The second episode of Loki dropped last week and I quite enjoyed it again. The first episode spent so much time setting up the premise of the Time Variant Authority and establishing where in the sequence of the existing Marvel movies and series this story sits on the timeline.

The dialogue was fun. Owen Wilson is a good foil for Hiddleston’s Loki. The other Time Agents remain entertaining in their lack of being impressed or awed by Loki. And Loki is his tricksy self.

If they can keep this chemistry going, I think the series will be just fine even if it turns out to be a typical kind of timey-wimey battle of wits adventure. I can’t say much more without spoilers, so…

There Be Spoilers Hereafter!

Turn back now if you don’t want to be spoiled.

I noticed that several reviews of the first episode of Loki called it a “clip show”which is slang for one of the cheap episodes that television series sometimes do where they film only a small amount of framing material and spend most of the episode showing scenes from previous episodes.

I think that’s an oversimplification.

To be fair, the reviews that I saw make this claim have also said that it makes sense to do that since the Disney+ shows have (thus far) attracted an audience that includes lots of people who have seen either none of the MCU movies, or very few.

But…

There was a substantial amount of episode one that was new material. Some of it quite well-done, such as the Miss Minutes narrated orientation cartoon. One bit of it looked like it was a clip from something else (the DB Cooper Escape bit), but wasn’t. And also, the number of clips they picked were not focused on recapping Loki’s entire life, but rather to set the stage (and allow the audience to see how devastated Loki is to learn that not only does his mother die, but he is somewhat to blame).

That said, by episode two they are done with the set-up. Loki knows his only hope for any kind of continued existence is to keep being useful to the TVA. And right now the TVA is trying to capture another Variant of Loki that not only broke the timeline, but is out to do something else—we just don’t know what. There is a lot of fun back and forth as Agent Mobius tries to manipulate Loki, and Loki literally replies to one such attempt, “It’s so adorable you think you can manipulate me.” And Mobius demonstrates that he is good at sniffing out Loki’s lies.

Loki figures out that the other Variant Loki has been impossible to track down because they’re hiding inside Apocalypses. Not full-on end an entire world Apocalypses, but moments in history when no one in a particular region survives. The reasoning being that the presence of the time-hopping variant can’t leave any ripples in the time line, because none of the people the Variant interacts with has any impact on the future.

I want to note that as Loki explained this I had a flashback to Connie Willis’ 1992 science fiction novel, Dooms Day Book, as that bit about a time traveler’s presence at a point just before everyone dies can’t change history is an important plot point. I’m sure Willis wasn’t the first person to do this, but I was thinking about the time traveler who was trying to figure out why she landed an English Medieval village just weeks before the entire village will be wiped out by the Plague when the time machine was supposed to take her to a different period.

Anyway, there is a hilarious scene where Loki proves his theory by getting Mobius to take him to Pompeii moments before the volcano erupts, and he jumps up on a cart and shouts out in Latin that he’s from the future and they’re all going to die. And his actions don’t cause Mobius timey-wimey tricorder like thing to register anything.

They next pick a spot based on the pack of bubblegum that The Variant had given a little girl in the scene from episode one, and they find themselves a few decades in our future in a kind Walmart with a hurricane bearing down about to kill everyone.

Loki finds The Variant, has a bit of a fight and some banter. The big reveal here is that this Loki is female. Our Loki doesn’t bat an eye, but anyone really familiar with Norse Mythology knows that Loki as swapped genders a few times as part of a scheme in some of the old legends (in one of them he even gets pregnant, and gives birth to a magical horse). So this isn’t some newfangled woke thing that SJWs are forcing onto Marvel. (I’m sure somewhere out there people are writing angry tweet about it).

The Variant escapes and Loki leaps through the time portal after here, apparently leaving Mobius and the other Time Agents behind. Oh! And The Variant has built a bombs or bombs out of all those Reset Charges earlier, and may have just broken the Sacred Timeline altogether.

And I’ve been on the edge of my seat for days waiting for episode three!