Loki: The Complete Second Season (Steelbook) (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Dec 16, 2024
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Various

Release Date(s)

2023 (December 3, 2024)

Studio(s)

Marvel Studios/Disney+ (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

Film/Program Grade: B
Video Grade: A
Audio Grade: A
Extras Grade: B+

Review

[Editor’s Note: Blu-ray versions are not yet available in the States, but the UK Ultra HD package is a 4K + Blu-ray Combo and the BDs are all region.]

With the demise of Thanos and the end of the Infinity Saga, the first three Phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to a decisive close, leaving the door wide open for future superhero storytelling. Moviegoing audiences who were unfamiliar with the depths of comic book lore had been introduced to new concepts gradually, and a franchise that started out with the relatively grounded Iron Man had been able to go full cosmic with the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy without skipping a beat. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to exploring the multiverses that have been part and parcel of the comic book world for many decades, and the final film from Phase Three, Spider-Man: Far From Home offered a peek under the curtain in that regard. The next three Phases of the MCU would tear that curtain wide open with the Multiverse Saga, yet true to the nature of multiverse storytelling, it ended up starting not with a feature film, but rather in multimedia fashion via Mavel’s new streaming series on Disney+. WandaVision may have been the opening salvo, but a few months later, the Multiverse was made manifest with the first season of Loki.

Of course, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) had been strangled to death by Thanos at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, and since that occurred prior to the Snap, he wasn’t resurrected after the Blip. Yet as Avengers: Endgame proved, there are always possibilities, and the time traveling shenanigans while trying to prevent Thanos from obtaining the Infinity Stones meant that there was a loophole to exploit: an earlier iteration of Loki vanished while escaping with the Tesseract. Loki brought this variant into conflict with the Time Variance Authority, an organization that exists outside of time and space in order to monitor any deviations from the accepted timeline(s). Threatened with erasure, Loki cooperated with Agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) in order to track down the even more devious variant Loki, aka Sylvie (Sofia Di Martino). Ultimately, their misadventures led to the Citadel at the end of Time, where He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) awaited his fate at the hands of Sylvie. Her actions unleashed a Multiverse apocalypse with expanding timelines that could no longer be controlled.

Loki Season 2 starts right where the first season left off, with the added wrinkle that Loki is now slipping back and forth uncontrollably through time. He reunites with Mobius, who brings him before the chief TVA technician Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) in order to find a solution. Ouroboros concludes that Loki’s fate is now intertwined with that of the Temporal Loom, a cosmic device that maintains the normal timelines by weaving them together. Unfortunately, Sylvie damaged it when she confronted He Who Remains. To solve both problems, Loki and Mobius end up reuniting with Sylvie as well as Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), while Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and the renegade A.I. Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) are pursuing their own plans for the TVA. All of their paths converge on the nineteenth century inventor Victor Timely (Majors), who Remains the key to unlocking the fate of the universe. Loki Season 2 also stars Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, and Kate Dickie.

The multiverse has been both a blessing and a curse for the MCU: a theoretical blessing, but a practical curse. While it’s opened up and diversified Marvel’s storytelling opportunities, it’s simultaneously hurt the overarching narrative drive of the whole Multiverse Saga, and the presence of multimedia branches like the Disney+ streaming series hasn’t helped. Thanos and the Infinity Stones were never more than a tenuous connection between the films in the first three Phases of the MCU, at least up until Infinity War and Endgame, but it still felt like everything was working toward the same end. That’s not the case with the Multiverse Saga, especially since the interconnected nature of the films and the streaming series has left many viewers in the lurch. Yet even for Disney+ subscribers, it’s still too much information to track. Worse, the introduction of Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror has left Mavel in a bit of a sticky wicket due to his offscreen behavior, leading to a radical revision of their own timeline. A saga that was already feeling rather nebulous is now changing course midstream.

Yet Loki has had an ace up its sleeve in the form of the title character. Marvel doesn’t always get enough credit for its canny casting, but Tom Hiddleston was such a home run that even Marvel detractors can’t deny the fact that his unmatched charisma can paper over a multitude of sins. Pairing him with Owen Wilson was a stroke of genius (although they still haven’t taken advantage of Hiddleston’s amazing Owen Wilson impression, dammit), and adding the eternally likable Ke Huy Quan into the mix certainly doesn’t hurt. Mosaku, Mbatha-Raw, Cordero, and yes, even Majors are all fine actors in their own right, but it’s the triumvirate of Hiddleston, Wilson, and Quan that anchors everything no matter how far and wide the story may range.

