Loki Review Season 1 Episode 4 “The Nexus Event”

John F. Trent |

Jun 30, 2021

Loki and Sylvie seem to be out of luck as the moon of Lamentis-1 comes tumbling down, but never fear, sexual attraction and romance with your own variant is here to save the day.

“The Nexus Event” begins with a flashback scene or rather a memory of Ravonna Renslayer that takes us to an alternative Asgard where Sylvie is just a little child playing with her Viking boat when the TVA led by Renslayer show up and capture her.

They take her through the same process we saw Loki go through in episode 1, but she is able to get away by pickpocketing Renslayer’s time pad device just as she is about to face the judge. She uses the device because apparently only seeing it used once was enough for her to figure out the technology.

I guess you can suspend your disbelief on this one, but it is just one of many things in this episode that are just plain dumb.

From there Sylvie apparently goes on the run for years before she eventually discovers she can hide out in nexus events.

Source: Loki

Following this memory, Renslayer goes to meet the Time Keepers. Once she ends her meeting Mobius is waiting for her and begins to ask questions about C-20, the Minuteman who was enchanted by Sylvie back in Episode 2.

Renslayer’s story is way too obviously a load of crap and Mobius clearly doesn’t fall for it. That sets up the drama for this episode as Mobius will continue to try to figure out what happened to C-20 while more “secrets” about the TVA and who they really are, are revealed.

The show then shifts back to Lamentis-1 where Sylvie and Loki sit in the middle of an open area as the moon comes tumbling down on the planet. Meteors crash down around them, but they are in no real danger.

Remember that entire action sequence from Episode 3 where they were dodging the meteors? Apparently, the meteors were only dangerous for about five minutes despite the moon breaking apart and crashing down into the planet. But again in Episode 3 the meteors were harmless following that action scene too.

Source: Loki

The show then introduces a weird sexual attraction and romance subplot between Sylvie and Loki. This attraction almost red lines the TVA’s Sacred Timeline meters and allows Mobius to locate them.

Apparently, you can have a nexus event within a nexus event. So the entire method of them locating Sylvie within nexus events in Episode 2 is completely undermined by this romantic attraction.

That means that all of the exposition they’ve provided through three episodes is completely useless as it all goes out the window. Sexual attraction between Lokis conquers all!

Not only is the storytelling here absolutely horrid, but they try and make the moon breaking apart and crashing onto the planet pretty. If you didn’t know the moon was crashing down on the planet, the scene feel is almost reminiscent of The Little Mermaid when Sebastian sings “Kiss The Girl.” It’s really sick and twisted.

After they are captured, they aren’t immediately pruned or wiped out of existence for who knows why. Again a contradiction from the previous episodes.

There’s some absolutely horrendous dialogue between Mobius and Loki as he is thrown into a time prison, where he faces down Jamie Alexander’s Sif on repeat similar to Doctor Strange’s battle against Dormammu.

Source: Loki

Apparently Sif slapping Loki a bunch of times is enough to break him in less than a day. It’s truly pathetic and shows just how terrible the show treats Loki as a character. He’s nearly unrecognizable as the would-be conqueror of Earth who led a massive alien invasion and almost defeated an entire team of Avengers.

I can’t emphasize how truly terrible the characterization of Loki is in this episode. Not only is he a lovesick puppy pining over Sylvie, but he’s completely weak-willed as well. Never would I have ever described Loki as such before this show.

The show tries to build mystery off a number of ham-fisted conversations between Mobius and Renslayer and Mobius and B-15. First, with Renslayer he’s prevented from interviewing Sylvie. It’s in this conversation that we get a reason for Loki and Sylvie being kept alive. Apparently, they want to discover the source of the nexus spike within the nexus event.

However, not allowing your investigator to investigate one of the suspects makes absolutely no sense. The only reason for Mobius not being allowed to interrogate Sylvie is because they have her interact with B-15 later in the episode.

As for Mobius’ conversation with B-15, it’s all about setting up B-15’s interaction with Sylvie and to show that she’s wavering in her commitment to the TVA.

We get another Loki and Sif moment, and this is the worst one as he is literally on his knees groveling in front of her and talking about just how terrible a person he is. I repeat this is not Loki.

Next, there’s a lot more bad dialogue between Mobius and Loki as Mobius attempts to discover what caused the nexus spike. Maybe the only good thing out of this conversation is that Mobius does figure out that Loki has been pining for Sylvie and he rebukes him for it.

Following this conversation, Loki is tossed back into the cell with the time looping Sif.

Source: Loki

The show switches to B-15 where she confronts Sylvie about the enchantment she used on her that apparently showed her, her previous memories like C-20. She takes her back to Roxxcart and allows Sylvie to enchant her to show her the memories again. The two then decide to seemingly team up together.

However, this is out of character for Sylvie. She’s literally at Roxxcart and has B-15 enchanted. Instead of having her undo the collar and take the time pad device and escaping, she remains in custody and puts her faith in B-15. It’s literally the opposite of everything they showed us about her in the previous episode. She doesn’t like to work with others and prefers to work alone.

While B-15 and Sylvie are off at Roxxcart, Mobius is back in Renslayer’s office wrapping up the case based off his boring conversation with Loki. However, the case isn’t completely closed as they still need to prune Loki and Sylvie. But for some reason they need to do it in front of the Time Keepers. No explanation why is given.

Mobius starting to doubt the TVA decides to switch time pad devices with Renslayer. He then discovers that Renslayer was lying to him and that C-20 was perfectly fine. From there he decides to betray the TVA and assist Loki. For a company man, he turned pretty quickly.

However, Mobius’ plan is foiled as soon as it was hatched. Renslayer discovered she had Mobius’ device. He has him pruned and then proceeds to take Loki along with Sylvie to the Time Keepers.

Once they get into the elevator that takes them to the Time Keepers, Sylvie asks what the nexus event was that caused the TVA to come after her. Renslayer claims she doesn’t know. I’m sure that conversation might mean something later, but in this episode it was just filler. I guess you could argue it was more evidence of the TVA being strange, but at this point did you really need anymore?

Once they confront the Time Keepers, we find out that you can’t even understand what they are saying. I watched it twice and still had no idea what the second one says. It wasn’t until I turned on the closed captioning that I figured it out.

Source: Loki

The meeting with the Time Keepers also makes no sense as the Time Keepers just command the TVA to delete them. However, that order is not executed as B-15 shows up and frees Loki and Sylvie.

The most idiotic battle of the show takes place. Sylvie who previously man handled TVA guards in the past episode, now struggles against two of them because the show wants to give you a final fight scene. However, the fight isn’t earned through writing.

It eventually comes to an end and surprise, surprise the Time Keepers aren’t actually real. It’s the Wizard of Oz all over again. They are machines.

Loki then plans to confess his love for Sylvie, but he never actually finishes as Renslayver recovers quickly from being knocked out and prunes Loki in a surprise attack. Sylvie then easily disarms her and keeps her prisoner planning to discover what exactly is going on with the Time Keepers.

The episode then appears to end, but there is a post-credit scene and Loki is actually still alive and he wakes up on a planet with an urban hellscape. There he is confronted by what appear to be four other Lokis including Kid Loki, Old Man Loki, Black Loki, and Crocodile Loki.

Source: Loki

The Verdict

This episode is actually worse than Episode 3. Not only is it boring, but it adds in a hefty dose of stupid to go along with it. The show breaks all of the previous rules it set up for itself. But maybe the most egregious problem with this episode is just how much it destroys Loki’s character. He’s now a lovesick mewling, groveling whiner with no backbone whatsoever. The only redeeming aspect of the show is the post-credit scene.

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