'Loki' Has a Real 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' Vibe

While the most recent episode of Loki feels like a legally dissimilar Marvel take on a Doctor Who story (but still with a soupcon of every movie you saw in 1995), we couldn't help but notice another subtler influence: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade … seriously.

Sure, Loki has time travel and infinity stones and weirdly poetic monologues about the sublime beauty of jet skis, but it seems like the show has borrowed some key story beats from Dr. Jones' third adventure. Like the moment at the end of the first episode, when Loki is tasked with helping the TVA in their mission. He isn't interested until the revelation that the job involves tracking someone he shares a personal connection with: a variant of himself.

It's not dissimilar from the moment in The Last Crusade when Indy rejects the villain's invitation to search for the Grail but then relents when it's revealed that it also means searching for his missing father.

So both Indy and Loki have to follow a series of clues to track down a lost family member (of sorts). When they finally do, there's lots of bickering as they escape from the Nazis/mysterious time travel police. Both pairs find themselves sneaking onto a passenger vehicle (thanks to a wardrobe change), be it a German zeppelin or an apocalyptic alien train ride.

Which allows the action to pause for a moment, giving the pair of estranged relatives a chance to connect.

But they're soon recognized as interlopers and have to make another daring escape, ultimately ending up stuck in the middle of nowhere together.

If the show continues to follow this trend, we look forward to the revelation that Owen Wilson's character is a straight-up villain who may or may not end up turning into an exploding skeleton by the final episode. 

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Top Image: Marvel Studios