Better yet, Loki Season 2 manages to improve on the first season by actively foregrounding the fractured nature of multiverse storytelling. It gleefully plays around with all of the paradoxes that are inherent to time travel narratives—at one point, when Loki explains his plan and just pushes past any holes in the chronology that it may crate, Ouroboros responds with a deadpan “Wow, that makes perfect sense. There’s no flaw in that logic.” Of course, there was, and as they debate which came first on the timeline, Ouroboros comments that “It’s like a snake eating its own tail.” (Insert rimshot here.) As everything becomes more and more fractured, the series embraces that fact with open arms, moving into Edge of Tomorrow territory by forcing Loki to replay things over and over again until he gets it right.

That’s perfectly appropriate, because in many ways, both seasons of Loki are about letting him finally get things right. When Loki had his first debrief with Mobius early in the first season, he reiterated the fact that his biggest goal has always been to achieve the throne that he thinks he deserves. By the end of the second season, he’s finally learned that there’s more to life than thrones, and it’s only at that moment that he actually achieves his heart’s desire—albeit in unexpected fashion. Rather than attempting to rule the universe, he ends up sacrificing everything to save it. There are still consequences for his past actions, and so he ends up bound to his fate much like the Loki of Norse folklore, but in this case he ends up bound to that which holds the Nine Realms together. It’s a throne of a more cosmic sort, which provides a fitting conclusion for the one Saga that Marvel fans have followed the most closely: the Loki Saga.

Cinematographer Isaac Bauman captured Loki Season 2 digitally at 4.5K resolution in ARRIRAW format using ARRI Alexa Mini LF cameras with spherical Tokina Cinema Vista lenses, plus Angénieux Optimo and Zeiss zoom lenses as needed. Post-production work was completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.20:1 rather than 2.39:1 (Bauman felt that 2.39:1 had too much wasted real estate in the letterbox bars when viewed on a 1.78:1 screen, so 2.20:1 gave him 10% more image area to work with). Bauman wanted to create a cohesive whole despite the fact at each specific time period and setting was calibrated to its own unique look, and he also wanted to maintain the vintage feel of the retro-futuristic nature of the TVA. To that end, he applied film emulation LUTs (lookup tables) plus a heavy dose of fake 16mm film grain, and he used diffusion on set as well as adding even more diffusion in post. He also avoided modern LED lighting and stuck with traditional tungsten light sources instead. He opted for less expensive Tokina Cinema lenses because they enhanced the vintage look that he was trying to achieve, and he used a wide-open aperture in order to create shallow focus for the closeups. Loki Season 2 looks quite different than the first season did, and that’s by design.

It’s important to keep all of that in mind while judging the quality of this 4K release. The image isn’t necessarily razor-sharp, but it’s not supposed to be. Between the diffusion and the heavy grain layer, fine details can appear somewhat muted and even hazy. Yet it does look consistent throughout, and that helps to tie everything together, even the abundant visual effects—Loki’s climactic confrontation with the Temporal Loom is almost entirely digital, and yet it blends well with the live-action footage of the other characters who are watching everything go down. Fake or not, the grain field looks reasonably natural, and the greater breathing room provided by encoding the series on a pair of BD-100 discs means that it’s reproduced better than via streaming on Disney+.

Of course, given the nature of the story and the settings, it’s the HDR grade that gives Loki the most room to shine. (In keeping with the welcome new trend for Disney 4K releases, High Dynamic Range for this version is offered in Dolby Vision as well as the basic HDR10 layer that their first few Disney+ streaming releases were limited to.) Loki Season 2 may be softer and hazier than the first season was, but it’s also significantly brighter, and the HDR grade takes full advantage of that fact. There are a few moments where the characters are nearly blinded by the light emanating from the Temporal Loom, and it’s nearly blinding for viewers as well. The rainbow of colors in the Loom itself are dazzling, and the varied color schemes in each time period and/or setting are reproduced accurately. Yet there’s still an overall burnished amber tone to most of the proceedings that looks, well, like vintage tungsten lighting. In other words, everything with this release of Loki Season 2 looks exactly like it should.

Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos. While there are some action-oriented moments in this season of Loki, the best thing about this mix is the way that it takes advantage of the full Atmos soundstage in order to immerse viewers in the varied environments. That’s especially true at the TVA facility, from the pneumatic message tubes zipping around Ouroboros’ workshop to the creaks and groans as the station slowly starts to deteriorate. There’s still plenty of dynamic impact when the action does kick in, but it’s the quieter moments like these that offer the most impressive use of the object-based nature of an Atmos mix. Plus, unlike some older Disney Atmos mixes on physical media, the bass hasn’t been crippled, and it offers some real depth during appropriate moments. The whole track is still mastered at a relatively low level, so you’ll have to adjust accordingly, but doing so doesn’t harm the dynamics in any way. It’s another fine Atmos mix on a Disney physical media release, and it feels good to be able to say that!

Additional audio options include French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, plus English 2.0 Descriptive Audio. Subtitle options include English SDH, French, and Spanish.

Disney’s 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release of Loki: The Complete Second Season is a two-disc set that includes a set of three different art cards. There’s no Blu-ray version currently available, and none of these sets offer any Digital codes, either. (They’re undoubtedly being withheld in order to protect the value of the show on Disney+.) The six episodes are spread across the two discs, with the extras split between them:

DISC ONE (EPISODES 1-3)

Ouroboros (UHD – 45:18)
Breaking Bad (UHD – 49:21)
1893 (UHD – 53:35)

Assembled: The Making of Loki Season 2 (HD – 58:05)

DISC TWO (EPISODES 4-6)

Heart of the TVA (UHD – 48:14)
Science/Fiction (UHD – 44:39)
Glorious Purpose (UHD – 56:10)

Loki Through Time (HD – 6:15)
Gag Reel (HD – 1:46)
Deleted Scenes:
- What Would You Like? (HD – 2:08)
- Key Lime Break (HD – 1:47)
- Roll Call (HD – :53)

Assembled: The Making of Loki Season 2 is a comprehensive look at the production of the show featuring interviews with cast members Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Ke Huy Quan, and Rafael Casal. It also includes interviews with crew members like executive producers Kevin R. Wright and Stephen Broussard; head writer/executive producer Eric Martin; directors/executive producers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead; director Dan Deleeuw; editors Paul Zucker, Emma McCleave, and Calum Ross; visual effects supervisor Christopher Townsend; production designer Kasra Farahani; costume designer Christine Wada; and Isaac Bauman. Naturally, there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes footage as well. This episode of Assembled covers the making of the second season of Loki from conception to production, and while it does spend plenty of time addressing the abundant visual effects that were crafted for the series, it also shows how much effort was put into building a substantial quantity of impressive sets, with VFX being utilized for set extensions. It’s a nice reminder that not everything these days is shot against a blank green screen or else on a Volume stage; there’s still some tangible craftsmanship on display. I’ve always maintained that one good making-of documentary is worth its weight in static talking head interviews, and the quality of Marvel’s Assembled series proves that point.

Loki Through Time opens with a vintage Kevin Feige interview from 2010 where he talks about the casting of Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and then it strolls through memory lane showing on-set interviews with Hiddleston at every stage along the journey to this point: Thor in 2010; The Avengers in 2011; Thor: The Dark World in 2012; Thor: Ragnarok in 2016; Avengers: Infinity War in 2017; and the first season of Loki in 2020. It’s interesting to see Hiddleston talking about Loki’s death in Infinity War and saying decisively that there are no resurrections this time, followed by his mea culpa three years later explaining how they did indeed resurrect him. Usually, these secondary featurettes for Disney+ streaming series are redundant with the content from the Assembled episodes, but this one is well worth a look. On the other hand, the Gag Reel is as disposable as ever, and the Deleted Scenes are a bit perfunctory (they must have had a pretty good lock on the editorial process from early during the production). What Would You Like is just a minor extension of Sylvie’s transition to the McDonald’s, and both Key Lime and Roll Call offer a little bit of flavor that would have just bogged down the narrative flow.

A decent slate of extras led by a very good documentary, uncompressed Atmos audio that hasn’t been crippled, and finally, Dolby Vision as well; in other words, Disney’s Steelbook releases of their MCU Disney+ series have definitely come of age. The lack of Blu-ray copies in the set may be an issue for some people, especially since Disney isn’t releasing separate Blu-ray versions at this point in time. Yet for everyone who is 4K capable, this is the best version of Loki: The Complete Second Season to add to your physical media library. It’s expensive, so keep your eyes peeled for sales in the next few days before Christmas.

- Stephen Bjork

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