I couldn’t resist posting this picture of me in my Loki Christmas sweater as I write about Loki. This is my last post of 2021, and I guess it makes sense to talk about one god’s psychological journey while so many of us are taking those journeys ourselves. I am on the cusp of Christmas, between semesters, and not looking forward to yet another long, dark Corona winter, so perhaps some introspection is in order, yes?
So, then, Loki. There’s something about watching Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston chew up the furniture in all the Thor movies. They are really great at acting off each other. If you’ve seen the Thor films and the first Avengers film, you know that Loki in those films has an arc: he has family issues, he becomes a villain, he redeems himself, and he dies. It makes little to no sense Disney+ would have a show about Loki, because well, he died.
And yet…there’s so much time travel hijinx in Avengers: End Game that the villainous Loki after the battle of New York takes off and is immediately discovered by a group of time cops—the TVA—as a variant.
So, the TVA. The Time Variance Authority is an organization dedicated to the preservation of the One True Timeline. It is Marvel’s way of introducing the multi-verse. Why no, I haven’t seen Spider-Man: No Way Home. Why would you ask? *innocent blink* Anyway, this multi-verse idea, for those of you who aren’t familiar with comics, is an idea that many versions of many heroes exist across many universes. It is not an idea linked only to Marvel—DC Comics had The Crisis on Infinite Earths many years ago to deal with their multi-verse problem. That venerable community theater of comics, the CW, plays with the multi-verse concept in both The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Comic books are always on the lookout for ways to breathe new life into old characters.
Loki finds himself enmeshed in a high-level bureaucracy. He is quickly recruited (and psychoanalyzed by Mobius M. Mobius, an honest to goodness Marvel character, who questions how Loki, the god of mischief, became Loki the murderous villain. It is from this point, when Loki sees himself in the one true time line become a hero, that he begins to question the stuff he is made of.
Oh. And he’s recruited to bring in a variant of himself who has been trying to muck up the One True Timeline. Because it turns out that a lot of Lokis mess things up. Loki agrees, orginally thinking he can find an angle in this for himself, but ultimately ending up on an amazing journey of self-discovery.
Loki meets not only the object of his search, but also many variants of himself, including an awesome alligator, the boy Loki who ultimately killed Thor, and the classic comic book Loki, played by the awesome Richard E. Grant. Most importantly, he meets and falls for Sylvie, the variant of himself he’s hunting. And Loki discovers the hero in himself, especially at the end.
There’s a school of thought that suggests Loki falling for himself is a tad narcisstic, but Sylvie is a deeply troubled character, and she is the first character Loki has seen a need to put in front of himself…or something like that. Like our Loki, Sylvie is deeply flawed, but unlike our Loki, she can’t move on from the defining tragedy that set her on her path.
Loki probably couldn’t change if Mobius didn’t point out to him that he is foundationally capable of doing so. I think the Loki/Sylvie relationship is interesting, but to me, the Loki/Mobius relationship is more so. Each one of them is a great foil for the other. Loki learns from Mobius what he is, and Mobius learns from Loki how to question and think.
I won’t go into the ending, because I don’t want to spoil you. I will say that whatever they do in the second season, it has a difficult stepping off point. Our Loki is now all alone again, given his circumstances, but he is vastly altered.
It’s interesting to note that of the two brothers, for the first time ever, Loki might be more psychologically healthy than Thor, given the events in the Thanos war. I would love to see the two of them get together again.
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I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Stay safe and well in the new year. I will probably talk about Hawkeye at some point, and I’ll get back to chatting about writing, and other things.