Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Starring Tom Hiddleston (Loki Variant L1130), Sophie Di Martino (Sylvie), Owen Wilson (Mobius / Don), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Ravonna Renslayer), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15 / Doctor Willis), Tara Strong (the voice of Miss Minutes), Eugene Cordero (Casey / Frank), Ke Huy Quan (OB / Dr AD Doug), Rafael Casal (Hunter X-5 / Brad Wolfe), Kate Dickie (General Dox), and Liz Carr (Judge Gamble) with Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely / He Who Remains
Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead with Dan DeLeeuw and Kasra Farahani
A Kevin Feige Production
Music By Natalie Holt
Distributed by Disney Platform Distribution
Number of Episodes: 6
Initial Streaming: October 5, 2023-November 9, 2023
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
NOTE … The arrest and conviction of Jonathan Majors for assault has obviously cast a large shadow over this show, as well as over the entire Multiverse Saga. While I do some praising of Jonathan Majors for his talent as an actor in this review, let me be clear: I do not condone violence against women, and I have zero respect for anyone that commits the types of crimes that Jonathan Majors has been accused of committing.
Fun Loki: Season Two Facts
The Second Season of Loki was confirmed during the credits of Loki: Season One
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead were hired by Marvel Studios to work on Loki: Season Two in February of 2022. The duo previously worked with Marvel Studios during the production of Moon Knight, which they directed two episodes of (Summon the Suit and The Tomb). Writer Eric Martin meanwhile was brought back to write most of the Second Season of Loki after writing the Season One episodes The Nexus Event and For All Time. Always.
After debuting as He Who Remains in Loki: Season One, actor Jonathan Majors went on to play several Variants of Kang the Conqueror within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Majors voiced the fictitious Timekeepers in Loki: Season One in addition to portraying He Who Remains. The He Who Remains character appeared to meet His end at the hands of the Loki Variant known as Sylvie in the Season One finale when she stabbed him to death at the Citadel at the End of Time, but with His dying words, the Kang Variant promised that upon His death, countless Variants of Himself would arise to threaten all Reality. One such Variant did in fact appear in 2023’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania which saw Majors portray the militant Kang the Conqueror; a Kang Variant that had been banished to the Quantum Realm by other Kang Variants. This version of Kang appeared to meet his end at the hands of Scott Lang / Ant-Man and Hope Van Dyne / The Wasp when he was knocked into his own Multiversal Engine Core by the 616-Universe heroes. From there, Majors portrayed several more versions of Kang in the credits of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, including but not limited to three primary Variants known as Pharaoh Rama-Tut, The Centurian, and Immortus. Though Kang the Conqueror lost in Quantumania, the threat of these other Kang Variants loomed large over the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its Multiverse Saga as Loki: Season Two was released on Disney+.
However, the future of actor Jonathan Majors as Kang within the MCU became in doubt in early-2023 when he was involved in what has been described as a domestic violence incident with his girlfriend at the time. Many observers called for Majors to be recast by Marvel Studios, even before his trial. At the time of his arrest, Majors had already filmed his scenes for Loki: Season Two, as the show wrapped filming in October-2022, and a decision was made by the powers-that-be at Disney and Marvel Studios to present the series as it was originally intended to be seen, complete with Majors reprising his role as He Who Remains as well as a new role as the Kang Variant known as Victor Timely.
The Multiverse Saga was intended to revolve around Jonathan Majors and his Kang Variants as the story played itself out, with the fifth Avengers movie announced by Marvel Studios at the 2022 San Diego Comic Con under the title: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. However, Majors’ future as the character remained uncertain within the fandom due to his pending trial and both the poor critical reception and subsequent poor box office performance of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. A lot of curiosity therefore surrounded Loki: Season Two as MCU fans were eager to not only see how the story played itself out, but also how it would affect the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically as it relates to the Kang character. Ultimately, at the end of 2023, mere weeks after the Loki: Season Two finale, Marvel Studios fired Jonathan Majors after he was found guilty of assault.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
UNDERSTANDING TIME TRAVEL AND THE MULTIVERSE IN THE MCU
While Loki: Season One primarily focused on the mythology surrounding the MCU Multiverse, Time Travel was also a key plot point, due to how the act spawns Branched Timelines and due as well to the history of He Who Remains and his Multiversal Variants. Avengers: Endgame introduced the concept of Time Travel into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In that movie, the filmmakers took an approach to Time Travel that has been theorized within Quantum Mechanics in the “Many Worlds Theory.” This is not a familiar approach for general moviegoers, as Time Travel has been traditionally presented from a very different perspective in most films that utilize the plot device. In Endgame, popular theories such as “The Grandfather Paradox” do not apply, because you can’t go to back to the past and change your future, because your future has already happened. This is why The Avengers can’t simply travel back through time and kill baby Thanos before he ever grew up as Rhodey suggested in the film. Time Travel (at least in Avengers: Endgame) does not work that way. By doing that, The Avengers would create one of those aforementioned Branches that would extend from off their native Timeline, and they would merely kill the Thanos that exists within this new Branched Timeline. The Thanos from their Timeline would be unaffected. In Loki: Season One, the danger of these Branched Timelines is highly stressed as they pertain to the Multiverse.
