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The most recent episode of Loki is called ‘Lamentis’ after the name of the planet Loki and his new lady version show up on — it’s something with a perhaps single reference in a throwaway line in a Marvel comic once, but not connected to this one. It also means ‘laments’ in Latin so there’s also a sort of mournful feeling to the name, which makes sense because everyone on the planet is about to die.
We start the episode hearing the song ‘Demons’ by Hayley Kiyoko, which notably has the lyric ‘I’ve got demons in my head’ just as we see the ‘Lady Loki’ mess with Hunter C-20’s head. As we find out later in a sudden revelation that feels like one of a hundred such setups, the now newly named ‘Sylvie’ (certainly a reference to the character in the comics with the same name but unclear if she’s the same one) tells our Loki that everyone in the TVA is just a variant brainwashed into thinking they were always there.
If that is so (and it doesn’t seem that she’s lying), it’s another good reason to not trust the TVA — although how high up does it go? Is Mobius in the know, or Ravonna, or neither of them? At this point it’s more questions than answers, and I felt the absence of Owen Wilson’s energy throughout the episode to balance off the chaotic Loki vibes.
Although Loki and Sylvie have similarly chaotic energy, the two actors have great rapport and the dialogue between them is consistently well done. Loki opens up more about his own backstory, more talking about his mother who taught him magic — clearly seeing her death the first episode still affects him.
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But the only thing he really asks her is if she’s found anyone as a ‘beau’, which might be to get inside her head. The only thing it actually does though is get Loki to confirm that he’s had romantic partners both male and female, which seems like more of a reveal on his part. So although Sylvie drops a few drips of information, by the end of the episode we’ve barely learned anything about her — the big thing was how her enchanting magic worked. That’s an interesting insight, but the episode was a lot more about the ‘let’s get to the next place’ action beats.
Although it was fun to see the two get into a bunch of fights and use their magic to sneak around, the final moments of simply running to the doomed evacuation spaceship felt a bit flat. The only really fun part was when Loki used his magic to reverse a piece of building that almost hits them, but these aren’t normally simply ‘run and gun’ characters so it’s not the most interesting scene.
Ultimately it was still a pretty fun episode, with some great rapport building between the two characters, even if there are still a million mysteries and questions left to answer. But it also did feel like a bit of a ‘table setting’ episode, with a lot of beats that were fairly repetitive (another trick or fight to get to the next step closer to the ‘power source’). Although I did appreciate the little appearance of Miss Minutes on the ‘TempPad’ cheerfully saying that ‘You’re outta juice’. Anthropomorphic cartoon characters like that are always fun. Honestly it feels like we’ve just scratched the surface of how weird this all can get and I hope we get there.
New episodes of Loki premiere Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
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