Owen Wilson's sadness is crucial to Loki's Mobius

Slate

"There’s something odd going on, and it’s all over Wilson’s face, in the wateriness of his gaze, the slight furrow of his brow, and the tension around his lips," says Isaac Butler. "The tenderness with which he treated the boy has given way to an unexpected regret. It is in this moment that we get a sense of what 'resetting a timeline' might actually entail. It might just mean that this little boy and everything else in his universe will cease to exist. It might mean Mobius’ job requires regularly committing murder on an unfathomable scale, and that it has finally begun to weigh on him. Mobius’ sadness is a tell that there are more interesting layers to his character than the Loki superfan who guides the audience and protagonist through what amounts to an MCU clip show during the rest of the episode. But this discovery of unexpected depths to Mobius should not come as a surprise: Wilson’s careful deployment of his inherent sadness has always been a sign that he’s a far more interesting, intelligent, and idiosyncratic actor than he is usually credited for being. Some of our underestimation of him is his own fault—he’s only made a small handful of good films and is too often happy to glide by on his natural, laid-back charisma. But there is a thing he can do better than almost any other actor alive: embody an eccentric, wide-eyed innocence, and then find underneath it a knowing darkness."

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