Loki Episode 1 - Spoiler Review!

episode one of loki has dropped but i already have a season's worth of spoilery thoughts right now [Music] hello everybody and welcome to my spoiler review of episode one of loki which is called glorious purpose it dropped late last night slash early this morning slash tonight don't really matter it's the same time no matter where you are here on this planet earth and even though i have seen the first two episodes of the series and you can see my non-spoiler review for both episodes right up there there's a little card in the corner this show is just about episode one so even though there are some things that i'm gonna bring up in this spoiler review for episode one that could potentially be answered in the second episode i'm not gonna talk about them nothing that i'm gonna say here is affected by anything that happens in the second episode because this is a spoiler review of episode one not of episode two so if you're worried about anything leaking in that might happen next week don't worry about it i'm going to be very careful to make sure that i can strain myself to the information that we may or may not learn in this particular episode this recap begins with a recap because the first thing we see in loki is a revisiting of the events that happened in 2019's avengers in game when the 2012 version of loki due to the time traveling heroics of the avengers was able to escape using the tesseract and a lot of people thought that this would be the event that kicks off the main plot of the show but as it turns out loki's theft of the tesseract is merely the entrance to what is going to happen in this show he almost immediately re-materializes in the gobi desert and we have a shot of him kind of half buried in the sand it was very reminiscent in my eyes of a shot that was in 2008's iron man and i thought it was maybe kind of a clever nod a clever homage this is the beginning of this version of loki's story and it has a strange echo in a way to the beginning of tony stark's story all the way back in 2008 i'm also digging by the way the custom marvel logo that loki gets this green logo you know it's a special event series when it gets its own custom marvel logo after crash landing in the desert loki is almost immediately confronted by the time variance authority a group of what i call in my non-spoiler review chrono cops who essentially are there to patrol the sacred timeline we'll get a little bit more into that in just a second and it's a great question of how do you stop a god on earth well the time variance authority can change the way that time itself operates time has proven to be the one thing that can override everything it's what doctor strange can use to feed dormammu it's what the avengers use to defeat thanos and it's what the time variance authority uses to control loki of all the elements that we've seen in the marvel cinematic universe time seems to be the most powerful loki is taken to the headquarters of the tva where he's put into processing and you immediately understand that this is not a place where something like the tesseract is seen as the all-powerful object that it was on earth here it's simply logged into evidence just like anything else in any regular police station that you'd find in any other part of the world loki himself also goes through a processing procedure one part of which includes a friendly looking machine very friendly looking machine that relieves him of his fine as guardian leather aka his clothes and when i was watching this i had a childhood memory that just like was struck it was a very vivid image that i remember reading in a book it was part of a book series called the my teachers and aliens series there was one book called my teacher glows in the dark and there's a scene in that book where one of the main characters gets abducted or goes up into the alien ship and he encounters a machine that does basically the same thing it blasts something at him and his clothes disappear and he gets put into an alien uniform and it made me wonder if the series creator and writer michael waldron who according to the internet is just a few years younger than me might have read that book too because for some reason that imagery and i guess it's this idea that somebody who in that book was my age would be in this fantastical situation on this alien ship i wonder if this was an image that stuck with him or if it's just a weird cosmic coincidence after loki goes through the rest of these procedures which includes signing a waiver to claim everywhere that he's ever said he then goes into a big lobby and this is where i got some really strong beetlejuice vibes this idea of kind of a no-man's land somewhere for wayward beings and the combination of these very surreal circumstances with the very banal look and feel taking a number like you're at a deli but this is also a chance for the show to do a big exposition dump via an animated video and this is something that's been done in a lot of different movies jurassic park is one that does it it's been done in a bunch of tv shows as well i actually dug this because it's throwing a lot of information at you but it's doing it in a way that's way less boring than just having a character sit across from loki and tell him exactly what's going on we meet miss minutes who is the animated mascot of the tva and she takes us through exactly what the origin of this whole organization is which is that a long time ago there was a multiverse and there was a multiversal war where all of these timelines were battling with each other and it almost ended in the destruction of everything as we know it basically reality as we know it this led to the establishment of something called the sacred timeline which is one master timeline it is maintained by three all-powerful beings called the time keepers who then have empowered the tva which they created to keep nexus events