We’re kicking off our recap for Marvel’s Loki Disney+ series as we break down all the big, time busting moments in Episode 1, “Glorious Purpose”. Picking up right after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Loki has escaped via the Tesseract, only to be captured by the Time Variance Authority, a group dedicated to protecting the Sacred Timeline. And as Loki confronts his own past, present and future he discovers that the power he’s been seeking his whole life might not be as important as he thinks it is. From the Marvel comics origins of the TVA and the Time Keepers, to connections to WandaVision, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and much more, we’re discussing all the Loki Easter eggs and theories.
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Full Episode Transcript
Alex: Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel and the MCU. This episode, we are burdened with glorious purpose to talk to you all about the kickoff episode of Loki on Disney+. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I’m Pete.
Alex: And this is it. This is the one so many folks have been waiting for. We got WandaVision, which I think was a nice surprise. We had Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which obviously broke big. But Loki really, to me, does feel like the big one coming down the pike here. There’s a lot of anticipation for the show. The first episode just dropped on Disney+ so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Obviously, if you haven’t watched it, turn away now. Don’t listen to this podcast. We’re going to spoil the heck out of Loki-
Justin: The hell.
Alex: The hell.
Justin: Loki, Loki, Loki here if you want spoilers.
Alex: Yes. The Muspelheim, if you will, out of the first episode of Loki, so turn away. But let’s talk broad strokes first. I think we were all excited in different levels about this show. Now that you’ve seen the first hour of it, just generally speaking, what was your reaction, Justin?
Justin: It was a little weirder than I… sort of like calmly weirder than I thought. It was sort of like… very like… Moving through it, it was beautifully shot. Felt a lot of Brazil vibes. That movie from back in the day. And some light Doctor Who. I mean, Alex, you’re the Doctor Who expert, so I’ll let you to speak to that. Because I don’t touch that shit. But this is… It was a little calmer than I expected. But I did like it.
Alex: What about you, Pete? What’s your broad strokes reaction?
Pete: Fun. I was excited. From the trailers and teasers and stuff, it looked like a fun, kind of low-key vehicle. I was excited. I felt like it had a-
Justin: Okay.
Pete: I thought it had a nice Hitchhiker’s Guide to-
Alex: Were you high-key about Loki?
Pete: Yeah. I thought it had a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy type of feel. Yeah, I thought it was… And Owen Wilson… Just come on. I mean, it’s just Owen Wilson being magical. Even though there’s no magic there. He’s breaking all the rules.
Justin: Let me say, on the Owen Wilson tip, he really… What a perfect casting choice as a counterpoint to the cocky, comically highbrow Loki of Tom Hiddleston in this period of Loki. It’s a real… Marvel just crushes it in the casting department. I feel like we learned that again and again during our Phase One re-watch we just finished about just how good of a job they do in the casting department.
Alex: I agree with you guys. A lot of this episode was, I think, adjusting my expectations of what I thought the show was going to be and what it actually was. Going in, maybe based on the trailers, maybe based on what we’ve known in the past about Loki… and as you mentioned, Justin, if anybody hasn’t listened, we did a re-watch of Phase I on the past couple episodes of the podcast, which I thought, honestly, was a really good lead-up for this. I was really happy that we watched Avengers last week before we saw this. Because they clearly-
Justin: Honestly, if you haven’t re-watched Avengers and you’re watching Loki now, re-watch it. It’s totally worth it. It gives you the full flavor.
Pete: You kind of do watch it a little bit in this, though, too.
Alex: Yeah. They do… and we’ll get to that in a moment, but they do a great job of recapping you emotionally through everything. But I expected a sort of [Rom Somillion 00:03:39] type of jaunt through the multiverse going on.
Justin: And Rom Somillion, as we know, is your long-time TV review blog, right? Rom Somillion.
Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Check it out. Romsomillion.biz. I couldn’t get dot com.