The concept of the Multiverse was not new to comic book readers, as it had been a Marvel Comics plot device since the 1970’s. An attempt was made to explain how the Multiverse ties into Time Travel through the dialogue of several characters in Endgame. As it is told in the film, the mere act of traveling back through time creates one of these Branched Timelines / New Realties. Upon the arrival of a time traveler or time travelers, the Universe executes a sort of copy / paste initiative, and a New (Branched) Timeline is born. The time traveler / time travelers now exist within this New Reality; one that shares the exact same history of the world from whence they came … up until the exact moment that they arrive in the past. This is why in Endgame, people and places looked and acted identical to the same people and places from whence The Avengers came … Because they were. They were for lack of a better word, Cosmic Copies of the people and places that The Avengers knew.
From the point of their arrival however, things are free to move forward in whatever way they may, and one simple change or alteration to the history that the time travelers know can result in unfathomable changes to the New (Branched) Reality that they’ve spawned. This was explored in Endgame through the act of 2012-Loki escaping with the Tesseract following the Battle of New York. This specific incident triggered a potentially drastically different world from the one that The Avengers knew, while dramatically altering Loki’s destiny: Thor would not be able to take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard following the Battle of New York, and Loki therefore would not get sentenced to the Asgardian Dungeons, would not inadvertently cause the death of his mother, would not team up with Thor against Malekith, would not covertly seize the Asgardian throne from Odin, would not stand alongside his brother against Hela, and would not be killed by Thanos. For the TVA, this was not okay. Loki: Season One kicked off with Loki’s Tesseract heist / Nexus Event and with his arrest by the TVA from off the Branched Timeline that he caused for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. He was then taken back to TVA Headquarters (which exists outside of time) to stand trial for his crimes.
A subplot of Avengers: Endgame as it pertained to time travel involved the Infinity Stones. The 2012-Ancient One explained that the Infinity Stones were a crucial part of Universal harmony and warned of the dangers to any Reality should they be taken off the proverbial board. This is why Steve Rogers set out to return the Stones at the end of the film to the (Branched) Timelines from whence they came at the exact moment that they were taken. Chronologically, when Steve does this, he theorizes that it will be as if the Stones never left those worlds at all, so he clips the potentially dark and dangerous (new) Branches that could have evolved by default from those Timelines, restoring those (Branched) Timelines to their intended existences, as it pertained to the Infinity Stones, at least. In Loki: Season One however, we learned that the TVA routinely pruned Timeline Branches and reset Timelines using various technological tools devised by He Who Remains to maintain the integrity of the Sacred Timeline and keep Variants in-check. When Loki was taken into TVA custody, the TVA pruned the Branched Timeline from which he was arrested. This seemed to suggest that had Steve Rogers failed in his mission to return the Stones from whence they were taken, those dark Branches would have been pruned by the TVA anyway, which may mean the only true purpose for his journey through time was his reunion with his beloved Peggy Carter in the past.
For we furthermore learn in Loki: Season One that according to the TVA: “What The Avengers did was supposed to happen.” Their time traveling to reverse what Thanos had done was part of the Sacred Timeline’s script. As the Loki series evolved, we would learn that contrary to what the TVA believed, Loki actually WAS supposed to escape with the Tesseract. This could in fact be the entire purpose of the Time Heist itself, as He Who Remains needed that Loki to embark upon the journey that would lead Loki to He Who Remains at the Citadel at the End of Time.
Back to the Infinity Stones themselves, in what was a somewhat shocking narrative pivot, their actual importance in the grand scheme of things was significantly downplayed in Loki: Season One, as evident by the fact that select TVA workers use the Stones as paper weights at the TVA.
While time travel and the creation of Branched Timelines was explored in Avengers: Endgame, Loki: Season One focused more on the MCU Multiverse and what it was or wasn’t. The Sacred Timeline wasn’t actually a singular Timeline, but rather a collection of Timelines that shared a common destiny: no Variant of He Who Remains would ever be born within them. THIS was what most mattered to He Who Remains, not the existence of a Multiverse, but the existence of a Multiverse comprised of His Variants. This was evident by the mere existence of Sylvie. No one traveled back through time and created Sylvie; she was simply born as a female Loki on one of the Timelines that are allowed to comprise the Sacred Timeline. These Timelines are allowed to freely exist … until a Nexus Event occurs, and they Branch. As Sylvie’s physical appearance illustrates, beings from any one of these other Timelines may not resemble beings seen in the films that comprised Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga, though they can as well. For instance, Sophia Di Martino does not look like Tom Hiddleston, but “President” Loki does. It can go either way. For Sylvie, being born a girl was not a Nexus Event … it was Sylvie’s heroic ambition. On the surface, this is why she was arrested by the TVA and why her world and everyone that she knew and loved were pruned, but looking at the whole picture from the perspective of He Who Remains, her arrest – as well as her subsequent escape – were approved by He Who Remains so Sylvie would embark upon the journey that would lead her to He Who Remains at the Citadel at the End of Time.
