Replaying after which selecting up instantly after Loki’s look in Avengers: Endgame — the place as a prisoner circa 2012, he occurred upon a dropped Tesseract and teleported to (hopefully!) freedom — the primary episode rapidly lands the Asgardian trickster proper again in custody, nabbed by the TVA (Time Variance Authority). Recognized as an anachronistic “variant,” Loki is topic to a bureaucratic slog of a registration course of led by Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Sturdy), a useful cartoon character who colleges him and us on the Time Keepers, a holy trinity whose mission is to guard the “sacred timeline” from anomalies that would result in the “insanity” of a “multiverse” struggle. (Physician Unusual 2 plug? Test!)
In these early scenes, MCU vet Tom Hiddleston effortlessly slips again into not simply the position of Loki, however particularly the model of him that was about to be imprisoned greater than a decade in the past within the movies’ timeline, and thus was a bit extra bratty.
The banter between Hiddleston and Wilson is electrical and infrequently hilarious — a major improve from what Falcon and Winter Soldier believed it was doing — and I can’t stress how important that’s, for the reason that two, roughly 50-minute episodes despatched to critics (out of six complete) revolves round their push me/pull you dynamic. (The truth that Loki and Mobius at one level make what is actually a library all-nighter as entertaining as it’s is testomony to the actors’ chemistry.)
As soon as the premise for the collection is in place, issues get very enjoyable, as Loki channels his mischievous brilliance into splendid detective work and he and Mobius have interaction in some timey-wimey principle testing, all constructing to a tantalizing, two-pronged reveal — one capping every hour — that opens up every kind of prospects for the remainder of the six-episode season.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Loki guarantees to be a superb time (after time).