Marvel’s properties. In the comics, the story was a meta-comic so it wouldn’t surprise me to get a meta-film focused on...
No, but it seems like a built-in solution to the burnout happening around Marvel’s properties. In the comics, the story was a meta-comic so it wouldn’t surprise me to get a meta-film focused on the same.
Dunno if it's just me, but when meeting Wolverine, Deadpools seems a bit akin to Disneys cutesy-talking animated protagonists. Made me think of the Youtube analytic disney's "adorkable" problem 🤪...
Dunno if it's just me, but when meeting Wolverine, Deadpools seems a bit akin to Disneys cutesy-talking animated protagonists. Made me think of the Youtube analytic disney's "adorkable" problem 🤪 which also lean into this.
Ryan Reynolds just seems to be having a great time. Good set up. I'm actually looking forward to it.
Maybe it's because I'm not as online as much anymore or something but I was super surprised that it's coming out so soon! Excited to see the Deadpool crossover into the MCU of course.
Yeah, I really liked last season of Loki and this "continuation" of TVA story looks intriguing.
Is Loki S2 worth watching? I watched the first season, and my enjoyment diminished a bit more after each episode. Kinda like Wandavision that turned an original idea into the usual CGI Marvel Fight ©
There some moments where story feels a bit slow and some moments where story going forward too quickly (I have similar feeling from first season), but I liked it. Liked more than (for example) Marvels or Secret Invasion.
M-m-m... in my opinion its generally on the same level as the first season.
I greatly enjoyed season 1 up until episode 4.
My unfavorable review here
Exact opposite for me. I genuinely thought Season 2 was far better than the first season, and one of the best things Marvel has put out in the last few years. The acting was incredible all around, I loved the addition of Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros, I thought the pacing was perfect, and the ending, while sad for Loki himself, was super super satisfying and a fitting end for the character. Not that your opinion is invalid though. To each their own.
I agree. I was really happy that the climax was character-driven and not the usual Marvel weightless CGI punch-fest.
Agree… dare I say that they elicited some sympathy for “The Man Who Wasn’t The Man”.
I completely agree. Loki season 2 is up in my top tier list of anything put out by Marvel Studios. No clue if it’s “mandatory” watching, but it was definitely satisfying watching.
oh the acting was SO good!
I love Tom Hiddleston and I think he makes the best possible Loki: so fun, so mischievousness, but also so tortured. He wants to be loved so badly that he puts on a persona which makes it hard for people to know him, let alone love him. I enjoy his portrayal of all MCU Lokis merged into one character, and to that goal I'm thankful the series exists. Partially, my frustration with the show is that I feel like viewers are expected to love and empathize with this Battle-Of-New-York Loki, when on screen the story dictates that this Loki hasn't had the opportunity for redemption and growth and depth as those other Lokis. The best, most self actualized Loki was the one in Infinity Wars, after all those events, the one who proudly declared himself Odinson, stood up to Thanos to save his brother, and died in space.... The Loki series Loki didn't do any of that: he wasn't Odin briefly, he wasn't on Sakar, he wasn't there when his mother and father died and Asgard destroyed - he just watched it on TVA TV.
Ke Huy Quan is a big part of why I decided to go ahead with Season 2. Love love love Ke Huy Quan. I feel like he's under-used in this series....compared to how differently he was able to portray three distinct Waymonds in EEAAO. His character is a little too much of the generic helpful squirrel nerd, and they even already had Casey for that role already :\
Sophia Di Martino did what she could....but it was like they forgot she's a Loki, and she's just the complicating factor / ex-girlfriend with different goals this season.
Owen Wilson has done much better work in Wes Andersons, for example. : )
I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed it and I do hope on-the-fence people will give it a try and take what they can from it.
Sure, but the movies Loki also didn't get to peek behind the curtain to see how utterly pointless all his efforts and scheming ultimately ended up being. Whereas Loki from the show did, and also got to see how powerless the Infinity Stones (supposedly the ultimate power source in the universe) were to the TVA. They were using the stones as paperweights!
But more importantly he also got to see that on the sacred timeline he was always destined to fail, always destined to die at the hands of Thanos, and the only purpose for his existence was to act as a stepping stone on the other heroes' path to success. And most importantly, the Loki from the show also got to develop genuine bonds of friendship, respect, and love for people other than his family members, which movies Loki never really did. Both were always seeking "glorious purpose", but show Loki actually found the ultimate one; to help the multiverse flourish, and give his friends a chance to prevent Kang's multiversal war without relying on He Who Remains' solution of pruning countless lives.
So I would say you're selling show Loki's own totally separate character development arc short.
I like your analysis a lot :) it's why I still really like the first season's ep1-4 -- maybe that's what he's been missing all this time, a chance to be his own person away from all the family drama
Thanks. I try. :P And yeah, I agree. I think the reason the show worked so well for me is precisely because it finally gave Loki the opportunity to develop as someone other than just a foil for (insert hero or even-worse-villain here), or as just the black sheep in his family. I was satisfied with his ending in the movies, but I thought it was a much more profound and satisfying ending for him in the show. IMO it's possibly the best character send-off Marvel has ever done.
Wouldn't it have been even more awesome if somewhere in S2, he winked at Sophie and says, "hey check this out, I can control time slips now." She's better at he is with all things magic, and she spent a whole lifetime running from things and slipping through cracks afterall. How long could it take her to also learn that skill, Michael, 10 years?
And then when he goes to his lonely throne, ready to spend eternity doing a thankless chore, there's an "on your left" moment, where Sophie, along with all the other Lokis (Aligator Loki!) of the entire multiverse, goes and joins him in their Glorious Purpose?
