The 2023 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Male TV Character

Tom Hiddleston's Loki found Glorious Purpose and wins this year's Best Male TV Character.

By Nicole Drum

With 2023 drawing to a close, we here at ComicBook.com are once again taking a look back at the year in entertainment and reflecting on some of our favorite movies, television shows, comics and more as part of our annual Golden Issue Awards. While 2023 was a complicated year in entertainment, it was also a year that gave us some incredible television — including male characters. Across a wide range of genres, television offered up heroes, villains, and everything in between. It also gave us characters whose journeys we've been on for years across multiple seasons and projects, and others we're just starting to get to know. For each of them, those characters were a genuine gift to behold on screen.

After seven seasons and countless insane adventures, Riverdale concluded this year and KJ Apa still somehow managed to bring Archie Andrews to life in a way that showed just how complex and human that character — and by extension, the show — really is. Pedro Pascal's Joel Miller in The Last of Us was an absolute force as he made his way across an apocalyptic world, breaking our hearts each episode as he rediscovered his humanity and reminded us of our own. Tom Hiddleston returned as everyone's favorite God of Mischief back for another adventure with the stakes higher than ever and took the character and fans on a journey no one could have expected. In One Piece, Inaki Godoy brought the iconic Monkey D. Luffy to life in a way that fans had previously only dreamed of; while Samuel L. Jackson returned as Nick Fury once again in Secret Invasion and reminded us that there really is no one else better for the character. Each of this year's male characters were impressive and incredible, but only one can be our winner — and it wasn't an easy choice.

And the winner of the 2023 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Male TV Character is…

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Tom Hiddleston's Loki in Loki!

For fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Loki's journey has been a long and complex one with Hiddleston's God of Mischief first coming into our view as a full-on villain but ending up as a something a bit more — and a bit more ambiguous — at the end of the first season of Disney+'s Loki. And while Hiddleston has always given Loki incredible complexity and made the character such a delight to watch even at his worst, it was Season 2 of the series that not only showed his skill as an actor, but the true depth of the character as well.

Season 2 of Loki saw the titular character in a light viewers have never seen him before and one perhaps Loki has never before seen himself. This Loki wasn't scheming or putting himself first or looking for his glorious purpose. Instead, and perhaps for the first time, Loki's only purpose was doing something good: saving the Sacred Timeline and preventing the arrival of Kang as warned by He Who Remains. Across the season, Hiddleston's performance showed the nuances of what that unexpected position was like for a character who is very much accustomed to looking out for number one. We saw him struggle, we saw him doubt, we saw him deal with actual fear, and, ultimately, we saw him heal in ways that would have seemed impossible when we first met him. By the time Season 2 came to its conclusion, Loki had not only found his real glorious purpose, but he'd found himself as well and Hiddleston made it all beautiful, hopeful, and heartbreaking in equal measures. It's a performance that we'll be talking about for years to come and that's why he's our Golden Issue Award winner for Best Male TV Character for 2023.

Congratulation to Hiddleston for his Golden Issues win!

The nominees for Best Male TV Character are:

·      Archie Andrews (KJ Apa, Riverdale)

·      Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us)

·      Loki (Tom Hiddleston, Loki) — WINNER

Related:

·      Monkey D. Luffy (Inaki Godoy, One Piece)

·      Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, Secret Invasion)

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