which are events which would splinter away from the main timeline from taking over and creating another multiverse this thing is so packed with different easter eggs you can almost take every single frame and probably do a deep dive on it and like i've said before when i was doing wand division these videos aren't really about unpacking every single easter egg it's more of just my stray observations my recap my review and a few things that i may notice here or there but there were some very heavy hints to wear and how this might tie into the future of the mcu and particularly doctor strange in the multiverse of madness especially considering that one of the lines that you hear in this animated video is quote when left unchecked these timelines could branch off into madness leading into another multiversal war there's also an illustration with all of these different timelines that says multiverse that looks very similar to the early logo art that we've seen for the new doctor strange movie so it's not a big jump to assume that this is going to tie in pretty heavily with what goes on not only in the doctor strange movie but perhaps in the future of the entire mcu throw in the fact that you have the nexus events nexus was also something that popped up in one division and we're seeing a web and i like that one division and loki seem to be kind of on the same wavelength as far as being really weird but also seem to be tying into doctor strange which is itself very weird there's a very tonal consistency if these shows are all going together and it makes sense also why these shows are so different and how they feel from a show like the falcon and the winter soldier they're meant for different purposes and it seems like one division loki and doctor strange may all be on a collision course with each other next up we meet owen wilson as agent mobius the second protagonist of this series he's in france in 1549 where a rogue variant aka someone who has escaped from the sacred timeline is killing off the minutemen the soldiers of the tva they encounter a young french child who has some very anachronistic candy so they're sure that this child has had interaction with whatever this being is from the future and then she points to a stained glass window and it is the devil and as soon as i saw this image i thought oh my god here we go again with mephisto because mephisto was a recurring thing in one division and as soon as that devil was shown i i looked on uh twitter already as this episode was a debuting mephisto was trending yet again for the record the director of the show kate herron has said that mephisto is not part of this series the devil imagery is supposed to be a tie into loki the horns the fact that loki is cast down from heaven it's basically this little girl saying that a being like the devil was the person that she interacted with so there has already been official word that there is no mephisto connection whatsoever but you know what maybe let's just give the mephisto talk a break altogether and then be surprised if it is mephisto i personally don't think it is i didn't think it was mephisto last time i don't think it's mephisto this time but people seem determined to get mephisto into the mcu no matter what i hope you haven't been drinking every time i said mephisto or you're in big trouble agent mobius's investigation is interrupted by the news that loki has been captured and we get a glimpse of loki's file including his name loki laufeyson which makes sense because he is not loki odinson because he's not the son of odin he's the son of king lauthy of the frost giants that is now his official canon name in the mcu we also get some other vital statistics about loki including the fact that his sex is listed as fluid this is something that tom hiddleston was talking about i saw it coming up just today and it makes sense because loki is a shape-shifter and it opens up a lot of possibilities for what could potentially be coming down the road either in this show or later down the line loki is hauled in front of a judge at the tva who's played by gugu and bathurath she will be a key supporting player in this series and we learned a couple of interesting pieces of information number one loki was apparently aware in the 2012 version of the avengers timeline that he escaped from that the avengers had time traveled because he could quote smell the cologne of two tony starks anywhere so he was definitely aware that there was some kind of hijinks going on involving the timeline and he's under the assumption that he shouldn't be in trouble for violating the timeline it should be the avengers because he assumes that the avengers time traveled to keep him from winning to keep him from ruling the earth yet another example of the fact that loki will not acknowledge at this point in his existence any reality in which he's not the ruler there's also an interesting response to loki's accusation against the avengers when the judge says that what the avengers did was supposed to happen and that him escaping was not what was supposed to happen this lends credence to the fact that doctor strange could see all of those millions of different possibilities but the one outcome that he could see is apparently at least according to the tva the sacred timeline the only way that it could have happened the only way that they would have allowed this to happen which means that everything that happened in the previous avengers films must have happened in order for the timeline to maintain its stability loki is almost wiped out of existence as a variant because the tva can do this his magic has absolutely no power there nor do anything like infinity stones or tesseracts but mobius intervenes because he sees something in loki and thinks that he could be useful to the tva and their investigations i also think that there is a weird inference that the tva may share some kind of a universe