It is certainly possible that Sylvie could take on Enchantress as her new moniker by the end of this story. That Sylvie keeps talking about her powers of enchantment, and that she has chosen this specific name, led a lot of Marvel fans last week to speculate that she is in fact not a Loki at all, but the Enchantress, a classic Thor comics villain who in a later incarnation also went by Sylvie. Jonathan Majors Casts a Big Shadow Over ‘Loki’ Season 2 They run into a gun-toting homesteader and various guards and train crew on their trip to hijack the ark that’s meant to carry the moon’s richest citizens to safety, but all of those people are just props in the battle of wits going on between Loki and Sylvie, as each takes the other’s measure and tries to figure out how to beat him or her - or if they even want to. While Owen Wilson was a huge part of what made the earlier chapters fun (and even merely watchable during some of the bigger infodumps), Loki gets by just fine without him for a week, because Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino also have chemistry in spades, and because it’s important to see what differentiates the two variants without anyone else getting in the way. The detour is as crucial as - if not more crucial than - everything that happened before, and will come after our odd couple of Lokis make their way back to the TVA offices. Ali, and again directed by Kate Herron) recognizes that if we don’t understand who Sylvie is, and the ways in which she is and is not like her male counterpart, then none of her endgame really matters. Perhaps Mobius really did get to ride Jet Skis in the Nineties?īut “Lamentis” (written by Bisha K.

(*) Sylvie’s conversations with and about Hunter C-20 reveal that the TVA employees were not, in fact, created by the Time-Keepers, but rather are variants who have had memories of their past lives erased while put in service to the Sacred Timeline. Loki’s quick moves with the TemPad, and then the device’s mechanical difficulties, simply seem to delay what Sylvie was planning, and it’s clear she intends to pick up right where she left off if they can get off the moon before its neighboring planet crashes in and kills everyone on it. In terms of Sylvie’s plan for the Time-Keepers, the TVA’s plans for Loki, Mobius’ true identity(*), and all the other questions set up in previous weeks, nothing of importance happens here. As Loki and Sylvie race for survival on the pre-apocalyptic moon that gives the chapter its title, the larger plot of the season is placed entirely on hold, and most of the supporting characters are either absent entirely (Mobius, Hunter B-15) or appear only briefly (Ravonna). If all you care about on those series is the plot, you could easily skip each chapter (though the Dharma van actually serves a minor purpose later in that season) if you’re on a long-haul journey with Hurley or Walt, then episodes like that greatly enhance the whole experience.īut that’s exactly what we get with “Lamentis,” even if Loki and his female variant - who here reveals that she has adopted the name Sylvie - spend much of it riding a luxury train. Many of the best dramas of this century have understood the importance of pausing the plot to spend some extra time establishing who these people are and how they relate to each other - like “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,” the Lost episode where Hurley and the guys spend an hour fixing up a Dharma Initiative van just to have something to do or “Fly,” the polarizing but brilliant Breaking Bad hour where Walt and Jesse try to catch an insect intruder in the Super Lab. If I don’t know or care about the people these twists and turns of the story are happening to, then the twists themselves quickly lose all meaning or sense of entertainment.

But that approach leads to diminishing returns in a hurry. The last 20 years of TV - and the streaming era in particular - have conditioned a lot of the audience to value plot over all else. What, exactly, is the advantage of serialized television over movies? Is it just to elongate stories, and get viewers excited about what happens next, and what happens after that, for months or years on end? Or is it the opportunity to really get to know the characters in these stories, so that what happens to them next matters more emotionally than if the viewer had only spent a couple of hours with them? A review of this week’s Lokion Disney+, “Lamentis,” coming up just as soon as l maintain a serious relationship with a postman whilst running across time from one apocalypse to another…

Loki episode 3 air time