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The first trailer for Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard has arrived, giving fans the early look at what to expect for the show’s return to the Paramount+ streaming service in 2022. And for Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, it includes a very exciting reunion.

Kicking off the trailer is the return of Q (John de Lancie), a foil of Picard’s from The Next Generation who also appeared on Star Trek: Voyager. “Oh captain, how I’ve missed you,” he tells Picard (Patrick Stewart). “Welcome, my friend, to the very end of the road not taken.

The trailer then explains that time has been broken and it’s up to Picard and his crew to fix it. “We can save the future,” he says. “And I will get us home together.”

The final reveal of the trailer sees the Borg Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) awaken in a bed. However, she quickly notices one massive change: the ocular implant that’s been a trademark of the character since its inception is gone. What’s more, there’s what looks to be a variation of a Borg badge in her room. It should be pretty interesting to find out what all of that means.

Picard returns to Paramount+ in 2022.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Loki: Episode 2! Be sure to check out IGN’s review of the new episode.

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The second episode of Marvel’s Loki just introduced a major new character to the MCU. In the process, the show has just confirmed a popular casting theory. Sophia Di Martino is indeed playing a female version of Loki, and she’s hatching a scheme designed to upend time as we know it.

How can there be a female version of Loki? What does this mean for the trickster god’s ongoing MCU story? Let’s break down how Lady Loki has factored into Marvel’s Thor comics and how this unpredictable character may fit into the future of the Disney+ series.

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Lady Loki: A Comic Book History

In traditional Norse mythology, Loki is portrayed as a shape-shifter and a trickster who can take many forms. Needless to say, he’s not limited to manifesting as a man, or even as a human. In one of the more famous Loki myths, the trickster god takes the form of a mare and is impregnated by a stallion named Svaðilfari, which results in Loki giving birth to an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir that becomes Odin’s prize steed. As one does.

In Marvel’s comics, however, the concept of Lady Loki didn’t really arise until the 2007 Thor comic. That series is set in the aftermath of Ragnarök, a cataclysmic battle only Thor himself survives. Now reigning over the empty kingdom of Asgard, Thor sets out to locate all his fellow Asgardians, who have reincarnated in new, human bodies without their memories, to restore them to full power. That includes Loki.

Thor is surprised to find his brother now taking the form of a woman. But though Loki professes to have left her evil ways in the past, this is actually the start of her latest scheme. Colluding with Doctor Doom, Loki hijacks the body of Lady Sif and sets about a chain of events that results in Thor being banished and the Asgardians taking up a new home in Latveria.

Loki eventually reverts to his traditional, male form, but only after sowing seeds of chaos across the Marvel Universe. And that only lays the groundwork for more transformations. Loki soon dies again, returns as a child and becomes Asgard’s most unlikely hero. It’s all part of the character’s shift from overt villain to a more morally neutral agent of chaos. Because what good is a god of chaos if they’re predictable?

Does Loki Have a Gender?

While the original Lady Loki storyline dealt with Loki stealing Sif’s body, Marvel has gradually shifted away from portraying Loki as strictly male or female. Loki is now officially recognized as being both genderfluid and pansexual.

That detail was cemented in 2014’s Original Sin: Thor & Loki – The Tenth Realm. After discovering the existence of the Tenth Realm of Heven and his long-lost sister Angela, Loki takes a female form in order to blend in with these angelic warriors. Odin himself recognizes Loki’s nonbinary status at the end of this story, remarking, “My children. My son and my daughter and my child who is both.”

Loki also spends several issues of his own comic series, Loki: Agent of Asgard, taking the form of a woman as he reunites with his friend and ally Verity. Verity is the one person to whom Loki is physically incapable of lying, and this new form is a rare sign of trust and vulnerability from the erstwhile Marvel villain.

Again, Marvel is simply reflecting an aspect of Loki that’s existed in Norse mythology for centuries. Loki is a trickster who can adopt many different forms, male, female and otherwise. Far from needing to steal another Asgardian’s body, Loki can change his physical form at will.

