Sometimes, a show isn’t made just from performances or words. It’s not just created from the images displayed before us. What can really elevate it is the music setting a scene, and the Loki finale was next level because of its score.
Few times have I listened to the music of a scene and truly been overcome by emotion and felt the need to say “holy sh*t” out loud, but that is how my viewing of Loki season 2 episode 6, “Glorious Purpose,” felt. The season 2 finale was emotional. Filled with goodbyes, characters doing the sacrificial acts that heroes are want to do, and forcing themselves into solitude for the greater good, the final moments of the season will leave you in pain. That pain is only exacerbated by composer Natalie Holt’s score.
The only way I could describe it is as if a cold stabbing pain was gripping me in my darkest moments but it was somehow beautiful. That’s what the score felt like. As we see Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) face off with Alioth as so many pruned variants before her did, the score swells before painfully cutting off. It returns mixed with the Loki theme in the end, highlighting Loki (Tom Hiddleston) watching over the timelines alone.
Both of these moments really just left me almost bereft. That, to me, is a moment that really shows not only a brilliant series as a whole, but a score that makes it that much better. The acting was perfection and the writing exquisite, but it all came together with the music to really give us moments in Loki’s story that will stay with me forever. And they are songs that I want revisit again all thanks to Natalie Holt’s work.
A perfect undertone from Natalie Holt
While the score of Loki has always been an iconic one, there is something specific about this finale that really just added to the scenes playing out. Without Holt’s work, I don’t think the moments with Victor Timely as a child not getting the TVA handbook would have been as powerful. I don’t think Renslayer facing off against Alioth would have worked. But Holt’s score brought power to them. And then the final moments with Loki sitting on a throne he didn’t want, holding the branching universes together for all of time? That moment was made so much stronger from Holt’s work.
The mix of the Loki theme with a new addition of Holt’s score really just nailed the pain that Loki is going through, sacrificing himself to keep the branching worlds together. All of it, the life he gave up to become the God of Stories, just comes crashing down on you and Holt’s work really just compounds the entire moment together to make one of the strongest final moments of the Disney+ era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I want to have this score on vinyl, I want to listen to it on repeat. It’s that heartbreakingly good and I’m a glutton for punishment.
(featured image: Disney+)
