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What makes a Loki a Loki? Loki gets to know herself in Loki's third episode
The only thing more entertaining than one Loki is two of them. Loki met the variant that has been wreaking havoc on the TVA at the end of last week’s episode. Instead of stopping her, he joined her. Or went to try and stop her? You never know.
Episode 3, titled “Lamentis” sees the result of that choice, with Loki getting to know… Loki. There are so many plans, double-crosses, magic acts, and more — as one would expect from a show called Loki.
***WARNING: From this point on, there will be spoilers for Loki Episode 3. If you have not watched yet, turn back now.***
Before vanishing, our newest Loki (Sophia Di Martino) used her own power set (and some talk of brain freeze) to get intel on the Time Keepers and the TVA (Time Variance Authority) from the captured C-20 (Sasha Lane). After going through a doorway to the TVA itself, we see her beat the utter stuffing out of a gaggle of Minutemen with our other Loki (Tom Hiddleston) tottering in after her.
We find out later that she goes by “Sylvie” now, which Loki doesn’t think is very Loki-like. “What exactly makes a Loki a Loki?” she asks. Loki answers with a sigh, “Independence, authority, style.”
Because neither of their magic works in the TVA, it’s knife time when Loki and Sylvie face each other again, with Tom Hiddleston gifting us another beloved double knife flip. Ravonna (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) shows up to shut down both the fighting, but thanks to a TemPad they both escape through another doorway.
They land in the year 2077 on a moon called “Lamentis-1.” In Marvel Comics, this place is located on the edge of Kree space and appeared in a 2007 comic called Annihilation: Conquest Prologue #1. Here, it is on the verge of apocalypse. Those are the places where Sylvie loves to hide out, after all.
The two of them start to go at it again with magic and weapons before realizing that they need to call a truce and get their TemPad working. If they don’t, they’re both dead. The banter is now running faster than Quicksilver runs to an XS slim-fit shirt sale. What exactly is Sylvie’s plan? It was years in the making, for one thing.
Neither brute force nor trickery work on one of the only local inhabitants around, one who tells them that everyone has fled to an evacuation vessel aptly called “The ark.” This ship, whatever it is, likely has enough power to recharge a TemPad. Loki and Sylvie approach a train that can take them to the site, and Sylvie goes along with Loki’s “s*** plan” which involves him magicking himself to look like a guard.
Only the wealthy are being transported to presumed safety (natch) but Loki’s plan works. He and Sylvie are soon on a train full of wealthy a-holes on their way to Shuroo, where the ark is located. While enjoying the comfort of a set from the latter half of Snowpiercer (meant as a compliment) the two hash things out some more, with Sylvie asking about Frigga, and Loki making sure that telling her they were adopted isn’t a spoiler. It isn’t, Sylvie was told much earlier than Loki was.
She didn’t have a Frigga, though, she self-taught herself the mind-magic that she’s been demonstrating in this episode. She also gives Loki a gem of a line: “Maybe love is hate.” They sidebar about each other’s love lives, in the carnal sense they both enjoy flings (Loki says that he’s enjoyed a “bit of both” with a smile) but neither has experienced actual “love.”
“Love is mischief, then,” Sylvie says. Loki wants to amend the statement, but can’t quite get the words out. They decide to get some rest (they’re about to steal the only power source this doomed civilization has), and for Sylvie, that means a nap. For Loki, it means leading their entire train car in drunken Asgardian song, ending the chorus by smashing a glass to the floor and demanding “another” like his brother once did.
Loki is too full of figgy port to clock some weird looks in his direction, but Sylvie picks them up instantly. Loki doesn’t care, he’s thought of an answer to what love is: “Love is a dagger. It’s a weapon to be wielded far away or up close. You can see yourself in it. It’s beautiful. Until it makes you bleed.” He holds out a dagger to Sylvie and continues, “But ultimately when you reach for it…”
She does, and it vanishes. “It isn’t real,” she says. “Love is an imaginary dagger.”
Loki admits it doesn’t make sense, and Sylvie agrees that it is a “terrible metaphor.” (We like it.) None of this matters, because they both end up off of the train after a fight with some guards. The TemPad crumbles on Loki’s hands, and his only real excuse is, “I’m hedonistic.” Sylvie is too, but never at the expense of the mission.
He comes up with an alternate plan that Sylvie likes: Normally the ark never gets off the planet, but it’s also never had them on it. On their way to hijack it, Sylvie tells Loki how her Inception-esque enchanting skills work, and in describing how she did this with C-20, she lets it slip that C-20, and everyone else at the TVA, are variants. None of them know.
That reveal will have to wait, because they are approaching the ark. “Do we trust each other?” Sylvie asks. “We do, and you can,” Loki answers.
“Good, because this is gonna suck,” Sylvie says as they both enter the neon sci-fi chaos of Shuroo. We see them work in tandem using both magic and might in one long, glorious shot... it is an MCU all-timer moment, for certain. Unfortunately, it’s of no use — the ark explodes when they get close. Sylvie walks away as the apocalypse proceeds, and Loki catches his breath. After that sequence, so do we.
The wackiness just got ratcheted up yet again, the banter keeps getting hotter, and the action is choice. In our opinion, this was the best episode of the series yet, and since he didn’t appear this week, we’ll sum up with an Owen Wilson quote from many of his other movie roles: “Wow.”
New episodes of Loki stream on Disney+ every Wednesday.