This detail appears to be reflected in the MCU as well. The official Loki Twitter account released a promo image indicating Loki’s gender as “fluid.” Head writer Michael Waldron confirmed this is something the series will explore over the course of Season 1.

“I know how many people identify with Loki in particular and are eager for that representation, especially with this character,” Waldron told Inverse. “We worked really hard.”

How Lady Loki Fits Into the MCU

While we finally have confirmation Di Martino is playing Lady Loki in the Disney+ series, there are plenty more questions surrounding this new incarnation of the character. Has she taken this new form as part of her mysterious plan, or is this Loki from an alternate timeline where the character has always manifested as a woman?

For all we know, Di Martino’s Loki is the same character as Hiddleston’s Loki, just from a later point in the MCU timeline. Perhaps everything Loki is now enduring as a captive of the TVA is an ordeal she’s already experienced. Based on an Easter egg in Episode 1, some have speculated Lady Loki may be in league with Kang the Conqueror, with both characters attempting to weaponize time itself and destroy the TVA.

One thing does seem clear, at least. It doesn’t appear the MCU is adapting the original Lady Loki storyline and depicting Di Martino’s character as a Loki who has hijacked another person’s body. As influential as the 2007 Thor comic is, that element is generally regarded as transphobic by today’s standards.

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Marvel’s recent Loki-centric comics may give us an idea of the core conflict between Loki and Lady Loki. No longer a clear-cut villain, Loki often wrestles with the idea that he’s destined to become Asgard’s destroyer. In Loki: Agent of Asgard, that fear is embodied in another alternate version of the character called King Loki. Loki’s struggle in that series boils down to a desire to rewrite his story and become who he wants, not what fate would have him become. He’s not the Prince of Lies, but the God of Stories.

Just as Di Martino was heavily rumored to be playing Lady Loki, a great many Marvel fans have speculated that Richard E. Grant’s mystery role is actually King Loki (or a similarly older and more evil version of Hiddleston’s Loki). If this theory pans out, we can probably expect Loki to face a similar dilemma in the Disney+ series. Grant’s Loki may represent Loki’s apparent fate as a cosmic destroyer, whereas Di Martino’s Loki could embody the freedom and possibilities of a story yet unwritten. Either character may represent a possible future for the Loki we know and love.

Like so many great time travel tales, Loki may ultimately be a story about the clash between free will and destiny.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

We’re finally getting details on the next game from FromSoftware, Elden Ring, after a roughly two-year span of agonizing silence following its announcement at E3 2019. The Soulsborne developer released a gameplay trailer at Summer Game Fest and provided an official launch date, and Game Director Hidetaka Miyazaki sat down for an interview with IGN to go even deeper on the gameplay, the story, and what sets Elden Ring apart from the Souls series, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Bloodborne.

While Elden Ring will hit consoles and PC next year, it’s possible we may see it appearing in more media as well. Bandai Namco CEO Yasuo Miyakawa has suggested there are more plans for Elden Ring beyond just the game itself. However, don’t get your hopes up just yet for TV shows, movies, and comic book adaptations. The publisher laid out no specifics, and it could simply be a suggestion of merchandising plans.

When is the Elden Ring Release Date?

Elden Ring’s release date is currently set for January 19, 2022, on  PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5. But, it will also come to the previous-gen Sony and Microsoft consoles at the same time – no word on availability for Nintendo Switch, though. If you’ve been unable to get your hands on the latest generation of consoles, you’ll be happy to hear that Elden Ring will support upgrades for players who purchase the game on PS4 and Xbox One and then upgrade to the newer consoles later on.

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What will the Elden Ring gameplay be like?

Given Elden Ring is coming from FromSoftware, it should be no surprise that it’s set to feature some grueling combat and exploration. But, from what we’ve seen in the Elden Ring gameplay trailer and learned from Game Director Hidetaka Miyazaki, Elden Ring will bring some new ideas to the table that give players a lot more options.

