Reviews Nobody Asked For: LOKI (Disney+ Series)

How do you balance style and substance? It’s a question movies, TV shows and streaming series have struggled with for… well, since they began. The MCU Thor movies have been all over the board, so I wasn’t sure that LOKI would be any good. I already didn’t like WandaVision all that much, so my expectations weren’t high. That’s why Tom Hiddleston’s streaming series took me by surprise.

LOKI Overcame Serious Baggage

This heading refers to the streaming series, but I suppose it’s true for the character as well. Spoilers for all MCU movies and leading up to LOKI throughout the rest of this post!

Almost everyone looks back on the Thor movies and cringes about at least one. Somewhere in that trilogy is one of almost every MCU fan’s least favorite MCU movies. For me, that’s Thor: Ragnarok. For most people, it’s the admittedly lackluster Thor: The Dark World. Most people find the first movie good, but it helps put its successors in perspective.

Thor: Ragnarok vs Thor: The Dark World

You probably love one and hate the other, and I have a theory as to why. Ragnarok focuses on the appeal of its style, while Dark World suppresses style in an attempt to create a more robust story. Even though I like The Dark World more, it doesn’t carry out the latter that well.

But I’m going to indulge myself in a bit of Ragnarok criticism, because I have a blog and like to start arguments on the internet about pointless stuff. Ragnarok is full of pretty colors, fantastic special effects, some of the best costume design in the entire MCU, fun (albeit flat) characters, and no shortage of jokes. It’s an intergalactic adventure that slathers the 1980’s nostalgia aesthetic on thicker than Jeff Goldblum’s face paint. Aside from 80s nostalgia flexing being an overused pandering tool, Ragnarok even uses protagonist narration for comedy. Worse yet, the narration is apparently diegetic (meaning that is understood to be heard in the context of the movie itself, not just to be heard by the audience), which doesn’t fit with the MCU’s established storytelling conventions.

I have no problem with bright colors and comedy, but it swallows up the whole concept of what the story is supposed to be about. Ragnarok is the destruction of Asgard, and it’s played off as a background element to the story. Surtur is a punchline, when he could have been a Thanos-level villain. Based on its title, this movie should have been as dark, tragic, and significant as Avengers: Infinity War was. Instead, the only depth in the movie comes from Thor rejecting his father’s legacy and losing respect for him. The near-genocide of the Asgardian people is brushed under the rug. The god of thunder loses an eye but we can’t have him actually act like it matters or it will kill the vibe. Did Marvel really get that scared when Dark World‘s reception wasn’t stellar? Thor movies have to crank up the saturation and laugh track until they bury everything else?

…But then Came LOKI

Disappointed in WandaVision, I expected LOKI to follow Ragnarok’s pulpy nonsense tone. And the first episode did. Sure, the aesthetic was different, but it pulled the rug out from under Loki’s character’s tone. It shouldn’t be a spoiler to say the show follows what happens to the Loki immediately after he used the Tesseract to escape S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the Avengers flashback scene of Avengers: Endgame. He is taken out of time, having just failed to achieve his ‘glorious purpose.’ That means this is the same Loki that had just wreaked havoc on New York City. He was an intimidating villain that people cared about, and the first episode treated him like a joke.

I get that the scene where Loki arrives at the TVA was supposed to make fun of Loki to show that Loki has no real power outside the timeline, but that can be done by differences of scale, not by stripping him naked and indulging in slapstick comedy. The retro-American aesthetic of the TVA doesn’t make a lot of sense. It had to have some kind of design to it, but why 60s corporate America? Why a hand-animated clock with a southern belle accent? [DISCLAIMER: Tara Strong is a phenomenal voice actor, and performs the character perfectly, I just don’t know why the character had to be done that way.]

The smug attitude of Mobius (oops, almost put an ‘l’ in that name) was subtle enough to not feel obnoxious, and that’s where things turned around for me.

Achieving Balance

Spoilers for LOKI in all paragraphs of this Section

I was surprised at how deep the show was willing to go, and how much reverence it was willing to give to profound character moments. When Loki watched himself get strangled to death in the true timeline, we got to feel through it with him. Clowns didn’t burst in and slap a pie in his face to make us laugh again, we got to sympathize with Loki. The proper mood was preserved without being overbearing. When Loki met Sylvie, the show didn’t rush into them kissing, it built up their relationship by degrees. Even when a whole bunch of Loki variants showed up, defined by stupid gimmicks, (style) it was treated like a comedic break before the core variants continued their progress toward Alioth and mortal danger.

Old Loki’s death scene was treated well, that is to say, it had lasting significance and weight to the main characters. Compare this with Karl Urban’s character’s death in Ragnarok, where he saves a bunch of nameless Asgardians, then gets killed by Hela and the main characters don’t even get to know the significance of his sacrifice. The emotion of the scene passes so fast, as if it never happened.

I would even say the little bit of characterization of kid Loki was more significant than most of what we saw in Ragnarok. Meaning, when the other Lokis mention that kid Loki had killed Thor as a child, the audience is given a moment to reflect on the existing Loki’s sense of brotherhood and love for his brother. One of the the biggest assets to Marvel’s treatment of the mythological Thor and Loki characters is the whole complicated quarreling sibling relationship. It’s deep, relatable, and little moments like kid Loki’s characterization lend a lot of depth without being downers. Now that’s how you balance style and substance.

Is LOKI Worth Watching?

While not my favorite Disney+ MCU series, it deserves credit for holding its own amid the sensations that WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier became. That being said, LOKI is pretty over-the-top. Lacking grounded legs, I feel like it’s one of the more forgettable series. But Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson’s performances and the plot twist (if you can call it that) near the end do make up for it.

With strong character development, a fresh cast, and a surprising level of depth, I would rate LOKI around 8-out-of-10 territory. I hope the next Thor resembles this more than Ragnarok. I miss the prestige of when Thor was helmed by legendary director Kenneth Branagh, but maybe Taika Waititi can surprise me. He’s a great director too, but I don’t think he should be in charge of the Thor franchise. His next entry, Love & Thunder comes out around my birthday, so we’ll see!

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