Out of the three Disney+ series Loki was the one I was most looking forward to and honestly had the most potential narratively. Unfortunately, with its clucky dialog, incongruent writing, mishandling of characters and overall seemingly directionless directing, it is poised to be the worst out of the three.
However, I would like to say that the overall esthetic was good. The set designers, costume and make-up did a fantastic job. Also Tom Hiddleson and Owen Wilson were great on screen. Unfortunately it was kind of like watching two people trying their hardest to keep a sinking ship afloat. Other than the stellar job done by the visual effects team, these are the only good things about Loki.
Loki’s biggest down fall is the writing. The dialog is so clumsy, awkward and forced. Tom and Owen do their best, and to their credit they barely make their scenes passable. Unfortunately for everyone else the awfulness of the dialog really shines through in all of the other scenes. Another huge flaw is the inconsistences in the narrative that are honestly a bit embarrassing to have in a professional production. The easiest area to see this in is in the inconsistency in character, where characters or even character groups completely flip flop motivations, ideology, mannerisms or personalities to fit the narrative. For example Loki constantly flip flops between an evil villain, submissive friend, scared child, mad genius, fumbling fool, clingy & emotionally needy, confident & independent, super strong and then unbelievably weak. Even his powers are all over the place. In one episode Loki goes from being beat down by a single mortal man to stopping a skyscraper from crumbling down with his mind. This entire show has no cohesion at all.
Which brings us to the overall direction; it’s a huge mess. When watching Loki it feels like you a being pulled in multiple directions at random moments. This makes the viewing very jarring and rips you out of the story every time you get pulled in a new direction. This also makes the entire narrative an incoherent mess. No more is this prevalent than in the 3rd episode. The majority of the scenes in episode 3 have no purpose and make no sense within the story. This is why episode 3 comes across as boring and unengaging, because it was in fact a huge waste of the audience’s time.
In the end the show Loki is bad because of the poor writing and poor directing. Now considering that this is only the 3rd Marvel tv show Disney+ plus has made, let’s hope they learn from their rocky beginnings and do better moving forward.