Review: Loki, "Glorious Purpose" | Season 2, Episode 6
Back in Loki’s second season premiere, the frazzled God of Mischief arrived back at the TVA with one wish: more time. He needed more time to think about He Who Remains’ offer. More time to talk things through with Sylvie. More time to catch his breath. Tonight’s season (series?) finale finally closes that loop, giving Loki literal centuries of time to figure out the best course of action. And yet I can’t help coming away from it with the same sort of feeling Loki had at the start. I wish we had more time—literally more episodes—to allow this fascinating but flawed season to land with an even greater sense of cohesion.
Two years into the grand Disney+ TV show experiment, it’s clear that six was the wrong number of episodes for Marvel to default to per season. It’s too much time to pace these projects like a movie, but not enough time to pace them like a proper TV show. And it’s left just about every show feeling overstuffed, underbaked, or oddly balanced in some way. (That WandaVision is a bit of an exception makes sense when you remember it got a nine-episode run with an explicit episodic structure.)
Where tonight’s finale works best is as a singular episode. From that “Centuries Later” title card onwards, I literally never knew where this episode was going. And that’s a really exciting feeling for a genre so rife with formulas and tropes. “Glorious Purpose” takes the time loop premise that’s been baked into this season and turns it up to 11 (the episode is literally titled the same thing as the series premiere!!), increasing the stakes at each turn before delivering a boldly somber ending deeply rooted in character growth. On paper, and in practice, there’s a lot to like here.
The trouble comes when you consider this episode within the scope of this six-episode season (or even this 12-episode series) and realize just how many threads it drops. There’s no return to the General Dox/X-5 throughline? No real presence for Renslayer or Miss Minutes? No emotional resolution to the Victor Timely stuff? While I praised the first four episodes of the season for their ensemble-focus, in retrospect that now feels like an odd choice for a season that was building towards such a Loki-focused final set of episodes. With more time, I think the show could’ve balanced the arcs of its supporting characters with the arc of its leading man. In just six episodes, however, the equilibrium feels off.
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