Timely Thorsday #20: The Silence Of the Loki

Greetings and guess what, Ticketholders!?
Streaming Saturday has a new name again! I was planning on Loki dropping on a Friday like WandaVision and Falcon and The Winter Soldier had before it, but it arrived on Disney+ on a Wednesday, so in a nod to Norse mythology and day name origins (assuming future episodes don't move back to a Friday release schedule, that is), this column shall be dubbed Timely Thorsday for the remainder of Loki's weekly debut.

And I swear, I didn't plan this, but (minor SPOILER Warning) all three of this week's posts have dealt with time travel in some way.

Remember to click those social media buttons and leave your comments down below. Also, if you want to avoid full-on SPOILERS, you can link to the streaming site above and watch the first episode of Loki right now, because the real SPOILER Warning! is now in effect.

Before we get started, though, the above image was PhotoShopped together by me from the following sources: https://static1.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/New-Loki-Clip.jpg, and https://www.pngitem.com/pimgs/m/56-569505_transparent-moth-silence-the-lamb-silence-of-the.png.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in response the Great Depression as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program on May 18, 1933. Its purpose was to provide infrastructure and stimulate economic growth in the Tennessee Valley area of the United States, and to this day it serves as the benchmark for all successive regional planning efforts in the country and the model for societal modernization programs being implemented in developing nations worldwide. But that is not the TVA we are here to talk about today; that honor goes to the Time Variance Authority. The Time Variance Authority is an extra-cosmic, bureaucratic police state dictated by a tribunal of "space lizards," as Loki himself put it, calling themselves the Timekeepers, who have taken it upon themselves to prevent the Madness of a Multiverse by sending squads of bumbling, out-of-shape Dark Helmet cosplayers across time and space to locate and "prune" (temporally disintegrate) or "reset" (um...I don't get how this differs from pruning because the special effects are the same for both, and neither process has really been explained yet, but let's go with the obvious and just say that resetting means resetting because time travel is ill-defined and inconsistently circular, shall we?)--.
Run-on tangent, so let's play Timekeeper for a moment and go back to how these incompetent Dark Helmet cosplayers "prune" and "reset" "Variants" (people who, by virtue of how the Timekeepers are supposed to maintain the Sacred Timeline by predetermining and orchestrating every fate in the Universe, shouldn't be able to deviate from their lives, but somehow do anyway). I say "somehow," but I cannot stress enough that the protectors of chronological order were designed by omniversal gods of time and fate to look somewhere between this:

and this:

and are almost as useful as the S.W.A.T. team in Kylie Jenner's Pepsi commercial. Oh, and Loki, the Jotun-Asgardian-born deity of mischeif, mayhem, illusions, manipulation, and escape artistry who killed Phil Coulson, took over Asgard twice, enslaved New York City, turned the five core Avengers against each other, circuitously gained favor with the Jotun, the Svartalves, and Thanos to further his own ends, disrupted the natural order of the Universe by accident, and assumed the identity of D.B. Cooper on a dare? He's been put in the care of this guy:

cosplaying as this guy:

So actual God, help us all.
In all seriousness, though, as much as the first episode of Loki dunks on the TVA (not all that different from how Guardians Of the Galaxy reduced the Nova Corps down to a John C. Reilly character), the series and concept start out huge and swing even bigger, even when the budget dictates that MCU characters need to sit in a too-large, almost empty room, watching the MCU (more on that later). Tom Hiddleston's Loki (his 2012, Avengers incarnation, as the "Sacred Timeline" version was killed off in Infinity War) is as evil and cavalier as ever, and as much as I dunked on Owen Wilson just now, he's actually fantastic as Agent Mobius M. Mobius here (just a guess, but the "M" probably stands for Mobius because circular circles are circular), using his usual, relaxed acting style to great effect as the no-nonsense, "I've seen it all and heard it all and you can't surprise me because phenomenal cosmic power beyond your comprehension" straight-man complement to Loki. It's refreshing when the comedian and dramatist can switch roles and have the chemistry to still make it work. By the way, if you haven't heard of it, there's an early dramatic film of Wilson's called The Minus Man (Tubi has it free with ad support) where he plays a serial killer. And look at this picture:

How have we not gotten a Bill Murray biopic with Owen Wilson playing him by now?