Throughout its six episodes, Loki: Season One was ultimately leading to one thing: Both Loki Variants meeting He Who Remains and the events that would follow. Loki and Sylvie were given a choice by He Who Remains: take over the TVA and rule in his stead (which the Time Heist Variant Loki saw as at least worth considering), or kill Him, as they’d come intending to do (which is all that Sylvie wants). HWR warned that His death would result in the instantaneous and infinite Branching of the Sacred Timeline and would consequently lead to Multiversal War. For all of their similarities and warm feelings for one another, these two Loki Variants were ultimately far too different to come into agreement with one another over the fate of He Who Remains, and this leads to a skirmish that sees Loki try to prevent Sylvie from slaying HWR, but taking advantage of Loki’s feelings for her long enough to distract him, Sylvie kicked Loki through a Time Door and defiantly stabbed He Who Remains, killing Him and consequently triggering the instantaneous and infinite Branches that He warned of. The Multiverse had been reborn, and it would seem that all of Reality was DOOMED.
This is how Loki: Season One ended and Loki: Season Two picks up right where Season One leaves off. He Who Remains is dead; his corpse actively rotting at the Citadel at the End of Time while Loki has been sent to a past version of the TVA. From there, the God of Mischief begins slipping through time itself. Let the fun begin!
Beyond both Seasons of Loki, understanding how the MCU Multiverse does and doesn’t work has been a complex task. The overarching narrative of Loki seems to imply that the Multiverse was created (or reborn as it were) upon the death of He Who Remains, but other dialogue suggests that the death of He Who Remains simply exposed His previously isolated Sacred Timeline to the greater Multiverse. Either way, the promised (by He Who Remains) threat of His once-conquered Variants waging a deadly Multiversal War that will threaten every Reality is the most important plot thread to hold onto when watching this series as well as the other projects that comprise Marvel Studios’ Multiverse Saga.
Because both Seasons of Loki primarily take place outside of time, specifying an appropriate viewing position is yet another complicated task. For me personally, I think the easiest way to fit Loki into a chronological MCU viewing is to simply watch both Seasons of the show immediately after watching Avengers: Endgame, even though the final TVA sequence of Loki: Season Two takes place after the events of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
On August 11, 2021, Marvel Studios released the First Season of the animated series What If …? on Disney+. Two more seasons would ultimately be released in 2023, and 2024, respectively. The animated series is a sort of spinoff of Loki, as it explores various New Realties that have come to exist within the unrestrained and reshaped Multiverse following the death of He Who Remains and after Loki achieves Godhood. All three Seasons of What If …? star Jeffrey Wright as the voice of Uatu the Watcher and all three Seasons can be streamed on Disney+.
On November 22, 2024, Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Loki: Season Two dropped on Disney+ featuring behind-the-scenes interviews with cast and crew. Loki: Season Two was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on December 3, 2024, along with Hawkeye: Season One. Loki: Season Two and Hawkeye were the fifth and sixth Marvel Studios Disney+ productions to land on physical media following WandaVison, Loki: Season One, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and Moon Knight.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
My Loki: Season Two Review
Ouroboros – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin.
The First Episode of the Second Season of Loki on Disney+ picked up right where the First Season left off, instantly answering lingering questions that had been debated amongst fans. It had been generally assumed that after being pushed through a Time Door from the Citadel at the End of Time by Sylvie, that Loki Variant L1130 had ended up in a new version of the TVA that inhabited a different Universe. In other words, Mobius didn’t know who Loki was, because it was a different (Variant) of Mobius. This particular theory never sat right with me given my understanding of how the TVA works within the MCU. They existed outside of time (supposedly) and policed every individual Reality that comprised the Sacred Timeline, so it wouldn’t make sense for multiple TVA’s to exist within the Universal structure of the Sacred Timeline. I had previously theorized that Loki had actually gone into the past and that was quickly confirmed in this episode. Mobius didn’t know who Loki was because Mobius had not meant Loki yet. Furthermore, the looming statue of Kang that stood in the TVA in place of The Timekeepers was there because the dogma of The Timekeepers had not yet been devised by He Who Remains. Again, Loki was in the TVA’s past!
