Major Spoilers

Loki is trapped in the Void. With Loki. And Loki. And Alligator Loki.

This week was surprisingly sentimental. After a journey in which Loki has frequently been the least absurd person in the room we arrive at the penultimate episode accompanied by an alligator, a man in a yellow bedsheet and the kid leading the lot of them.

Loki’s trapped in the Void, somewhere beyond time itself and guarded, in an allusion to Cerberus’ guard dog duties, by a massive monstrous dog made of cloud (mainly) and who eats everything the TVA decides to prune because, as hinted at last week, pruned people and timelines end up somewhere else and not actually destroyed.

At least not until the giant cloud dog eats them.

The key thing about the Void is it’s populated entirely with Lokis (I think I even spotted a second female presenting Loki at one point – I won’t say where). Now, Loki’s either ended up at the gates to the underworld or he’s being persecuted by the wizard of Oz. The show has done a great job of not telling us which it could be while also making call outs to both the Greek drama, Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as our friend behind the curtain in the Emerald City. Is it a Loki behind that curtain or some other great and terrible cosmic power? We still have no real idea. The internet is, as you might already be aware, awash with speculation with most people suspecting the upcoming villain of the next Ant-Man movie being behind it all. Staying away from what the comics did with these characters, the show has very deliberately not told us.

I don’t think it’s because there’s some great reveal. There might be, but Disney have been very careful not to let any of their shows detract from the centring of their main characters. To reveal some great antagonist at this point would decentre Loki and risk it becoming all about the villain and not our beloved God of Mischief.

I started out by talking about how sentimental this episode is. I’m normally a fan of sentiment – especially where it’s the opening up of emotions and feelings and truth telling when faced with momentous events. It’s different here – more of a sense of having tamed the rambunctious energy which Loki normally brings to proceedings. Loki feels like the troubled child who’s found their way after a bit of TLC. I’m not sure this will stick – I can see the last episode delivering us a proper gut punch of the Loki we’ve grown to love, the ambiguous character who can do good but so often chooses not to just because they can. At least I hope so because I’d be less of a fan of them turning Loki from an agent of chaos into someone tame – especially through so short a series of events.

The arc in this episode is pretty linear – perhaps because we’ve come out of a twisting eel of a run up to this episode which serves, mainly, to deliver us to the finale. The absurdity here is minor – although there’s a lot of it – from Thanos’ ridiculous copter to the absolutely wonderful alligator Loki (who I’d pay to watch attacking people) and Richard E. Grant’s sumptuous turn as Classic Loki, there’s a lot to love and lot to laugh at. At the same time, Hiddleston feels underserved somehow and I think it’s the lack of chaos around Loki which hurts the character.

Sylvie is the other half of this equation and although she starts out questioning the equally non-plussed Renslayer, she quickly figures out a way to get to Loki in the Void. From there they hatch a plan to get to behind the curtain and it’s apiece with the absurd but oddly linear approach of the episode which is essentially ‘go here and do this, but weird’.

Her journey is odd. Compared to Loki she has a reason to be bitter and ready to flee or turn on those around her because unlike him she never had the benefit of a close family, love and stability. Loki was a prince of Asgard and had everything. He might be alone but it was his choice. Sylvie had nothing and was chased her entire life by people she didn’t understand or know. Somehow the two of them follow the same road though, orbiting one another awkwardly and although it’s a slow motion meet cute it’s also pretty hammy and slightly weird to be falling in love with oneself.

Nevertheless, I liked it.

What I don’t like is that notwithstanding my comment above, Sylvie is the only significant female representation of Loki. For someone supposedly gender fluid not having gender parity in the Void is a really odd decision. It kind of cements Loki as a man and Sylvie as an aberration. I mean, we get an alligator Loki but not gender parity? That is a choice and one I don’t respect. If it turns out Sylvie isn’t even a Loki? Still off from my perspective.

I would note one odd thing and I think it’s entirely about me and not the show. There were so many English accents on display I found it weird. Reflecting on why I noticed them so hard I realised it’s because I’m so used to hearing American accents in MCU shows that hearing all these different British accents (and Boastful Loki’s was the best) my own colonisation by US TV came and tapped me on the shoulder, insisting something was off. I find it incredibly sad that English accents – my own accent – were jarring to me when seen on screen. I’ve had a word with my brain and am going to relish seeing them in future but it’s not something I expected to come up when watching a superhero show.

Finally I come back to the beginning. Mobius is about to go and burn the TVA to the ground but we still don’t know who set it up. We don’t know if they had valid reasons, we don’t know if they were full of good intent or if they were always setting out to mess with the universe? Were they trying to stop something worse from happening by doing the less bad thing or are they a Loki just trolling everyone from behind the scenes?

Verdict: I’m excited for the last episode, but I think that has overshadowed this penultimate one just a little.

Rating? 6 alligators out of 10.

Stewart Hotston