You can still expect dangerous enemies ranging from the human-sized to the utterly mountainous, and you’ll still be dodge-rolling your way to safety while fighting back with a combination of magic, swords, spears, and other medieval weaponry. But, Elden Ring will be adding in new combat opportunities.

Rather than having certain skills attached to specific weapons, Miyazaki explains that “you’re actually able to freely interchange skills between a large variety of weapons.” He also mentioned there are something like a hundred skills in total, and there will surely be no shortage of different weapons in the game. Factoring in magic abilities as well, Miyazaki suggests, “… the build customization is going to be even richer and even more varied than before.”

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The way in which you can approach enemy encounters also promises to be more varied. Elden Ring’s world is a little less linear than past Soulsborne games, and to that end, approaching combat will be less linear, too. There will be some stealthier options available, like sneaking through tall grass to avoid combat or get the drop on enemies with a backstab. You  can also explore the game world to hunt down and collect enemy spirits, giving yourself an ally you can summon in combat. And if enemy spirits don’t quite do it for you, you’ll still have the option to summon other human players for cooperative play.

Traversing in Elden Ring will be a little different from the usual Souls formula. You won’t just be hoofing everywhere you go. The game does include a fast travel system, but it will also include player mounts. And, for those of you who hate not being able to get over a two-foot-tall obstacle, your character will also be able to jump.

You’ll need those faster methods of transport, too, as this is FromSoft’s biggest game yet. That scale might make it intimidating to explore, as past Soulsborne games would see you drop all of your XP if you died somewhere and you’d have to go track it down after respawning or risk losing it forever. So, to keep you encouraged to explore further and continue progressing, the game will include more ways of healing, including the ability to craft items on the fly and gather the necessary materials to do so. 

What do we know about Elden Ring’s world design?

Elden Ring will take place in The Lands Between, a  vast area to explore.  You’ll start in a linear opening area, presumably to set up the story and explain the game mechanics, but then it will broaden. There will be a lot to explore, including six key domains that are each ruled by a demigod, twisted by the power of a shard of the Elden Ring – but more on that later. That world will feature plains, mountains, and everyone’s favorite: swamps. You’ll also find castles, fortresses, and catacombs scattered around the game world, off the beaten path. 

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With that large map, FromSoft is giving players the freedom to approach and explore the game world how they want. Miyazaki explains ”there is an element of guidance, particularly at the beginning. There is a mainline that [players] can follow, but at any time they’re free to break off this route and to take the untrodden path.”

Elden Ring will also feature a dynamic weather system and night-and-day cycle, to help keep its world feeling alive.

The game world will also be populated by enemies and NPCs alike, all with their own stories and motives. And then, of course, some slightly anthropomorphized pots wandering about. Fortunately, Miyazaki has confirmed players won’t encounter Mimics in this game world. Unfortunately, Miyazaki only confirmed that players wouldn’t encounter Mimics “in that exact same form.” What that means is anyone’s guess.

What’s the Elden Ring story about?

With the latest reveal, we’ve learned a bit more about Elden Ring’s story. It will take place in The Lands Between some time after the destruction of the Elden Ring and the scattering of its shards, known as The Great Runes. 

Players will take the role of a Tarnished, part of a population that had long ago lost the grace of the Elden Ring and the Erdtree, which symbolized the presence of the Elden Ring. The Tarnished were banished from The Lands Between before the destruction of the ring, and they have been summoned back after the shattering of the ring. 

The Tarnished will set off with the goal of finding and defeating the demigod offspring of Queen Marika the Eternal. Each of these demigods possesses a shard of the ring and has been tainted and twisted by it. The ultimate goal for players is to collect all of these Great Runes and become an Elden Lord. Whether doing so will actually be a good thing remains to be seen.

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Like the story in Dark Souls, much of the plot will come down to players finding and piecing together the details themselves (a little bit like piecing together the fragments of the Elden Ring, perhaps?). That said, Miyazaki has explained that the story may be easier to understand and more accessible than the story in the Dark Souls franchise.