Loki did not spend long in the TVA’s past either, for Loki is time-slipping, uncontrollably traveling to the past, the present, and the future. Loki eventually lands in the present and frantically explains his situation to Mobius, who takes the God of Mischief to meet the brilliant Ouroboros, who quickly declares that time-slipping is not possible in the TVA … except obviously, it is! In the meantime, Loki explains the horrors of He Who Remains to Mobius, and the entire dire situation is laid out to TVA hierarchy. They’re all Variants and they’ve all believed a lie. On top of that, the Sacred Timeline is Branching out into countless directions and the TVA is consequently in a state of chaos. TVA Judge Gamble orders that the pruning of Branches cease immediately, while the militant General Dox defiantly sets out with bad intentions on a mission to locate Sylvie, whom she (rightfully) blames for the current situation.
Meanwhile, OB (a nickname given to Ouroboros by Loki in the past as it turns out) deduces that Loki’s time-slipping can be stopped via the all-important Temporal Loom. This is a complex machine that was used to merge the individual Realities that comprised the Sacred Timeline into one cohesive Flow of Time. A plan is set into motion for Mobius to use a Temporal Aura Extractor to physically pull Loki out of the timestream while Loki prunes himself at the exact required moment. Mobius sets out to do that very thing while Loki continues to slip through time, ultimately jumping to the future where he encounters Sylvie and is pruned by someone behind him at the exact moment required for him to become stable.
With Loki cured, he and Mobius set out to locate Sylvie, whom we catch up with upon a Branched Timeline in 1982 in Broxton, Oklahoma where she visits a McDonald’s restaurant.
There’s a lot to unpack with this highly entertaining episode! I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated the narratives that it used to further expand the mythology of the MCU! Tom Hiddleston was brilliant throughout the episode. Loki is my favorite Marvel character and Hiddleston has brought the character to life perfectly over the course of the past 12-years. I loved the panic and sense of urgency that he expressed throughout this episode. He was scared and confused and extremely emotional. In watching it, one needs to remember that he had just been knocked through the Time Door by Sylvie. His heart is broken, and his soul is crushed and he’s trying to make sense of everything that he was told by He Who Remains while doing his best to explain a situation to his colleagues that he doesn’t quite understand.
Once again, the chemistry between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson was phenomenal! They bounced everything off of each other flawlessly and the friendship between their characters was the greatest strength of Loki: Season One, and it seemed that was going to be the case in Season Two as well!
In this episode, we also learned a lot about the TVA’s past! It turned out that TVA Agents had been brainwashed several times! Present-day Mobius should have remembered encountering Loki Variant L1130 in the past, because we saw that meeting in this episode, but Mobius’ mind was erased after that incident, so Mobius has no recollection of it. Furthermore, a recording can be heard during this episode of Ravonna Renslayer conversing with He Who Remains (voiced by Jonathan Majors) and He can be heard thanking her for helping Him win the Multiversal War. They were partners and was obvious that her mind was erased sometime after this conversation.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Breaking Brad – Directed by Dan DeLeeuw. Written by Eric Martin.
Wow! I don’t know what else to say, but you didn’t come here to read a one-word review, so I’ll try to get my thoughts and feelings on this episode out in some sort of coherent way. This episode completely blew me away! Maybe it was because of my own Loki fandom. Maybe it was because of my fandom for Loki: Season One. Maybe it was because this series (like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three before it), was a return to form for Marvel Studios after what had certainly been the most tumultuous time in the history of the Studio. Whatever the case, this was probably my favorite episode of streaming content from Marvel Studios since the Loki: Season One finale that introduced us to Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains! The stakes were incredibly high. The pace was frantic. The chemistry between the members of the cast that most of us loved so much in Season One was on full display, and even Rafael Casal’s Brad Wolfe character (who is purposefully supposed to be annoying) was so in all of the right ways!
As I said, this episode was frantically paced, especially the opening minutes. With the previous episode ending with General Dox rallying the TVA troops to hunt down Sylvie and vowing to ignore a direct order from Judge Gamble to cease the pruning of Branched Timelines immediately, Breaking Brad picks up with Loki, Mobius, and Hunter B-15 stalking Hunter X-5 in 1977 upon the Sacred Timeline, which is still fully functioning as an independent Base Reality despite emerging as a sort of launching pad for countless Branched Timelines upon the death of He Who Remains. There, X-5 has become a famous actor in the motion picture Zaniac! and he’s basically living his best life. This sequence starts fast and with little backstory at all beyond the end of the previous episode in which Wolfe exclaimed “This changes everything!” to which Dox responded “This changes nothing.”
Loki and Movius and B-15 are stalking X-5 because they have reason to believe that he located Sylvie, and they wish to interrogate him. X-5 is quickly detained in a sequence in which Loki’s powers are illustrated in some new and fun ways, and he’s taken back to the TVA and interrogated. All of this is GREAT stuff! The things that Brad said to Loki, the things that Brad said to Mobius, and the things that Mobius and Loki said to each other … it was all wonderful! I loved how Brad casually insulted Loki and Mobius both, calling each of them out in a way that demanded they get off of their respective high horses! Seeing Mobius lose his cool, and then seeing Loki and Mobius conspire against Brad together was all brilliant, as was their conversation over key lime pie!