Justin: I know. Well, I actually own romsomillion.com but that was for a sexual and sort of an erotic novel I was writing.
Pete: [crosstalk 00:04:01]
Alex: By the way, I got to get you those notes back on the chapters.
Justin: Yes, I know. And I know the chapters… It’s like a very long… a thousand page erotic novel. Mostly sex. Not a lot of lead-up. So, it’s just graphic, graphic sex over and over-
Alex: Please stop.
Pete: Yeah, please stop.
Alex: I’ll move on in a second, but just one note is, at a certain point, in and out, you can find other words to say that. Because it’s just kind of over and over and over again at a certain point, which I appreciate at a very James Joyce level, but-
Justin: I’ve never described sex in any other way but in and out. But if you have another way of describing it, tell me. Because I need it. Both in my novel and in my personal life.
Alex: I expected Loki to be a goofball romp, partially I think because Michael Waldron, who is the showrunner, worked on Rick and Morty, so that was somewhat of my expectation there. That’s not what this delivered. The more that I thought about it, the more that I really appreciated what was going on in this episode. Because it’s much more emotionally grounded, like you were saying. It’s a little slower than I expected, but doesn’t feel slow at the same time, if that makes sense. Like it doesn’t feel like a drag.
Justin: Stuff’s happening.
Alex: Well, the last thing that I was going to say that’s apropos of the discussion we were having the past couple of weeks about the character of Loki is it really gets into something that we’ve never seen in the MCU before, which is this very emotionally grounded take on the Loki character versus what happens in Avengers, where he just keeps getting set up to be knocked down the entire time. Pete, what about you? Let’s talk, I guess, a little more specifically about that. How did you feel about Tom Hiddleston as Loki in this episode?
Pete: Oh, it’s fantastic. He’s doing such a great job. And it was fun to see him watch his life and then react to it. That was nice, as Justin says, inside the head a little bit. I very much enjoyed that and the performance.
Justin: A lot of it was… His performance was so… It was just constantly being undercut. He’s being undercut because he doesn’t have his powers. He is wrong throughout the whole episode. He gets called a loser, which is something we talked about in the Avengers podcast we just did. He loses so hard in Avengers. And, here, it’s like… He gets called out for being a loser and then has to come to grips with his life as a failed god, essentially. Which they do a lot of work with Loki to put him in a place to be sort of a protagonist and hero. Which they did over several movies in the rest of the timeline of the MCU. Here, they do it over the course of several minutes, which I thought was impressive.
Alex: To that point, just the work… the acting work that Tom Hiddleston work does in this episode to take you back and give you the Loki… even though it’s technically directly after Avengers: Endgame, it is really right after Avengers, where he spent a day destroying New York. He killed Coulson, I think, earlier that day or the previous day. He got beaten the shit out of him by the Hulk.
Pete: A cartoon-like-
Alex: Yeah. Taken downstairs and then ends up in a desert. Gets taken here. Everything… Just knocked down over and over again. And then not only do you have to have Tom Hiddleston channel that Loki, but then he has to go through processing all the awful things that have happened to him over 10 years of movies.
Pete: And then also will happen. The stuff he hasn’t even really-
Alex: That’s what I’m saying is he has to process what happened in Thor: The Dark World, which is tough for all of us, honestly. He has process Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and ultimately dying at the end there. Coming to grips with that and coming out as potentially a new Loki at the end or at least having a new purpose there. We can certainly get there and talk about that a little later on because I think that reaction and what happens towards the end of the episode is very interesting. But just great stuff from Hiddleston.
Justin: It is funny hearing you describe what he does in this episode, where he… Basically, he does a little bit of a re-watch of all the MCU movies. It’s very funny that like… At this point, do all the characters in any series or new movie… Are they going to have to be like, “Right, so, I was… Let me get this straight. I was in space for a while.” Just really recapping themselves.