How was George R. R. Martin involved in Elden Ring?

Game of Thrones (or A Song of Ice and Fire) fans may have hoped that George R.R. Martin wrote every line of dialog in Elden Ring, but his responsibilities lay largely in shaping the lore and mythos of the game world. So, while not everything will feel like you’re playing through a Martin narrative, you will still be inhabiting a world he dreamt up. 

In contrast to past Soulsborne games, Martin’s worldbuilding took place prior to FromSoft’s development of game systems, so the gameplay should be more informed by the game world than before. Martin also played a part in creating the main bosses of the game. Each Demigod has their own mythos and lore behind them, and it’s from that background that their new, tainted forms have stemmed. 

Even if Martin didn’t write every character interaction, Miyazaki suggested Martin “brought things to the table that we couldn’t have done by ourselves, in terms of that rich storytelling and that sense of character and drama.”

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Is there anything else exciting for Elden Ring?

While Elden Ring will hit consoles and PC next year, it’s possible we may see it appearing in more media as well. Bandai Namco CEO Yasuo Miyakawa has suggested there are more plans for Elden Ring beyond just the game itself. However, don’t get your hopes up just yet for TV shows, movies, and comic book adaptations. The publisher laid out no specifics, and it could simply be a suggestion of merchandising plans.

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Mark Knapp is a regular contributor to IGN and an irregular Tweeter on Twitter @Techn0Mark

After months of “will they, won’t they” speculation, Microsoft and Bethesda have confirmed that its upcoming RPG Starfield will be an Xbox Series X|S and PC exclusive. And though this may be frustrating for PlayStation owners, Bethesda’s longtime marketing boss Pete Hines says he understands this is disappointing, and apologized.

“If you’re a big fan of stuff we make and a game that we’re making is no longer available on your platform I totally understand if you are unhappy or pissed. I get it, those are all real feelings and frustrations,” Hines said in an interview with GameSpot.

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“I don’t know how to allay the fears and concerns of PlayStation 5 fans other than to say, ‘Well, I’m a PlayStation 5 player as well,’ Hines added. “And I’ve played games on that console, and there’s games I’m gonna continue to play on it. But if you want to play Starfield? PC and Xbox.”

“Sorry, All I can really say is, ‘I apologize,’ because I’m certain that’s frustrating to folks, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”

Starfield is Bethesda’s first original RPG in 25 years. Director Todd Howard has described it as ‘Skyrim in space,’ though stressed that its brand of sci-fi will be grounded in reality.

Bethesda has long been a multi-platform developer, though its games typically run best on PC. But after the blockbuster acquisition where Microsoft purchased ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion, there were questions about whether or not future games from the whole of ZeniMax will be Xbox and PC exclusives.

The E3 press conference, at least, seemed to indicate that whatever new titles are in the works, whether it’s Starfield from Bethesda, or Redfall from Arkane, will be coming exclusively to Microsoft’s platforms.

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A bulk of Microsoft and Bethesda’s E3 press conference leaned heavily on Xbox exclusives that will also be coming to Xbox Game Pass on Day One. And it seems Xbox will leverage exclusives and bring its new-gen gaming experience to PC, smart TVs, mobile phones, and even older Xbox Ones.

Check out IGN’s own interview with Pete Hines for deeper dives into Starfield and Redfall. For more from E3 2021, check out everything announced at Xbox’s E3 press conference, and how the exclusivity drought is over for Microsoft.

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Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor.

It’s rare to have an original action movie in the superhero-saturated landscape of 2021. But while The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a sequel to a script that wasn’t based on an already existing IP, it still feels like a stretch to call it original. If you disliked The Hitman’s Bodyguard then this sequel barely improves on it, although it does ambitiously aim to be entirely unlike any other movie simply by being so derivative and out-and-out weird that you might think it’s an okay “WTF” watch. 

