A fun fact from Disney’s behind the scenes of the recent Loki series is that the God of Mischief has been on the big screen for less than two hours out of the fifty or so available in The Infinity Saga. Two hours across ten years, and yet this character is so incredible popular. I saw one of those weird bracket competitions on Twitter for who was the MCU’s best villain and it came down to Thanos vs Loki. Villain is a bit harsh for the Asgardian scamp, and I don’t actually know who won out of the two of those, but it does show how popular he really is.

So the only surprise of there being a Loki series announced for Disney+ is that we all saw that character die, many times, so how would they work it out? In fact, they did a great job. Giving Loki an out in Infinity War via the Tesseract meant there was scope for Loki to go on adventuring, but I don’t think he or we would have expected it to be such a timey-wimey based next step.

Loki finds himself both joining forces and doing battle with the TVA, the Time Variance Authority, across six short episodes and unravelling the mysteries of time and travelling through it. It’s an interesting premise and it worked well, was gorgeous to look at, such interesting and unique visuals, and it was more cerebral than I thought it would be - much more talking and less fighting than you expect from your average MCU outing.

It wasn’t perfect, the six episode arc felt a bit lumpy and oddly paced, and we all know there’s an uncomfortable feeling about Loki falling in love with himself, but there was a lot to love too. Here are five things that really worked:

• Mobius. Just more, please.
• Loki being faced with things he has done, or is going to do, or did in a different timeline. So interesting to see someone having to come to terms with their own actions like this.
• Sylvie. Such a great character. Again in the behind the scenes show, Sophia Di Martino revelled in playing someone unapologetically angry and stubborn and always ready to fight.
• The TVA sets. A weird mix of futuristic but also seventies, lots of orange and brown which I hate but offset against really interesting designs which I love.
• Alligator Loki. You wouldn’t think Richard E Grant could be upstaged, but hey, it happened!

It was a deliberate choice to have the big action showdown in the penultimate episode, and then have the series finale more cerebral, facing the big enemy with words instead of swords. We’re setting up for something huge, the next phase of the MCU even, and it seems fair that Loki, in his various forms, is the one to release such a demon upon the world. I can’t wait to see what happens in series two but also to see how this affects the wider universe too. Loki Will Return!