Alex: This very specifically made me think about what’s going to happen in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 because that’s the place where we have a different Gamora from a different timeline. I feel like, in Guardians of the Galaxy fashion, they’ll probably explain it as, “Oh, she’s a different Gamora. She doesn’t know us. Don’t worry about it,” and move on from there. This obviously had to, by definition, by what the plot of the show is, really dig into the whole thing more. But it never felt like exposition, which is a very difficult feat to meet.
Justin: I think because they tied it so much to Loki’s emotional state. He was re-watching his life not to just be like, “Got it.” He was like, “Oh, wow. I’m looking at this from an outside… with an outside eye for the first time and I see that I’ve been so wrong and so small-minded in the way I’ve looked at things.” And then they do some great back flips here by… He’s like, “I need to change.” Then he’s like, “Oh, wait. This place is actually way more powerful than all the other shit I’ve been chasing after. Maybe this is how I become the god I want to be.” So, he gets to be the god of mischief. At the same time, he’s like, “I’m actually a little bit better of a person.”
Pete: Yeah. It’s impressive. Also, what’s key about Loki that has been something that’s burning through the whole thing is you want to punch him. You want to… You know what I mean? He’s a very punchable face. So, that slow-motion lip-flapping? That was just… Oh, I could’ve watched that for a while. That was really fun and a nice callback to the Avengers, where he kind of was a cartoon doll there and it was very… It was also very fun and enjoyable.
Alex: But I did like… On the same note… That was definitely, I think, the comedic high point of the episode for me. Just them letting that play out for a very long time. Like you said, Justin, he gets bashed down a ton of times. But the fact that, by the end of the episode, he does get to take a little bit of that back and get one over on Hunter B-15, it is… Yeah. Hunter B-15, who’s played by Wunmi Mosaku. They have that great fight scene. That was good and I think that was important. Because it’s showing us it’s not just Loki the loser who loses all the time, but somebody who does actually have power and can get one over on people. Just sometimes, like Owen Wilson’s character, like Mobius is dialing into, he lets himself lose. So, why does he let himself lose? That’s something that I think we’ll continue to explore over the course of the series.
Justin: It sort of explains why Thor believes in him, which is something I think they haven’t really done a great job of explaining in the MCU and something they do in the comics a little bit more. But if we’re taking as the premise out of this first episode that Loki loses on purpose, he’s just shaking things up and keeping it going because that’s what he does, then he’s a much more sympathetic character and you can see why someone like Thor would be like, “My brother. He’s important. I do this thing. I’m the hero that everyone looks up to. He’s the other side of the coin. We’re both necessary.”
Pete: Yeah, but I also really love that brother back and forth. Because there are moments where you can really call each other out. The fact that Thor had that moment where he was like, “Loki, I know your tricks. You’re a one-trick pony. You’re just going to betray me and you’re going to try to do your thing…” It was just like… That’s what’s cool about this is he really is being like, how can I grow above this to be who I want to be, and who is he going to become? It’s a fun adventure for this character that can be kind of written off or used not so well.
Alex: One thing that I think they did really well on the script, kind of bouncing off of that a little bit from Michael Waldron who wrote the episode, is a little bit like WandaVision in a very similar way. It seems like they studied every single moment of this character’s time in the MCU and figured how can we pivot off of that? You’ve got the loser thing, him losing all the time, but just that line, “I’m burdened with glorious purpose.” Again, getting back to Mobius really digging into it. What is his purpose? Why does he say that line and what does that mean for him? And then reflecting that back on him.
Alex: Similarly, with the Thor-Loki relationship, the best moments with Thor and Loki are always those moments where it’s clear Loki is trapped by his own actions. It happens in the first Thor movie. It happens in Avengers. It probably happened several times past that, though we didn’t re-watch those movies for the podcast yet. But those moments where Thor will say, “Please, you don’t have to do this. You can turn this back. You can turn this around. You can be the good person that I know you can be.” You see it play over on Tom Hiddleston’s face every single time, where there’s a moment where he thinks, “Can I do that? Can I be good?” And then he looks around and says, “No, I can’t. I can’t do that. I got to go on and do this thing.” Again, I think it gets backs to… At least in my mind with this first episode, the idea of the show is what is Loki’s purpose? If that’s the thematic idea that they’re playing with, I think that’s a very exciting place to take it forward.
