Loki Episode Three Shuffles the Pack, With Interesting Results

The opening two episodes of Loki set up a pretty simple but entertaining premise. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) working together for the Time Variance Authority to track down a rogue variant. It’s the kind of premise that could have easily sustained an entire show. You can just picture a 22-episode drama with a new case every week, starring these two Buddy Cops trying to deal with whatever time-travel-themed hijinks the writers have managed to come up with. The X-Files meets Supernatural meets Doctor Who. But the twist at the end of the second episode, which reveals Sophia Di Martino as a female variant of Loki, tears up this premise as it has our Loki follow her through a portal in time and space, abandoning Mobius and the TVA for this new adventure.

It’s kind of inevitable that we see this kind of bait-and-switch more and more in modern television. As streaming platforms have begun to dominate, we have moved away from the traditional episodic structure that can carry a show over half a year or longer, towards more serialised, short-form seasons that tell a single story over six weeks. There’s no time for case-of-the-week adventures, we’ve got plot to get through! This approach had obvious benefits – we’ve seen how great shows like Breaking Bad or Black Sails can use this limited time-frame to tell very focused, strong character stories. But it comes with the loss of the kind of comforting fun that can only be got through seeing a familiar set of characters tackle an unfamiliar situation every week. 

The Loki/Mobius team was a familiar set of archetypes for this kind of story. Mobius as the straight-laced, down-to-earth, experienced agent who wants to get the job done, and Loki as the wild card who nobody entirely trusts. Ravonna (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) completes the set with a performance as what is essentially a Galactic version of the skeptical police chief who has to keep the pair in line while having the Mayor (the Timekeepers) breathing down her neck. The team-up of Loki and Sylvie (the name taken by female!Loki) is a little different. In this episode, we see them tag-team the classic Buddy Cop roles in turn, as they trek across a planet that is in the middle of an apocalyptic event – the titular Lamentis.

At times, Sylvie is the grumbling, experienced one who has a job to do and no time for any of Loki’s nonsense. She has a singular purpose – kill the Timekeepers and destroy the TVA – and her behaviour reflects that. Meanwhile Loki, with his more nebulous, free-style approach to gaining power whenever the opportunity happens to arise, is more of a wild card. One is a concert pianist, the other a jazz musician. We see Loki’s mercurial nature a few times, as he bluffs his way onto a train (which is theoretically their one route off this dying planet) on the fly, then proceeds to get drunk and get them both kicked off said train.

Other times the show reverses this dynamic. Sylvie is shown to be headstrong, prone to leap into reckless violence to solve any problem, while Loki takes a more reserved, diplomatic approach. At one point, the pair stop at a run-down shack to try and get information. Loki proposes sweet-talking any potential resident, but Sylvie opts to just kick down the door. For her troubles, she gets an instant laser blast in the face, and a raised eyebrow from Loki. The show has a challenge to try and balance a pair of two loose-cannon renegades.

Despite this atypical setup, Loki and Sylvie are every bit as fun a pairing as Loki and Mobius were in the first two episodes. Di Martino and Hiddelston play off each other nicely. The stand-out scene comes on the train, when they talk about their shared heritage. Hiddelston gets to reminisce more about his relationship with his mother, Frigga, which is always a very sympathetic note to hit for this character. Di Martino gets to show a sadder, more vulnerable side of her character, as she reveals that she has little memory of her mother, having been on the run from the TVA almost all her life. 

Also in these scenes, we get what is a pretty big moment for the franchise – the reveal of Loki’s bisexuality. It’s mentioned pretty casually, as Loki mentions that he has had romantic trysts with “a little bit of both” princes and princesses, and presumes the same of Sylvie. While it’s a bit lacking in terms of being great representation – it’s a throwaway line, the B word is never mentioned, and we don’t see any of this on screen – it’s still a momentous occasion for the MCU. This is the first lead of an MCU property that is confirmed to be queer (explicitly anyway – Carol Danvers you’re not falling anyone), and that is an overdue relief. We hope that this means we’ll be seeing a lot more significant LGBTQ+ characters in the franchise going forward.

It’s appropriate that this is revealed now, as the existence of Sylvie implies a fluidity to Loki’s gender. This is no surprise – the Loki of Norse mythology takes the form of women in numerous tales, including one in which he becomes pregnant via an eight-legged horse (long story). Sylvie is not an explicitly trans character – the details are left unclear, but it’s implied that Sylvie was simply a version of Loki that was born with a female body, rather than someone who transitioned at some point – but her existence lends the narrative a trans flavour. 

The multiple levels of queerness are especially interesting, as this gives a very strong queer reading to the topic of Variants. We have established that Variants are versions of people who have diverted from the path decreed for them by the Timekeepers, who claim to be the sole source of authority on the “true” course of time. There’s an obvious queer metaphor here – being queer means diverting from the path that a cisheteronormative society has decreed is the “correct” one, and usually being the target of oppression, silencing, and even violence because of it. The fascistic nature of the TVA has already been mentioned, and giving us a pair of queer characters that aim to overthrow it is a fantastic choice that is ripe for a lot of really interesting explorations.

Time will tell if Marvel chooses to explore that avenue more. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with the pair watching their supposed only hope of escape destroyed, stuck helplessly on a planet that is moments away from total destruction, unable to act against the fascist system that threatens their existence.. It’s a familiar feeling for a lot of people in 2021 I think. We can only assume that they will get out of this somehow – potentially through a last-minute rescue from Owen Wilson, who doesn’t appear at all in this episode, but will of course have a big role in the rest of the season. Perhaps we will see the show bringing together the dynamics it has established, or perhaps we’ll see another shift. There are a lot of balls in the air as we enter the second half of this show, and I’m sure, plenty more surprises to come.

Episode Grade: B+