Loki Appreciation 2021

[Yoruno]

With comic books Loki, I feel as if I live in the "Journey" panel which keeps saying "You can escape" to no avail. Whatever the writers do, general publics still prefer to see everything in black and white, Thor good Loki bad (and, presumably, Hulk smash).

[charliehustle415]

Now this is what I was expecting from a Marvel show!

WandaVision was so boring, and Falcon & The Winter Soldier was bread and butter; but Loki is what I wanted to see.

I love how the show has such a weird manic energy, just like Loki.

Wilson is dream, I never thought I would love him and Hiddleston together.

I love the implications for the larger MCU as well as character growth for Loki even though this Loki isn't "our" Loki.

I love that he's a big ol' mama's boy; it adds so much to his character.

And I willing to argue till the sun blows up, Loki is and forever will be the best "villain" in the MCU - yes; even Thanos

[Yoruno]

Just in case: if anyone wants to base a theory on the kid in the church, it's not Sylvie, unless she's a shapeshifter. The part is listed as French Boy.

[Yoruno]

It occured to me that even if the sacred timeline gives no choice, this Loki variant is absolutely free, it will just take him some time to understand it. Nobody's writing his fate, if I may borrow this from the books.

[rpmaluki]

So the TVA, or rather Mobius, is asking Loki to help the TVA stop himself so they can put him back into the "fate set in stone to be a defeated 'villain' who's only real purpose is being a springboard for others to reach their truest and best selves, because you're nothing more than a plot point" box. If Loki is as smart as the writers have said (even if it's his hubris), no way I want this to be how the story plays out. He has to escape his fate and not necessarily to be reset in the main timeline.

[Raye]

that's true... it's not complete freedom, because the TVA won't allow him to just do anything he wants, we saw when he did his little escape that if he steps out of line, they will try to rein him back in, and if they can't, 'resetting' him is on the table. BUT, it's still more than he had before, and more than the vast majority of people have, even if they don't realize their actions are pre-determined. He at least is now outside of the sacred timeline, and is not bound by the fate they have decided is the 'correct' one, and he no longer runs the risk of having his entire reality erased because he broke the timeline in some way, without even knowing he did so. Like how many people have had their timeline erased because they were late to work, as the Miss Minutes video used as an example? How many Lokis (and every other character for that matter. I mean, we actually SAW Peggy Carter in the background of one shot, it turns out, about to be erased) have just been erased over the years for incredibly minor deviations from the timeline? And it's so arbitrary. Loki gets hauled in for picking up the Tesseract, but the Avengers go jumping around time, and Cap runs off to live an alternate lifetime with Peggy, and they get away with it because the Time Keepers decided that was the correct chain of events. But there's no way anyone involved could have known that Loki's Tesseract grab was against the rules, but the Avengers time heist was okay, none of them even knew anyone was even making that determinaton. they knew about branching timelines, but not that anyone was keeping track of them and pruning ones they didn't approve of. So at least he is no longer risking unwittingly getting erased because he broke a rule he wasn't even aware of.

I dunno if this particular Loki will get put back in the timeline, assuming they can catch this other Loki. I think he's just an anomaly that exists outside the system now. But I very much doubt the 'Sacred timeline' will come out of this intact, I mean, we have 'Multiverse of Madness' coming out, and Kang appearing in Ant-Man. So I think Loki will break fate to some extent at least. It may lead to Secret Wars. I mean, what is Secret wars if not a war between alternate timelines like was explained in the Miss Minutes cartoon? (especially the recent Hickman version)

On the subject of the show, I thought this was interesting https://www.inverse.com/entertainmen...ules-explained Explains how they laid out the rules for time travel in the show, and by extension the rest of the MCU.

And yeah, I do think a large contingent of fans is content to just see the characters as static and unchanging, and to be fair, the comics themselves have encouraged this view for a long time, and hitting the reset button still happens today. Any change is met with jaded cynicism, and questions of when it will be reset. Genuine changes are often mistaken for temporary ones, for quite a long time, and people don't take character development seriously. Because resets do happen a lot. But it's been over 10 years since JIM started, and I think it is an actual permanent change, I truly think they can't just put him back to pre-JIM characterization without jumping through a lot of hoops, but people are still viewing Loki the same as he was before that, even if they have read it and subsequent stories. Not everyone, but enough to be kind of frustrating. I think the comics are kind of changing to be more open to permanent character development, it varies a bit for different writers and editors, but still, you do see more long lasting changes being done to characters and the lore surrounding them recently. And Donny Cates is one of the writers that does this... I mean, look at Venom. It was a good move for them to have Cates and Ewing swap books, imo, because neither one of them is likely to reset the new developments the other put in place. They may move things in a new direction, but not in a way that resets the status quo. But some fans are so entrenched, i have no idea what will lead them to actually accept that a change is genuine.

[Drops Of Venus]

I just wonder what might be borrowed from YA.

Assuming it's not just for design reasons like Raye said, there's the fact that Loki's head writer is also the writer of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, so if I had to take a wild guess? The show might have some post-credit scene featuring Kid Loki and America Chavez, or something like that, that could be clearly inspired by Gillen/McKelvie's YA run.

