New series Loki continues to impress and episode 3, Lamentis is both gorgeous to look at and adds to the mystery

Last week we reported on the role Sophia di Martino may (or may not) be playing in Loki, as well as touching on the mystery of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) itself. The latest episode, Lamentis, gave us plenty of insight into di Martino’s character, adding to her mystery as well as the TVA’s. Some spoilers ahead if you’ve not yet seen it (and why not?!)

Lamentis

First the episode itself. Marvel has produced a detailed guide (spoiler-packed) so we’ll just cover our favourite points. If (like some of us at Cultbox) you remember watching Star Trek before we called it The Original Series, you will have seen many episodes where Kirk and crew beam down to a planet with a brightly coloured sky, painted rocks and a vivid (if compact) setting. Rich tales were told with bold window dressing. Now imagine a modern budget and vast amounts of CGI, sound, music, camera-work and HD. Welcome to the planet Lamentis, about to become a catastrophe.

There’s almost no TVA this week; it’s all about Loki getting to know the new variant and we get superb performances and chemistry from Tom Hiddlestone and Sophia di Martino.

The plot is high concept, with might spaceships, planetary desolation, apocalypse, a bar on a train from the back of beyond to the escape ship as a planet and its moon decide to test what happens with two large bodies try to occupy the same space. It’s all wonderful.

We’ve felt Loki was taking its time to build, but this week it surely delivered. It also made us think just how well Marvel would make Doctor Who if it gave it this kind of treatment.

Moving onto the mysteries…

Who is Sophia di Martino playing?

As we said last time, di Martino seemed to be Lady Loki, bar one language version calling her Sylvie. Come this week she rejects being call Loki, and is called Sylvie. Like the Marvel character she’s also an enchantress. So far though it’s not clear if Marvel is teasing, or if she really is the character from the comics, not a version of Loki.

What about the TVA?

While chatting (they do a lot of that when not fighting or running), Sylvie drops the fact TVA operatives are just variants like them. This isn’t what Mobius told Loki, so even more doubts about what the real story behind the TVA actually is.

Meanwhile it looks like certain death for our heroes/villains (delete as appropriate), so we can’t wait for next week.