TOPIC: Let's talk Loki - Spoilers

Picc wrote:

Lodestone (KH) wrote:

Picc wrote: What made the MCU special for me was that you had 10 years and 20+ movies in an epic story. Now with the multiverse you just have a brand where disney can park any stand alone superhero property they manage to buy. The details don't matter since there will always be an alternate reality where the opposite happened. You want Black Widow back, no worries, she's alive in another dimension and better yet in this timeline she's played by a cheaper actress. On the plus side I guess this gets us fox x-men I guess.

The comics have always been this way. For those like me that followed the comics long before the movies, this was to be expected. A little surprising that they have this one clear point of transition. But now everything - comics, TV, other movie franchises - it's all canonical though they don't have to recognize or use anything more than they want. And in some ways it frees them to tell stories they couldn't before. And if they screw something up they can relegate it to an alternate timeline which they couldn't really do before.

Ultimately, they are going to have to use different actors for some parts eventually. The people will not last forever but they are still going to want to tell stories and sell their brand. This is just a convenient way to regenerate their particular brand of Doctor.

Getting back to Loki, he said at the beginning of the show that 'Free will was the biggest lie ever told.' That was straight up foreshadowing and a hint that everything we had seen in the MCU (before Loki) was a set destiny. The end of the show saw the lie end as free will came to exist. But having a set destiny doesn't make things less heroic when you have no idea that destiny exists.

Agree to disagree I guess. I remember reading Thor comics (issues 200 to 300ish I think) and how Thor and Loki actually left the comics for a good 2-3 years after everyone basically died in the rune king Thor arc and thinking wow they actually killed off a popular franchise, man that must have taken guts.

I understand everything now a days has to be a forever franchise so the disney money printer can go burr but It just feels cynical. Like something of value was lost or the characters deserved better. Anyway feel free to ignore me. I'm just sounding old again.

Death of major characters sells in comics, not only the death issues but also the inevitable "return" issues. The Death & Return of Superman is probably the best example of that. Marvel has recently announced that Dr. Strange and Peter Parker Spider-Man (to be replaced by Ben Reilly) will die soon and they just killed the Scarlet Witch. I think there's another major character dying as well that has escaped me.

I thought the series was brilliant, even better than WandaVision, but I know everyone's tastes differ.

"The Good, The Bart, and The Loki" on Disney+ is well worth the 6 minutes. The TVA judge's speech at the end pretty much sums-up the Loki series.

I've got mixed feelings about the series as a whole. On the one hand I really enjoyed each episode, and I genuinely like that it opened up the multiverse. I subscribe to the philosophy that they pushed in Spiderverse...it doesn't matter who takes up the mantle or "wears the mask", what matters is that the characters commit to being heroes in a compelling way. Just because another Thor or Iron Man pick up the pieces after one falls doesn't ultimately make the one who fell any less interesting to me.

That being said, this felt like episode 42 of X in the ongoing Marvel story, not the season finale of a show. Nothing got resolved really, Loki's actions and feelings were largely irrelevant to the overall narrative of his own show. The finale was a character that no one had ever seen before (if they were just watching the show or even the MCU as a whole) monologuing. It was a fun monologue and it was interesting to watch, but it didn't feel satisfying as the season finale of a self contained show.

Josh M. wrote: I've got mixed feelings about the series as a whole. On the one hand I really enjoyed each episode, and I genuinely like that it opened up the multiverse. I subscribe to the philosophy that they pushed in Spiderverse...it doesn't matter who takes up the mantle or "wears the mask", what matters is that the characters commit to being heroes in a compelling way. Just because another Thor or Iron Man pick up the pieces after one falls doesn't ultimately make the one who fell any less interesting to me.

That being said, this felt like episode 42 of X in the ongoing Marvel story, not the season finale of a show. Nothing got resolved really, Loki's actions and feelings were largely irrelevant to the overall narrative of his own show. The finale was a character that no one had ever seen before (if they were just watching the show or even the MCU as a whole) monologuing. It was a fun monologue and it was interesting to watch, but it didn't feel satisfying as the season finale of a self contained show.

It isn't a self contained show. I am pretty sure the ending would have been different if it weren't for them having at least one more season. They had to leave some things hanging to take back up in in season 2. Combine that with setting up phase 4, and the season ending episode is going to be different than any of the other Disney MCU series.