Returning to the action-packed and familiar world of Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds), a one time AAA licensed bodyguard — if you’re wondering why we mentioned his license status, it’s actually and bafflingly a key part of the plot — whose life was turned upside down in the last movie, the hero is now struggling to deal with his new status quo as an unlicensed bodyguard. He’s in therapy, he’s on sabbatical, and he’s hating it. But he need not worry as Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek), the wife of his old client/enemy Darius Kincaid (Samuel L Jackson), needs his help. Darius has been kidnapped and while that seems like a movie-length mission to fill the 99-minute run time, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard has no interest in a single narrative or even making a modicum of sense. All this sequel cares about is a high body count, outrageous sex scenes between Jackson and Hayak, explosions, and whether Michael will get his bodyguard license back… really.

As the central trio follows their world-ending MacGuffin to many beautiful locations around Europe, you can see why three of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces took on this lackluster script. Who doesn’t want an all-expenses-paid European holiday? That’s the only relatable part of the film, though. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard doesn’t have the heart or ridiculously sincere power of a Fast and the Furious film but also doesn’t have the action chops of a John Wick. It seems most indebted to classic action flicks like Die Hard and the back catalogs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme but it does not nearly have the range, script, or action set pieces to deliver. Instead, this feels like the kind of film you’d put on Netflix on a Saturday and spend most of the time going “did you just see that?” to anyone else watching as the stakes and silliness get higher and higher. 

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Samuel L Jackson and Ryan Reynolds should be a match made in unexpected team-up heaven. But Reynolds is given a script that makes him Deadpool without the mask, smart mouth, or cool regenerative powers, a twist that would have upped the quality of this movie exponentially. So while he should be the straight man to Jackson’s outlandish (and rather entertaining) hitman, he is, instead, just a zany guy full of quips who loves being a bodyguard more than life itself. Hayek is let loose in the most extreme version of the “fiery Latina” stereotype you’ve ever seen. She’s clearly having the most fun out of everyone, but like most of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, it’s unclear whether it’s meant to be an SNL-level parody of what Hollywood action films are or if this is just what the creators think they could get away with. 

There are moments of absolute madness where you wish the team had committed fully to the bonkers balls to the wall film they clearly wanted to make at some point. The final act offers a few legitimate laughs but also relies on pure nonsense to get us there. The film is at its funniest when Michael becomes victim to the horny hit-people he’s been saddled with, a sort of weasely punching bag for their strange sadomasochistic romance. Antonio Banderas also delivers some solid ridiculousness as the arch-villain that someone in the movie describes as “if Liberace f****d a pair of curtains,” which also sums up the level of humor the film delivers. 

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Whether or not you like The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard will likely not be determined until the final joke of the movie, which is so wildly surreal and odd that I wanted to see the version of the movie which fit with that final ridiculous gambit. If it gets you laughing then maybe this sequel has found a fan, or maybe you’re just in shock, who knows?

If you own an original Oculus Quest, you will soon be able to use Air Link, a feature that allows owners to wirelessly stream PC VR games and content from your gaming computer through your Quest VR without using a cable to connect the two devices. Previously, this has only been available on Quest 2.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the feature was coming via a comment he added to his recent post, which teases new features that would arrive as part of the Quest software update v30.

Last month Quest v29 added an update to Air Link, which allowed Quest 2 owners to play PC wireless VR games with a refresh rate of 120hz.

Oculus released its first-generation Quest headset in 2019. It quickly became one of the more popular head-mounted displays because it was a standalone headset that did not require external sensors or multiple cables. Unfortunately, the headset would get discounted just a little over a year after following the announcement of its successor, the Oculus Quest 2, which was released on October 13th, 2020.

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Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

This story contains spoilers for Marvel’s Loki, season 1, episode 2.

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The second episode of Marvel’s Loki has concluded with quite the major reveal, introducing a significant character from the Thor comics to the MCU.

