Better than last week, loved the 70s setting, not as amazing as the first season just yet.
Is anyone else just confused by this? I feel I have no idea what’s going on
watching this I was sure I just skipped at least 3 episodes, everything is so confusing
So did they just retcon this X-5 guy into existence or something? Seems like everybody knows him already.
Loki: so how should I approach Sylvie, the woman I have feelings for and just tortured a guy to find
Also Loki: ah yes, showing up in full TVA gear with a prisoner in a jumpsuit like the one she was forced to wear as a child and immediately yammering about the TVA and how I saw her there in the future even though I know full well it's the organization that ruined her life and she hates it deeply will surely do the trick. it's not like it's gonna set a totally wrong tone for this reunion I've been laser focused on since the moment she pushed me through the time door. 10/10 zero flaws in that plan.
Bro really needs to get some game QUICK like I understand he's never been in love before but what the hell was that :sneezing_face:
I couldn’t stop staring at the key lime pies.
"Let's just get this to go, it packs right up"
Barf, how desperate were they for money, that they literally wrote ads, not just visually all over the place, but right into the dialogue.
[7.1/10] We’re only two episodes into the new season, so it’s hard to make any grand pronouncements (but I’m going to try anyway). The show is dull and difficult to invest in when it falls headlong into plot, but it’s engaging, and even fleetingly profound, when it leans into character.
The big climax of “Breaking Brad” involves General Dox’s crew “bombing” the extra branches of the timeline that have popped up since Sylvie did her thing with He Who Remains. And I have to tell you, I really struggle to care.
Loki does its best. Hunter B-15 declares “those are people” as she watches the read out, and Wummi Mosaku delivers it well and earnestly, to help give us a perspective character to all of this supposed horror. But to me, they’re not people. They’re just lines on a chart. We don’t know anyone affected. We haven't really seen how and why it matters. And when everything is an apocalyptic event on a weekly basis, nothing really registers anymore. This is supposed to be a big deal, and it just isn’t.
Why do General Dox and her loyalists want to bomb the branches exactly? Presumably it’s to preserve the sacred timeline, but it’s not really fleshed out; it just sort of happens. How are she and her confederates accomplishing this? I think there’s an answer, something involving temp pads or some other technobabble, but because it’s explained super fast in a stage whisper by a bunch of characters about to blow it all up anyway, none of it quite lands. Who are the TVA die-hards taking her in, and why are they on Mobius side and not hers, and where are her people going to go? No one cares to explain, or note loyalties, or anything else. Stuff just sort of happens.
It’s my big problem with this episode. We don’t get any set up for Loki and Mobius hunting X-5, aka “Brad” in the sacred timeline; it just happens. The same goes for the search for Sylvie -- obviously Loki wants to find her because he cares about her, but why are the others so invested in it? And what is the deal with Casey and his ability to recognize what’s going with Brad’s modified device? Is it just to setup his partnership with OB? When your storytelling is sloppy, it’s hard to distinguish between what’s a cryptic tease for something yet-to-be-revealed, and what’s just a frankenstein’ed together episode of random threads and bits without a real structure or soundness to it.
Despite all of those complaints, I actually like a lot of the themes and character work here. For as random as Brad feels as a major character in this one, he does a good job of drawing interesting things out of everyone he’s paired with. He makes a good point -- akin to Cypher in The Matrix. If none of this is real, why play the game? Why not head back into the timeline somewhere and have your fun? Why play the parts assigned to you? His casting off of his hunter responsibilities to be a movie star is silly, and so is Brad’s general vibe, but he ends up having a point about why should they keep up the charade.
HIs recriminations touch a nerve when it comes to Mobius. The interrogation scenes are well-written. There’s a nice subversion with Mobius warning Loki not to let a pro like Brad get under his skin, when it turns out to be Mobius himself who ends up bothered by what the prisoner has to say. I like the idea that Mobius isn’t interested in his “real” life in the timeline, because he likes his life in the TVA. He believes in what they’re doing. He doesn’t care if it’s “real” anymore than Brad does, in his way, because it’s real to him. So being called “Mr. Nowhere Man” (hello Beatles fans!) is an insult because it demeans the life he chooses to live and the work he believes in.
That's a fascinating idea, and it ties into one of the themes the show’s spun from the beginning -- what do you do when you believe you’re “burdened with glorious purpose” only to discover that there is no external purpose? It is the classic existentialist dilemma. And seeing different people find meaning in different places in the wake of the revelations about He Who Remains and the truth of the TVA is the most compelling part of the show.
That includes Sylvie. There’s something wonderful about the idea that without the TVA breathing down her neck, without needing to run constantly anymore, with the entire multiverse as her oyster, she chooses to...work shifts at a fast food restaurant. I dunno, the idea of wanting to live a simple, uncomplicated life after ages of being on the run is kind of beautiful. It makes Loki and company walking in to puncture the pleasant existence she’s scratched out for herself a bit sad, honestly.
And then there’s Loki himself. I appreciate Brad’s recriminations that, again, he’s not a hero; he’s a villain. He’s not a winner; he’s a loser. Loki thinks he’s found new purpose with the TVA, acting as an agent and basically Mobius’ partner. So Brad undermining that, saying that he’s going against type and it’s not working, works on both an in-universe and a meta level.
