The MCU is in decline. There can be no doubt about it. It's products have taken a sharp decline in overall quality, with crushing failures like Secret Invasion and possibly great stories reduced to mediocre television (Quantumania, Moon Knight, etc). And then there's Loki. This is the only Disney+ show I would consider a true success. It's first season delivered the best product we had seen so far in a Marvel TV show, but it had problems, such as some real inconsistency with Loki's character and abilities, and an overbearing focus on Sylvie at times. But the ending, setting up the Multiverse Saga, more than made up for its earlier flaws.

And then we get to Season 2, which, in my opinion, boosts this show to a level of quality we desperately need. I remember early reviews were negative, and I thought this series had fallen into the almost AI-like cookie cutter formula everything else Marvel produces now has. But it didn't, and honestly improved upon the first season, bringing the focus fully back to Loki himself, and ending the series with some of the most striking imagery and storytelling in the post-Endgame era. This show's combination of quirky humor, character-driven storytelling, and hard sci-fi a la Everything Everywhere All At Once, Doctor Who, and Rick and Morty (minus all the cringy gross-out jokes and overbearing "edginess") transcends almost everything else made since Endgame. It's on a level with No Way Home and GotG 3, and is matched only by the latter in terms of its creative exploration of old characters we know and love. What a show. The only sad thing is that it's bogged down by being connected to the same universe where trash like "The Marvels" is being put out as a standard-bearer. Just hire the Loki writers to write Kang Dynasty and Secret Invasion. It's the only real way to go forward.