In the closing scenes of the second episode, it is revealed that the cloak and hooded variant that Loki and Agent Mobius have been hunting is not, in fact, simply just an identical variant of the God of Mischief. Instead, it is Lady Loki, a female variant of our protagonist, played by Sophia Di Martino.

Lady Loki is a fairly major part of the recent-ish Asgardian mythology of Marvel comics. She was introduced in 2008 as part of J. Michael Straczynski’s famed run on Thor, in which Loki was reborn as a woman following the apocalyptic events of Ragnarok. Born into a body originally intended for Lady Sif, Loki lived as a woman for a lengthy period, extending through to the Dark Reign storyline in which she teamed up with Norman Osborn.

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In the comics, Loki is both gender fluid and also able to take the form of a number of Loki variations, Kid Loki being a particularly popular form. It’s part of the character’s trickster personality; regardless of if they are a man, woman, or child, they are always Loki. The MCU may well be taking a slightly different approach to this, in that these gender/form variations of Loki are present in different timelines, rather than the choice of the prime “sacred” timeline Loki. This second episode has already confirmed variants that include a Frost Giant and a Hulk Loki, but further episodes and more time spent with Lady Loki may reveal more about the MCU’s Loki lore.

This all links back to the recent confirmation that Loki is gender fluid, as seen in his Time Variance Authority file.

For more from Loki, be sure to check out our episode 2 review, as well as our deep-dive on Loki’s evolution from villain to an agent of chaos.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Loki, the latest MCU TV show streaming on Disney+, has finally arrived, and brought with it no shortage of time traveling weirdness. The show brings Tom Hiddleston back to the MCU alongside newcomers like Owen Wilson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

The premise is pretty odd, but on par with Marvel’s trickster god: Loki, after escaping his pre-determined timeline with the Tesseract back in Endgame, has been recruited by an extradimensional bureaucracy known as the TVA, or Time Variance Authority. The TVA’s job is to maintain the timeline based on the whims of the mysterious and secretive Time-Keepers. One TVA agent, Mobius (Wilson), decides that rather than punish Loki with removal from the timeline altogether, he wants to team up and use Loki’s expertise to help track down a criminal who is hopping through time and besting the TVA at every turn.

That criminal, unfortunately, just so happens to be a version of Loki–a different time traveling variant who is cooking up a potentially dangerous scheme.

This week’s episode saw Loki and Mobius buckling down to solve the mystery, buddy cop style. And, just as they’re beginning to really close in on the variant, Mobius reveals that there are an abundance of Lokis across the timeline. He even shows some projections of what they might look like–everything from a hulking full-blooded frost giant version to other monstrous variations. But by the end of Episode 2, the Loki responsible for the chaos is revealed–in the form of a woman.

Fans of the comics will already be extremely familiar with Loki’s shapeshifting abilities and the trickster’s many alter-egos, including the popular “Lady Loki,” a female version who became the primary incarnation for a time back in the early ’00s. The Lady Loki form wasn’t a conscious choice on Loki’s part at the time, but rather a botched reincarnation where Loki was able to take over a body intended for Sif. For several years, Lady Loki used this unexpected form to manipulate and trick her way into positions of power, such as Norman Osborn’s villainous cabal during the Dark Reign storyline, before she eventually reverted back to her male form.

This idea was, of course, informed by the actual Norse mythology that Marvel’s Asgardians draw from. In many myths, Loki shapeshifts into everything from an old woman to various animals.

In the comics, though Loki had inhabited other forms before, the popularity of Lady Loki opened the door for Marvel to begin experimenting with new Loki forms–including a kid version and a young adult version nicknamed lkol. Usually these versions were brought about by various deaths and reincarnations–after all, Loki is technically immortal, so even outside the wacky rules of death for comic book heroes, he can do things like that.

In the show, however, it seems that these alternate Lokis are taking a slightly different route. Rather than being reincarnations, they’re “variants” in the timeline–meaning that the Lady Loki we see at the very end of Episode 2 is acting autonomously and independently from the Loki we’ve known in the MCU. This doesn’t necessarily rule out her origin as a reincarnation from whatever timeline she escaped, but it does mean it’s unlikely we’re going to see a one-to-one translation of any of Lady Loki’s comic book stories.

