Television series

Loki

Name: Loki
Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Released: 2021
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

A rogue variant of the God of Mischief gets recruited by a time-policing bureaucracy and forced to ask what he actually wants once nobody's watching. Part genre pastiche, part existential mystery, part odd-couple comedy, it's the rare MCU spinoff that treats its hero's ego as the plot. For anyone who liked Loki more than the punchline, and enjoys stylish, talky sci-fi with real stakes.

TVMaze rating

8.1

If you liked this

WandaVision2021

The other MCU show willing to get formally weird, swapping sitcom pastiche for grief instead of time-travel bureaucracy. If you loved Loki's playful visual language and slow-burn menace, this scratches the same itch.

But The back half tips into standard superhero spectacle, and the emotional core can feel undercut by franchise obligations.

Doctor Who2005

Time travel as endless genre tourism, fronted by a hero who's lived too long and lost too much — witty, melancholic, and gleefully inventive about what a time machine can actually do to a story.

But Fifteen-plus years of continuity and wildly uneven seasons make it a real commitment to find your footing.

The Umbrella Academy2019

Superpowered siblings, timeline collapse, and a soundtrack that never stops showing off — if Loki's family dysfunction and apocalypse-adjacent stakes appealed, this leans even harder into both.

But The tone whiplash between slapstick and genuine trauma isn't for everyone, and later seasons strain the premise.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

La Jetée1962

Loki's whole arc runs on the idea that a fixed point in time can still break your heart; La Jetée is the original, purest version of that grief, decades before branching timelines became a genre.

A 28-minute French photo-essay film that basically invented the modern time-loop tragedy, told entirely in stills and voiceover. Haunting, strange, and the ancestor of every time-travel story you've loved since.

But No motion, barely any dialogue scenes — it's a completely different viewing experience, closer to a slideshow than a show.

12 Monkeys2015no page yet

A leaner, grimmer time-travel bureaucracy story, where every fixed point costs someone dearly and the loop tightens with real dread. Great if you want the TVA's stakes played completely straight.

But It's bleaker and more claustrophobic than Loki, with far less humour to cushion the losses.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow2016no page yet

A ragtag team fixing timeline 'aberrations' with the TVA's bureaucratic premise but none of its restraint — pure comic-book chaos, self-aware jokes, and a real sense of fun.

But It's cheaper, campier, and leans hard into absurdity that some will find charming and others insufferable.

The Good Place2016

A cosmic bureaucracy story with a soul — funny, philosophically curious, and stuffed with twists that reframe everything you thought you knew, much like Loki's own reveals.

But It's a very different genre, no action, all sitcom rhythms, so the connection is more spiritual than visual.

Rick and Morty2013

Multiverse chaos played for pitch-black comedy and surprising heart, fronted by a trickster who's smarter than everyone and still can't fix himself.

But The nihilism and crudeness run much darker and cruder than Loki's earnestness, and can curdle fast.

Everything Everywhere All at Once2022

Multiverse-hopping used to ask the same question Loki circles — what do you owe the people you love across every version of yourself — wrapped in kung fu and absurdist joy.

But It's a two-hour sensory overload rather than a slow-burn character study, so the pacing is wildly different.

Everything Everywhere All at Once poster

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness2022

The MCU's most direct multiverse cousin, with variant selves, cosmic bureaucratic stakes, and a villain wrestling with the same what-if grief Loki explores in miniature.

But It's louder, glossier blockbuster filmmaking with less room for the introspection that makes Loki work.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness poster

Brazil1985

Miss Minutes' cheerful menace and the TVA's stacks of pruned timelines are pure Brazil DNA — this is where that particular flavour of bureaucratic dread and dark comedy comes from.

Terry Gilliam's nightmare comedy about a totalitarian bureaucracy that files paperwork on your soul is the TVA's evil twin, played for satire instead of adventure.

But It's dense, deliberately disorienting, and far angrier and stranger than anything the TVA ever put you through.

Steins;Gate2011

Where Loki treats timeline branches as cosmic bureaucracy, Steins;Gate makes them intimate and personal — the same 'what did I lose to save this world' ache, just animated and achingly sincere.

A Japanese anime about amateur scientists who stumble into time travel and slowly realise every fix has a cost — funny and geeky at first, devastating by the end.

But Slow opening episodes and anime conventions in pacing and visual style may take real patience to get through.