Justin: I agree. This is getting to the end of the episode, which maybe we want to save. But just on the Loki side of it, it feels like Loki is going to be chasing Loki. Another Loki. So, getting into the duality of that and like… A god of mischief is going to create… He’s sort of creating and solving problems or like… If this Loki is an evil Loki, then it’s up to Loki to bring back that mischief level to a tolerable level of mischief, which is what I’m always chasing in my life. And so that’s sort of a nice… the themes of, that you just said, Alex, and that idea as the bad guy also being Loki is a fun Mobius strip of a dramatic arc for the series.
Pete: Yeah, and it was a fun reveal of, like, of course that’s who it is. You know what I mean?
Alex: Well, that’s… He’s… It’s a villain-focused show, right? So, who could be the villain of the villain? Either it’s going to be a hero or it’s going to be an even worse version of the villain. It’s such a smart, fun reveal there. Excited to see how that plays out. This is a little side note, but they touch on this in the episode, which I was very surprised and happy about. In Norse mythology, when you go back to the original Norse myths, Loki’s mischief is very like what they’re talking about, where he’s like, “Oh, I’m so mischievous. I skinned some people and left their bodies to rot in a river.”
Justin: It was a different time! That was back when it was like, “Ha ha! I cut the knees off all your cows! Gotcha!” Very aggressive pranks back then. Comedy, yes.
Alex: Exactly. I like that. [crosstalk 00:15:09]
Pete: Comedy has evolved.
Alex: Yeah. People… They play on this a little bit with the D.B. Cooper section, where it’s like, he also plays tricks and he’s tricky and he does some mischief! But the fact that they’re not forgetting that, yeah, he’s been around for thousands of years at this point and he did have that mischief that they played on in Norse myths as well, which is, by our standards, definitely not mischief, I thought was very nice.
Pete: Loki’s impression of D.B. Cooper was really impressive. It was just really nice.
Alex: Well, and you know D.B. Cooper, right?
Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good friend. Good friend.
Justin: You’re the one guy that found him, right?
Pete: Speaking of knowing people, Justin, do you know Eugene in this? Casey?
Justin: Yeah. Shouts to the actor who plays Casey. Eugene Cordero.
Pete: Yeah! I used to do shows with him back in the day. He’s great. He’s hilarious.
Justin: I love Eugene. Great guy. I haven’t seen him… He moved to LA years ago. I saw him a couple times when I was out there. But he’s had a killer career lately. He’s been crushing it. And to see him as a sort of main character here on Loki is super fun.
Pete: Couldn’t have happened to a better dude. That guy is hysterical.
Alex: He was on The Mandalorian as well, right?
Justin: Yep. Mandalorian. He was on Skull Island, I think. The movie.
Pete: Yeah. He was like a [inaudible 00:16:17] army dude. Like a jacked dude.
Alex: And he does voice on Star Trek: Lower Decks as well. Big ups.
Pete: Killing it.
Justin: [crosstalk 00:16:24] write for Lower Decks. He did a character back in the day, which is a break dancer that just had a horrible back injury. It was so fucking funny. I don’t know if he’ll break it out here, but very good.
Alex: I really liked his character also… beyond the fact that it was exciting to see him on TV… for fleshing out the world of the TVA, which so weird and so interesting. Just in terms of, like, he barely seems like a person who understands anything about the real world.
Pete: It’s a fish.
Alex: It’s a fish, which was a great joke. The whole thing with the Infinity Stones was great.
Pete: They’re just paper weights. Like, it was… Yeah. Fun moment.
