A Writers View

Yes, we have seen Loki somewhere before, but no I’m not talking about the Multi-Verse or any of the Marvel movies or indeed any of Mr. Hiddleston’s movies. I’m talking about the content similarities in the finale of the first season of Loki. Don’t get mad Sylvie & Loki, it only makes sense that the show would copy classics just as you two did.

Similiarity # 1: Nevermore aka Shadar’s Castle from Ni No Kuni, and the concept of fighting/killing alternate versions of oneself.

Similarity # 2: Castle Fairfax aka Lucien’s Castle from the beginning of Fable 2 and the awful choice that has to be made by our Hero(s) at the end.

Similarity # 3: The Dark Tower written in the 1940s by Mr. CS Lewis and the monster sitting alone in their tower watching other timelines as well as the history of the discovery of time travel that included a mad scientist experimenting on children.

First, Nevermore…

If you’ve played (or would now like to play) Ni No Kuni, the Miyazaki PlayStation adventure game, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Near the end of the game our hero, Oliver, finally makes it to the evil villain Shadar’s castle, the castle Nevermore. The mission is all very topsy turvy, with the camera angles constantly shifting and turning till it feels for some of the time like you are playing upside down. And Loki gave us that with the twisting turny camera angles as Loki and Sylvie entered the Citadel at the End of Time.

Then, Oliver gets to talking to Shadar and Shadar tells him about how the two of them are Soulmates and that Oliver shouldn’t have even been born because he, Shadar, had been going about and killing all of his Soulmates to prevent any of them from mending his Broken Heart. Much like how our Kang, or He Who Remains, in Loki talked about how he met himself many times over and that some of him were much, much worse.

Second, we have Fable 2 and Castle Fairfax…

The room that Loki, Sylvie and Kang are sitting in looks EXACTLY (ok, almost exactly) the same as the room that the main character and the main character’s sister, Rose, enter into in the very beginning of the game. The room where Lucien, the master of the castle, kills Rose and then attempts to kill the main character thus propelling the plot of the game.

Then, at the end of Fable 2 the hero is given 3 choices – 1 good, 1 evil and 1 neutral and the player of the game is free to choose whatever choice they’d like. Much the same as Loki and Sylvie are given the choice of Rule the TVA or Unleash the Multiverse and let chaos rein! More or less.

Third, we have The Dark Tower by CS Lewis.

Not to be confused with The Dark Tower by Stephen King, ok, CS Lewis wrote his unfinished tale years before King was even born.

But anyways, in The Dark Tower this group of scientists have created this Chronoscope that allows them to look through a scope into another time, a timeline that is projected onto a fabric screen. Much like the projection screen in the first episode of Loki when Mobius is showing Loki his timeline. Through the Chronoscope they are able to view this valley that has a singular Dark Tower in it’s center. In the tower sits a still dark figure that I don’t want to go into here, but suffice it to say if you’d like a good little scare then please, go and read Mr. Lewis’s unfinished story, it is quite hair raising.

Jumping over a lot of major details there is then a sequence in the story where one of our characters finds himself in that other timeline reading up on their history of time travel discovery. Just like Kang a scientist created a device, discovered that there were other timelines, discovered that there were other versions of ourselves on those timelines and decided to experiment, using the young of course, on crossing over into those other timelines. Unfortunately for us, this is where Mr. Lewis stopped writing so we don’t get much more, but the similarities between Kang and the scientist in this other timeline were so striking that I found myself shouting at my laptop “they’re just doing The Dark Tower!”

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are more time travel classics buried in this final episode of Loki alone, not to mention the entire show, but these were just the major comparisons that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Finally, I would just like to finish by saying I LOVED this show and I CANNOT WAIT for season 2.

Bring on the Multi-Verse!!! Tobey Maguire is back everybody!!