Loki, episode 2 recap: Loki finally comes face to face with himself

The first episode of latest Marvel spin-off Loki was full of potential – yet perhaps hobbled slightly by the vast amount of world-building required. But, having clued viewers in on the Time Variance Authority and the Time-Keepers – roughly speaking, Marvel’s answer to Doctor Who and the Time Lords – episode two was ready to chug full ahead.

And that is exactly what it did across 50 minutes crammed with set-pieces and with lashings of Marvel’s patented bantering humour (as Loki, Tom Hiddleston is loving the one-liners). And it contained its share of curve-balls – culminating in the big reveal that… well, keep reading for that spoiler.

So now we know the identity of the 'Variant' Loki.

The hooded figure pinging across time spreading mayhem was revealed to be… a gender-swapped Loki. Say hello to the character known in the comics as “Lady Loki” and portrayed here by former Casualty and Flowers star Sophia Di Martino.

“This isn’t about you,” she told Hiddleston’s Loki in a face-off at a mega-mart about to be destroyed by a hurricane. She was correct – it was very much about her.

Which is the more powerful Loki?

Lady Loki then vanished through a timegate – though not before destroying the TVA’s “sacred timeline” by simultaneously detonating the “reset” charges she’d been stealing from TVA field units. Loki hopped through after her to parts (and timelines) unknown. And then the screen cut to black. After episode one’s endless table-setting, the sense was that Loki was up and running. And what a cliff-hanger for the episode to bow out on.

What is Lady Loki’s plan?

She’s been zapping across time and stealing reset charges – bombs that lay waste to the timeline in their immediate blast-radius. And then she has been hiding out in the shadow of “Nexus Events”, apocalyptic disasters such as the hurricane hurtling through rural Alabama.

Nexus Events represented her ingenious method of avoiding detection. Because apocalypses were impossible to stop, her presence registered as “zero energy variance” on TVA monitors. But is she ultimately trying to reset the MCU? And will she succeed? She should be so Loki.

Is Hiddleston the hero – or is his Loki merely pretending to be good?

In episode one, when Loki broke down in tears after watching his once-and-future self crushed by Thanos, it seemed he had been redeemed. But episode two suggested it was simply a cunning plan. When he and TVA buddy cop Mobius (Owen Wilson) traveled to a medieval pageant in Eighties America following an attack on a TVA unit, Loki tried to cut a deal.

He insisted Evil Loki had lured the TVA into a trap inside a tent. Loki Loki could help – but only if he received assurances regarding his safety going forward and an immediate audience with the Time-Keepers.

Is Loki the most nuanced MCU character to date?

It was a delicious performance by Hiddleston as an anti-hero who perhaps secretly wants to be good – but can’t help being bad.

“You almost had me,” said Mobius, when he realised Loki’s warning of an imminent ambush was simply a ruse to gain bargaining power against the Time-Keepers. “That was your first lesson in catching a Loki,” Loki claimed later on. “Expect the expected.”

Or is he just the same old Evil Loki?

In his face-off with the Lady Loki, He-Loki revealed his ultimate ambition: to dethrone the Time-Keepers. “Cards on the table I could use a qualified lieutenant – what say you, Loki?” Lady Loki had other plans: such as ripping asunder the entire fabric of space and time.

Will Marvel stay the course with Loki’s quirky tone?

WandaVision started as a delirious pastiche of I Love Lucy and Twin Peaks – and then devolved into just another Marvel biff-pow fest. Thus far, Loki has carved out its own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a tone indebted to Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Brazil, with a smattering of Seventies Doctor Who and a whole lot of Wes Anderson.

And if there is a true central mystery it is the lack of screen time (so far) for Gugu Mbatha-Raw as TVA judge Ravonna Renslayer. She has been charismatic and commanding in her handful of scenes – but surely there is more to come from her?

Is this the “talkiest” Marvel show yet?

Episode two proved it could stick to the popcorn Kafka sensibility established in part one while delivering the set-pieces so beloved of Marvel fans. The episode started with a fight between the hooded, yet-to-be-unmasked Lady Loki and Hunter C-20 (portrayed by Sasha Lane, next to be seen in the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends).

The twist was that Lady Loki used a magical whotsit to project her consciousness into C-20. Later, at the mega-mart, she utilised the same device to commander the bodies of random shoppers. We also saw Loki 1.0 demonstrate his mastery of Latin as he and Mobius travelled to Pompeii minutes before Vesuvius erupted in order to test his theory about Nexus Events and zero-time line disruption.

“You’re all going to die,” said Loki in the local lingo – an intervention which, as he suspected, had no impact on time going forward.

Yet for all the excitement, the most engaging sequences were the ones where Loki and Mobius sat around trading zingers. Mobius’s assertion, for instance, that Loki was merely a scared little boy landed hard.

But Loki had a devastating observation of his own: “I know something children don’t: no one bad is every truly bad and no one good is every truly good.” If the series has a maxim, this could be it: don’t believe your eyes and be prepared to see the good, and the bad, everywhere – and in everyone.