The time slipping wasn't a magical power that Loki could just teach to Sophie, it was a failsafe that He Who Remains designed into the loom when it started to break. And HWR would never have picked Sophie to get that power, since she was always going to kill him, no matter what anyone else did or said. That's the untenable dilemma that Loki faced when he went back and tried to stop her from killing HWR over and over and over and over again. Nothing he tried would ever stop her from killing HWR. She simply hated him too much. Whereas Loki might have been convinced to rule alongside HWR, which is why he was picked.
I also wish Sophie had gone with Loki at the end, but I don't know if that would have been possible. And even if she could have, she wouldn't have wanted to though... she just wanted to live a normal life. But in a way, I think all the other Lokis actually are with him on the throne, since I don't think he's just holding on to the timelines... he's feeding them with his power, keeping them alive, and likely gets to perceive and potentially even influence what's occurring in them all now. He has essentially taken the role of One Above All in the MCU.
Why does Kang, a mortal human, even have that power over the loom, and how is its time slip fail safe something possible to grant? Like, what mechanism enables powers like that to be transferable? Once Loki has it, what's stopping him from granting it to someone else?
Kang != He Who Remains, not strictly speaking, anyways. It's a bit convoluted, but HWR is a Kang variant, like show Loki, Sophie, and all the others Lokis we meet in season 2 are. HWR is simply the Kang variant that ultimately wins (or simply survives) the war that all the Kangs inevitably always start, which devastates the multiverse and very nearly ends all life on all the branches, and at every point in time. And after the war, HWR designed the loom, outside of time, to harness the power of and control the flow of time, and founded the TVA to prune any branches, in order to maintain a "sacred" timeline in which no other branches exist, so no other Kang variants would arise again. It's a nearly endless loop (Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail) designed to stop the inevitable war between all the Kang variants that always pop up again in a multiverse, but at the expense of the countless lives of every other variant living on those differing timelines. And HWR also wasn't really "mortal" either, since even if that version of himself died, he would always essentially reincarnate again after the inevitable war ended once again. "Reincarnation, baby!"
However, HWR also knew that with the sacred timeline in place, everything could also get to a point where he was no longer in total control, after Loki and Sophie finally reached him at his palace outside of time. And if he didn't stop them from killing him (which he could have done at any point but chose not to), he actually didn't really know for sure exactly what would happen after that. Which is also why he designed the failsafe into the loom for after Sophie killed him and the timeline started branching again, to give Loki a chance to bounce around in time trying and failing to fix things without HWR, so he could learn to see everything how HWR sees them, as inevitable, and the sacred timeline as the only solution.
It's why in the final episode of season 1 HWR suddenly gets all serious and says "We just crossed the threshold... so I fibbed. I fibbed earlier when I said I know how everything is going to go. I know... I knew everything up to a certain point, and that point was 7-8-9-10 seconds ago. Now I have no idea how the rest of this is going to go."
And it's also why in Season 2 HWR simply stops Sophie from killing him once Loki finally asks him why he never stops her... since at that point HWR knew Loki wasn't actually experiencing that moment for the first time either, so the failsafe had obviously been triggered, and he was now speaking to a more informed/experienced Loki he could talk to about the dilemma they were in. Which is when HWR finally explains that he's tired, doesn't want to keep doing this alone anymore, and made his sales pitch to Loki about helping him rebuild the loom and TVA, restore the sacred timeline, and rule alongside him.
However, Loki instead decided to ignore HWR's warnings about the inevitable war between all the Kang variants, and destroys the loom, essentially sacrificing himself to free the multiverse, and keep all the branches alive to give his friends a chance to stop the Kang variants multiversal war, without them having to rely on pruning. Now, whether that will actually work out, or whether HWR was right about another war being inevitable, with another HWR reincarnation surviving afterwards to restart the whole sacred timeline thing all over again too, remains to be seen.
At least that's my understanding of it. As I said, it's a bit convoluted, and hard to wrap your head around the Jeremy Bearimy (Good Place spoilers), wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey, paradoxical nature of time, time travel, and multiverse stories. So I could easily be wrong about a bunch of things. :P
Kang isn't a mortal human (at least not in the normal sense) since he has, essentially, travelled to every branch of the multiverse and "recruited" himself. That's why Loki and the team had to go back to the instance before Kang ever became aware of himself as "Kang". He also created the loom which is why he has the ability to control/contain it. His ultimate goal is always to preserve the "sacred" timeline.
Loki isn't granted the power over the loom, per se. The loom is destroyed which starts to unravel each of the branches and, as they unravel, they die. Loki, being an actual god, simply grabs them and imbues them with magic to keep them alive. That cements him as the "God of Stories" (one of his many titles in the comics) as opposed to just being the "God of Mischief" (as we first meet him).
I’m fully expecting a “Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe” story out of this one. Would give them a great chance to reboot everything with different actors and have it make sense in the story. I’m pretty sure Hugh Jackman only came back on the promise that his Wolverine dies.
That would be interesting for sure. I dunno if they'd go that far though, have they indicated that they're trying to reboot?
No, but it seems like a built-in solution to the burnout happening around Marvel’s properties. In the comics, the story was a meta-comic so it wouldn’t surprise me to get a meta-film focused on the same.
That looks really good!
Marvel really needs a win, so this being their only movie in 2024 is a great decision
Dunno if it's just me, but when meeting Wolverine, Deadpools seems a bit akin to Disneys cutesy-talking animated protagonists. Made me think of the Youtube analytic disney's "adorkable" problem 🤪 which also lean into this.