Is Marvel Teasing a Return to Form for Loki?
Is Marvel starting to remember what made Loki so much fun? Perhaps, because the recent marketing for the second season of the Disney+ series Loki is bringing some of the moral ambiguity the first season discarded. A recent teaser for the upcoming season, the first episode of which begins streaming on October 5, emphasizes Loki’s villainous past, implying that he was meant to walk on the dark side:
Okay, that’s only a small part of the teaser. But today, the Marvel Studios Twitter account posted a piece of the video with the text “Once a villain, always a villain”:
Once a villain, always a villain.
Marvel Studios’ #Loki Season 2, an Original series, starts streaming this Thursday at 6PM PT, only on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/bHFWPqrDs2
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) October 1, 2023
Of course, this is far from conclusive, but it is suggestive. The first season garnered the best ratings for any of Marvel’s Disney+ shows, and it seemed to be pretty well-liked. And Marvel has become adept at promising one thing from its output and delivering another; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was advertised as a much different (and far more interesting) movie than it ended up being. But I wonder if there’s a sentiment out there similar to mine, that Loki is fun because he is evil, or at least because he maintains some of the traits that made him such an entertaining villain, like his selfishness and vanity, both of which he lost in the first season of his show. Did you ever imagine Loki telling an alternate version of himself that she’s a better version of him than he is? The trailers for season 2 have indicated that he’s getting those back, at least to a certain degree, like when he tells Sylvie that they are gods, or when he mentions being the God of Mischief (another intrinsic part of him wholly absent from season 1).
The promise is there, but it was also there before season 1, and that went nowhere. Ultimately, I don’t think Loki season 2 will redeem the character (in terms of his realization as a consistent and entertaining figure in the Marvel Universe; he’s been morally redeemed, and then some). In the featurette they put out a couple of weeks ago, the new showrunner promised “our Loki” and “our Mobius.” And the guy in the new video telling Loki he is evil seems like a bad guy, so he’ll likely be proven wrong. But these shades of doubt Marvel is casting in its ad campaign make me wonder if they aren’t aware that a good number of fans want the old Loki back, or at least a new Loki that feels more consistent with the one we’ve grown to love. I’m not overly hopeful, but if Marvel is ever to right its lopsided ship down the line (another thing for which I’m not holding my breath), it starts with understanding what people want from your stories. And if they’re leaning into a darker, more mischievous Loki, perhaps the first season wasn’t as well-received as I thought it was, and they’ve heard enough to make them bring back the real Loki – or, at least, suggest that they will. There are only a few more days before we find out.