with monsters inc because loki says that this place is a nightmare and agent mobius says no that's a different department and i'll help you burn that one down and when you think about it monsters inc is all about nightmares they're in this weird kind of factory place they go from place to place through doorways just like the tva could this be the groundwork of disney setting up a shared not only marvel cinematic universe but marvel pixar cinematic universe the answer is definitely no but it's kind of fun to think about right mobius takes loki to the tva time theater which is apparently stocked with an endless supply of josta cola and i love that the people that control the sacred timeline have chosen josta as their cola of choice and this is where some of my favorite stuff in this first episode starts to get established because mobius is challenging loki about his very nature about why he's cruel why he's mean why he chooses to hurt people and at first loki puts up the shields and says the kind of things that he usually does he says the first and most oppressive lie ever uttered was the song of freedom because he believes it's his job to take that freedom away from everybody else in the nine realms but the irony here is is that he's facing the exact same situation himself he's coming up against the reality that everything he's been saying is actually true that there is one set path for everybody but he's not the one who dictates it and as a matter of fact he's not even a part of it anymore mobius challenges loki's nature he says he's not a god of mischief he's just mean he's just cruel and then they recount an episode from loki's past where we find out that he was mischievous in some ways and that he was in fact the mystery man d.b cooper if you don't know who db cooper was i know because i watched unsolved mysteries when i was a kid back in the early 1970s he hijacked an airliner by telling a flight attendant that he was carrying a bomb the plane landed he was given several hundred thousand dollars in cash the plane took off again and he parachuted out of the plane never to be seen again he was never identified no body was ever found the only thing they found was some of the money that was stolen that's it it's one of the most enduring mysteries in american history it's also the only case in the u.s ever of an unsolved airline hijacking as it turns out this was just a little bit of mischief from loki because he was as he said young and lost a bet to thor and i like the idea that this is what two godlike brothers would do if they really didn't have anything but time they would send one of them to midgard and mess around with some humans just to play a practical joke on them this is the kind of mischief that loki wants to be known for but as agent mobius points out that's not what he's known for he's known for pain and death and misery and he wants to get to the heart of why because you can tell that mobius thinks that he can unlock the secret inside of loki he can also unlock loki's usefulness to the tva of course loki's not going to take to this lightly and he accuses mobius of making this whole thing up saying that the tva is an illusion basically a way to subjugate him as a god to intimidate him because they're afraid of his power but then he has kind of a rough hour or so because to prove that what he's saying is true mobius first shows him the death of his mother frigga and and keep in mind that this version of loki doesn't know that this ever happens not only does mobius show loki his mother's death he also shows him that loki was kind of directly responsible for it giving the dark elves the directions of where to go inside of asgard to find what he thought was thor mobius twists the dagger by pointing out that you led the dark elves right to your mother so that she could die and then really plunges it in further when he cuts loki to the quick he says you were born to cause pain and suffering and death so others can achieve their best versions of themselves and when you think about it that's true it was his murder of coulson that really caused the avengers to gather it was his hijinks that brought everyone together as this fighting force and in the end everything that he did didn't really matter loki because he's a trickster briefly escapes from custody and i was kind of worried that this was the part where okay he's going to go get the information dumped and then he's going to escape he's going to grab the tester act and then he is going to jump around like we kind of thought that the show was going to do but they took it in a direction that i liked a lot more which is that he goes into an office he intimidates the office worker and says give me the tester act which he does get of course the tester act is useless here and then inside the desk drawer he sees that it is full of infinity stones they created an entire multi-billion dollar franchise about gathering these stones how powerful they were what people would sacrifice to get them and they're just sitting in this guy's desk drawer they're being used as he said for paperweights now i saw a lot of people reacting to this saying that marvel was trivializing the infinity stones that they were basically saying that all of these people died for nothing and i don't think that that's true because the tva does not exist inside the marvel timeline or really any other timeline it's its own pocket universe i don't think that saying that the infinity stones were powerless in this reality means that they were meaningless in every other reality i think this is just a tool for the show to say hey listen this place is for real i'm still not sold on their motivations i think the whole three time keepers thing is all very convenient i i don't really think that everything with the tva is as it seems but i do believe that it is a powerful place and that it's underscored by them showing just how trivial these