The fact that Loki turns that around to his advantage is marvelous. The signature scene of this one is Loki “locking” Mobius out of the interrogation room, turning on his villain bona fides, and intimidating Brad with a continually shrinking box. It comes with nice visual flair mixed with Loki playing up to expectations, oyl to reveal that this was part of his and Mobis’ plan all along. Whatever he was before, Loki is a good guy, or at least a better guy now, even if he still has the skills to put on his old persona for effect.
Those are the kinds of things I want from this show. Reinitiating the temporal loom, or finding out how Rendlsayer is in league with He Who Remains, or un-pruning the branches on the timeline is all of pretty mild interest to me at this point. The plot doesn’t really drive the drama here; the characters do. I’d probably rather have great characters than great story at the end of the day, but there’s no reason Loki couldn’t have both, and instead it only has half of the equation.
so boring I'm not sure I'm gonna finish this episode! what a mess.
at this point, the show seems to be going nowhere, episode 2 can be summed up thus, a lot happens but nothing happens. can we get to the point already instead of all this running around that achieves nothing?
E2 is a little slow tempo, but I do really liked it as the color and composition there. Also the performance from Ke Huy Quan is such good, I like this character
Mixed feelings. One one hand I love the cinematography on display in some sequences, also really love some of the set design and props. But my god this is all just so boring. Maybe I'm just too mentally checked out of the MCU at this point to really enjoy it.
"Those were lives?"
Like we are supposed to care with this mediocre writing?
Okay somehow the structure and plotting of this episode is more abaffling than the premiere. We spend more than half of it interrogating a random TVA agent we've never met before in the hopes of finding Sylvie. The story doesn't clarify why finding Sylvie is so important until waaaay late into the episode when we discover another random tva agent we barely know is carrying out multiversal genocide. IMO maybe the focus should have been Dox and the multiverse purges over Brad the movie star.
I also really don't understand both Loki and Mobius motivations as characters. I don't understand why either of them are with the TVA still and what their aims and goals are at any given moment. This episode gives Brad a lot of shit for attempting to live a life on the main timeline and "abandoning his post" which literally makes no sense because all of last season was building up to the TVA being an evil organization. Like why should any TVA agent feel obligated to stay there at all? Why is Loki still working for the TVA? why is Mobius? The only character I actually understand is Hunter-B15. She wants to protect all the branches because she sees that they have as much of a right to exist as she does and I guess that what Mobius and Loki believe too???
This series so far has done an piss poor job of establishing its stakes. Two back to back episode where I couldn't figure out why we're doing what we're doing is a bit concerning.
The character stuff has shades of interestingness but the plot sequence is terrible, nonsensical and writing a comment as to specifically why feels like even more of a waste
After years pruning branches and killing gazillions people, suddenly that X whatever is her name lady is REALLY horrified of branches being erased with, gasp, people living on them!
I joked on my comment on last episode that the show felt like they hired new writers that never watched one episode of the last season, bit it turns out this season is REALLY being written by a new writing team LOL. Man, they REALLY needed to at least take a glimpse at the scripts from last season. It'sb becoming beyond ridiculous at this point.
Also the McDonald's ads were really up in our noses this time. I was surprised Sylvie didn't have a dialogue line about her new life saying she was lovin' it!
Better than the first episode. I liked Loki using his magic, to be honest. But he seems very docile right now. Why exactly is he working with Mobius? Let's remember that this is the Loki right after "The Avengers", not the one who came to terms with his past. I also liked that Sylvie doesn't take over like she did in the first season.
However, my liking this episode because it was a bit more straight-forward doesn't change the fact that the main plot remains convoluted and outright confusing.
7.5/10
So Good
Not got a clue what's
going on but I'm here for it.
Great seeing our Loki
flexing the magic again,
new stuff for us to see
as well.
Sylvie was annoying
AF this episode acting
like all this isn't her fault
then putting all that blame
elsewhere just takes the
piss. She Was acting like
a proper brat.
The Marvels
did the hole destruction
of people on planets so
much better and made
me actually care and
feel genuine sorrow.
I felt nothing in this episode
watching a bunch of
retracting lines on
a monitor screen.
That being said this
is definitely feeling a
much stronger season
than number 1 and I'm
very keen on what's to
come next.
This episode felt like watching a season finally that I hadn’t seen any of the episodes leading up to.
It wanted me to care without building any reasons for me to. It also wanted to make sense without any of the character development or script writing to make it do so.
I've been enjoying this season quite a bit, and it's due largely to Mobius and OB.
Love it when you pick up a show again after two years and you have to remember who the hell the minor characters that you barely saw never existed in the first season.
Soft episode. Looking for Brad to look for Sylvie. Looking for Renslayer on the side. Only to find incidently that the one they should have looked for was Dox.
The complete reset thing is a bit weird. On one side we were shown at the end of season 1 that all the sudden branching was catastrophic. Turns out even a small faction inside the TVA has the means to simultaneously take care of it. At the same time, they're presented as genocidal villains but this is literally what all of them have been doing for years. Centuries ? Millennia ?
I looooove that Loki can use his magic now :sob: spot on indeed
Man, why don't they always just use that hold hands green fart explosion move? Seems very handy.
And yeah the McDonald's shilling is pretty ridiculous. Although the fact that the show was delayed and threw off the timing of the McD's ad campaign for the season makes this all even funnier.
Shout by noelctBlockedParent2023-10-14T06:17:55Z
The dialogue feels like it's talking in circles a bit much, but damn does this show still know how to craft a whimsically weird scene, and I'm still excited to see what this is building into.