Season 2 of “Loki” corrects one of the biggest flaws in Season 1, by bringing in a pivotal character who is played by an East Asian actor, Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan. Although the director for all six episodes of Season 1, Kate Herron, is not involved this season, the quality of Season 2, stays up to standard as we learn more about the formation of the Time Variance Authority and its creator, He Who Remains.

 

At the end of Season 1, the Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mgatha-Raw) left the TVA after Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) gives her information about He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). The TVA troopers learns that they are variants when B-15 (Wunmi Mosaic) shows them a Renslayer variant, vice principal Rebecca Tourminet,  on a timeline in Fremont, Ohio in 2018. After Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant) sacrificed himself so that Loki and Sylvie could enchant the cloud-creature Alioth who then showed them the Citadel at the End of Time (“Journey into Mystery), Loki (Tome Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) confront He Who Remains. He Who Remains tells Loki and Sylvie that the TVA was created after he ended a multiverse war between himself and his variants by using Alioth to destroy the alternate timelines. He warns that by killing him, they risk starting another multiverse war. Sylvie sends Loki back to the TVA headquarters and Kills He Who Remains.

Back at the TVA, Loki meets Mobius (Owen Wilson) and B-15, but they don’t recognize him. Running away from them on a corridor on the outside of the TVA Headquarters that gives a view of the vast TVA world, Loki notices that the statue of the Time-Keepers has been replaced by a statue of a variant of He Who Remains.

This is where Season 2 begins. At this point, reviewers have not been given specific titles for the first four episodes of Season 2 of “Loki.”  Like Season 1, Season 2 is a total of six episodes.

Episode 1 (5 October 2023): 

After a quick summary about the events of Season 1 involving the the sacred timeline, variants and He Who Remains, the audience returns to Loki being chased by the TVA Minute Men. Mobius and B-15 do not recognize him. Trapped in an outside corridor between two groups of Minutemen, Loki leaps over the barrister. Loki lands in the bed of a flying beat-up pickup truck. The force of his impact and his extra weight, cause the vehicle to smash into the head of the giant statue of He Who Remains, damaging one cheek of its face, but that sends the flying truck into the window of the command center of the TVA headquarters where Casey (Eugene Cordero) is working, no longer as a TVA receptionist, but as Hunter K-5E. Casey doesn’t recognize Loki either, but Loki is pulled back into another timeline where that Casey recognizes him.

In this new TVA, Mobius is questioned by X-5 (Rafael Casal) about his interest in Jet Ski, but Mobius tells him that those earthly play things aren’t necessarily calling to him, saying,  “I don’t know about calling, but gently whispering.”  T-5 notes that Renslayer is missing and T-5 has come to take Mobius to the new war council (which includes characters played by Kate Dickie and Liz Carr) who are meeting in the war room. After X-5 and Mobius leave, Loki reappears before Casey.

In the war room,  there’s a debate about whether the TVA has been protecting or destroying and what should be the next plan of action. The TVA is experiencing power surges. Mobius leaves the war council, but decisions will be made and armed forces will be sent out on the hunt.

To correct the power surges, Mobius, rejoined by Loki, goes down to the repairs department (Repairs and Advancement?) where Ouroboros “OB” (Ke Huy Quan) receives orders and repairs. Mobius last met OB 400 years ago when he got off at the wrong floor. OB wrote the TVA Handbook, based on the inventions and innovations of Victor Timely. OB realizes that Loki is “time slipping” and that this shouldn’t be possible at the TVA Headquarters.

Loki’s time slipping is a symptom of greater problems in the timeline loom which was never meant to handle so many branches of multiverses without pruning. To save Loki, OB needs to make a temporal aura extractor and both Loki and Mobius need to work together. Yet with Loki’s time slipping, the duo might not be able to complete the time sensitive operation. If things go wrong, someone might lose skin or become spaghetti.

Episode 2 (12 October 2023)

At the end of Episode 1, we learned that Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) has traveled to Broxton, Oklahoma in 1982. In this episode, Sylvie walks on to a golden grassy plain toward trees in the distance but turning around she finds civilization in the form of a McDonald’s. Once inside at the counter, a pleasant young man asks her what she wants, and she gives a puzzling response, “Not squirrel, not opossum, not rats. Something that’s already dead, and nothing with a face please.”

Somewhere along the timelines, the hunters are pruning the timelines down to the Sacred Timeline. Hunter B-15 laments this means many lives have been lost. Who is doing this?

Loki and Mobius are looking for Sylvie and notice that the tempad belonging to X-5 had curiously gone dark. They go to London UK in 1977 on the Sacred Timeline where X-5 has become Brad Wolfe who is at a special premiere event for his new film, “Zaniac,” that he describes as “an elevated thriller.”

