The second season of Loki drew to a close this week, and I’m going to be honest, it was a pretty big disappointment. The whole series, in fact, hasn’t lived up to the fun and glory of the first one, even though this time out the stakes were higher and the time travel even more prevalent.

The biggest problem I had with it was not enough time spent with the characters being themselves. The great thing about the first serious was the back and forth nature of the relationship between Mobius and Loki. We only got to see that fully in the third episode, title 1893, where they went back in time to the Chicago World’s Fair and chased around together like idiots. That was fun and brilliant.

There was some fun to be had by new whizkid Ouroboros and his quirky conversation but otherwise it felt like we were quite far removed from the character development in the first series. Instead the focus was on this big time travel mystery, essentially how to stop the multiverse imploding due to too many new timelines. That might not actually be what the series was about, it was hard to follow and confusing in many places, but that’s what I took from it.

I feel like occasionally there was a bigger message trying to be conveyed too, about destroying lives and timelines as if they didn’t matter, which is a convenient turn from a cinematic universe that destroys practically every city it enters. And then there was the big grand ending with Loki finding a purpose that presumably gives him a convenient place to stay forever or be recalled from if future stories require it (although Tom H interviews suggest that he’s done with the character). Where we ended up was so far from the god of mischief that we know and love and I just don’t totally buy the journey.

But oh well, another day, another Marvel letdown, and we move on to the next.