Loki “Lamentis” Review
Loki “Lamentis” is the third episode of the Loki series. Following Loki’s escape in episode 2. Loki ends up fighting and then teaming up with the variant Loki, who we now know is called Sylvie. In order to escape a moon called Lamentis 1 that’s about to be destroyed by a planet crashing into it.
Action is the only way to tell a story
I could probably put the plot of this episode down in one sentence: Loki and Sylvie try to board the train to the Ark that everyone is escaping the moon on in order to escape because the TemPad needs to be charged. That’s it. And whilst this is definitely the most action packed episode of the show to date, that’s it’s biggest problem. The action scenes are clumsy and ridiculous. You can practically see, at times, where the moves have been rehearsed over and over again. And during the scene with all the running at the end you can practically see the green screen room they had to run through in your minds eye.
Loki is not a superhero. He was never meant to be. So giving him an episode which follows a typical superhero formula, though admittedly very weakly, just does not work. He’s a trickster first and foremost. But more than that this episode doesn’t have the strength the other two did because the other two had strong support acts. I believe I openly said in my episode 1 review that not a single person was outshone and they all did a fantastic job of portraying their characters enough to get a good idea of who they are but not so much that anything is given away. This time it’s just Loki and Sylvie. And Sophia Di Martino, whilst clearly doing everything to make the character work, just doesn’t. This isn’t Di Martino’s fault however, the fault lies with the writing.
Convenience for the sake of plot
The entire episode is just so badly written. If I had to sum it up in one word it’d be: convenient. Everything in the episode happens because the characters need it to happen. The characters don’t push the plot along, the plot forces the characters to change according to what it needs from them. Sylvie is a genius who openly admits that the plan she was working on took years to plan. But doesn’t know she can’t use magic inside the TVA. I mean, really?
Surely if you’re going to study aspects of an organisation for years on end in order to bring it down, that little fact would’ve come up at some point. But the plot needs her to have an awesome fight scene so she conveniently doesn’t know this little fact. Even though she’s the one who discovers the TVA’s deepest, darkest, secret and reveals it to Loki. That the TVA are the bad guys and all the employees are Variants who just don’t know they’re Variants. Sorry but, that just screams bad writing.
What is plot if not convenience everlasting?
Loki isn’t free from the bad writing curse either, he constantly gets into tussles with either Sylvie or the bad guys who realise they’re not supposed to be on the train. I watched the train fight again and oh God it’s bad. Di Martino is fine. But Tom Hiddleston’s Loki looks out of place and goofy. Not to mention his skill as a fighter is very much dependent again on how strong the plot needs him to be. If he needs to win this fight then he’s as skilled as you’d expect him to be. If he needs to lose because plot then he becomes a bumbling idiot and you start questioning if this is the same guy you just watched a few minutes ago. The whole thing is just horribly written.
Add all this to the cringe as hell dialogue and well, you got yourself a stinker. I feel like this one episode was written with 12 year old twitter Loki “stans” (I hate using that word but it’s accurate) in mind and them only in mind. Which isn’t a bad thing, fan service is great, in small quantitates and as long as it doesn’t affect quality. The problem is that this one episode breaks those rules, the entire 50+ minutes is fan service (but only a certain type of fan) and it massively affects the quality.
The best thing to come from episode 3 is confirmation of Loki’s bisexuality and finally confirmation of the TVA being evil and using variants as workers. The rest is lazy and doesn’t work. It tries, desperately to establish a connection between the two characters, but it just feels so flat.
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