Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Ke Huy Quan, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku
Director: Kasra Farahani
Writer: Eric Martin, Kasra Farahani, Joseph O’ Leary
For all those who were wondering whether Jonathan Majors, who has been embroiled in multiple accusations of assault, would be pruned out of Loki after his chilling and memorable appearance at the end of the first season as He Who Remains, this episode provides an answer. Majors is back, and it doesn’t look like he can be sliced out of Loki’s narrative easily. After the scattered second episode, this one is a reminder that the season is best when it focuses on the chase (pun intended) of a singular pursuit that brings its main characters together, rather than squeezing in multiple plot lines. Also, pro tip from Loki: Don’t mess with artificial intelligence (A.I.).
At the start of the third episode, Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) steps through her TemPad into squelchy mud in Chicago 1868 on the Sacred Timeline, following the directions given by Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong), the “rogue” orange cartoon clock of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and He Who Remains’s chief ally. Miss Minutes gets a lot of screen time in this episode and she feels almost like a cautionary tale for all those excited by A.I.. However, it is a bit disappointing how she ends up mired in very feminised tropes, like that of the jealous wannabe girlfriend, for example.