Alex: Well, what I appreciated again about the show is that sort of character could just be there for bits, and certainly the bits work, but it also adds so much information about Loki and his circumstances. The Infinity Stones thing in particular just drives home to him not just that there’s power at the TVA that he potentially can take over, but also that the power he’s been chasing his entire life means nothing.
Pete: Yeah. In this world, they’re just paper weights. To see Loki come to grips with that… Just fantastic. And just this… Like that moment where we’re seeing Infinity Stones just in a dude’s drawer. In a office. This guy is way over his dead, doesn’t know what’s going on, and that moment where he’s like, “Hey, you almost hit me!” was such a great… Like, can you imagine someone almost kills somebody in front of you in an office? That would be insane. It’s a fun element to this.
Justin: Just speaking about how that works and the larger TVA, it carves out this whole new weird portion of the MCU that we haven’t touched on yet, but we are going into. Unlike so many of the other TV shows, where it feels like they’re operating around the edges of the movies, this feels like it’s setting up a lot of the stuff we’re going to see going forward with the Doctor Strange movie. I was really surprised by how much table setting they do in what we assume will be these next movies coming up.
Alex: 100%. I mean, other than the seriousness, the other thing that surprised me with it not being Rom Somillion… and, again, I’ve got to get you those notes.
Justin: Please stop.
Pete: Don’t call that back.
Justin: Everyone’s dying to get this.
Pete: Do not.
Justin: It’s a 2000-page erotic novella and I’ll tell you what.
Pete: Have you been writing during the podcast?
Justin: A little bit. A lot of in and outs.
Pete: Stop.
Justin: It’s a lot of copy and pasting.
Pete: Please.
Justin: The sex is pretty wild. It’s at the foot of the bed and then also in just regular part of the bed. So, it’s like crazy stuff.
Alex: Speaking of crazy stuff, I totally agree with you on how much this is setting up Phase Four. It almost feels like… Though there obviously was set up… there were things they were leading into with WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier and potentially with Black Widow…. those feel to me like they’re dealing with the fallout of Endgame. This, even though it’s literally directly coming out of Endgame to the point that we see a scene of Endgame in this episode, it feels like it’s the one that’s really kicking off Phase Four. Specifically, that whole instructional video that Miss Minutes does about timekeepers and the multiversal war and laying all that out. We also hear something that ties into WandaVision. They mention Nexus, which if you remember what WandaVision, one of the ads was for Nexus, which was relatively unexplained. So, we’re starting to get this build-up there that, like you’re saying… Michael Waldron is also the writer on Doctor Strange 2. Spider-Man: No Way Home is also going to do multiverse stuff. It seems like this is the one that lays out at least part of what the central conflict is going to be going forward. Even if not specifically timekeepers going forward and the TVA going forward, but this multiversal war seems like a key piece of information for the MCU Phase Four.
Justin: Yeah, and the fracturing of this sacred timeline, I think… I’m assuming… They set up that the TVA is here to shut down timelines that are deviating from the sacred timeline. It feels like something’s going to happen that will cause a real bad situation, where a multiverse will occur and it’s going to be up to Doctor Strange to set that up, explore it, and find out what that means going forward.
Alex: Well, I’ll throw out another thing at you, and it’s certainly early going here, but it sort of feels like that there probably is supposed to be a multiverse. The timekeepers are either actually the bad guys or some sort of Oz behind the curtain thing, where there’s clearly something else going on. I feel like… Granted, we have five more hours to go after this, but it kind of feels like Loki is going to gun for the timekeepers, gun for the power here, and find out things are not exactly what they seem.
Justin: Yeah, I agree. Also, if timekeepers are being very picky and very orderly about everything, that really flies in the face of this redefined Loki that is about both the positive and negative sides of mischief or the heroic sides of mischief. So, it’s like, “Hey, timekeepers. Unbutton your top button and get loose! Let’s have a multiverse. Let’s have some mischief.”
Pete: Do lizards have buttons? You know what I mean?
