I do think they're dropping the ball on the character stuff in general - most of the conversations are good high-concept dialogue, chatting about free will and personhood and that sort of thing, but they don't have much of an emotional grounding. Which is why a lot of those beats in this episode (Loki calling Mobius his friend, the whole Loki/Sylvie ship) sort of caught me off guard. Like, oh, that's what you were going for? If that relationship stuff was working, Episode 3 would have been a lot more engaging.
If you could combine the strong, emotionally resonant leads of WandaVision with the high-concept world-building of Loki you'd have pretty much the perfect Marvel show. Well, if you got a better action director...
I really disagree, this show does have emotional grounding.
I think the character work in Loki has been great so far. We've seen Loki very emotionally discuss with Mobius & Sylvie about what it means to be a Loki....what his identity really is in the grand scheme of things, who he is as a god of mischief.
The bits we get where he expresses reverence for his mother Frigga and wanting to be believed in, where he sings a melancholy song in Asgardian about home and the crushed expression of sadness on Sylvie's face, where he finally apologizes in vain to Sif about why he does what he does, about his lies and his truths to Mobius and how that can impact a budding friendship, about his need to survive despite the many failures and admiration of another version of himself he sees in Sylvie. None of that evoked any kind of emotion from you????
They are doing the work to explore the identity of Loki and the season isn't even over yet. I think it's struck a good balance of character exploration and world-building in its runtime. I wish I could've been as engaged in WandaVision, where it was unfortunately only the two main leads that I felt had a strong arc.
But, Loki has interesting side characters too!
We start to see the seeds of free thinking in Mobius right at the start in episode 1 where it then cascades into an eventual discovery of the truth in episode 4 about his existence. The little things built up with the jet ski, the discussions with Ravonna, order vs chaos with Loki, etc.
We see mini-moments of character work happen with C-20 and B-15. That scene of B-15 discovering her identity in the rain was sad and thoughtful, in my opinion. I appreciated her gradual change from episode 1 to 4. In episode 1, B-15 is a no-nonsense TVA soldier. In episode 2, B-15 gets enchanted by Sylvie and rattled by the changes she sees in C-20. In episode 3, we find out what happened to C-20 and what that means for other TVA workers. In episode 4, B-15 becomes disillusioned after C-20 is coldly eliminated and decides to act for herself, not the TVA, learning who she was from Sylvie and attacking the Time Keepers directly. It's a fun little mini-arc!
I think Loki is a show about identity. All the emotional character work is going to lead into that theme.