Moving on from insults and comedic, backhanded compliments, let's talk about the plot of Episode One, titled, "Glorious Purpose." When the Endgame Avengers time travel back to the events of the first Avengers (cosmically sanctioned, apparently) to recover the Tesseract and capture Loki, chaos ensues and Mr. Puny God himself takes advantage, using the dropped Tesseract to randomly teleport himself to the Gobi Desert, where he attempts to subjugate some passing locals before getting owned by a squad of Minutemen (the aforementioned S.W.A.T.-meets-Dark Helmet-meets-Sgt. Schultz buffoons), led by Hunter B-15 (Lovecraft Country's Wunmi Mosaku, in a more serious role than Loki's setting might indicate at first). A perfectly paced gag ensues where Loki must legally affirm every word he has ever spoken, but keeps talking, creating more paperwork for himself. It's absurd but very subtle, and only goes on as long as it needs to for its punchline to stick. The TVA is used as a hyperbolic commentary on bureaucracy from this point on, poking fun at waiting rooms, the DMV, the compartmentalized nature and engineered big-picture ignorance of corporate office culture, and the court system--ironically, the judge overseeing Loki's case is Ravonna Renslayer (Doctor Who's Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the Marvel Comics wife of time-travelling supervillain Kang the Conqueror (whom I have mentioned in previous posts to be the main villain of Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, as well as a descendant of Reed Richards in the comics). While waiting in the DMV-like room, we and Loki are treated to some brief exposition by Miss Minutes (an animated, talking stopwatch voiced by Batgirl herself, Tara Strong), Loki's answer to Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park, right down to the "bless your heart" Southern accent. This scene is important, though, because not only did Marvel land the voice of Ben 10, Raven, X-23, Batgirl, and Mary Jane Watson from various animated series that I love, but Miss Minutes puts Marvel fans' insecurities at rest by name-checking Nexus ("Get back to reality, or the reality of your choosing") from WandaVision, and referring to the divergence of a new Multiverse as Madness. Huh? Huh? Wink-wink? Nudge, nudge? It's Doctor Strange 2, get it? Huh?

Sarcasm about blatant obviousness is obviously blatant sarcasm....
Meanwhile, Agent Mobius Mobius Mobius is called to a church to investigate the murders of a Minutemen contingent by an unknown Variant, whom a young boy identifies by pointing to a stained-glass image of the devil. Yay! We finally get to see Mephisto after months of over-speculation and self-trolling! But, no. As it turns out, Agent 3M (because I don't want to accidentally say Mobius three times into a mirror for fear that Owen Wilson will magically appear to kill me in my sleep with a rusty hook covered in bees) needs Loki's help to catch the murderer because...it's another Loki? This was kind of a disappointing reveal, but now that I think about it, Mephisto personally slaughtering cosmic goons to steal their technology makes even less sense than time travel. Also, word has it that "Evil Loki" (confusing distinction, but split that hair and let's go!) might be a woman. This version of the character was active in the comics in 2008 and as part of the Dark Reign event, and is based on aspects of Loki's Norse mythology roots, so it isn't just an instance of a publisher gender-bending a character for fanservice points, and leads to a decent cliffhanger moment. Learning the accuracy of this hearsay, and the mechanics and motivations behind the character, if it turns out to be true, will be the important thing.

But for now, the important thing is our main man's character development (learning and accepting that his "burden of Glorious Purpose" is an illusion when he watches the death of his mother and himself in the post-Avengers timeline, via the aforementioned MCU clipshow), his potential rookie/veteran chemistry with Agent 3M, and the tidbit Loki learns about confiscated Infinity Stones not functioning outside of their source Universe (which is an established mechanic in the comics, as well). For better or worse, Loki is already shaping up to be an experience for the ages.

And speaking of Infinity Stones and time, the "sanctioned act of time travel" perpetrated by the Avengers in Endgame and given a swift hand-waving in this episode might be better established than the casual viewer might think. Heck, I had to do some pondering to even come up with the explanation I am about to give. And it all comes down to the Eye of Agamotto, a.k.a. the MCU Sacred Timeline's version of the Time Infinity Stone. In Infinity War, Dr. Strange states that he consulted the Eye and saw over 14 million possible outcomes, with only one being in their favor. This hints that the Eye of Agamotto might be a direct conduit to the Timekeepers, and that the one in 14 million-plus favorable outcome would result in maintaining the Sacred Timeline and preventing the Nexus point of a new multiverse. But, of course, Wanda discovered chaos magic, warped reality, learned to use the Darkhold, and did some time traveling of her own during her fight with Agatha Harkness, and Loki ended up as at least one Variant by escaping with the Tesseract, which was confiscated and rendered inert by the TVA, essentially crippling the efforts of the Avengers to stop Thanos and rendering Iron Man's sacrificial snap impossible, thereby creating a reality where Thanos might still be alive and in possession of the rest of the Infinity Stones. And there are Billy and Tommy, Doctor Strange 2, and Spider-Man: No Way Home to consider, as well.

So, yeah. Good start. Hope it gets better in the weeks ahead. Social media buttons, comments, below. Tired. Out of time and words. Stay tuned for more anime, movies, streaming, and a long-delayed confession that I need to make.

Ticketmaster,

Out.