infinity stones are to them keep in mind this is what they do when a branching timeline comes up they go they capture whoever it is so of course they're gonna capture artifacts like infinity stones and bring them back they're powerless at the tva that doesn't mean they're powerless in the real world so i didn't really see that as any kind of a betrayal of the stakes of any other marvel movie instead just underlining what the stakes of this show are realizing that his escape attempts are futile that the tva is for real and that the tesseract is completely useless loki returns to the time theater and does the one thing that you should never do doc brown tried to warn us all about this he looks into his own future and sees nothing but pain and misery first he sees odin's death which we saw in thor ragnarok and then even worse he sees his own death at the hands of thanos and he realizes once and for all that all of his dreams everything that he wanted to be this glorious ruler would never come to pass and that he actually died at the hands of somebody much more powerful than him realizing that his whole concept of glorious purpose is a complete fabrication loki now is finally cut down to the core of who he is and when mobius comes back he's able to open up to him and finally explain why it is that he hurts people and he says he doesn't hurt people because he enjoys doing it he hurts it because quote it's the cruel elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear and we've known this about loki his origins in the first thor movie everything he did in that movie was basically inspired by his insecurity he didn't feel like he belonged he felt like everyone had lied to him everything was rooted in this deep well of pain inside of him and that motivated all of his actions and i love that you're returning to the root of this character and bringing it full circle here where none of his powers have any meaning and he has to confront the mortality within him because the immortality is gone now that loki's admitted who he is agent mobius also puts his cards on the table and says that he needs loki's help because the mysterious variant that they're trying to track down the one that's killing all the minutemen is loki obviously loki finds this very hard to believe and that's where we leave these two characters the episode ends with a group of minutemen arriving in 1850s oklahoma to investigate a variant and that's where they encounter a mysterious hooded figure presumably loki who sets the field on fire sets the team on fire and there we have the end of episode one really in about 45 minutes if you don't include credits we have taken loki from the trickster that we knew escaping avengers tower in 2012 to someone who has encountered the darkness within himself in less than an hour i love the runtime of this episode i think this was the longest of any of the episode ones of the three marvel shows that we've seen so far but i also think it covers a lot of ground when you think of all the character stuff that was done in this episode introducing new characters introducing the tva and the sacred timeline and the timekeepers there was a lot to be done and it could have felt disjointed but it all feels really well put together it flows really well this is going to be a six episode series so we have five episodes left episode two premieres next week i'm really looking forward to seeing where this is going because we've already seen so much character development with loki and now we get to see how this changed person carries on across this investigation i also like the vibe of the show beetlejuice men in black 80s 90s movies lots of different things that it felt like in addition to being something inside the mcu and i want to give a shout out to natalie holt who did the music for this show the music that went over the little opening credits bit was great and then the closing credits music was really awesome that was my favorite piece of marvel music that i've heard in a while it kind of reminds me of when i heard ludwig gorinson's score for black panther and when i want to hear more from that composer immediately even though i knew he'd already done creed etc but i think natalie holt might be a rising star not only in the mcu but in the music universe so that does it for my episode 1 spoiler review of loki what did you think were you as intrigued by the character stuff that was done in this episode are you looking forward to investigations potentially coming up in episode two and beyond what is it about this new world that you trust what is it about this new world that you don't trust i think there's still a lot left to learn let me know down in the comment section below and as always stick around we have a lot going on here on the channel i've got a review of in the heights which is coming out tomorrow that's opening this weekend i also have a live show coming up later this week we are going to talk about moviepass and the fact that maybe it was the scam that we all thought it was from the very beginning i'm already picking up some information on that it's going to be a lot of fun to talk about also if you want even more of what i'm doing you can check me out on patreon at patreon.com danmerl and i'll be back next week with a spoiler review of episode 2 of loki thank you so much for watching and here we go again with yet another mcu show they're two for two as far as i'm concerned let's see if they're gonna go three for three thank you for taking this journey with me and i'll see you next time [Applause] you

Channel: Dan Murrell

Views: 45,072

Rating: 4.9467974 out of 5

Keywords: dan murrell, dan murrell movies, loki review, loki spoiler review, loki episode 1 review, loki episode1 spoiler review, loki disney, dan murrell loki review, dan murrell loki spoiler review, marvel, loki marvel, mcu

Id: ly7ch6C9idc

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021