TV Review: ‘Loki’ Season 2, Episode 6 — A Beautiful Mess
by Frank Martin
Now that the second season of Loki is finally over it can be compared to the first. The differences are striking. The first season had clear villains and objectives for its characters. All the characters were unified in their goals, with He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) as the ultimate objective. And the ending left fans on a cliffhanger as it appeared variants of He Who Remains or even He Who Remains himself took over as the TVA’s supreme authority. However, the second season completely rewrote the cliffhanger and failed to properly introduce a new villain for the characters to battle. Preventing the destruction of time itself became the season’s the goal. The logic and constructs for the story made little sense, rendering the entire season an exercise in pointlessness.
Now that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has mastered his time slipping, he immediately gets to work trying to fix the loom. First he tries to get Victor Timely (also Majors) more time to do his original fix. When that doesn’t work, he tries to stop Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) from killing He Who Remains. But that also is a pointless endeavor. Realizing that he only has one option, Loki walks out towards the loom and destroys it. He then collects all of the time branches and uses himself as an anchor for them, essentially becoming the new He Who Remains.
There is little about the logic behind this season that makes any sense. The loom stands at the center of the show’s time travel mechanic. However, the TVA’s time travel system was introduced last season without the loom ever being mentioned. He Who Remains laid out exactly what would happen in the event of his death last season. But what he said would come to pass didn’t. Clearly, the writers had no idea what this season would be about when they finished the first. The loom was retroactively added and thus simply doesn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things. The show is still fun with great acting and an iconic ending. It’s just the road the show took to get to that point was a bad one.
Loki is now streaming on Disney+.
