The last time we saw Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was during the Time Heist in Avengers Endgame, when the Avengers’ plan to take the Tesseract from 2012 went a little bit awry, allowing Loki to pick it up and teleport away, leaving everyone scratching their heads and saying, “but hang on, where’d he go?” Well now that Loki has finally premiered on Disney+, we can reveal that the answer appears to be… Mongolia.
SPOILERS AHEAD
We begin, once again, in New York City, 2012, with the events of the Time Heist, only this time from Loki’s perspective (incorporating some alternate shots and takes that hint that we’re already beginning to see variations to previously established events). Again, he makes his escape, leaving Thor’s voice calling into the void over the Marvel Studios logo, which then turns green with a flash of gold—a certain god of mischief’s signature colours.
We then cut to the Gobi desert where the Tesseract portal spits Loki out. An encounter with some locals is cut short by the arrival of Hunter B15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and her Minutemen, there on behalf of the Time Variance Authority to arrest Loki after he deviated from his set path through history and to reset the timeline. Loki is less than cooperative but B15 easily subdues him by making him feel a sock to the face at 1/16th normal speed.
Arriving at the TVA—whose whole aesthetic seems to be ‘soul-sapping corporate office block circa somewhere in the 1970s’ meets ‘Big Brother’—Loki endures a further series of humiliations as he’s processed for his trial (including having his clothes lasered off him by a rather creepy robot and replaced by a TVA prison jumpsuit). He is unceremoniously dropped through a trap door between each one, beginning what will be an episode long process of stripping away the outer layers of his godly arrogance and pomposity.
We’re then introduced to the TVA’s mascot Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) who, through a charming Rocky & Bullwinkle style animated infomercial, fills us in on the history and function of the TVA. Apparently, long ago, there was a vast multiversal war, in which various different timelines battled for control, nearly resulting in the destruction of all reality. Disaster was averted, however, by the intervention of the Time Keepers, who united the multiverse into a single timeline. The sacred timeline. They then created the TVA and its workforce to enforce this. See, whenever you do something that takes you off of your predetermined path through the sacred timeline it creates a “Nexus” event, a branch timeline that, if left unchecked, could lead to “madness”. (WandaVision viewers will have felt their ‘MCU-senses’ tingling at this point, and as showrunner Michael Waldron has also written the latest draft of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, stick a pin in this as there’s a good chance it’ll come up again later). Doing so makes you a “Variant” and it’s the TVA’s job to reset things by pruning you and your branch timeline. So the TVA are basically what Red Dwarf’s Inquisitor would be if he were a vast, all powerful bureaucracy instead of a one-man show. Loki declares it to be “bunkum” but since the next thing he sees is a Minuteman erase another Variant for not having a ticket he comes to the realisation that, bunkum or not, the TVA are deadly serious.
After the titles, we cut to a church in Aix-En-Provence, France, circa 1549, where we meet Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter U92 (Derek Russo). It seems that someone has been introducing anachronistic items to the past (in this case, a pack of “Kablooie” bubble-gum), luring in Minutemen in order to kill them and steal their reset charges. They encounter a child who, when asked who did this, points to a stained glass window featuring the devil (who both Waldron and director Kate Herron have gone on record to confirm is NOT Mephisto but a reference to Loki himself; a horned ambitious god who was also cast out of ‘heaven’). Mobius is then informed of Loki’s capture.
Back at the TVA, Loki is brought to trial, presiding over which is Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who, in the comics, is a character also associated with Kang the Conqueror, due to be portrayed by Jonathan Majors as the villain of upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and who is also associated with the Time Keepers; again, stick a pin in it. Loki makes the reasonable point that the Avengers were the ones who time-travelled—“Oh, believe me, you can smell the cologne of two Tony Starks”—so shouldn’t they be the ones the TVA apprehend? He’s told quite bluntly, “No”, as the what the Avengers did was supposed to happen but him escaping with the Tesseract wasn’t. Whether this includes Steve Rogers’ extended stay in an alternate timeline is unclear, but it does seem like the Avengers get a time-travel ‘hall pass’. Loki tries to use his magic to escape, only to that find magic doesn’t work in the TVA, but he’s saved from being pruned by Agent Mobius.
