'Loki' Season 2, Episode 1: This Is Sort of Depressing, Folks

You've probably clocked this, but we're living in a pretty f*cking weird moment in television right now. Gen V just delivered the most unnecessary sex scene in the history of the moving image, Star Wars reached a new level of we're out of ideas! with zombie Stormtroopers, and Justin Fields threw four touchdowns during another meaningless Thursday Night Football game. (Sorry, Al Michaels—I feel for you.) And actors still can't talk about any of it.

This week—without an obligatory Tom Hiddleston Hot Ones appearance, or some Owen Wilson junket interview where he slips his tongue about Wedding Crashers 2—entered Loki. The Disney+ series is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe television project (aside from I Am Groot, which, no, doesn't count) to see a second season. And its arrival feels as out of step as all the other strike-era releases. Not only is it weird that Loki's biggest marketing effort has been sweet 'n' sour sauce at Mickey D's, but it feels like a sign of the times that the latest MCU outing crash-landed on the same app where your kids watch Muppet Babies Play Date without any fanfare at all.

It's hard to remember given the discomforting appearance of Jonathan Majors in the cast—a statue of the guy fills the very first frame of season two—as well as the lack of a two-month-long press tour from Hiddleston and Wilson but the last time you saw Loki was probably the last time you were excited about the MCU. Loki's Season One finale, which aired in July 2021, promised a cohesive story for Marvel's post-Robert Downey Jr. slate. Since then, we've seen a smattering of disappointments gussied up with cheap VFX: Secret Invasion, She-Hulk, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Two years ago, we were lauding the discovery of Sophia Di Martino and Owen Wilson's lil' mustache. Now, Loki's sudden reappearance feels, at best, mildly interesting. At worst, a little sad.

If I've already bummed you out, just wait until you watch the first 45-some minutes of season two. The story picks up right after the season one finale, when Sylvie (Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Majors) and seemingly kickstarted the multiverse of madness. Loki (Hiddleston) is suffering from some sort of Marvel mumbo-jumbo ailment—he's uncontrollably bouncing between timelines in fits and bursts—and throughout the episode, sprints around the Time Variance Authority (TVA) looking for Mobius (Wilson), who suddenly doesn't recognize him. When Loki and Mobius finally rejoin forces, they realize only a magical Maguffin (with a name I don't remember!) can help the God of Mischief. With the help of a new character, OB (played by a delightful Ke Huy Quan), they find the thing that just might cure Loki, use said thing during a CGI-gloopified grand finale, and a mid-credits scene teases the next act, which I'm sure will include another thing that'll lead us to another VFX moment.

Sure, you can reduce even the best MCU outings to a similar logline. But there's something off about Loki's second season so far. It's like every actor has been replaced with the ChatGPT version of themselves. Hiddleston runs around in a bug-eyed state of shock—where did the British-accented sass go?!—as if someone sucked the Hiddle out of poor Tom. Wilson has clearly reached a I-don't-know-what-these-words-are-but-imma-say-them-anyway point in his MCU tenure. There's little Di Martino in episode one, but here's hoping she saves the day. Even the vibe around the TVA nowadays, once a welcome, Terry Gilliam-esque blip in the MCU's ever-present sheen, feels a bit drab.

I could wrap this up by echoing every op-ed and podcast rant from this past summer—the MCU is dead! Bob Iger ruined once-beloved characters! Franchise storytelling is dead!—but I'd be doing just that: echoing. I'll just say that I hope we're living in a downbeat, and this isn't our new normal. That cultural moments like Andor, where vision and existing characters and money and commercial success and talent collided into one great story, are still just around the corner.

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