Loki Depicts a Fugitive from Continuity
This article contains light spoilers for the initiative two episodes of Loki on Disney+.
Loki is the fib of a narrative loose end, a persona in search of their have story.
Loki finds the title character (Tom Hiddleston) co-opted into the Time Variance Authority. The TVA is an organization that dedicates itself to the maintenance and preservation of "the sacred timeline" in keeping with the dictates of the Timekeepers. The organization believes that there is one dead on target timeline, an arc of history that must live protected from potential hurly burly and interference. There is a way that things are meant to be, and the TVA polices that status quo.
Loki is manifestly a time go up narrative. The serial jumps through with time, using face-saving graphics situating the audience in the timeline. The reading of Loki who appears in the show is not the Lapp cardinal that audiences followed through Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok, simply instead a time-displaced version from The Avengers who escaped into the timestream succeeding the heroes' busybodied in Avengers: End game. As such, this Loki is something that should not exist.
However, as Loki digs into the statute title fiber, another idea comes to the fore. Loki is 1 of the nearly exciting and persuasive characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he has ne'er been a character in control condition of his own narrative. Atomic number 2 has always been a supporting case, whether an opposer in Thor and The Avengers operating room something more complicated in The Non-white World and Ragnarok. Atomic number 2 has always been a plot function and ne'er the shopping center of attention.
Marvel Studios traditionally introduces stellar characters independently earlier folding them into bigger ensembles. The core cast of The Avengers were introduced in their own films: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain United States: The First Retaliator. Although Christmas carol Danvers (Brie Larson) was titillated in the station-credits stinger of Avengers: Infinity War, she got her own unaccompanied movie in Captain Marvel before appearing A part of the larger universe of discourse in Avengers: Endgame.
There are exceptions. Wanderer-Mankin (Tom Holland) appeared in a supporting role in Captain America: Civil Warfare before spinning off into Spider-Military personnel: Homecoming, but Spider-Man is one of the most recognizable brands on the planet and so required no introduction. Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) was besides introduced in Civil Warfare earlier starring in his solo movie. However, more often than not, Wonder Studios likes to define its characters and their arcs before throwing them complete together.
This puts Loki in a more unique position. Unlike the different major characters in the MCU, Loki has arguably only ever been defined in reaction to characters with greater agency within the narratives. Arsenic Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) points extinct, Loki is a character whose primary function is to go wrong in his diabolical plans "every so that others can achieve their prizewinning versions of themselves." His villainy in Thor is what made Thor worthy. His intrusion in The Avengers is what brought the Avengers together.
As if to emphasise how beholden Loki is to others' narratives, the show opens away replaying footage from Endgame that is itself restaging an unseen sequence from The Avengers. August F. Mobius' interview with Loki feels more like criticism than interrogation. Mobius boasts that he wants to figure out "what makes Loki tick." Atomic number 2 sits down in a "clock theater" and plays back sequences from the previous Marvel movies in which Loki has appeared to try to figure out a consistent case arc.
Mobius watches footage from The Avengers and questions how that characterization fits within the God of Balefulness's larger arc. "I don't see anything mischievous in this," helium remarks over footage of Loki tearing a man's eye KO'd with a sadistic grin on his typeface. It's a fair criticism. Loki's magnanimous speech about the evils of freedom delivered to a crowd in Germany before fight Sea captain America (Chris Evans) would probably have been more than in-fictitious character from the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).
Loki is not the for the first time time that the MCU has approached this question of Loki's autonomy or agency. In Ragnarok, Thor chastised his brother for his unwillingness to grow and develop. "Oh brother, you're becoming certain," Thor complains. "I trust you, you betray Maine. Round and round in circles we go." He elaborates, "I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'll always Be the Graven image of Shenaniga, but you could be more." The tension lies in whether Loki toilet be Sir Thomas More.
Loki acknowledges that its claim character borders connected cliché. A recurring joke has Loki plotting to override the Timekeepers and subscribe control of the TVA for himself, a plot and so transparent that Mobius has taken it for granted. When Mobius chides Loki for inevitably plotting to stab him in the back, Loki dismisses that as "such a irksome form of betrayal" only for Mobius to point out that Loki has literally injured dozens of multitude in the bet on. It's a familiar tune and a tired story.
Incomparable of the more frustrating aspects of the big Marvel Cinematic Universe has been its disastrous literal-mindedness when it comes to the more engrossing and engaging aspects of its root material. This is arguably most obvious when looking at the treatment of the Asgardians in the Thor franchise. In the comics, they are literally gods. They are deities. They are legends manifesting on reality itself.
However, the MCU has largely dressed the Asgardians as zipp much sufficiently modern aliens. Inchoate sequences of Thor present the gods arriving connected Ground as "past astronauts." While investigation evidence of Asgardian magic in Genus Arizona, Jane Further (Natalie Portman) references science fabrication author Arthur C. Clarke, "Trick's just scientific discipline we don't understand yet." When Thor describes the Bifrost and the rainbow span, Jane reframes it Eastern Samoa "an Mastermind-Rosen bridge."
Many of the more interesting comic Book portrayals of the Asgardians, including those from which Loki draws, have treated the Asgardians as stories. They are narratives conjured into being by those World Health Organization hero-worship them and captive by the limitations of the mythologies in which they find themselves. That gives Loki considerable power every bit the Lord of Lies. "What's a lie?" asked the character towards the end of Al Ewing and Lee Garbett's Loki: Agent of Asgard. "A rest is a story told. That's whol."
Loki is built just about this idea. After all, the comic book variant of the Meter Variance Authority was set dormy to monitor the internal continuity of the shared laughable book universe, with Mobius drawn to resemble in-star sign continuity expert Mark Gruenwald. They aren't actually preserving the timeline only conserving the story, as they make the direct that they didn't interfere in the time travel shenanigans of Endgame because that was "supposed to" happen.
The TVA is framed American Samoa a religious institution. The timeline is described as "sacred." Mobius worships the Timekeepers, the beings who created him for that purpose. As Loki points out, this is not rational or scientific. Mobius responds, "The TVA is my life, and it's real because I believe it's real." The question of free will comes prepared repeatedly over the course of Loki — whether the characters make whatsoever real choices or whether their actions are the solution of the narratives in which they find themselves.
This is obviously an idea with considerable metaphorical weight. The TVA are effectively curating "the canyon," using their power to mold which stories matter and which stories put on't. At that place's something pleading in the idea of Loki as a piece that doesn't fit, a persona World Health Organization makes no sense, a dangling train of thought that refuses to be cut. In close to ways, the TVA feels ilk an extension phone of the dyspneic suburban conformity suggested in WandaVision.
The core doubt of Loki is whether Loki has whatsoever agency as a lineament or if he is sure to stay a encouraging character in others' stories. He initially tries to weasel his mode out of cark by shifting blame to the Avengers. "We're not here to utter about the Avengers," Judge Ravonna Lexus Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) cautions him. However, she also is quick to admonish him, "It's not your story, Mister Laufeyson. It ne'er was." It's a trace that sets up a powerful conflict for the series.
Loki suggests that maybe the God of Mischief backside finally wrest control of his ain narrative.
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/loki-depicts-a-fugitive-from-continuity/
Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/loki-depicts-a-fugitive-from-continuity/