Loki premiere review: Season 2 episode 1 is wilder than ever

(L-R): Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Ke Huy Quan as O.B., and Owen Wilson as Mobius in Marvel Studios' LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.
(L-R): Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Ke Huy Quan as O.B., and Owen Wilson as Mobius in Marvel Studios' LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.

Our favorite misunderstood god of mischief, Loki, is back for his second season and the season 2 opener was a wilder ride than we expected!

Rejoice! Loki is finally back with its second season and off to a solid start. The first episode, “Ouroboros,” picks up right after the season one finale left off: Sylvie killed He Who Remains after kicking Loki through a Time Door, and Loki finds himself in a different timeline where Kang was the direct ruler of the TVA.

We’re happy to see the main cast all back – Owen Wilson as Mobius, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, and our beloved Tom Hiddleston as Loki. It was also great to be introduced to new and fun characters, and the plot thickened for a little bit there as well.

Now, before we go on and I say more than I should, obligatory SPOILER ALERTI will most likely spoil a thing here or there, or maybe the whole episode – I’m not sure yet as I type this. But hey, just to venture on the side of caution if you’re avoiding spoilers.

Owen Wilson as Mobius in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Owen Wilson as Mobius in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.

Loki season 2 episode 1 review – “Ouroboros”

For a season-opener, episode 1 has the good stuff: mystery, mayhem, and mischief.

We’ve got our crew back together and some newcomers added to the roster. Let’s see if Loki, once on the wrong team, can truly evolve into his shining knight phase.

As previously mentioned, we remember the first season closing with Sylvie, that stunningly stubborn variant of Loki, pushing him into a Time Door, leaving him all lost in a whole different time period. Turns out Loki is now getting pulled in and out of time itself, going into the past, present, and future at any given second – which is really inconvenient and disorienting for him.

We meet OB (Ouroboros, if you wanna be fancy). He’s like the geeky genius at school who knows how to fix stuff – very much Keymaker from The Matrix vibes. With Loki lost in time limbo, they figure out a plan by having a really fun conversation in the past and future, slowly building up a solution and making sure the past OB has what the future OB needs when Mobius visits him. Sounds confusing, I know, but it was executed so ridiculously well.

Enter the Time Loom. It’s kind of a cosmic computer on the verge of going into overdrive, or the equivalent of running an RTX 3090 graphics card without a proper cooling system in your computer tower. If it crashes, it’s not just the blue screen of death, but an inevitable and unstoppable multiverse meltdown.

OB’s solution is to get Loki out of the timeline completely by having him purge himself at the right time, and before Mobius or the TV suffer any kind of damage. In a move that gave me a lot of Armageddon vibes, Loki gets pulled out of the time-slipping loop successfully while Mobius tries to not get his skin peeled back and OB is able to protect the TVA by closing the blast doors leading to the Time Loom.

Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.

As Mobius and Loki figure out the time-jumping issue, B-15 finds that Dox is sending an army of hunters after Sylvie which begs the question  – where and when is Sylvie? What is her new favorite McDonald’s sandwich? Are we going to see some more variants? Where’s Kang? What’s Dox’s actual motive here?

With the king of MCU baddies, Kang, set to raise some hell in the MCU, Loki’s adventures might be taking some unexpected twists and turns – and it will most likely solidify a lot more of the MCU/branching of timelines for the rest of Phase 5 and onto Phase 6.

The second season of Loki is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes coming every Thursday evening at 9 p.m. EST.