#mm ... hubnd ...

For a bit of context, I've been a huge Loki fan since 2012. Liked the character in 2011 but The Interest (TM) fully kicked in when I first saw The Avengers, and I've been unhinged about him for 14 years now, aka most of my life. It's been a wild ride. @@;

About season 1 of the series - I think it was ultimately mishandled. Now, I do like some things about the series very much. I think exploring multiverses is cool, I like the TVA as a concept, I like seeing Loki adapt to new challenges and expectations.

Unfortunately that's not ... really what we got? Loki ended up as, narratively especially, a side character in his own show because Sylvie was treated with so much more significance. Iirc, Loki figuring out she hides in apocalypses is the only thing he really does that would be affected if he was removed from his own show. That's poor writing, and poor handling of the character. I also don't like how Series Loki was clearly written with a post-Ragnarok lens. I'm going to explain what I mean. This is all firsthand stuff from being in the fandom (I didn't just mention it for no reason, I promise!) and seeing shifts over time.

Wayyyy back in 2012, there was a significant divide in the Loki fandom about Loki, his upbringing, and very importantly, what hand he actually had in the events of The Avengers. Some people believed Loki was a completely tragic character who was neglected (if not abused) by his family, utterly disregarded, and then fully mind controlled by Th-nos through the mind stone/scepter, and Loki crying during his fight with Thor at the Battle of New York was him crying because he was finally coming to so to speak, and sometimes they'd argue Loki subconsciously designed all of The Avengers as a ruse to get taken back to Asgard and either take over (the eviller route) or to keep some of the Stones out of the Titan's hands (the heroic route).

Then there were people who thought Loki was fully terrible from the beginning, but he looked like pure sex and walked and talked like it too, so it wasn't a big deal. Some chose to believe Loki truly thought highly of himself (see: Stuttgart) and was crying during the Battle of New York to garner sympathy before literally stabbing Thor in the back gut.

Even as a youngster I recognized there was a serious issue here, because Loki's own fandom couldn't decide who Loki was at his core or why he did things. I wavered between both camps before eventually settling somewhere in the middle: Loki is a complicated, tragic character, who looks so good while he's bad, but also genocide against Jotuns and murdering humans isn't cool. Oh, and he was influenced by the Mind Stone, but not fully controlled by it. That was another thing in the fandom: Tom's eyes are blue, Loki's are canonically green according to the comics but in the MCU are blue because Tom doesn't wear contacts, but they can appear green or blue in certain shots. Because of this, some people looked at Loki's apparent eye color in The Avengers and argued Loki was controlled the same way Barton and Selvig are in the film.

In an interview years ago, Tom confirmed (and possibly Kevin Feige as well? Don't quote me on it) Loki was "under the influence" of the Mind Stone, and the wiki reflects this now I believe, but for YEARS it was more of an underground fan theory the general fan populace didn't know about or didn't believe. Sort of like how the cut-for-time Thor 1 scenes completely change the context of how Loki became king.

Anyway.

Fast forward through Thor: The Dark World, where Loki had to be brought back from the dead because test screening audiences didn't want him gone.

Through Age of Ultron, where Loki had to be cut from the film because test audiences thought Loki was behind Ultron.

Marvel in the mid-to-late 2010s hadn't hit their "too formulaic" point yet (I'd argue that's more the feeling of early 2020s MCU), but cultural shifts and a growing sense of superhero fatigue began to influence their films. Also Disney. They'd had great success bringing on talent like the Russos to direct films like The Winter Soldier, and found an absolute goldmine in Guardians of the Galaxy. It was witty, it was fun, it was cosmic, it was - NOT the relative disappointment Thor:TDW was. Thor:TDW was beloved amongst most (if not all) Loki fans, but it had a major flaw: it wasn't a great Thor film. While still a fine character, Loki really outshone him in the eyes of the public, and that was a problem when Thor's the merchandiseable character at this time (Fandom merch was much more focused around the male heroes, not the queer villains you'd be lucky to find a t-shirt of at Hot Topic.)

So, Marvel brought on Taika Waititi to make the net Thor film. And because of things like the deleted scenes I mentioned, the interviews giving crucial information, the disagreements of Loki's actual motivations, even the archetypes of "good, heroic brother / bad, mischievous brother" Marvel tries to slot Thor and Loki into despite Tom's very nuanced play of the character, I believe Waititi entered with a fundamental misunderstanding of Loki's character, AND a goal of taking Loki down a peg to let Thor shine.

I won't go into Ragnarok right now because I'm already talking too much, lol. But through Ragnarok and then Avengers:IW, even Endgame, Loki was seriously mistreated as a character. There are absolutely shining moments in Ragnarok, and I personally love Loki's look in much of it. His soft long hair and new helmet are a triumph. Thor torturing him and leaving him for dead are not.

These mistaken ideas of Loki grew and were carried on, and implemented in the series. So again, while I really enjoy aspects of the series, and I love many of the new characters (I also like Sylvie as a character, I just don't like everything they did with her ..) because the series is so intrinsically tied with this fundamental misunderstanding of Loki to his core, it falls short of what I would've wanted to see.

About season 2, I agree with you, it's much better. Season 2 was hard for me to watch because previous installments left me so bruised mentally and emotionally I could hardly interact with Marvel for a time. But I did really enjoy it more than season 1, and I think Loki was treated more as a main character (score!) and the strange plot of him falling in love with himself (or sibling-like; as Peter Parker remarks having always wanted a brother when meeting his variants ... It's just so confused.) was dropped, and Loki was allowed to be more of a character. I do wish we'd gotten to see that original concept for the series: Loki popping up throughout time causing trouble and affecting historical events, and we got to see some, but I don't think the way it was done makes so much sense for where he is emotionally at that time. To be fair, I was only able to watch the series once in full because of trauma, and I do want to watch it again, so maybe my opinions will shift with a revisit.

For Doomsday and Secret War (if he's involved in that one as well? Not sure) - I am cautiously optimistic. I do plan to see Doomsday, though I am apprehensive about being traumatized again. I can only hope Loki is treated well. I'm concerned they'll pull a Russo move and argue well the quickest way to make Dr. Doom intimidating is to make him kill a super powerful person! and Loki will have a target on his back. Again. But they might not! It all remains to be seen. I don't know much about Secret War beyond the Skrulls being involved, which could be interesting in terms of a character so intrinsically tied to themes of identity, like Loki.

TL;DR - Season 1 of series is complicated, Season 2 is better, Doomsday is hopefully good, I love Loki no matter what.