Better. Overall a much better show than its Marvel predecessors. For the record: Wandavision started cleverly and became a dumpster fire. Falcon and the Winter Soldier started as a dumpster fire and became a 4-alarm conflagration.
Loki has certain benefits the earlier shows lacked. Not the least of which is that the cast actually has star power and charisma. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson can command the screen and make you actually care about their characters. They can do humor and deliver lines in a way that gains your affinity. Sofie De Martino, as Silvie, does a good job of keeping up, and Jonathan Majors takes a series-stealing turn at the end as He Who Remains.
Another benefit it has is continuance. It didn't just exist to set up future movies. There will be a second season so there didn't have to be a mad rush to wrap it all up. It was a good balance between silly and serious. The character arcs, while certainly strained, weren't strained to the breaking point. The plot contrivances were no worse than expected. On the whole I would place it somewhere between mediocre and OK which, as I mentioned, makes it the best so far.
Marvel is very much in a slump. The TV shows have been a huge disappointment. The recent Black Widow film was universally panned. The next TV show coming up is something called What If… which I'll skip because, with few exceptions, animation is not my thing, but it sounds way too open ended and inviting of contrivance to have much value. I think the earliest hope to turn things around will be Spiderman: No Way Home on the movie side and Hawkeye on the TV side, now that they've announced the return of the mighty Vincent D' Onofrio as Kingpin. Maybe they should have just stopped with Endgame. It is the doom of things that they go on too long.
Aside: If you want to get some fun takes on pop culture I highly recommend the Critical Drinker YouTube channel. He can be repetitive and overly negative -- some things he trashes are actually not that bad (he hated Loki) -- but the snarky jagoff in me (yeah, he's still around) finds him hilarious.
