"Loki" - Season 2 Episode 2 Review

Ladies and gentlemen, he’s so back.

Audiences have seen a different side of Loki so far in his Disney+ series -- he’s more even-tempered, rational and a team player with Mobius, Hunter B-15 and O.B.

But in episode two titled “Breaking Brad,” the old Loki makes a reappearance while tracking down an escaped TVA employee, X-05, trying to live out his life on the Sacred Timeline as actor Brad Wolfe.

He was sent on a mission to find Sylvie but abandoned it for an unknown reason that Loki and Mobius want to figure out.

The duo finds X-05 at a movie premiere in 1970s London and chases him down into an alleyway where he tries to escape.

Loki summons shadows to bind his arms, and the shadows grow horns that audiences will recognize as the “evil Loki” look that hasn’t appeared yet in the series.

The opening of this episode was arguably one of the best in “Loki” thus far.

It foreshadows the events later in the episode, where Tom Hiddleston digs back into Loki’s dark side that viewers have been denied for so long.

The next major portion of episode two takes place back at the Time Variance Authority, where Loki and Mobius play “good cop, bad cop” with X-05/Brad (hence the episode title, “Breaking Brad) to try and get information out of him about Sylvie’s whereabouts.

X-05 tries to fire up both Mobius and Loki, saying they could have much better lives waiting for them on the Sacred Timeline that they don’t know about.

When he still refuses to answer their questions, Loki turns to a much more persuasive method.

More or less, torture.

In this scene, Loki delivers a line that rivals “burdened with glorious purpose” for his most iconic quote.

He tells X-05, “Perhaps I’ve just been waiting for a moment like this, so I can do terrible, awful things to you.”

Welcome back, God of Mischief, the people have missed you.

Loki ends up cracking Brad and getting Sylvie’s location, where he runs off immediately.

There seems to be some unresolved tension between Loki and Sylvie, who had a massive fight in the season one finale, but also a passionate kiss.

Sylvie made a new life for herself on a branch timeline, where she works at a McDonald’s set in the 1980s.

To no one’s surprise, she wants nothing more to do with the TVA and tries to get them to leave her alone.

The audience knows it’ll be impossible for Sylvie to remain uninvolved in everything Loki and Mobius have going on, so it’s no surprise when she joins them to stop countless timelines from being erased by the TVA’s General Dox.

It will be interesting to see how Sylvie’s arc plays out this season since all she wants is to live a normal life away from Loki, but she can’t seem to keep herself away from him.

Their identities will always be intertwined since they are variants of each other, which is what made the romance so controversial in season one.

The episode ends with the employees of the TVA realizing how terrible what they’ve been doing for ages truly is — murdering countless people on branch timelines in the name of the fictional Time Keepers.

Rating: 9/10

Kaitlyn Murphy is a second-year majoring in journalism. To contact her, email kvm6255@psu.edu.