Loki has officially been declared Disney+’s biggest debut yet. Disney+ arrived in late 2019 with the promise that it would be the perfect home for franchises like Star Wars and Marvel. Since its launch, the streaming service has seen the debuts of high-profile shows like The Mandalorian and WandaVision, with several more on the way. Loki, which arrived last week after much anticipation, is just the latest project to emerge from the MCU as it finally settles into its Phase 4. After only one episode, the series is enjoying some very favorable buzz.

Loki stars Tom Hiddleston as the titular trickster, now stepping into the spotlight for the very first time. As opposed to focusing on the Loki who has journeyed from Thor to his death in Avengers: Infinity War, the show picks up with the 2012 Loki who escaped with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame. His meddling with the timeline gets him into trouble with the Time Variance Authority, an organization tasked with preventing the creation of a multiverse. As the first episode of Loki revealed, the God of Mischief will be teaming up with TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) to hunt a dangerous time-hopping variant.

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Loki bucked tradition by debuting on Wednesday as opposed to Friday, but that move doesn’t appear to have impacted its arrival at all. According to Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Loki scored the most watched premiere on Disney+ within its opening week (via IGN). This includes the debuts of non-Marvel shows like The Mandalorian, which held the title of the biggest Disney+ original for some time. However, Chapek didn’t reveal any concrete figures for Loki‘s premiere, so it’s hard to say just how big it was.

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Last week, it was said Loki scored the biggest premiere of any Marvel Disney+ show, but now it’s clear that its popularity goes beyond that. WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier dominated the service during their runs, and Loki has only increased that audience. On paper, it looks like each Marvel show is building upon the previous one, which would bode well for the many shows to come. However, it’s also important to remember that Loki is a fan favorite character who has survived as long as he has thanks to audience enthusiasm. There was a real hunger to see a project based around him.

It also helps that Loki has earned glowing reviews; the series currently sits at a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews of the first two episodes. It remains to be seen if the current goodwill towards Loki will extend beyond this week’s episode 2, but the buzz right now remains positive. Hiddleston’s villain-turned-antihero has made quite the splash on Disney+, something he’d probably be quite pleased about.

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Source: Bob Chapek (via IGN)

Key Release Dates
  • Black Widow (2021)Release date: Jul 09, 2021
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)Release date: Sep 03, 2021
  • Eternals (2021)Release date: Nov 05, 2021
  • Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)Release date: Jul 08, 2022
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)Release date: May 06, 2022
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever/Black Panther 2 (2022)Release date: Nov 11, 2022
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)Release date: Jul 28, 2023
  • The Marvels/Captain Marvel 2 (2023)Release date: Feb 17, 2023
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)Release date: May 05, 2023
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About The Author


Rachel Labonte
(3420 Articles Published)

Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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