A fairly understandable complaint of Loki season 2, up to and including episode 4, was that the show wasn’t focused enough on its titular character, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Well, that all changed with episode 5, “Science/Fiction”—and for the better.
**Spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 5 lie ahead, beware!**
For a show called Loki, there were a lot of moving parts that kept him out of the limelight. We had to deal with the branching timelines and the Temporal Loom becoming overpowered. We had new characters to meet. Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) were both dealing with things that were separate from their time with Loki. When it came down to it, he just wasn’t a focal point. It didn’t mean that Loki wasn’t still the main character, he just wasn’t what the show needed to have as a centerpiece all of the time.
So whenever complaints would roll in from fans that the show wasn’t about our favorite God of Mischief anymore, we couldn’t really push back at all. First and foremost, the show was about the Time Variance Authority. Now, however, all of that has changed with this week’s episode, “Science/Fiction.” Episode 5 really took this idea of a world without the TVA, made Loki the most important figure in the show, and proved to us all that he is who we need to trust.
He is, after all, not just the God of Mischief—he is also the God of Stories. Frankly, it was worth the wait to have this absolutely incredible episode of television that gave Loki all the agency in his own story and gave him the ability to bring his team back together completely on his own and in his own time. He couldn’t have done it without O.B.’s (Ke Huy Quan) help, of course, but it was still Loki and his journey that took us back to the start.
As Coldplay once said, “Oh take me back to the start”
Loki coming into his powers was great. Watching him take us back to the start of everything to try and fix it was incredible, but what really just clicked was knowing that he was in control of it all. Loki should be the star of his own show. To see that he’s the one controlling it? That’s epic. It also fixes the complaint that I was begrudgingly beginning to agree with. Not that I didn’t trust what was happening with the series—I did, more than most. But I did wonder what was going on with Loki and why we kept seeing him being sidelined for other storylines.
Knowing now that it was all so he could have this moment when he gained the power to control his time slipping and control the narrative? To see how the lack of Loki in the first half of the season was all leading up to not only one of the best episodes of the season but such an incredible payoff, too? It just really made it all worth it.
(featured image: Disney+)