Justin: Oh, that’s a great… That’s your children’s book. We’re all in publishing. That’s a children’s book you’re working on, right, Pete? Do lizards have buttons?
Alex: I know I got to get you notes on that, but just one top line. A lot of the words are in and out and in and out and I feel like there are other things that buttons can do.
Pete: How else would you describe it? If you can invent a new way to say in and out, you let me know.
Alex: All right. I’ll look at thesaurus.com.
Justin: It’s funny. Now that you say that, hearing you say that, it’s really… Anytime I get dressed, it’s like my shirt is fucking itself. Just in and out.
Pete: And it’s like how much… You got to cut it off at some point, but how much do you leave open?
Justin: I usually cut it off at when I finish buttoning the buttons, you know?
Pete: Oh, wow. Okay.
Alex: There was one other little connection that I thought was interesting and it was a toss-away line, but it definitely seemed like chum to the fans like us.
Justin: I think I know what this is. Say it. Say it.
Alex: This place is a nightmare.
Justin: That’s exactly-
Alex: That line?
Justin: It feels like a direct set-up for Doctor Strange. Because the line he says after that? Different department.
Alex: So, I don’t know if he physically means an actual different department or world of nightmare, but there’s been a lot of rumors about the villain Nightmare from Marvel Comics showing up in Doctor Strange 2. That seemed like implicit confirmation that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Justin: I felt like the line, “Different department,” was a meta joke about, oh, that’s… The films do that. That’s a different department.
Pete: But it was also nice that he was like, “Oh, I’ll help you burn down the nightmare department.”
Alex: Are you having a problem with nightmares? Is that what’s going on?
Pete: Yeah. You guys don’t?
Justin: What’s your most re-occurring nightmare, Pete?
Pete: I don’t really want to reveal that, but I guess if you want to know, it’s a nightmare where I’m stuck on the school bus and there’s a monster in the back.
Justin: Oh wow. I thought you were going to say something about spoiling the end of an MCU movie.
Pete: Well, that would’ve been a nice bit, but [crosstalk 00:23:35]
Justin: You got real. And the monster in the back of the bus is you? Are you the monster?
Pete: It could be an evil version of me that just has a lantern.
Alex: So, we mentioned some of the characters on this episode. Obviously, we talked about Loki. We talked a little bit about Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius and Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15. But the one we didn’t talk discuss is Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer. She’s the judge.
Justin: Yeah, it had a great energy. That scene. I don’t know… When I was watching it, I was like, oh, she definitely seems like a main character, but how often are we going to be back in this room? She felt very tied to the room.
Pete: Because she was in front of the three lizards that maybe, if we see them, we’ll see more of her.
Alex: The lizard thing. That’s a play on conspiracy theory stuff. Like about lizard gods creating the universe and whatnot?
Justin: Yeah. I was in the Denver airport a while ago and they really lean into the lizard people running the earth underneath the Denver airport, which is pretty crazy.
Pete: Alex, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think the lizards are great and good rulers.
Alex: 90% of our podcast audience is lizards. I just want to mention that. Apropos of nothing.
Justin: It is crazy that, Pete, you just mentioned lizards having buttons. Do you mean the button? Like the nuclear button? Like because they’re running shit?
Pete: Maybe. They always got one talon on the nuclear button, I always say.
Justin: Cut off one tail and another tail will replace it.
Alex: Let’s call out specific scenes. Anything in particular you want to talk about from this episode that we haven’t mentioned so far?
Pete: Yes. I’d like to talk about the beginning. Really cool kind of mirroring where we had Loki fall in the desert like Iron Man, but kind of laying there in the desert when he first puts on his armor. I thought that was a cool little nod there.
Alex: I don’t think it had anything to do with Iron Man, but you could be right.
Pete: Wait. You’re saying they just happened to have two characters do the same thing in the desert and it wasn’t a nod to the other?
Alex: I don’t think so.
