Spoilers

The TVA – with Loki’s help – try to track the Variant…

We know the score, we understand the stakes. Episode 1 of the show laid it out carefully for us. Beyond that we also know that Loki is effectively trapped in the TVA – because to leave is to not simply die but to be erased from history entirely.

This episode starts to unpack some of the implications of the TVA, of where Loki is and what they have him helping them do.

However, the show doesn’t lose its small world feel. I don’t say that as a criticism but as a compliment – with subjects like freewill and predestination you could easily lose the intimacy of good characterisation, but the camera stays close in on the cast and it’s all the better for it.

The tone of the show hits exactly what was hinted at in the previous episode – goofy detectives (one on probation for serious misdemeanours, the other a little star struck) work together to solve the mystery and be the heroes.

Hiddleston delivers a dialled back Loki – assessing his situation, planning and, perhaps for now, outclassed and at a loss as to what his next move should be until he stumbles across it. It is here the show begins to deepen because, for a while at least, Loki behaves as someone we can understand and sympathise with.

Loki is faced with the very definition of all encompassing bureaucracy – something which would feel at home in the movie Brazil or Kafka’s The Trial. What makes this work is that I suspect we’ve all had to face this kind of treatment at some point or another and to see Loki floored by it too is brilliant.

The pace of this episode surprised me. After episode 1, I was settling in for a lengthy show in which Loki and Mobius run around the timeline chasing the Variant Loki. Instead, in a series of daft scenes they work out how to find the Variant and go after them to disastrous effect.

The show wrong footed me – left me wondering which way it will jump next.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this episode was a second character pointing out to Loki that the story is not about him. I think we need to bear that in mind as we continue to watch.

For sure, the TVA could well be the enemy here but to make it so (and let’s be honest it’s an organisation whose very premise seems like the good gone sour) would leave us wondering what becomes of Mobius, Ravonna, Hunter B-15 and last, but definitely not least, Casey. However, it’s clear people within the TVA regard those they police as little more than names on a page and treat them so. It’s Mobius who reminds people to treat others with dignity, certainly not Loki.

Is the Variant actually a hero? We still know nothing of their plans despite meeting them properly at the end of this episode. Even if they are they’ve been merrily tripping around the timeline murdering people at every opportunity.

Is Hiddleston’s Loki going to be the villain? Despite the writing and his on-screen charm – it’s worth holding onto the fact that this Loki was only just trying to take over the Earth and deliver the Space stone to Thanos. Has he really reformed at all in the space of two episodes?

The episode ends with us really not knowing where we go next and how it will tie together and I, personally, love that. I’m increasingly hoping the show is going to blow the bloody doors off the MCU and deliver us the chaos of a proper multiverse. For a long time I didn’t see how this could sensibly be shown on TV but if they think they’ve found a way to deliver it I’m on board. This would mean the TVA is little more than one participant in what’s to come but that too feels OK because without them being reduced somewhat it’s hard to see how you defeat a vast bureaucracy which literally sits outside of time.

There is one area I want to explore a little more but it’s a hard because it comes at the intersection of several parts of the world the show has built. The show is gently probing at the idea of essentialism – by which I mean we have essential natures which we can’t change no matter what. This is bound up in the idea of freewill and predestination. The show is never going to satisfactorily deal with those but by focussing on whether someone like Mobius or Loki are who they are because of factors outside of their control or whether they can, if they want, choose their own paths we see this being explored in its own neat little way.

What this does do is tap into Western ideas about what ‘good’ looks like. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about how the TVA is basically fascist. I think it’s far too early to suggest such a thing even if we’ve seen that it is pretty much a bottomless bureaucracy. What I think these objections often stem from is the unspoken assumption that individuals are the ultimate authority. Something like the TVA in which we would have no choice or voice overrides this primacy of the individual and therefore immediately strikes us as ‘evil’ of a most fundamental kind. It is, as I say, a particularly Western viewpoint. You can literally see people bristling at the idea of such an authority having sway over their lives – it feeds right into our ideas about our own levels of agency and the delusions we weave around our lives to convince ourselves we are freer than we actually are.

The position of the TVA is, really, a very deep one – it doesn’t, quite, acknowledge the idea that individuals have agency of their own, but nor does it say they are really only using delegated agency, delegated to them by the time keepers. If that latter were true then no one could break a timeline. If the former were true then there could be no sacred timeline while anyone still lived. This blurring of the actual facts will, I hope, be explored in the rest of the series through the interactions of Loki and Mobius but even if not, the philosophical foundations in play here are super interesting.

When I say deep, what I mean is that you could read the TVA’s role in managing the timeline as one of managing a universe populated by p-zombies. We remain indistinguishable from what we think of as normal people but actually have no agency – we are, by definition, unable to know we do not know. Flashes of agency in this instance are aberrations to be pruned not escapes to freedom.

Mobius distinguishes himself from his compatriots in that he still sees his charges as worthy of care and respect and he warns Loki off from trying to understand it. I think his warning could be read as a steer that, as a p-zombie, Loki is destined to come up with no satisfactory answer.

If this is true, then the TVA is nothing more than a caretaker of a program left to run its course and the structure of the organisation is more understandable.

Obviously this isn’t likely to be the actual outcome – we have hints (not least in the Doctor Strange sequel’s subtitle, Multiverse of Madness) that we’re going to see some form of multiverse. That in itself doesn’t render the TVA wrong, but it does perhaps suggest that the MCU isn’t a philosophical zombie universe. A multiverse by itself doesn’t prove anything though – it’s how we arrive at it. The threat the TVA perceives in the breaking of the timeline suggests they know agency exists and are working to suppress, or at least contain, it to levels which mean order can be achieved (and perhaps save countless lives which otherwise would be lost through inter-timeline wars). The question to which the TVA is therefore an answer is: how much agency is too much agency?

You can see then why a Loki, a being whose life so far has been to act as an imp of the perverse, would be anathema to those who regard the agency of others as something to be managed.

Rating? 8 reset bombs out of 10.

Stewart Hotston