Before the next episode drops, just wanted to quickly drop my thoughts on the last one since I've more been responding to other people here than actually sharing what I thought, lol.
All things considered, really loved it. Easily the strongest pilot of the bunch, namely because it wastes no time diving straight into the meat of its premise. Wandavision and FAWS both deliberately take very gradual approaches in order to build their premises over time, while Loki sets up the TVA, gets this new Loki up to speed with working with them, and sets up the main mission of hunting down this other Loki all in episode 1. Plenty of room for twists but otherwise extremely efficient in getting the ball rolling.
It's been brought up but do have to commend Hiddleston for fitting right back into the 2012 Loki's mindset so damn well. The fandom's noted how bizarre Loki's more megalomaniacal tendencies were in Avengers compared to both before and since, and the show deserves a lot of kudos for actually bringing that state of the character back and deconstructing it. Part of that's helped by Owen Wilson's exceptional performance as Mobius, and the buddy-comedy relationship he and Loki have is very well done.
I really like the TVA and its aesthetic and all the weirdness around it, but goddamn that twist with the Infinity Stones just shoved in a desk drawer was so good. It legitimately rocked me, as a fan since day 1, to see the powerful artifacts that the entire MCU has revolved around literally reduced to office-space tchotchkes. I feel like I'm staring into the abyss thinking about it, and so it only makes sense for Loki to be driven to a literal existential crisis. Leave it to a Rick & Morty writer to make the human feel so alien, and leave it to a Rick & Morty writer to know how to make one feel so small.
As someone who enjoys reading fan reactions and speculation in these MCU threads and followed very regularly every week in the discussions for Wandavision and TFatWS and I think just the reaction from the first episode of Loki was the final straw that broke the camel's back for me. MCU threads always come with it's fair share of people nitpicking and doing their best CinemaSins impressions about how terrible things are, but after these Disney+ shows, it's really become insufferable and sucked all the fun out of reading comments.
TFatWS wasn't even a mystery or sci-fi like Wandavision and Loki, since it was mostly pretty straight forward, but even then there are people arguing for pages upon pages about the believability of the bank scene and if it was actually trying to imply a racist undertone and it's like people can't just just engage with the story in the way that it's presenting itself plainly and doubting intention of the writers when they are already being a bit on the nose specifically for that reason so people don't get miss what they are trying to say or give it the benefit of the doubt when it is veering of course where every character's motivation isn't immediately clear, or when there are small aspects that "don't make sense" in the sci-fi logic right now if you think about some obscure contradiction you picked out that ruins everything to you.
I'm basically going to stick with the people who watch on the day of release and the discussion that happens there, because I feel the quality of the discourse only drops off as the week goes on.
I honestly do agree with a lot of this sentiment. Somehow fan theories have become this precious legal tender in the online discourse, and people scramble to dissect and analyze shit the moment it drops, and the discourse just get increasingly dumb and toxic as shit moves on. And the Youtuber takes haven't fucking helped - fucking Nando dropped a video recently on this and what started as "people have forgotten what it's like to get too caught up in fan theories" became "actually the fan theories are pretty hype, c'mon Marvel step it up" and the wagons cycle none the wiser.
Like, this is all supposed to be fun and games, fucking chill out and don't get lost in your own sauce. Jeez.