Justin: Yeah, no. It was a nod to Luke Skywalker on Tatooine in the desert and-
Pete: Dune.
Alex: It was a teaser for Dune on HBO Max.
Justin: It also mirrors at the end of a meal when you have dessert. If you know, that’s like-
Alex: I always call that falling into dessert.
Justin: I want to shout out the Miss Minutes animated sequence. Alex, this felt like… a bit Lost-ian. Did you feel a little… Even this whole episode, I think we can say, if we’re plotting the ancestors of this first episode-
Alex: Yeah, I forgot to call out influences at the beginning. You’re absolutely right on Lost. I think you’re spot-on with Brazil. I hadn’t thought about that one. The two that jumped out to me for the episode… and I do want to get back to Miss Minutes in a second. Legion. One of our favorite shows on FX. Just from the production design perspective kind of felt like that. And then also the commission sections of The Umbrella Academy, which is very on the nose, but that is a bureaucratic place that deal with time travel mistakes, so it’s hard not to think about that when you’re watching the show.
Justin: Yeah. Agreed.
Alex: But the Miss Minutes section… Not exactly an Easter egg, but a fun casting thing. That’s Tara Strong as the voice of Miss Minutes. People might know her as lots and lots of voices. She did Raven on Teen Titans Go and on Teen Titans. She was also Twilight Sparkle on My Little Pony, Pete.
Pete: Oh, right! That’s why it was so familiar.
Alex: But I thought that sequence was great and the way they laid that out was super fun. I want to see more of that. I want to see more weirdness like that throughout the show. I think that would be super fun.
Justin: Agreed. And I feel like we will. I think they’re setting up Miss Minutes to be a whole thing.
Pete: Also, what was nice about like… as far as the set-up of the show and the pacing… I really liked how we got to have moments where he was just watching it, but then other times where we got to live it. Like when he became D.B. Cooper, it wasn’t us kind of watching it or anything like that. We got sucked into the moment, which was nice. So, I appreciate the fact that it wasn’t just talking about it. It also showed it and we kind of lived it with the character. Then, other times, he was watching it happen. As far as cool pacing and a fun rhythm to the show, I really appreciated it.
Justin: I also… Just to talk about something they didn’t really define, but we get some clues toward. These grenades that reset the timelines. Very curious to how they work. Here’s my theory. They also, at one point, use a timeline… a branch that’s nearing a red line. It feels like… this is a total guess… that the grenades can reset the timeline as long as the timeline hasn’t hit its red line. So, the goal is they need to go and sort of like… Like putting your finger into a leaking dam. They need to do it before it gets to the point where it breaks through. Evil Loki stealing these… getting his hands on a grenade, I think is an interesting thing. Is he going to try to break open the sacred timeline? Somehow reverse engineering these grenades? Or is he shutting off specific timelines that he doesn’t like? I would think the evil Loki is trying to explode the multiverse. Make it more.
Pete: That’s a great question. Justin, if you had a time grenade, when would you use that in your life?
Justin: Wow. Okay. I would reset the timeline where I wet my pants in the third grade and got caught. Because I did that and then I didn’t get caught. Third grade. Late to be wetting your pants, but I was waiting in line to get a library book I really wanted. Didn’t want to lose my place and I’ll tell you what. It just came over me. So, I want to reset the timeline where I did get openly mocked for that. Because I got away with it in this timeline, which I am calling the sacred timeline.
Pete: Wow. Thank you for sharing.
