I’m a couple of weeks late writing this post, because I did not watch Loki season 2 as it was released on DIsney+. I mostly watched over the last two weeks, and then binged both episodes five and six last week.

Since then, I’ve been mulling over the season (and series?) finale while listening to a couple of my favorite podcasts’ coverage of the show. And I’ve come to a simple conclusion.

Loki is the best story that the MCU has told since Avengers: Endgame.

I will not spoil this show, just as I try not to spoil books I read and review. But through 12 episodes and two seasons of television, the titular character follows an arc that must be compared with similar heavyweight arcs of Thor or Iron Man in the Infinity Saga.

Loki enters season one as a villain, freshly time-jumped from the end of Avengers, when he tried to invade New York City with an interdimensional alien army. Through his experiences at the Time Variance Authority and witnessing other timelines — other pasts and possible futures — Loki changes and evolves into something other than the conquering Asgardian god of mischief.

I have been mostly underwhelmed and occasionally disappointed with the MCU TV shows over the last few years. They have primarily felt like movies that were stretched too thin or longer television seasons that were crammed into tighter spaces, with no obvious direction to point towards in terms of building a story around the next big villain.

Loki, the character, is not that next big villain, but Loki, the show takes Big Villain Stakes that most of the recent MCU properties have been missing, and boils them down to emotional, dramatic storytelling between characters.

And the climactic finale, rather than being a CGI punch-fest, is a stunning and spectacular moment of agency for one character to choose his path.

The series ends so resolutely, so satisfyingly, that Marvel could end the series, put a period on Loki’s character journey, and I would be content. If nothing else, I can go read the comic run that inspired this show.

However Marvel came to execute Loki as a storytelling vision, I hope they follow a similar path for TV and movies going forward.

Steve D