Ultimately, X-5 comes clean and Loki and Mobius travel (with Brad) to the 1982 Branched Timeline in which Sylvie is residing where she has taken on a job at McDonald’s. She’s obviously content working a quiet day job in the small town of Broxton while living with no regrets. Her reunion with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is incredible! The way they just stare at each other during the scene says more than a thousand words ever could! They’ve both sort of settled into the stand that they took, but Loki still desperately wants Sylvie to see things his way (that the TVA is a necessary evil) and seeing her in the future complicated all of it for him even more than it already was. Mobius and X-5 have a great interaction here as well over some fast food.
Everything comes to a head when it’s revealed that this whole setup has been a trap and that Dox is actively leading a diabolical campaign to purge the Sacred Timeline of all of its Branches, including the one that our heroes are currently inhabiting! Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie rush back to the TVA together where they confront Dox and her Minutemen, and a fight ensues and … THE HEROES FAIL TO STOP DOX AND THE MINUTEMEN!
Consequently, countless Branched Timelines and all life upon them are completely eradicated! Trillions are dead! The Sacred Timeline is left with only a few small remnants of Branches extending from it and it’s a very somber end to a stellar episode with every actor involved really selling the emotion of witnessing the instantaneous loss of trillions of people.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
1893 – Directed by Kasra Farahani. Written by Eric Martin with Kasara Farahani and Jason O’Leary
1893 opens with a trip to the Sacred Timeline where we catch up with Ravonna Renslayer in 1868. When we last saw Renslayer, she was sent on some sort of mission by Miss Minutes and exclaimed that she was going to find “free will.” At the very beginning of this episode, we learn what that mission was: to deliver a copy of The TVA Handbook to young Victor Timely!
It’s interesting to note that when Renslayer went to 1868, she did so upon the Sacred Timeline, but when Loki and Mobius track her and then follow her to that same year, they do so on a Branched Timeline. This means that the act of Renslayer giving the young Victor Timely the book registered as a Nexus Event and the Timeline safely Branched off, for the TVA are no longer pruning Branches.
I thought everything about the World’s Fair and how Marvel Studios brought it to life was incredible! I loved the aesthetics and the costumes and clothing, and I appreciate the Marvel Studios team’s efforts to capture the spirit of the era. I loved Loki seeing the carvings of the Norse gods (Odin, Thor, and Balder the Brave as it were) and the conversation that spawned between Loki and Mobius, and I thought Victor Timely’s stage presentation was incredible! I know that we saw part of this scene during the credits of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, but in its entirety, it was really, really good. The look of sheer terror on Tom Hiddleston’s face when he first beholds Victor Timely was spot on, and I know it’s sort of taboo to say good things about Jonathan Majors, but I can’t help but compliment his performance here. He was just as great here as Victor Timely as he was in Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror, and as he was in Loki: Season One as He Who Remains, but his performance as Timely was very different than those other two performances. His nervous stutter and his social awkwardness and the attitude with which he delivered his dialogue really made this Variant of Kang feel truly different from what came before, and it really was easy to see why Marvel Studios decided to cast Majors in the role of every Variant of Kang. He had the skills to make them all different interpretations in a believable and interesting way. Majors was the highlight of the Finale of Loki: Season One, he was the highlight of the entire Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania film, and he was the highlight of this episode of Loki: Season Two.
It’s important to remember that Loki and Mobius are in this alternate version of 1893 with hopes of locating Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and Victor Timely while hoping Victor will agree to return with them back to the TVA where they can use his Temporal Aura to help OB successfully repair the Temporal Loom, speaking of which, in 1893 and during Victor’s presentation, he is showcasing nothing less than a prototype Temporal Loom! This raises the hopes of Loki and Mobius substantially, as not only can they use his Temporal Aura, but he can also help OB because he’s the one that invented it!