Alex: A couple of little notes I wanted to throw out there on comic book stuff. Folks might know this who are listening to the podcast, but the Time Variance Authority was created by Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema in Thor 372 from 1986. The bit that they did was everybody in the TVA was Mark Gruenwald, the legendary editor, because he was the guy who kept the continuity in his head, so they thought it would be fun for him to be the guy that was enforcing the continuity. On the other hand, the timekeepers actually came a lot later. They were created by Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern for 2000’s Avengers Forever. This is something that I think maybe will play out. If you want to talk wild theories. Immortus, who is a… what do you call it… antecedent of Kang the Conqueror worked for the timekeepers and then they eventually became these beings called the Time Twisters, who are putting all of reality at risk. So, as usual, I don’t think the MCU is going to do all the comic book stuff, but I do think there’s something to be said between… the connection between the timekeepers and Kang slash Immortus since we know most likely, most probably, Jonathan Majors is going to be Kang in Ant-Man 3. There’s definitely some potential either for set-up of Kang or connection to Ant-Man 3 happening in the show at some point.
Justin: To look a little bit deeper down the pipe here, Kang also gets us closer to Young Avengers, something that is being set up in the TV shows. Because I believe young Kang is actually Iron Lad in the original Young Avengers series. So, if this is all doubling back in some sort of Mobius strip to get us closer to Young Avengers, it’s a wild journey we’re on.
Pete: That’s cool. Also, I just liked how the time police were yelling at variants. Because a lot of comic book fans, they don’t like varying covers or some of them are really into varying covers. So, it was fun to be like, “Hey, get out of here, you variant!” That was kind of a fun-
Alex: Do you think we’re going to get holographic foil Loki at some point in the series?
Pete: Oh, man. You got to.
Alex: Got to collect them all.
Justin: Triple gate fold Loki. Truly evil.
Alex: Before we wrap up here, let’s move on to our vision board, where we take a look ahead at the next episode and speculate about what we want to see most in episode two. Pete, why don’t you kick it off? What is on your vision board for episode two of Loki?
Pete: It would be fun if we got a curve ball and we got to go back and see Owen Wilson’s life and what brought him to this place and [crosstalk 00:32:20]
Alex: What was it like growing up with Luke.
Pete: Was it cool? Did you guys fight a lot? Is it a Thor and Loki situation? So, I’m excited. That’s where I would love for it to go, but either way, I really… I’m just kind of enjoying what they’re doing right now. Enjoying the ride of it. I don’t have too… Expectations wise… I’m just having fun with this.
Justin: On my vision board, I want a… I think we need a fun free-wheeling episode. We just had this episode, which set out a lot of the emotional stakes. I want to see Loki really cut loose. I want a mission through time where he has to try and fails over and over again to complete this mission and then he finally learns how to be in this new TVA world he’s in.
Alex: I want to see what the show is a little bit. I really enjoyed this episode. I thought-
Justin: Disney+. Six episode limited series or potentially series.
Pete: It’s from Marvel. Kind of connecting with the…
Alex: Oh okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Justin: It’s sort of a… It’s like Rom Somillion.
Alex: This is a Rom Somillion. I think we can all agree on that. I like the set up a lot, but it didn’t necessarily… I don’t know what the plot of the TV show is. The thing that… The reason I think I’m not going to get that is Michael Waldron said he wants to completely upend expectations every episode because that feels very consistent with what Loki is about. So, I think we’re going to get something different next episode. Different the third episode. Fourth episode, fifth episode. Still, my TV-watching self wants to know like, okay, what is this show about beyond… Now, that we’re caught up, what happens next? And I think there’s a pretty good chance we’ll find out what happens next in the second episode of the TV show.
Pete: We’ll see.
Justin: Interesting.
Alex: Controversial take.
Pete: Yeah. Hot take.
Justin: It could be revealed in Pete’s children’s book or my erotic novella series. This is part one of 60. Alex, what book did you say you were working on?
Alex: I’ve been editing it non-stop and I have it cut down to two words. I don’t want to say which ones, but… If you’d like to support our podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube coming up. We’d love to chat with you about Loki. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe, listen, and follow the show. @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and more. Until next time, stay marvelous.
Justin: Wait, so you’re saying In-N-Out Burger isn’t about sex?
Alex: I don’t know. They do it animal style.
Pete: Oh! Come on, man. Don’t ruin In-N-Out Burger for people.
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