This is made more obvious by the fact that her design is completely different from the comic book version, with short blond hair and a costume that more closely resembles the one the kid and teenage versions of Loki have worn in the past. In addition, it’s similarly worth noting that she has displayed considerable power in possessing people and hopping from body to body, so the version we saw in this episode may or may not be her “final form”.

The episode concludes with Lady Loki “bombing” the sacred timeline with reset charges that create branches–the multiverse Ms. Minutes warned us about back in Episode 1.

There are still plenty of unanswered questions to tackle, given how early we are in the series. Where did this Loki come from, how did she get here, and why create a multiverse? How and why is she targeting the TVA and traveling through time to begin with? Whatever the answers, it all likely spells bad news for everyone but her.

Loki will continue on Disney+ with new episodes every Wednesday.

This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s Loki episode 2, ‘The Variant’, now available to view on Disney+. To remind yourself of where we left off, check out our Loki episode 1 review.

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Loki’s second episode is just as funny as the first, and while it suffers from similar issues of dramatic framing, its flimsy sentimentality is limited to a handful of scenes. The show works best when it’s a comedy — or at least, when its more serious elements are tongue-in-cheek — and its latest entry doesn’t waste much time getting to the point.

While the premiere was mostly set-up, the show’s second chapter immediately begins playing around with time. It opens in what seems like the Renaissance era, before a cheeky sliding-timeline text spins like a slot machine, revealing the setting to be a 1980s Ren Faire. Time may as well be historical cosplay to the Time Variance Authority; they see little difference between past and future when events are supposedly predetermined. However, they didn’t count on being ambushed at every turn by a murderous, hooded “Variant,” revealed last week to be a different version of Loki.

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The Loki we know (Tom Hiddleston) has taken up a desk job under the tutelage of Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), a sentient, clock-faced equivalent of Clippy from Microsoft Office. This setting resembles one of Takia Waititi’s dryly funny Thor shorts prior to Thor: Ragnarok, and it makes for an appropriately silly reintroduction, even though it skips over much of what Loki has actually been learning at the TVA. Subsequent scenes are forced to catch the audience up on what the characters already know about time travel, though these generally take the form of banter, rather than characters sitting around to explain things.

The exposition moves smoothly along whenever the grandiose, self-serious Loki shares the screen with the laid-back Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), a disconnect that informs the show’s comedic premise. Loki is at the mercy of forces infinitely more powerful than himself — so powerful that he’s treated like a lackey, or a sideshow — so his usual bag of tricks won’t cut it.

After a briefing that reveals a number of previous Loki “variants” — a Frost Giant, a Hulk-Loki, and a smiling Olympian — Mobius takes the God of Mischief out into the field, to the Ren Faire where the hooded Variant murdered several Minute Men. The show’s central Loki sports a beige TVA jacket, and he can’t help but resemble a hard-boiled detective, especially when he pretends to deduce the traps laid out for their unit, with Sherlock-esque cognition. Of course, Agent Mobius sees through this ruse, and lets the air out of Loki’s plan to get an audience with the all-powerful Time Keepers (if they even exist).

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Kate Herron directs even these little moments with an eye for performance. The frame holds on a medium two-shot of both actors as they play silently within the tension, only to diffuse it at the precise moment. In addition to the setting and costumes, the actors’ timing and movement make the series feel like a hybrid between police procedural and workplace sitcom. After Mobius convinces his boss Ravonna (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to let him keep working with Loki, a simple scene of Wilson and Hiddleston walking through a hallway becomes instantly hilarious because of their physical dynamic. Mobius remains centered in the frame, unwavering, while Loki crouches and hovers around him as he attempts to explain his actions. Hiddleston’s words are a justification, but his body-language reads like a desperate apology. This dynamic is even replicated in more upbeat moments and adjusted accordingly; while running a temporal experiment during the destruction of Pompeii, Wilson tries to go undetected, but Hiddleston bounces around like a kid in a candy store.

