LOKI (Disney+ Series)

[Raziel]

If Miss Minutes doesn't end up being Mephisto I'll have one of those head canon riots!

[JonnyLaw]

1 hour ago, John from Cincinnati said:

 

I understand it’s origins as a cost-cutting move, but I don’t tend to think of that as the defining feature of a bottle episode as much as an episode featuring character development while characters are stuck in one location for the episode.

Edited June 24, 2021 by JonnyLaw

[Casey]

Miss Minutes is actually Kang, voiced by Tara Strong but played by Jonathan Majors. Boom, figured it out, shut the thread down.

[Craig H]

Something I thought of while re-watching this episode last night - Sylvie isn't a Loki.

It wouldn't make sense. This series established there is one single timeline and universe and the MCU doesn't have parallel universes except for when it's allowed by the Time Keepers, presumably like with the time heist stuff in Endgame. So you're not going to have a female Loki. Or if it's not a female Loki, then it's Loki projecting themselves as a woman from...birth or childhood? Also, Sylvie wouldn't have experienced childhood different than Loki.

Something doesn't add up with her character or...the writers didn't realize they made something that shouldn't work.

[Raziel]

I wouldn't overthink it, Endgame broke it's own time travel rules with Old Cap.

[JonnyLaw]

It works, she’s a refugee/escaped variant from a divergent timeline pruned by the TVA. That’s true whether she is a Loki or not. If she is a Loki, being/presenting female is presumably what caused her timeline to be divergent, just like the Loki they showed who stayed Frost Giant blue.  

[odessasteps]

Seeing someone compare to it an RTD/Moffat Dr Who episode before I warched it ruined it for me.  

[EVA]

On 6/24/2021 at 1:59 PM, JonnyLaw said:

I understand it’s origins as a cost-cutting move, but I don’t tend to think of that as the defining feature of a bottle episode as much as an episode featuring character development while characters are stuck in one location for the episode.

They aren’t stuck in one location, though?  The action on Lamentis takes place across at least 5 different sets. They go on a train ride for a great distance!  It’s a whole journey!  They are constantly in motion throughout this story.  If being stuck on one planet makes something a bottle episode, then roughly 80% of all TV ever made is a bottle episode because the characters were confined to Planet Earth.

[JonnyLaw]

1 hour ago, EVA said:

They aren’t stuck in one location, though?  The action on Lamentis takes place across at least 5 different sets. They go on a train ride for a great distance!  It’s a whole journey!  They are constantly in motion throughout this story.  If being stuck on one planet makes something a bottle episode, then roughly 80% of all TV ever made is a bottle episode because the characters were confined to Planet Earth.

I was responding to it not being a bottle episode due to the budget/effects, but this an absolutely fair point (although they’re on a moon, not a planet). That said, given the show’s possible setting during all known time throughout the entire universe, them being trapped on one moon for a brief period of time, serving mainly as character development, if it’s not a bottle episode, it’s relatively the same thing serving the same plot purpose.

[TheVileOne]

That means Daredevil had at least two bottle episodes. 

[EVA]

10 hours ago, JonnyLaw said:

That said, given the show’s possible setting during all known time throughout the entire universe, them being trapped on one moon for a brief period of time, serving mainly as character development, if it’s not a bottle episode, it’s relatively the same thing serving the same plot purpose.

I think what you’re saying here speaks to the general confusion I see about what a “bottle episode” is these days.  And I think a lot of that confusion comes from the term itself—people think that a bottle episode is when the show is being “bottled up,” being confined to smaller space/time/etc., literally making the show smaller for an episode. But that’s not at all what the term refers to!  It actually refers to the exact opposite phenomenon—making an episode feel just as full as a “regular” episode despite significant constraints (smaller budget, core cast/sets only).  It’s a reference to it being like a magic trick, “pulling a genie out of a bottle.”  Just think, if that guy had said that they “pulled a rabbit out of a hat” instead, they’d be called “hat episodes” and there would probably be a lot less confusion.

And the idea that bottle episodes primarily serve a function as character development episodes is another misconception.  You can absolutely propel a narrative forward in massive ways using only core cast/sets, and many actual bottle episodes do.

The truth is—and I’m going to sound like a pro wrestler scolding smart marks for using insider terms here—there’s no way to tell if something is a bottle episode unless you can see the budget and know the intent of the show runner.  For instance, “Leslie and Ron” from the final season of PARKS & REC certainly looks like a bottle episode on the surface (it’s focused on two main characters who are locked in a single space over night), but in actuality it was one of the first stories conceived for that season and is intended to be the emotional heart of that season’s/the series’ story.  They’re locked in together because that was the best way to resolve those characters’ conflict and put an exclamation point on the show’s overall theme, not because the show NEEDED to get smaller for that episode.

