Loki recap: Loki finally figures out what the hell he wants

Listen: Loki Laufeyson has come unstuck in time…again.

Amazingly enough, it turns out that last week’s apparently apocalyptic installment of Loki did not result in the complete and total destruction of the multiverse–presumably because, if it did, Kevin Feige would start sending very pointed emails to not go around blowing up the fictional universe he’s spent the last decade-plus of his life creating. Instead, the results of the Temporal Loom detonating itself in “The Heart Of The TVA” are much more mundane (at least at first), as all of the Variants of the Time Variance Authority apparently just got blown back into their proper positions on whatever branched timeline initially produced them, and Loki himself starts time-slipping all over again.

After blowing a couple of minutes on Fun With Time Loops, “Science/Fiction” gets down to the business of using Loki’s resumed hops and skips as its overall framing device, as he finds himself pulled to points in time–Alcatraz in 1962, New York in 2012, Cleveland in 2022, Pasadena in 1994, and, for a fleeting moment, a McDonald’s parking lot in Brockton, Oklahoma–populated by his friends from the TVA. That’s not a coincidence, points out frustrated science fiction author A.D. Doug, Ph. D. (a.k.a. O.B., with Ke Huy Quan in familiar, but welcome, territory as a slightly sadder multiversal version of his TVA self), who quickly notes that Loki must be driving the jumps somehow, even if his efforts to consciously go Quantum Leaping through time produce nothing but an amusing new minute for Tom Hiddleston’s ever-expanding comedy highlight reel.

In what feels like a weird beat for the character, Loki rejects Doug’s early assertion that it should be the “fiction” side of the science-fiction synthesis that can save the day, though, insisting that there must be a scientific process to save the TVA. (This is as opposed to trying to drive and understand his personal story to gain control of the jumps; the episode has to pull this to set up the basic rug-pull it’s working toward in its last moments–and the idea of Loki refusing to look closely enough at his own motivations holds–but Loki’s embrace of science over narrative feels like an odd choice for a guy who’s, y’know, literally a wizard.)

And so we go a-questin’, as Loki jumps through time, convincing his former friends to come together to let him “scan their temporal auras” and help him save the TVA. The biggest focus of these scenes is, unsurprisingly, Don the Jet Ski salesman (Owen Wilson), whose frankly sad existence (and horrible sons) do not appear to have much diminished his love of life or the many merits of personal watercraft. Hiddleston and Wilson are always good together, but they find some interesting new notes to play together, Loki going warmer than usual toward his only friend, and Wilson letting a wary huckster show through the easy smiles. (These scenes also produce the best bleak comedy bit of the episode, as Doug pops in to reveal that exposure to the TVA Handbook has caused him to lose his job, and his wife, as he spent 18 unseen months building a makeshift, highly bulky TemPad.)

Loki saves the most painful reunion for last, of course–and runs into one of these moments of blind stupidity the show occasionally sticks him with when it’s hiding a pretty clear plot twist: Obviously Sylvie, who adopted her life in Product Placement, OK, rather than being plucked from it by the TVA, wouldn’t be operating under the same memory restrictions of the rest of the cast, even before you get into the god of it all. She’s just been doing exactly what she always said she wanted to do: living a life, equally free of Asgard and the TVA’s temporal policing. (She also held on to her TemPad, which Loki never seems to do in these situations because…well, she’s smarter than him.)

The subsequent conversation between the two Variants highlights an issue Loki keeps smacking its head into in its second season, though, pretty much every time it tries to run its more heavy emotional complexities directly through the lens of its science-fiction high concepts (mixing up its “science” and its “fiction,” to use the terms of this week’s installment). Science-fiction-as-metaphor is a fine and long tradition, of course, but it has to be used with some care, lest your whole story dissolve into strictly figurative soup. To take an example from this episode: Sylvie is in no way wrong when she diagnoses Loki with mixed-up motivations for his jaunts through time, ultimately pushing him to admit he’s less interested in the preservation of the timelines, or the TVA, than he is in holding onto the first place where he’s ever felt like he has friends who accept him for who he is. Said speech is metaphorically spot-on, making some very trenchant points about Loki’s blinkered devotion to the TVA (and, for someone who literally started last week’s review by asking what the hell Loki wants, was pretty dang satisfying to hear a character put into words). But since the plot side of that speech also advises totally ignoring the CGI Space Wedgie that exploded last week–and which is now, apparently, turning every timeline into so much temporal spaghetti–it runs the risk of re-casting her very fair points about Loki’s motivations as potentially lethal distractions.