However, while the show’s comedy beats are on point, its dramatic conceit still feels half-baked. The episode gives Mobius a few quiet ruminations, but it’s still unclear how he feels about Loki, and not as a matter of mystery. In one moment, he behaves as if he doesn’t care about what makes Loki tick, while in the next, he treats this as the most important path to catching the Variant, and he gains nothing from showing these two completely different fronts to Loki and Ravonna respectively. Thanks to Wilson’s sincerity, this feels less like duplicitousness or cunning, and more like remnants of conflicting drafts, as if what’s being said in a given moment is what’s most convenient for the plot.

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When Loki inspects the TVA’s files, the show repeats a dramatic beat that didn’t quite land last week, by having him read about the destruction of Asgard, an event familiar to the audience from prior films, but one that has not and will not come to pass for the character himself. Rather than making Loki reflect on (or wrestle with) his essential nature — a key question for him in both episodes — these events are treated akin to Loki mourning people and things he hasn’t actually lost. Hiddleston’s performance is no doubt powerful, but these moments feel disconnected from what the show is trying to achieve. This is not the Loki of the Thor sequels, a regretful man struggling not to waver from a redemptive path. Rather, this is a Loki who, at the height of his galactic conquest, was smacked in the face by failure (at the hands of the Avengers), and was then immediately told by godlike archivists that his only role in the universe is to be a stepping stone for other people’s stories.

There’s no reason Loki can’t be both these things eventually, but the show is in a rush to have its cake and eat it too, fast-forwarding through entire feature films’ worth of storylines in a matter of moments. At this point in Loki’s journey, loss and regret are theoretical. They’re presented at a distance, in the form of documents and clips from other movies, rather than Loki experiencing them first-hand. The most interesting question hovering over the character isn’t whether he can change in the exact same manner as the Loki of the main timeline, but the more existential notion of whether he can change at all now that he’s been plucked out of time, and whether change is real or illusory, given the Time Keepers’ mysterious rules and the faith with which the TVA enforces them.

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This question eventually manifests in a darkly funny climax, with an exciting score by Natalie Holt. In a future ravaged by climate change — you really have to appreciate the dour humor of a “Hurricane Sale” — Loki and the Variant come face to face, in a manner of speaking. The Variant Loki takes on a number of physical forms, invading other people’s consciousness and sauntering through the dimly lit ailes of a department store. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), an employee named Randy (Austin Freeman) and several other characters play host to the Variant’s mind, with each new actor chewing scenery in delightful fashion. It’s incredibly goofy, in the best possible way. The scene leans into self-aware horror, but it also establishes how minuscule Loki’s scheme to dethrone the Time Keepers actually is, compared to the Variant’s plan. More importantly, Loki himself feels insignificant in the face of the Variant’s abilities, a form of mind-control which Loki couldn’t wield without an Infinity Stone in The Avengers.

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Once the Variant reveals herself — this Loki appears to have taken the form of a woman (Sophia Di Martino), though the specific aren’t yet clear — she also uses the TVA’s own technology to create numerous branched timelines all at once. Loki, who had assumed the Variant’s plan involved joining forces with him, learns that he isn’t part of her plan at all. This narrative, in which he had desperately hoped to play the protagonist, casts him out and leaves him at his lowest point.

It’s unclear whether Loki’s decision to follow the Variant (and leave the TVA behind) is a step forward, towards a heroic chase, or a step backwards towards temptation and the pursuit of enormous power. Hiddleston seems to play it as the latter, but the episode ends not only on a note of ambiguity, but of possibility. Anything could happen, now that a chaotic multiverse has been forced into existence, and now that Loki has come face to face with a mysterious, all-powerful visage of himself. Maybe he really can change, in a way that hasn’t been preordained. After all, not all change needs to be good.