Hi everyone, I thought we might get away from the fandom theories and talk a little about the writing for the Loki series finale. What worked and what didn’t? I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow replay, you all know how the episode went.
So what worked? I liked the fact that Loki and Sylvie were front and center in the plot, and had clear motivation and stakes as the He Who Remains was finally revealed. Crucially, their differing choices not only showed how much they had grown (or not grown) as characters, it also reflected some of the larger questions at play in Kang’s Faustian bargain. Do we accept the loss of free will for a safe and secure world, or do we make our own decisions, good or bad, and accept the consequences of an unforgiving multiverse? The final choices made by Sylvie and Loki were good, character-driven plot points, and sets up some great clashes between these two in future seasons.
The biggest criticism I’ve seen of the finale is that there was too much talking and not enough action, and I think episode 5 did a much better job of balancing the two. The first problem was that too much of the final reveal was just exposition setting up Kang as the villain for the next phase of the MCU. They could have achieved the same with a “less in more” approach rather than have Kang (solidly performed by Jonathan Majors) laboriously outline the minutiae of the Multiverse. Remember, it’s always more fun for the audience to put the clues together themselves rather than simply have the plot explained to them as a monologue.
Another problem is that there was very little urgency to any of this. There was no “Clock” driving the finale, so the conversation was just that – a long conversation. Part of the fun in meeting the final antagonist of a series is having our heroes at the villain’s mercy, watching him slowly discuss his plan, because he knows that every second that slips by puts the protagonist a step closer to destruction.
A question I had with all this is why Loki and Sylvie were the necessary replacements for Kang, as opposed to Wanda or Doctor Strange. Kang made it clear that he had engineered events specifically for Loki and Sylvie to arrive at his mansion, but never made the case as to why Loki variants in particular are so special – to be honest they have always been presented as more of a pest in the Sacred Timeline.
My final gripe, and this is a purely personal opinion, was that I had hoped Loki would pull a Sherlock Holmes style reversal on Kang. Not reverting to the cruel God of Mischief but calling upon his character as someone who always has a plan up his sleeve. I wanted Loki to turn the tables on Kang, and to reveal that he had actually been slowly placing pieces all along to level the playing field. It would have been awesome to see a series of flashbacks, where Loki is revealed to have been making small, significant changes in the background of each episode, all culminating in the final scene as a counterplan that creates an unexpected victory. Again, it’s more fun for the audience to see the pieces coming together than just have it laid out for them.
That said, I still really enjoyed Season 1 of Loki, and I’ll be tuning in to Season 2 when it comes out. Cheers!
Leave a Reply