Review: Marvel's 'Loki' returns for a scrappy, brain-spinning Season 2 to save time itself

It’s time for Tom Hiddleston’s fan-favorite trickster god to save us from an onset of Marvel fatigue.

“Loki” remains the most brain-spinning of the Disney+ superhero shows in its new six-episode second season (★★★ out of four; streaming weekly Thursdays at 9 p.m. EDT/6 PDT). And Hiddleston’s complex title character, the Marvel debut of Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan and a significant appearance by Jonathan Majors nicely ground the unabashedly bizarre, chronologically challenged adventure series. It couldn't come sooner, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe films are starting to feel a little repetitive and a plethora of disparate TV series haven't helped.

This go-round picks up with the Season 1 cliffhanger, in which Loki – the former Avengers villain who's now working for the Time Variance Authority, which protects the Sacred Timeline – returns from the End of Time and finds a different version of the TVA ruled by Kang the Conqueror. Kang is a villainous variant of its creator, cryptically named He Who Remains (both played by Majors).

Honestly, Loki’s got bigger problems: He’s now glitching between timelines (aka “time-slipping”), which repeatedly brings him back to his normal status quo before painfully ripping him out of it. But wait, there’s more, because branches are popping out of the Sacred Timeline willy-nilly and the temporal loom needs fixing, post haste. (Not to mention that the entire TVA workforce is composed of alternate-timeline variants, so everybody’s feeling the existential crisis.)

Loki, once again partnered with sweet-toothed TVA agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), traverses past, present and future in a quest to save everyone from a bad time. Yet Hiddleston also exudes just enough of the mischievous nature that made audiences fall in love with him in the earliest days of the MCU. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) is an ally facing a change of heart about “pruning” variants, while O.B. (Quan) is introduced as the TVA’s earnest IT honcho, who deals with all sorts of disasters in eccentric fashion. Fresh off his supporting actor Oscar win for "Everything Everywhere All at Once," Quan gives the show a refreshing buzz.

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There are rogue elements at work as well, including former TVA boss Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), anthropomorphic cartoon clock Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) and “Loki” rookie Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal). Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), a variant who ventured with Loki to the End of Time and was a highlight of the first season, also returns: One of Loki’s main missions is to find her, while she is among characters trying to figure out who they are in the multiverse.

After an important appearance in the latest “Ant-Man” movie as Kang, Majors is back as He Who Remains as well as third variant Victor Timely, an enigmatic inventor Loki and Mobius run into at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. His offscreen legal troubles (Majors has a court date this month for domestic violence allegations) and complicated MCU future aside, he’s undoubtedly a talented actor and in a key role, his Timely adds jittery chaos to the mix.

At its best, “Loki” leans self-aware, absurd and nonsensical: People with too much free time have created an AI version of what a Marvel movie directed by quirky auteur Wes Anderson would look like, and this show is pretty much that except made by humans. Sometimes you feel like you need a theoretical physics degree to understand it all. Strong character work makes up for some of that, as does a knowing sense of humor. A riffing bit with OB and Loki in the past that affects the present playfully sends up the narrative's high-mindedness. And if you dig something darker, somebody is exploded into space spaghetti.

The new season of “Loki” is a scrappy time-travel caper, a ticking-clock sci-fi thriller and a workplace comedy all rolled together, and a reminder that oddball creativity still goes a long way in the MCU.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Loki': Tom Hiddleston returns for a scrappy Disney+ second season