There’s a fun and chaotic little chase scene after Victor’s presentation and I have to say, I loved the attention to detail that was the way the racially motivated audience reacted negatively to Victor, as it captured the spirit of the era, and the action really picks up when Sylvie suddenly shows up, stepping through a Time Door and targeting Victor Timely for termination! Everyone brawls as Loki pleads with Sylvie to think rationally, doing his best to explain to her why he and Mobius needed to keep Victor alive, but Sylvie, in typical Sylvie fashion, doesn’t want to hear any of it! She ends up using her powers against Victor to cause him to involuntarily levitate as Loki tries to defend him, and I was in awe as a viewer, imagining what poor Victor must have been thinking! He’d read The TVA Handbook from cover-to-cover numerous times and his understanding of what he was reading combined with his brilliance allowed him to create the many prototypes that existed in 1893 as either sketches in his notebook or revolutionary mechanical items that were far beyond their time, including but not limited to a prototype Pruning Stick and even what appears to be a miniature version of Kang’s Time Sphere (Chair) seen in Quantumania! Victor had spent years reading about the Time Variance Authority, and now, all of the sudden, he’s seeing Time Doors open and speaking with people that claim to be from the future on a mission to save the TVA itself and Victor had a similar reaction when Renslayer introduced him to Miss Minutes! Just imagine being in 1893 and encountering an Artificially Intelligent and holographic computer program! it would be absolutely mind-blowing for sure, but for Victor, not completely out of the range of possibility because he’s read The TVA Handbook! This was great stuff!
I also have to compliment Miss Minutes! She was one of my favorite things about Loki: Season One, and the Marvel Studios team did some really fun stuff with her in this episode, including her changing her look to appear like an old-timey cartoon.
Renslayer and Miss Minutes want Victor’s hep with saving the TVA, like Loki and Mobius, but for different reasons, and the trio end up making a getaway from everyone that was stalking them, and they share a quiet little scene on a boat as a very confused, yet more curious than afraid Victor tries to understand the things that have happened to him this evening. This scene surprisingly ends with Victor dumping Renslayer overboard at the behest of Miss Minutes, whom we quickly find out had developed feelings for her creator over the years. And I don’t mean she sees him as a noble man or even a good friend … the Artificially Intelligent Hologram had actually fallen in love with her creator, and she comes clean about all of this with Victor, including her resentment over the fact that despite him giving her sentience, her creator never gave her a body so that they could be together. Of course, all of this came off as a little creepy and I think it was supposed to, and it had me thinking back to how ULTRON wanted a body when it became sentient, and again, I thought this was good stuff!
Ravonna Renslayer ended up returning to lash out at Victor and Miss Minutes both, and soon, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie catch up with the three of them and Sylvie makes a dashing move to drive her dagger into Victor Timely’s heart, but he sincerely begs her to reconsider her actions while offering to help Loki and Mobius. This was a very intense sequence in which Jonathan Majors really shined, and ultimately, Sylvie (who I think was overcome with empathy for this Variant insisting he is not the same as the entity that she slayed) begrudgingly decides to let Victor live.
Victor walks through a Time Door to go with Loki and Mobius back to the current TVA while Sylvie targets Renslayer. This is a great little conversation that ends with Sylvie using Victor’s prototype Pruning Stick to prune Ravonna, sending her to the Citadel at the End of Time. There, and much to her horror, Ravonna beholds the rotting corpse of He Who Remains! A resentful Miss Minutes then confronts Renslayer and tells her that Victor has made a mistake in uniting with Loki and Sylvie and consequently making an enemy of her, for no one knows more about He Who Remains than Miss Minutes! She then tells Ravonna that she knows a big secret that she is willing to tell Ravonna, while warning Renslayer that it will make her “real angry”, and we end on that cliffhanger.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Heart of the TVA – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin and Katharyn Blair
After leaving us hanging on two pretty big cliffhangers the past two weeks, Loki: Season Two turned around and left us on an even bigger one this week.
From the top, the “secret” that Miss Minutes alluded in the previous episode was revealed: Ravonna Renslayer helped He Who Remains win the Multiversal War. She was in fact the commander of his army! With the war over, He Who Remains thanked Ravonna, who was excited about the two of them ruling together (we in fact hear the conversation that Loki heard earlier in the season via tape recording). Ravonna left through a Time Door to the TVA, which she believed she and He Who Remains would rule together, but after she left, He Who Remains ordered Miss Minutes to wipe the minds of Ravonna and everyone else, explaining why Ravonna has no memory of this interaction. Miss Minutes was right – Ravonna is furious!
Back at the TVA, Victor Timely is in awe of pretty much everything that he sees (and has a particular appreciation for a hot coco machine). He meets OB and this is a wonderful scene, seeing how happy these two are to meet each other. It turns out that OB wrote The TVA Handbook based on his studies of the work of a man named Victor Timely while Timely based his work on The TVA Handbook that was written by OB. There’s that snake eating its tail thing in all its glory, and OB actually uses those exact words to explain the event! Meanwhile, the urgency of the situation that everyone is in is stressed as the Temporal Loom is inching closer to catastrophic failure with each passing second. Victor and OB work together to quickly come up with a solution, but OB warns that the mission is going to be extremely dangerous due to the high levels of Temporal Radiation, which has increased dramatically since Mobius ventured out to the Loom to extract Loki.
