Glorious purpose indeed! In a high watermark for Phase 4, Loki Season 2 delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion to the Loki Disney+ saga. This is what top tier Marvel looks like. The character arc of Loki has to be one of the most insane in all of pop culture. This was a man who viewed Earth as nothing more than a mole hill filled with insects to rule over or destroy, depending on how he woke up that morning. A god-sized narcissist, he had no humility and little humanity.
But then, back in Season 1, the unthinkable happened: Loki the God of Mischief was humbled for perhaps the first time in his life. Learning that his power was fairly minuscule in comparison to other Titans like Thanos and an unseen overlord of Time and Space (later revealed to be He Who Remains) shook Loki to his core and altered how he views the world. Seeing his own death play out before him in stunning 4K high definition forced him to confront the reality that he wasn’t quite the immortal and all-powerful being that he thought himself to be; Loki saw that he is finite and that the rules of nature applied to him as well, which ultimately makes him not all too different from those pesky human insects he wanted to subjugate as ruler of Earth back in the first Avengers film.
Coming face to face with an entity like Kang (who is seemingly impervious to the rules of time and space and found a way to conquer the former) while Loki is simultaneously undergoing his own reckoning with his rightful place in the Universe, forces him to become the Hero that literally nobody knew he had in him. Loki went from desperately needing a throne and a people to rule over so that he could cling to a sense of power and purpose to willingly giving up his freedom so that his newfound friends could have a chance to live their lives freely on their respective timelines. The old Loki, the mischievous and ill-intentioned one, might have seized the opportunity presented by this immense and endless power and used it for some ultimately meaningless evil plot centered around his lust for the subjugation of others. By contrast, the new Loki — now the God of Stories — uses this power to give his friends a fighting chance.
If anyone had Loki performing one of the most selfless acts in the history of the MCU on their Bingo Card and predicted that our favorite mischievous trickster would willingly perch in what we can only imagine is eternal boredom, alone and isolated from reality, all to give his human friends (who he used to think of as equivalent to Ants) a chance at life … please come up and collect your prize. I guess Loki is a hero now, in an absolutely nutty turnaround for the most infamous trickster villain in MCU history. The evolution of Loki showcases some of the MCU’s finest character development at work.
The “Ouroboros” of it all was such a crafty and fun story wrinkle. We loved the cyclical nature of Loki’s journey, him pruning himself and coming full circle with that moment from season one was “Absolute Cinema.” Even Marty Scorsese would have to admit watching Loki outsmart He Who Remains and break the chains of this never ending time loop prison was super satisfying. We saw epic growth in Loki’s physical prowess but the strides he took mentally really punctuated his character development and metamorphosis into the God of Stories. The old Loki would have been perpetually outsmarted or choke slammed undertaker style, but the new Loki 2.0 had enough of Kang’s bullshit and did something about it. Loki won’t be eating his own tail anymore, Ouroboros be damned. P.S. We’d be remiss not to mention that the character Ouroboros, played perfectly whimsically by Ke Huy Quan, was a fantastic quirky addition to this season.
Loki finally finding his “Glorious Purpose,” although not in the way he originally intended, was the cherry on top of the series finale. It’s not what he wanted, but it’s what he had to do. All of his past failures and ill-fated pushes for power not withstanding, Loki assuming the responsibility of preserving and protecting the Multiversal Tree was what he was always meant to do. He now sits at the center of the multiverse, perhaps more powerful than any hero in the MCU, and we can’t wait to see how he’s incorporated going forward. Who wouldn’t pay good money to see a reunion between Loki and Thor?
Loki’s conclusion provided a perfect jumping off point into the deep end of the upcoming multiversal war. By giving the multiversal tree life and holding it’s interwoven timelines together, Loki grants Sylvie’s wish and gives their super-powered friends a shot at taking down a large but now-finite number of Kangs. Under the rule of He Who Remains no other timelines other than the sacred timeline could have existed, and without He Who Remains in the fold there would have been insurmountable chaos and an infinite number of Kang’s to contend with. Loki took a page out of Miles Morale’s book and did his own thing, stepping in and filling the void, he out remained he who remains. The MCU writers did not intend for this show to give them an off ramp away from kang and the multiversal war, to the contrary Loki Season 2 provided the spark that will ignite the flame of the upcoming multiversal war. We give Loki Season 2 a 9.1, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.
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