Mobius takes him to a time theatre—giving us a glimpse of how vast the TVA is—where he proceeds to try and find out what makes Loki tick. And here we see that the best scenes don’t have to have action, they can be just two men talking to each other. Mobius proves a good foil for Loki, unfazed by his theatrics and able to get under his skin, stripping away his bravado and self-perceptions layer by layer. He asks some armour-piercing questions: what he would’ve done had he been successful? Why does he want to rule in the first place? Does he enjoy hurting people? Questions Loki doesn’t seem to have answers for. We see a highlight reel of his ‘Greatest Hits’ (including that D.B. Cooper sequence we were teased with in the trailers; turns out he just lost a bet to Thor), showing him what would’ve happened if events had been gone the way they were ‘supposed to’, revealing that he would’ve inadvertently been responsible for his mother’s death. At this Loki loses his temper and Mobius hits him with the gut-punching revelation that he’s essentially the universe’s chew toy, destined to cause pain and suffering so others can become the best versions of themselves. They’re interrupted by B15 and when Mobius returns he finds Loki gone and that the “mischievous scamp” has stolen his Time Twister (the devices that work the collars to keep Variants in line).
Using the Time Twister, Loki finds his way to Casey (Eugene Cordero) the TVA clerk who they handed in the Tesseract to. But it turns out the TVA already has multiple variant Infinity stones, all completely inert. Casey even cheerfully informs him that some of the TVA staff use them as paperweights, (that sound you can hear is everyone who died as a result of trying to obtain those stones screaming “am I a joke to you?”), making Loki finally realise just how completely powerless he is, before B15 arrives and he’s forced to escape again. He returns to the time theatre where he watches rest of his file, from Frigga’s death in Thor: The Dark World, the events of Ragnarok to his death in Infinity War (Hiddleston’s expressions, coupled with composer Natalie Holt’s beautifully mournful violin piece, are utterly heart-wrenching – give them all the awards please). After a brief encounter with B15, where he manages to remove his collar and place it on her, Mobius returns to find him sitting dejectedly and we get this confession:
Loki: I don’t enjoy hurting people. I don’t… enjoy it. I do it because I have to, because I’ve had to.
Mobius: Okay, explain that to me.
Loki: Because it’s part of the illusion. It’s the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak [gestures to himself] to inspire fear.
Mobius: A desperate play for control. You do know yourself.
Loki: A villain.
Mobius: That’s not how I see it.
Yes, the universe wrote him to be a villain, but Mobius is offering him the chance to be the hero of a different story, and Loki is finally ready to listen. Mobius explains that someone has been killing their Minutemen, and the Variant that’s been doing so is him. But before either we or Loki can process this, we cut to an oilfield in Salina, Oklahoma, 1858. Hunter U92 and some other Minutemen find a futuristic looking shovel which apparently dates from the early third millennium (an era heavily associated with Kang; pins at the ready). Speculating that someone had time-travelled to try and get rich, they go about resetting the timeline, until they’re interrupted by a cloaked and hooded figure holding a lantern. The lantern drops, the oil ignites, and the Minutemen are burned alive, U92 being dragged away before he can activate the reset charge. And the last thing we see before the end credits is a close-up shot of that hooded figure wreathed in flames. The very last thing we hear, at the very end of the credits, is Miss Minutes, asking us not to “hesitate to let us know how we’re doing!” I’ve got a feeling the TVA has never met the MCU fanbase, or they wouldn’t ask that so cheerily.
So episode 1 sets up what promises to be a very intriguing journey—that has answered some questions but leaves us with many more—especially as Feige himself has also recently stated that, of their three Disney+ shows so far, it’s this one that is the most important in terms of consequences for the larger MCU. Strap in, ‘cos it looks like it’s gonna be a wild ride.
