TV review: 'Loki' Season 2 has more time travel fun

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Loki Season 2, premiering Friday on Disney+, continues the time-policing adventures of Marvel's greatest antihero. Thanks to the time-bending hook, and the appeal of the show's lead, Loki remains one of the better Marvel series.

The Disney+ series placed Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in the Time Variance Authority. Since he escaped his timeline, thanks to the events of Avengers: Endgame, Loki worked with TVA officer Mobius (Owen Wilson) to try to set time paradoxes right.

By the end of Season 1, Loki had discovered the end of time, a female Loki named Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), the entity responsible for eliminating alternate timelines.

But Season 2 begins with more immediate problems, such as Loki "time-slipping" in and out of the present.

The timeline issues of Loki are dense, even by science-fiction standards. Fortunately, most of them are spoilers, anyway, so they don't need to be detailed before the viewer sees them.

Loki and Mobius meet a new character, Ourobouros (Ke Huy Quan), who helps explain some new developments. He is pleasantly bewildered by the new time phenomenon, but also able to understand and quickly explain.

It takes three episodes to address all of the loose threads from Season 1. Fortunately, references to the Marvel movies are judiciously limited to one major conversation between Loki and Mobius.

Loki and Mobius visit the '80s, '70s and even further back in their missions. They retrieve new devices that lead to more mysteries.

Since it deals with time travel, Loki can have fun revisiting scenes from a different perspective. Episodes also have fun toying with the Marvel formula and even its theme song.

The TVA characters make a strong case that every alternate timeline is full of real people living their lives. So, that is who they are fighting for, no matter how obscure the logic gets.

Hiddleston improved every Marvel movie in which he appeared, so he's likewise able to keep his Disney+ series more playful than others. Just spending more time with Loki is enough, but Loki builds an engaging show around him.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.