Marvel Sudios’s Loki season 2 releases on Disney+ this week, picking up where 2021’s season one finale left off. With the multiversal threat of Kang the Conqueror now looming and countless branch timelines forming, we find out what is next for Loki Mobius, and the others at the TVA. We will also start seeing answers about what happened with Loki and Mobius after the Kang variant seen in the end credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
What to Expect from Marvel Studios’ “Loki” Season 2
As expected and teased, Loki season 2 immediately follows the cliffhanger from the first season’s finale. Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) has killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and sent Loki (Tom Hiddleston) back to the TVA so he can’t interfere with her plans to give the timelines free will and stop the pruning of variants. And like in the season 1 finale, Mobius and the others at the TVA don’t immediately recognize Loki at first.
This season will see members of the TVA grappling with the revelation that they are variants and what the right thing to do is. All the while dealing with a bigger problem. Which is that the fast-growing number of timelines is causing instabilities within the TVA.
New and Returning Characters in Loki Season 2
This new season will introduce new characters as well as the return of key players from the previous season. Loki season 2 is filled with great performances from the actors involved.
Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros (O.B. for short), the TVA’s temporal handyman, is a delightful addition to the series. He’s a very matter-of-fact, probably overworked man with a dry sense of humor and a bit of a fanboy, too. He works closely with Loki and Mobius throughout the season. O.B. is my new favorite character in Loki.
Stand Out Performances
Another great performance comes from Rafale Casal as Hunter X-5, or “Brad”. Brad heavily features in episode 2 of the season- my personal favorite so far. Though it’s difficult to talk about why without getting too far into semi-major spoiler territory, Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s return of Ravona Renslayer is another standout in Loki season 2. Her motivations are clear and while at first she’s unsure, she quickly becomes unafraid to get her hands dirty to accomplish her goal.
There are some big revelations for her this season, too, and some excellently written and performed speeches from Renslayer. Mbatha-Raw’s performance is powerful as Renslayer grapples with the new reality around her and figures out what she wants her place in all of this to be. Honestly, if Marvel wanted to make her the main antagonist of the multiverse? I would not be mad.
The performances that each actor gives in this show are utterly delightful, though. There’s great humor throughout, often balancing high stakes. I’ve already talked about some of my personal favorites in the season, but all of the actors involved in this season give amazing performances. Relationships between characters are more developed, too.
Loki season 2 is enjoyable, although confusing at times
Overall, Loki season 2 is enjoyable. The main conflict of the season is a little confusing at times- especially as it seems like many of the characters have the same end goal but cannot agree on the approach and what happens after the TVA is stabilized. Reasons for the characters doing what they’re doing can be muddled, too. The exact reason for Loki searching for Sylvie again isn’t super clear and, realistically, does not seem as important as the main threat that they’re dealing with. But the show wants to have reasons to reunite the two Loki variants, so those moments happen. Kang and his variants need to be established as credible and capable threats, so those moments need to happen as well.
Loki and the Time Travel Genre
I also greatly enjoyed some of the references to other time-travel shows and movies this season. There are references to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the Back to the Future films. A recording and reveal early on is very reminiscent of Doctor Who‘s “Blink”.
Interesting questions and concepts set up
Loki has a lot of potential. There are many interesting questions and concepts set up and while the first four episodes do explore some of these, I will be very interested to see if they continue to develop these ideas in the rest of the season. It seems like a lot is being set up in this season for future projects- and possibly even a third season depending on how the last two episodes go. Hopefully, the payoff works, especially with the many, many directions they could go with episode four’s cliffhanger. While at times the plot and motivations for the characters get a little confusing, I do want to know what happens next!
Loki Season 2 premieres on Disney+ on October 5th at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET.
Note: This review was written during the SAG-AFTRA strike. Temple of Geek fully supports their strike and hopes that the AMPTP will provide a fair deal to the actors soon. At this time, the guild has not called for entertainment journalists or critics to pause reviews on new releases.