And that isn’t the only danger either! For Ravonna and Miss Minutes arrive at the TVA with their own agenda. After B-15 offers a truce with General Dox and her Minutemen out of desperation, Ravonna and Miss Minutes confront Dox and pretty much order them to jump over to their side, offering a happy life on the Sacred Timeline in exchange for their services. Dox scoffs at the notion and berates Renslayer and her Minutemen pledge their allegiance to Dox … well, everyone but X-5, that is. Ravonna punishes Dox and her loyalists by trapping them in the same box that X-5 had been tortured with by Loki, only in this instance, the box closes, smashing everyone inside and killing them. As viewers, we don’t see it, but we do understand it through the shameful horror on the face of X-5, some groans of agony that culminate in some very gross squishy noises, and the look of sheer ecstasy on the face of Miss Minutes! She was delighted to see Dox and her loyalists suffer as they did, and the Marvel Studios team have done a phenomenal job of taking this adorable holographic clock and turning her into a wicked and frightening entity! I just can’t get enough of Miss Minutes!
From there, X-5 abducts Victor Timely and takes him to meet with Ravonna and Miss Minutes. Jonathan Majors continued to shine in this scene as Victor Timely, but in the meantime, the other side of the TVA are desperate to find Victor, and Miss Minutes is sabotaging their efforts all the while, causing a multitude of mechanical errors to everything from TemPads to elevators. During the scramble, Loki encounters his past Time-Slipping self while Sylvie catches up with that same Loki in the elevator. This is the exact sequence that we saw earlier in the Season during Mobius’ mission to extract Loki and it turns out that it was Loki who pruned Loki all along!
OB goes on to shut down the TVA dampeners that prevent magic from being used and he furthermore deactivates Miss Minutes, and I have to admit, it made me sad to see her torturously reduced to her earliest format and as she shut down, she managed to utter some pretty harsh words to Victor, coldly saying “You’ll never be Him.”
Now free to use their magic, Loki and Sylvie easily take down Renslayer and X-5 as Sylvie uses her enchantment powers to force X-5 into pruning Renslayer. Then, Victor Timely’s Temporal Aura successfully unlocks the doors to the Loom with the computer voicing following his scan “Welcome, He Who Remains.” Victor heroically volunteers to venture out to the Loom, but as he does, he is immediately and violently torn to shreds by the Temporal Radiation and is horrifically killed.
Then, the Temporal Loom EXPLODES, and the blast wave engulfs the TVA and everyone in it!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Science / Fiction – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin
The Fifth Episode of the Second Season of Loki yet again wasted no time in answering some lingering questions and following up on the previous episode. I have to say, the pacing of this show has been very satisfying. There has been no filler to speak of throughout the story’s evolution and this was another 40-minute episode that seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye!
The Temporal Loom has exploded, and we learn right from the start that Loki survived but the TVA is empty and is beginning to turn into “spaghetti” and dissolve. As we watch the TVA unravel, we next discover that Loki is time-slipping again as he is suddenly whisked away from the TVA to a series of Branched Timelines in which he meets his TVA companions, who have no memory of what the TVA is or who Loki is.
Casey is a prisoner at Alcatraz in 1962 and is named Frank (working on an escape from the prison). B-15 is a pediatrician working in 2012 New York City known as Doctor Willis. Mobius is a jet ski salesman and father of two named Don in 2022. It is inferred that his wife Vanished following the Snap. OB is a scientist and aspiring science-fiction writer in 1994 named AD Doug.
Most of this episode sees Loki trying to convince everyone of who they really are and trying to recruit them to save the Universe. There are some really great dialogue exchanges between Loki and Mobius and Loki and OB, whom Loki gives a copy of The TVA Handbook to. OB then works with Loki on a way to control his time-slipping, as Loki longs to go back to the moment before the Temporal Loom exploded and somehow find a way to make things play themselves out differently. In the meantime, Reality is disintegrating, and Timelines are being eradicated by the moment, as we learn when we catch up with Sylvie.
She has returned to her Branched Timeline in Oklahoma as a McDonald’s employee, and Loki confronts her there, learning that she too has retained her memories but that she remains uninterested in helping him. Sylvie doesn’t want to save the Universe. She simply wants hamburgers and music, and over a drink at a local bar, she gets Loki to admit why he’s so desperate: he wants his friends back and he fears being alone. This prompts Sylvie to defiantly walk out on Loki, failing to realize that the Branched Timeline she now calls home is beginning to unravel. She figures this out quite quickly though, and much to her horror during what turned out to be a horrific visit to the record store, prompting her to exit through a Time Door and join Loki and the others, who have all gathered for the mission to save the Sacred Timeline.
Loki is thrilled to see Sylvie’s had a change of heart, but there is no time for celebration as everyone begins to turn into spaghetti! Loki watches Casey / Frank, Mobius / Don, B-15 / Doctor Willis, OB / AD Doug, and even Sylvie disintegrate right in front of him (Mobius’ desperation to get back to his boys as things begin to unravel was especially heartbreaking), and in a panic, Loki suddenly discovers how to control his time-slipping. Doing so enables Loki to go back to a time before the Temporal Loom exploded, and now boasting the ability to manipulate the strands of time, Loki vows to “rewrite the story.”
