LOKI Episode #4 Recap
The episode opens on Asgard and a young Sylvie playing with her toys when the TVA, led by a younger Ravonna Renslayer show up and take her into custody for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. Pruning her reality along the way however Sylvie soon escapes.
Back on Lamentis-1 Sylvie and Loki await the end of the world and share another emotional conversation that leads to a mysterious Nexus event that catches the eyes of the TVA. Suddenly the two are in custody and Loki is placed in a time cell where he repeats a memory where he hurt Lady Sif by cutting her hair over and over as she beats him up and berates him telling him he’ll always be alone.
Mobius, feeling something isn’t quite right about Sylvie’s crusade against the TVA and after getting a hint from Loki decides to investigate whether or not he and everyone else there are variants. Hunter B-15 likewise feels like something is amiss and performs and investigation of her own getting Sylvie to show her memories of her life prior to the TVA.
Mobius interrogates Loki again and discovers that the Nexus event that perhaps could’ve caused them to find Loki and Sylvie was Loki beginning to fall in love with Sylvie – a variant of himself. The ultimate narcissistic move. After much back-and-forth between Mobius and Ravonna later on Mobius gets all the proof he needs that he’s being lied to.
Ravonna quickly catches on to what Mobius is doing and prunes him. And then leads Loki and Sylvie to the Time-Keepers where Hunter B-15 helps the two escape their neck monitors. A fight ensues and the Time-Keepers are killed in the ensuing battle where we find out they’ve been androids the whole time. Loki is then pruned by Ravonna and wakes up in what looks to be a post-apocalyptic world where several other variant Lokis greet him.
Episode Review
Wow! What an episode! While we still have no idea what happened with all those bombed locations on the timeline, presumably they were all reset off screen which would be a real bummer, the episode still manages to give us all sorts of crazy shenanigans I definitely wasn’t expecting in this series. First off though I gotta say I just love when Loki and Mobius talk to one another. They have a chemistry that is off the charts.
I could listen to Owen Wilson as Mobius read through a phone book he’s so good.
But I gotta give a big personal shout out to Jaimie Alexander returning as Lady Sif in a surprise guest appearance. I hooped and hollered when she came on screen. I’ve missed Sif since her early Agents of SHIELD cameos and have felt she deserves more recognition in the MCU. Maybe one day she can even get her own Disney+ show. That’d be rad.
Sylvie doesn’t get a lot to do this episode for most of it as we focus moreso on Loki himself but her presence looms large throughout and comes to an explosive head towards the climax as she finally gets her revenge against the Time-Keepers only to have it stolen away when she realizes they’re frauds. Consistently Sophie Di Martino slays in this role literally and figuratively. I hope this isn’t her only appearance in the MCU and she becomes more of a mainstay after this.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw continues to be great as Ravonna Renslayer in this episode however I felt she was given too much on the nose “bad guy” dialogue that while she did her absolute best to deliver still only came out as “I’m giving off a big red sign that I’m evil Mobius, catch on already.” And I didn’t enjoy any of that. But it’s not her fault.
Likewise Wunmi Mosaku is still wonderful as Hunter B-15 who has a turn-about this episode going from no-nonsense TVA agent to dedicated revolutionary. In the scene where Sylvie shows her her old life Wunmi does a great job at portraying the euphoric feelings of whatever she’s seeing. I do wish we’d gotten to see it, but perhaps we’ll get to by the end of the show. But ultimately I hope we get to see more action from Hunter B-15 because she doesn’t get an actual whole lot to this episode physically and the one fight she instigates she gets knocked out of in two hits.
And speaking of the fighting one of my biggest actual gripes from this episode was the fighting choreography. So far all season it’s been pretty alright to strong but the final brawl in the Time-Keepers chamber was…really weak. Definitely by MCU standards. It was not an exhilarating time from beginning to end when hurt that final scene in my opinion.
I won’t spend too much more time on the episode, but real quick going back to the scene where Mobius berates Loki for potentially falling in love with himself, while we don’t know if the feelings are mutual between the two of them the idea that Loki finds the possibility of real love in himself, or a version of himself, that also isn’t quite the same as him, is a whole pallet of meta-commentary on coming to accept oneself that I really hope the show decides to unpack.
Finally, that end credits scene where we get to see FOUR Lokis show up: Boastful Loki that weilds Thor’s hammer, Kid Loki holding Alligator Loki, and Classic Loki in the classic costume all made me jump out of my seat with excitement! Super excited to see where they take these characters, I need to see more of the multiverse!
Overall Feelings
This was a great episode! Definitely needed more polishing, the fight scenes in this episode were truly painful to behold, but the show continues to be great in spite of that with a strong story and wonderful characters building on the immense lore of the MCU and expanding it all the same.
Observations of the Sacred Timeline
- Agents of SHIELD may or may not be considered canon, but if you’re wanting more Sif in your life it is the last place we saw here before now. And more Sif is never a bad thing no matter the canonicity!
- In her first episode of AoS Sif takes on the Asgardian Lorelei, whom in the comics is Enchantress’ little sister. Sylvie is much like Enchantress who uses enchantment and Lorelei also uses enchantment to control her victims.
- Hoping we get some payoff to those Sacred Timeline bombings. Seems the TVA already fixed them all but man it would’ve been cool to actually see some of those branches.
- The scenes on Lamentis-1 this episode were particularly beautiful.
- Gator-Loki is supreme.
- Will it be Kang the Conqueror or a variant Loki that created the TVA? My gut tells me Loki but man would I much prefer it to be Kang. Making enemy characters connected doesn’t always make the story better emotionally.
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