Book Review - Marvel Studios' Loki: Season Two - The Art of the Series
- The Artbook Collector
- 24 hours ago
- 6 min read
July 31th 2025
The God of Mischief returned in 2023 for Season Two of Loki, dealing with the complexities of variants, spaghetti-fication and timelines. It’s about time then that Marvel Studio’ Loki: Season Two – The Art of the Series has finally arrived so we can see the art that helped make it happen.
With a release date of August 5th 2025, fans can now dive into the concept art and designs behind the TVA and fan favourite characters, Loki, Sylvie, O.B., and Mobius. This is the last release to have no slipcase, so it’s hard not to mention the delays this book has suffered, because 3 have already been published that do. This was originally due in October of 2024, but Marvel, who are no strangers to delaying books, kept pushing this one back more than others, so it has felt like an Asgardian's lifetime of waiting to finally add this to the collection.
Now being published a year and 10 months after the season first aired, is this book worth the wait? As a fan of the show and the artists at the studio, I was looking forward to this one and can now share my thoughts!
Build Quality
Coming in at a matching size of the others, 29.3 x 24.5 cm, it’s again a strong hardcover with a wrap-around piece of art. I like the art created here by Jackson Sze, it’s nice and vibrant and certainly a standout from the recent slipcase releases. Also like the previous books, the paper is a little thinner too, so you have to be more delicate with the 224 pages inside, but it’s good quality overall.
This book does fall flat on the binding unfortunately. This has come up before, but not quite as bad as this, so isn’t usually worth bringing up, but there is no flexibility to help the pages open up fully, which results in text and images almost being lost in the centre fold. If it wasn’t for the paper being thinner, this would be a much bigger issue. You can see what I mean in the image below, where even when pushing down on the pages with my fingers, the binding is too tight to open the pages fully.
Bottom image page art by Aleksi Briclot and Jeff Simpson
Content
It’s business as usual with content for Marvel and never a bad thing if you enjoy the books. Inside you get a wealth of concept art for the show that covers characters, locations, objects, key frames, and more for the series. I’m happy that there are more sketches included too, as these can often be left out and I am personally partial to seeing line drawings included amongst the full colour pieces. There could be more though, but I’ll take what they give me. Sadly no storyboards in this one, but so much is included this can be forgiven.
I’m not an art critic, but it’s always worth pointing out the continued superb work from the team at Marvel Studios. Their detailed depictions of the characters when designing costumes, environments, and exploration of the weird and wonderful (the Loom and timelines in this case) are always an impressive showcase of their talent. Jackson Sze, Wesley Burt, Karla Ortiz, Jeff Simpson, Christine Wada, and many more get a well-deserved showcase in this book.
Each element that is highlighted, from characters to the Temporal Loom, has a lot of unused designs highlighted, giving readers a look at what could have been, which is always the best part of these books. A section at the back is even dedicated to unused ideas which I wish was in every release. Character designs for O.B are featured that were done before Ke Huy Quan was cast, giving him the most variation. Sylvie also has good number of pages for her look too. It’s worth mentioning that Victor Timely is included, but only in a handful of images and with no exploration, almost certainly due to the actor being fired.
Top page art by Liam Gerogensen, Dominique Sanglier, Jason Sweers, Christian Kessler and Kesra Farahani. Bottom page art by Aleksi Briclot
A large section is devoted to Loki’s final form as ‘God of Stories’ and has a wide variety of looks for his costume and throne, as well as some stunning key frames of how the scene would play out. This transformation was a highlight of the show and is now a highlight of the book too. You can find more previews of this section in my early look here.
The insights and interviews add a lot of value to Loki: Season Two – The Art of the Series, as they explain the approach to designs, how the story changed and influenced the art, and how the team and cast view the characters. The artbooks always do a good job in this regard, giving meaningful details and interesting perspectives, without becoming a novel or going the opposite direction and leaving short generic notes. As an MCU fan myself, it kept me engaged the entire time.
Another bonus for this book is that there are less dark images, so the persistent problem with images being unclear due to prints being too dark isn’t a this time round. Some images do take a hit, but it’s certainly been much worse in other entries in the series.
Top page art by Wesley Burt, Mushk Rizvi and Joe Studzinski. Middle page art by Mushk Rizvi. Bottom page art by Jackson Sze
Credits
Short and sweet as always for this part of the review because Marvel have always done this well. Each page credits the artists with surnames, with their full name listed in the back along with all the pages they are featured on. It’s a great way to do it and short of giving the full names on the page, should be the standard for all artbooks.
Use of Space
Good news again on this front as the designers of the book have stuck to simple layouts that make the most of the page space. There is very little empty space and the text and image placements make each page very readable. The only downside is a couple of double page spreads that are affected by the binding, so there is some image loss. Not many images cross the centre fold though, so it is minimised.
Top page art by Jeff Simpson. Middle page art by Wesley Burt. Bottom page art by Jeff Simpson
Value
As the last book to come out in this format without a slipcase, people can breathe a sigh of relief because that means the price is much more reasonable too. Although still a little more than others on the market, at full price this is $60/ £54. Of course, this is assuming you pay full price, which most people won’t and these books can drop in price quickly. Although there is no discount at the time of writing this in the US, on the UK Amazon site it is already 21% off 6 days before release.
Whether you buy it day one at full price, or later when it is reduced, I don’t think people will feel let down, so I have no problem at all with this price point. It’s sad to know it’s the last one like this, as the jump to $100, and soon $150 in the case of Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps – The Art of the Movie, is a huge mistake in my opinion, because they don’t provide enough value to justify it. Take advantage of this new book if you want some Marvel art on your shelf at a good price.
Top page art by Jeff Simpson. Bottom page art by Wesley Burt and Jeff Simpson.
Verdict
Like Loki finally finding his glorious purpose, this book has also finally been released and delivers like I had hoped. It boasts incredible art, engaging insights and a look at the designs and ideas that didn’t get used, despite being superb in their own right. Fans of the show and collectors of the artbooks will find a lot to enjoy in Marvel Studios' Loki: Season Two - The Art of the Series and it makes me hope that we get to revisit the world of Loki and the TVA again, if only to get another artbook like this one.
If you like what you see and are wanting to add this book to your own collection, you can order the book here;