Taken into custody, X-5 is questioned by Loki and Mobius. Ultimately, Loki and Mobius find Sylvie based on information provided by X-5.

N.B.: Broxton, Oklahoma is an actual unincorporated community in Caddo County, OK, but it is also Marvel’s Thor lore. According to the Marvel Database, it first appears in 2007 as the place near where “Thor, after his rebirth, had recreated the City of Asgard” to make a new home for Asgardians.

Episode 3 (19 October 2023)

You’re probably wondering what happened to Renslayer and where is Miss Minutes? They are in Chicago in 1868 on the Sacred Timeline, but after what seems like a minor errand, they leave.

Loki and Mobius track Renslayer to Chicago twice, but miss her during her initial contact with a young Victor Timely. During their second trip to Chicago, Loki and Mobius meet the now adult Victor Timely at the World’s Columbian  Exposition in 1893 after seeing his presentation: Victor Timely’s Astounding Temporal Marvels, but Miss Minutes and Renslayer are also there.

Victor Timely will have to decide who to trust: Loki and Mobius or Miss Minutes and Renslayer. And yet, can anyone trust Victor Timely?

N.B.: Also known as the Chicago’s World’s Fair, its name, World’s Columbian  Exposition,  celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbu’s arrival in the Americas; he left Spain on 3 August 1492 and arrived 12 October 1492. He returned to Spain on 15 March 1493 after spending about a week in Portugal due to a storm forcing him to part at Lisbon.

During their visit to Chicago, Loki and Mobius will see the facade of an exhibition which features Odin, Thor and Balder carved into the wooden pillars. Balder the Brave is the half-brother of Thor in the Marvel Comics. Balder first appears  in the October 1962 “Journey into Mystery” and is based on the Norse god Bald.

Episode 4 (26 October 2023)

Together in the Citadel at the End of Time, Miss Minutes reveals to Renslayer something shocking about He Who Remains.

Back at the TVA Headquarters, Victor Timely and OB meet and together work to save the TVA from certain destruction as the loom goes on overload. Renslayer returns to the TVA and the TVA Minutemen must choose sides.

Yet these four episodes have questioned the ethics of the TVA and who to allow to live. Each time a variant timeline is pruned, lives are lost, but aren’t lives also saved?

Sylvie notes, “It sounds like whatever we do, we’re playing God.”

Loki replies, “We are god.”  Loki later makes another vow to Sylvie and the audience, “I promise you this will make sense.”

I had no problem following the science-fiction jargon used in the second season, and despite the dire situation proposed in this season, there is still time for humor and the mystery of a ringing rotary phone. You have to pay attention to what Loki is wearing as indications of what timeline we’re in. Sylvie’s Season 2 hairstyle also comes into play so pay attention to these details.

The set designs are details and continue to have that lived in feel and the cinematography works well in framing the characters, even during the action scenes and or when posing two taller characters (the 6-foot-2 Hiddleston as Loki and the 5-foot-10 Wilson as  Mobius) with the 5-foot-4 Quan as OB.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this Loki brings in more involvement of AAPI actors in pivotal roles. Season 1 was disappointing in the beginning when Loki appears in the Gobi Desert, but the Asian bystanders are just background. Casey (Filipino American Eugene Cordero) is the only presence felt, but in a minor role as a receptionist. By the end of Season 1, he is a hunter. In Season 2, Casey takes charge and helps work out some technical problems with Quan’s OB. While Quan is a quirky and cute repair and tech guy, a legend to TVA geeks like Casey who love the technical stuff, one hopes that we’ll see his character in action as well. Quan appears in all six episodes as does Cordero. Cordero appeared in three episodes of Season 1: “Glorious Purpose,” “The Variant” and “For All Time. Always.”

While I was disappointed by the first season’s lack of AAPI representation,  Season 2 had renewed my faith in the people behind the “Loki” TV series.  With Gugu, Mosaku and Deobia Oparaei (Boastful Loki) and Jonathan Majors, Black/African Americans were well represented in Season 1 and continue to be represented in Season 2 with Gugu, Mosaic and Majors.  I originally saw the “Thor” films specifically to see Tom Hiddleston because I had seen him in the TV series, “The Hollow Crown” (2013)  in which he portrays Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s  “Henry IV, Part 1,” “Henry IV, Part 2” and “Henry V.”  So I missed the original release of “Thor” in 2011. I also enjoyed Hiddleston’s performance in the 2011 “War Horse.” Last year, I did dress up as a Loki variant and I have an alligator Loki.

Season 2 of “Loki” debuts on Disney+ on 5 October 2023 (Thursday) 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST. Each of the subsequent five episodes will be released weekly on Thursday at the same time, ending on 9 November 2023.

If you really want to be prepared, get the complete collectors edition of Season 1 and a limited edition TVA Handbook pin.