The issue here is that Loki is obviously far more interested in solving what Doug would call “the fiction problem,” sketching out the steps required to get Loki to a place where he realizes that all he wants in life is the power to protect his friends (which includes, as it turns out, watching them all get existentially linguini’d, in a series of legitimately disturbing effects scenes). But we in the audience still have to stick around for the many scenes devoted to the “science” side of the plot, i.e., caring at least a little bit about the mechanics of exploding Time Looms, temporal auras, etc. By aiming relentlessly for the metaphorical truth, Loki sometimes cuts its own practical storytelling to shreds.

Honestly, though, the mere fact that we’re in the weeds a bit on this concept suggests that “Science/Fiction” is playing with some pretty heavy, and pretty successful, stuff. (An episode of Marvel TV that’s actually about something! Wonders never cease!) As an episode, it doesn’t hurt that it’s mostly a series of two-handers, which is the space where Loki often does its best work. (Hiddleston plays well with everybody, but his chemistry with Quan is really a joy to watch.) And, gods bless it, the episode even manages to take a breath from time to time–most notably a scene of Sylvie blissing out to the Velvet Underground right before reality all falls to shit that’s genuinely beautiful, Sophia Di Martino ably selling Sylvie’s enthrallment by the music.

We end with Loki finally taking control of his own narrative, jumping back to the moment right before Victor Timely got himself so disastrously unraveled last week. How much agency he actually has remains an open question–one suspects they included that bit where He Who Remains says he’d plotted everything out in the “Previously Ons” this week for a reason–but after a season where Loki’s main character has often seemed like he was permanently playing catch-up to other people’s more aggressively sketched-out ambitions, it’s thrilling to see him stride back into the center stage with a real desire in his heart.

Stray observations

• The Loki title sequence is always a treat, but seeing the letters briefly blink out of existence before flipping back to the complete logo in this episidoe was a nice touch.
• The episode implies the TVA itself was blown up last week; in which case, where on the timeline is Loki at the start of this episode, when he’s running around a completely empty version of its facilities?
• A.D. Doug’s books include The Zartan Contingency, which has been showing up in the closing credits sequence all season, as well as The Sons Of Yoren. He might be able to find you a copy!
• “You can’t. That’s impossible. But don’t let that stop you.”
• Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead (who do a typically lovely job tonight, filling the episode with ominous, beautiful moments) also briefly cameo as (I think) a couple of the guys hanging out in the Jet-Ski shop
• Don’s parenting style appears to be largely based around limiting his children’s access to matches in exchange for dogs.
• Interesting to see that Doug has, presumably unconsciously, built himself a lab space that closely resembles his lair in the TVA.
• Casey and B-15 both get short shrift, but do each get a few nice moments, B-15 (a.k.a. Dr. Willis) as a pediatrician and Casey (Frank Morris) as a bank robber.
• Given all the story talk, it’s worth noting that one of the most celebrated run of (semi-) recent Loki comments was entirely about him rejecting his title as God Of Mischief or God Of Lies and embracing his role as God Of Stories, instead.
• Sylvie’s life in Brockton seems genuinely great, with a cool record store and a bar where she’s a beloved regular (at least, once you divorce it from the McDonald’s-centrism.)
• Idle thought: Has it ever been addressed why the TVA seems to be made up entirely of human Variants from twentieth/twenty-first century Earth? Loki and Sylvie went to an alien planet in the first season, but He Who Remains appears to have stuck close to home when staffing his personal army of timecops.
• I’ve noted it before, but episodes like this make me really wish Loki had longer episode orders to work with; the creative team does lovely work recreating the different eras, and it’d be great to see what they could come up with if the show could lay off the ticking clock for a few episodes and just unwind.

Stream Loki now on Disney+