Loki Review – Season 1 Episode 3 “Lamentis”

John F. Trent |

Jun 23, 2021

Source: Loki

After encountering the female Loki variant in the second episode and following her through a time portal, Loki eventually ends up on the planet Lamentis-1.

“Lamentis” begins with a wine mom flashback scene as the female Loki has some kind of tropical alcoholic drink with the captured TVA Minuteman. It’s eventually revealed this is part of female Loki’s enchantment powers as she attempts to extract the location of the Time Keepers from the Minuteman.

The scene is completely useless and unnecessary as we already knew that female Loki had obtained the location from a sentence of dialogue in the past episode. It’s just added fluff to attract Disney’s new wine mom audience they want so desperately. Maybe they’ll get it, but at the same time more scenes like this will drive away former MCU fans much like they have in their comics department.

After wasting three minutes of your life watching this wine mom scene, the show finally reverts to where it left off in “The Variant.”

Sylvie has actually traveled to the TVA and discovers she can’t use her powers, but proceeds to beat down every single TVA agent she comes across. It’s something Loki wasn’t able to do given he was actually subdued and captured by the TVA almost immediately in the first episode. Remember she’s the superior Loki after all.

Upon first viewing the combat is somewhat decent, but if you look at it a second time, it’s a whole lot worse than what you might see on WWE. I think at one point female Loki ends up hitting one guard with the palm of her hand instead of her balled fist as they want you to believe.

After dispatching these TVA guards, Loki eventually arrives. He gets his daggers and begins to follow the trail of bodies left behind by female Loki. She continues to beat down TVA agents with ease.

Eventually Loki catches up with her and the two duke it out. The fight is reminiscent of the Boba Fett fight from The Mandalorian Season 2 finale. Female Loki gets in the first blow, Loki eventually gets on his own footing, and the two end in a dumb draw.

Renslayer shows up and Loki uses a teleportation device, which transports the two Lokis to Lamentis-1, hence the title of the episode.

Upon arriving the two wrestle around over the teleportation device. Female Loki eventually wins and grabs the teleportation device. But upon trying to use it, she discovers it’s no longer working. She’s quite perplexed.

Loki eventually recovers, uses some magic, finally, and reacquires the device. However, their duel is interrupted as a a piece of moon debris comes flying through the building they were in.

The camera pans out and we get a shot of a strip mine. We are told it’s a foreign planet, but the only thing really out of this world about it is the filter they put on it. It literally looks like a mine. It doesn’t feel like an alien planet at all. The construction vehicles are vehicles you’ve seen on the side of the road.

More debris comes crashing down and they have to make a run for it, eventually finding safety in a shack. The whole point of the episode is then revealed as they tell us that they need to find an energy source capable of recharging the teleportation device.

They leave shack and the debris mysteriously doesn’t come down aiming at them anymore despite the moon surrounding the planet where the debris is coming from is getting closer and closer to the planet.

The special effects budget must have all been spent on the purple filter.

The two easily walk through the mine and there’s a bunch of dialogue making you know that these two characters are completely different. In fact, they are so different female Loki doesn’t even want to go by Loki anymore instead going by Sylvie, the name of Enchantress in the comics.

The two eventually show up in an abandoned town. Nothing happens besides some bickering. They eventually make their way to a house on the edge of town. Stopping at the house is completely pointless as the woman gives them instructions to a train that can take them to the city where the ark is located. However, Sylvie already knew all this apparently.

The scene appears to be put in place to show just how dumb both versions of Loki are. Like I said completely useless except to denigrate the two protagonists.

The two Lokis then arrive at the train station where the two have to sneak on with Loki disguising himself as a guard with a captured Sylvie. When things start going sideways, Sylvie enchants another guard. And the two get on the train.

It’s low effort and the idea of sneaking onto a train being a challenge for both of these characters is insulting. Especially since we just saw Loki use teleportation magic to get the upper hand on Sylvie earlier in the episode. It’s almost like he could have just teleported onto the train.

Once on the train, the episode grounds to a halt. There’s some absolutely terrible dialogue about what seat they should sit in and how terrible their plan to get on the train was. They then bicker about sleeping with Sylvie specifically saying she won’t sleep on the train.

After Loki reminisces about his mother and the two talk about their different experiences being Lokis, Sylvie tells them to take some rest. And then she proceeds to fall asleep. Remember just moments ago she said she wouldn’t be falling asleep.

The best part of the episode is when she wakes up and Loki is out of his disguise and enjoying himself to what sounds like an Irish jig. It’s actually entertaining and you want to be throwing a beer back with Loki.

While it is the most enjoyable part of the episode, it’s also completely out of character for Loki and much more like Thor. Not only that he puts their entire plan at risk by shedding his disguise, something Loki would not do.

From there a fight ensues after a guard asks for their tickets and instead of producing the tickets, Loki magics a bunch of fireworks from his hands. The guards proceed to attack them. Again the fight choreography is lacking and Loki gets beat down by two humans and thrown out of the train. This is the same Loki who almost conquered Earth and manipulated the Avengers. Now, he’s getting tossed out of train windows by mere humans.

After being tossed out of the train, Sylvie jumps after him, needing the teleportation device. It’s for naught as the device is apparently destroyed in the fall.

Nevertheless, the two continue their journey to the city on foot. When they get there they aim to board the ark and make sure it leaves the planet. However, upon taking up this new plan, Sylvie reveals the whole idea of seeking information about the ark was completely and utterly pointless because she already knew about it and that it actually doesn’t end up leaving the planet because it gets destroyed.

As they try to reach the ark, the series’ low budget special effects and fight choreography are on full display. The fighting is really, really bad. There are some scenes where Loki just shoves people and they go flying. But remember just a few short scenes ago similar guards threw him out of a train. So not only is the fight choreography bad, but the whole premise makes no sense.

The show ends with the ark being destroyed and Sylvie and Loki walking in the opposite direction. It’s actually a really good pickle to be in and it’s somewhat interesting to see how they will get out of it.

But everything leading up to it was boring and drab. This was the worst episode yet, and it doesn’t look like things are going to be getting any better.

The Verdict

The third episode of Loki is the worst episode of the entire series so far, yet it is also the one with the most action. However, the action scenes are uncompelling and drop you out of the show. Not only are the action scenes lacking, but the set design and graphics are just plain bad. It’s just not what you expect from Marvel Studios and is really poor quality. There are also plenty of story contradictions that will be hard to swallow for even the shallowest of viewers. And finally, as with the previous two episodes, it was just plain dull and boring with dialogue that just drags on and never feels like it’s going to end.

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