All of its characters seem to want the same thing, one way or another. Its major problem however, is its dramatic structure. The episode looks great, with an era-appropriate gaslight aesthetic. Both sets of chases lead to some amusing banter - these are the kinds of scenes in which Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson usually shine each week - and eventually, Sylvie shows up too, with the intent of killing Timely because he’s yet another variant of the man who all but etched her fate in stone. This week, two pairs of characters collide on a time hunt: Loki and Mobius are after Renslayer and Miss Minutes, who are themselves trying to catch up to Timely and convince him of his future trajectory as Kang/He Who Remains, creator of the TVA. But in the meantime, he remains a vital puzzle piece to Loki, from both a plot and character standpoint, even if the other pieces don’t always add up. It’s currently unknown whether Kang will end up factoring into the overarching MCU (despite plans for a film titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty), or whether he’ll still be played by Jonathan Majors, whose trial for assault is due to begin next week. This twinning of the Kang and Stark lineages speaks to the future importance of Kang, but that’s really all it is at this point: a promise of potential. Similarly, it seems all of Timely’s blueprints might require, well, time. It’s a distinct mirror to Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger and Iron Man 2, whose ideas were eventually brought to fruition decades later by his son Tony. However, he fraudulently hires actors to inflate the bids on his prototype so that a vulturous robber baron - who’s kind of racist, too he calls Timely “boy” - will pay him a hefty fee.Ī scientist with big ideas, shackled by the technological limitations of his era, presenting his inventions at a real world’s fair isn’t a new image for the MCU. The major impetus for this change in setting is the backdrop: the 1893 Chicago world’s fair, or the “The World’s Columbian Exposition.” Here, a now-adult Timely presents his rudimentary version of the Time Loom, which purportedly converts temporal energy into electricity (a scene teased at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania). In 1868, Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer covertly drop a copy of the TVA Guidebook through a young Timely’s window (a plan seemingly concocted by Kang himself) before hopping forward 25 years to 1893, where Loki and Mobius track their movements as well. It seems as though some of these decisions came pre-cooked based on the version of Victor Timely seen in the comics - a Kang variant who travels back in time to the early 20th century and founds his own township - without necessarily being retooled for the show’s version of Timely, who appears to have lived in Chicago all his life. Granted, some of these tricks feel a tad anachronistic, whether out of time or out of place Miss Minutes disguises herself as a silent-era cartoon, despite showing up in the 1860s (a joke that, therefore, doesn’t quite land), and the episode’s Chicago setting clashes with the soundtrack’s distinctly Western feel. The Marvel logo is scored by a honky-tonk version of the company’s musical suite, and throughout the episode, composer Natalie Holt continues to remix the show’s signature theme, this time in the vein of an old roadshow. The show’s production designer Kasra Farahani takes the director’s chair, in an entry that feels immediately carnivalesque even before its opening frames. “1893” isn’t altogether bad - in fact, it’s entertaining in spurts - but its dramatic construction is so flimsy and self-contradictory that it can’t help but reveal the series’ seams. In the show’s narrative, it involves the illusion of plot momentum, too this is the third straight episode where Ke Huy Quan’s Ouroboros reminds us that the Time Loom might malfunction and kill everyone, a problem that still isn’t resolved by the end. Marvel head honcho Stan Lee’s version of this involved the illusion of character growth before a return to status quo. Like the god of mischief, Loki’s second season has mastered a devious magic trick: the illusion of change. Photo: Marvel Studios/Courtesy of Marvel Studios
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