Why do they mention Jamie McKelvie but not the creative team of Vote Loki, I wonder?

The special thanks list is not unchangeable. In WandaVision and TFATWS, it kept changing per episode, sometimes adding more people or removing some. So there could be more creators added in future episodes.

[rpmaluki]

Oh for sure Loki is currently in a better place now than pretty much most of the MCU characters save maybe Dr Strange himself. He can leverage his situation to better serve himself despite Mobius' hope/expectation for the "sacred timeline".

[juan678]

[Raye]

The tumblr came back to life: https://tvaofficial.tumblr.com/

Looks like one of the minutemen survived, and is exploring a mysterious building that is shielded from something bad that happened, but turning up a whole lot of nothing, and is now regretting their life choices. But this could explain why they've had trouble finding Bad Loki, if they have created some kind of hideout that is shielded in some way. I am getting the feeling this is related to that strange purple cathedral type deal in the trailers. Could it possibly the same cathedral shown in episode 1, saved from being reset somehow, and now being used as a base? though the building they are exploring seems to be more modern, with house plants and office chairs, but no saying there can't be more than one building.

and back to comics, i had a thought, kinda inspired by the show... though Loki has mostly escaped movie synergy, the one thing that really made the jump from the movies to the comics (beyond cosmetic stuff) is making Loki a big momma's boy, and this is actually something I like. We never did get to see one scene i really wanted, Freyja's reaction to Loki un-deadening himself, and it's kinda too late for that now... But I got an idea for a close substitute we could get in the future, looking at the solicits for upcoming issues where Thor is fighting Odin, i presume the reason they are fighting stems from the insecurities Thor has been experiencing regarding his new role as King. So I think a nice contrast would be to have Loki go to Freyja afterward, but for support, to ask advice maybe, not to fight. This is again kind of assuming my speculation is correct, and Loki ends up with Thor's old role to the surprise of everyone, including Loki himself, and is kinda feeling overwhelmed by that. But I think Freyja would be really proud that he is finally becoming the kind of person she always hoped he could be, but never was, and would be supportive, even if no one else is. And I would like to see this split between her and Odin from her perspective as well, anyway.

[Yoruno]

Loki is in Valkyries
http://www.multiversitycomics.com/pr...y-valkyries-3/

[Raye]

Nice! heh, got slobbered. He doesn't seem to be malicious here like the cover implied, so that's good. But depends on what he needs with that water, or what Karnilla needs with Jane's hair. So it doesn't appear there like Karnilla knows if they are Norns, but i sitll suspect they are, i mean... triplet girls?

[Reviresco]

Just wanted to drop in and say how much I LOVED the first episode of the DisneyPlus series. It's so great to see Hiddleston's Loki again and the show is great!

[Yoruno]

About the series - did you notice the alternative spelling on the bubble gum package? It says blooberrie! Also, "units" instead of pieces. It’s from a parallel (or future) Earth.
Somebody has also pointed out that there's a picture of Loki wearing Thor's armour in TVA papers.

[Raye]

I think maybe it was just to make it fit with the Kablooey play on words... but yeah it is quite possible it is from an alternate timeline. It seems to be a running joke that the TVA apparently only serves discontinued food brands. The soda Mobius was drinking during the interrogation was Josta, which was discontinued in the 90s. https://www.avclub.com/was-that-jost...-lo-1847051347 but the gum is not a defucnt brand, it's something completely new. tho, the TVA is a time travel agency, it may come from THE FUTURE.

I needs them:



Also, came across some really interesting speculation here:



I think it would be really cool if they did that, have the Bad Loki that's running around killing people be the inadvertent result of the Avengers mucking with time.

I see some people in the comments there kinda going 'but Cap put everything back! so it's fine!' But why assume he was successful? Sure, the Avengers made an attempt to fix things, but the very act of time traveling, of interacting with people in the past, altered the timeline, and as the video says, the way time travel works in the MU, which the MCU is based on, means you can't overwrite a divergent timeline by going back a second time, only create more and more branches. So I think the Avengers tried their best, but ultimately Cap's attempt to put all the stones back was futile, some of those stones in the desk are likely ones he 'put back'. The TVA still likely just went around 'resetting' all the timelines they created like 5 seconds after Cap put the stone back, but they humored his attempt because it did remove the extra Infinity Stones from the main timeline, which needed to happen. But the TVA may have missed something along the way, and boom, this Loki variant going around mucking things up.

Now, we can't take everything we've seen in Loki at face value either, like the Miss Minutes cartoon was clearly propaganda which was more than likely tweaking the facts to make the TVA look good, (and also conspicuously failed to mention He Who Remains, who i am guessing will end up being revealed as a sort of man behind the curtain deal) but we saw that the Ancient One was wrong, it's not just removing the Infinity Stones that creates branches, ANY event can, even samll ones. Loki never removed the Space Stone from it's home reality, that's not what the Space Stone does, he just moved it to a different spot on the planet. But teleporting to Mongolia was still enough to alter the future significantly. So if the Ancient One was wrong, why couldn't the Avengers be as well?