Words have to mean something! And, really, the people to blame here are a certain generation of TV bloggers, who don’t actually know how the TV business works, incorrectly using a term they don’t understand to the point that it trains the general public to use it the wrong way, too.  I’ve seen people at major publications (LOOKING AT YOU, RINGER) try to say that stuff like “International Assassin” and “Blackwater” and “Teddy Perkins” are bottle episodes, and I’m just like…what? Y’all are journalists?

Anyway, yes, “Lamentis” is not a bottle episode.  It’s just a regular ol’ episode of TV that happens to focus on two of the main characters going off on an adventure away from the main action.  And a very good one, at that!

[EVA]

Just gonna go ahead and double post:

Through 3 episodes, this is by far the best of the new MCU shows IMO.  One of the most under-appreciated things in TV/film is how hard it is to write a really *good* scene of two characters talking at a table.  And, despite all the sci-fi trappings, I would say that the defining characteristic of LOKI thus far has been “Loki sits at a table.”  And all those scenes are really good!  The scene of Loki/Sylvie talking on the train this week was one of the most delightful scenes I’ve seen in the whole MCU in recent years.

I think one of the reasons people are breaking their brains on “Lamentis” is that, in the age of short-run streaming shows where everything has to be about PLOT PLOT PLOT, it’s rare to see a streaming show really take it’s time to build some characters, to take interesting detours—which used to be one of the hallmarks of TV but has started to fall by the wayside with this push to make everything “binge-able” or “like an x-hour movie.”

But, to me, this is what the MCU show should be about: taking what would’ve been a 5 to 10 minute beat in the movie version of LOKI and letting it stretch its legs for 30 to 40 minutes and turning it into something deeper.  In just half an hour, they got me all the way in on the Sylvie/Loki relationship. I care about it more than I care about most things in the MCU at this point.  This was masterful TV writing.

[odessasteps]

It must be a sign of how uninteresting this episode was, plot wise, that the discussion here has been dominated by storytelling minutiae. 

 

(I always thought the term was derived from "ship in a bottle.")

[EVA]

Re: theories of Lamentis being a Sylvie  enchantment or the broken tempad being a Loki illusion...

I considered both as the episode was ongoing, but with the way it played out, I think what we saw should be taken at face value.  If they were going to swerve viewers, it needed to be paid off in this episode.  Doing a big cliffhanger and then coming back next episode to say “Psyche! That didn’t matter!” would be big-time shmuck bait, and the writing has been too smart for that sort of stuff so far.

[JonnyLaw]

I think I agree about them needing to pay it off, or at least hint at it more, in this episode, but then again the other likely option is the TVA showing up and apprehending them in the nick of time. That also seems less than satisfying, as it would be easier to let them just perish in the apocalypse on Lamentis-1, unless they need proof they’re dead.

[The Natural]

Happy Loki Eve!

[The Natural]

New character poster. Might we meet the Time Keepers tomorrow? I'll say yes.

[JonnyLaw]

Ok, that middle one does resemble Kane’s head more than I first thought. I’ll still be surprised if that’s who it turns out to be.

[AxB]

5 hours ago, JonnyLaw said:

Ok, that middle one does resemble Kane’s head more than I first thought. I’ll still be surprised if that’s who it turns out to be.

Kane?

Spoiler

 

[JonnyLaw]

Dammit, I mean yes, kinda sorta when he was unmasked?

[JonnyLaw]

AxB’s post caused me to completely blank out for like ten minutes on the name Kang.

[Casey]

I bet it's a fake out and we meet Old Man Loki.

[The Natural]

Just watched episode 4, it's eventful and might be the best of the bunch. Sylvie is kidnapped by the TVA as a child but escape. The TVA rescue her and Loki from the doomed planet. Loki tells Mobius what Sylvie told him that the TVA is made up of variants. Mobius doesn't believe Loki sending him to a Time Cell with a surprise cameo, Lady Sif! Always enjoyed Lady Sif in the MCU. It's when Loki cut her hair so he gets punched and a knee to the nads on repeat. Mobius takes Ravonna's TimePad to investigate Loki's claims and finds she got rid of the Minute Man who Sylvie enchanted saying she knows a life of her's before the TVA. Mobius frees Loki and when they return, Ravonna is flanked by MinuteMen and the bastard prunes Mobius. B-13 who was enchanted by Sylvie in Ep2 asks her to show her her past life. She frees Loki/Sylvie when Ravonna takes them to the Time Keepers. A fight happens and Sylvie decapitate a Time Keeper discovering these are androids. Ravonna prunes Loki and wants Sylvie to do her but Sylvie refused wanting to find out everything on the TVA. There's a mid-credits scene as Loki think he's in Hel but will be if he doesn't move it. We see Richard E Grant as Loki in comic accurate costume spandex with other Loki's. Best thing is Richard E. Grant's getup.

Edited June 30, 2021 by The Natural

[The Natural]

[Casey]

Loki falling in love with an alternative timeline version of himself is going to rip a hole in the multiverse confirmed.