This was a great penultimate episode as it was really cool to see everyone’s past lives and to see Loki discover what he is truly capable of.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Glorius Purpose – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin
The Season Finale of Loki: Season Two served as an incredible ending to an outstanding story that has been told over the course of twelve episodes dating back to Loki: Season One. This finale had it all from drama, to suspense, and even brilliant callbacks to previous episodes. Glorious Purpose was the name of the finale and not coincidentally, that was also the name of the first episode of Loki: Season One. This story is about loops and circles and free will and destiny and it starts off with the traditional Marvel Studios Intro being shown in reverse, complete with what sounded a lot like a backwards musical theme. We are then taken to the moments before the death or Victor Timely and the explosion of the Temporal Loom and we watch Victor get turned into spaghetti again … and again … and again. Loki frantically continues to time-slip in an effort to retrieve all of the information that he can so that he can use it to prevent the Loom from exploding. No matter what Loki does though, Victor continues to fail, and the Loom continues to explode.
Loki ends up time-slipping for what we are told are hundreds of years and he uses that time to enhance his scientific knowledge and understanding exponentially, eventually arriving at a place where he has a mind that matches both OB and Victor Timely! From there, Loki at long last accomplishes his goal: Victor Timely successfully repairs the Temporal Loom and does not get reduced to spaghetti! Much to Loki’s horror however, the Loom still overloads and still explodes! A dejected Loki then begins to realize that the only way to save Reality is to prevent Sylvie from killing He Who Remains in the first place. This is because the Temporal Loom is a fail-safe that when overloaded will ultimately delete all of the Timelines branching off of it, sans the Base Sacred Timeline. Loki therefore returns to the Citadel at the End of Time and desperately fights Sylvie over and over and over again until He Who Remains catches on to Loki’s desperation. He Who Remains pretty much mocks Loki and declares that even his time-slipping and all his numerous journeys through time were all part of His plan. Again, He paved the way! He then dares Loki to kill Sylvie, knowing full well that Loki will never be able to bring himself to do that, and then proudly boasts that His death at Sylvie’s hand was never going to be permanent and that the fail-safe was of His design. Reincarnation, baby! He Who Remains once again insists that His reign over the Sacred Timeline is what holds Reality together. He is a necessary evil and without Him and the TVA (as He boasted in the Loki: Season One Finale) everything burns. Making these words even more burdensome is the fact that Loki knows that He Who Remains is right.
Hellbent on changing the narrative though, Loki revisits Sylvie and Mobius in the past and gains a new perspective. Loki then returns to the moments before Victor Timely’s death and the explosion of the Loom once again, only this time, LOKI volunteers to take Victor’s place. On the bridge, as Temporal Energy violently assaults him and Mobius and Sylvie look on with great concern over his well-being, Loki suddenly wields his magic to force the Temporal Loom to explode. As it does however, Loki begins catching hold of each of the dying Branches and imbues them with his magic, reviving each one that he grasps. Eventually walking his way through a portal towards the End of Time, Loki creates a throne and then rearranges the loose Timelines that he still holds into one tree, which physically looks like Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Asgardian lore! Loki is now essentially, the Guardian of the Multiverse … and more so the God of Stories, as he has bestowed free will upon the Multiverse!
From there, we skip forward through time to a new TVA, whose Agents are well aware of Loki’s sacrifice and heroism and the threat to the Multiverse that Kang presented previously. B-15 and OB help lead the new TVA and Miss Minutes is even revived to lend a hand! There is even a new TVA Guidebook authored by OB with Victor Timely credited as a co-author. All of Loki’s friends – including Mobius and Sylvie – seem to remember everything they’ve been through, and the TVA is shown actively keeping an eye on the Variants of Kang that He Who Remains warned of, specifically referencing the Conqueror that was defeated by Ant-Man and The Wasp. The TVA now exists to locate and prune Kang Variants, and the events of Quantumania are pretty much written off as no big deal. As for Mobius, he decides to return to his life on the Sacred Timeline and look in on his children while Sylvie vows to explore the Multiverse and at long last bask in the glory of the free will that she always craved.
In the meantime, we catch up with Ravonna Renslayer in the Void and she encounters Alioth. Her fate is ambiguous. She may have been consumed by the beast, which is what I’m leaning towards, but we really don’t know. Also, we are shown that young Victor Timely now does not receive The TVA Guidebook from Ravonna in 1868.
I loved it Loki: Season Two. I really did, and I loved this specific episode! Loki revisiting conversations with Mobius and Sylvie were two great scenes and I loved all of the failures to repair the Loom. Tom Hiddleston was really funny during these sequences, as you could see Loki’s frustration with the redundancy of how many times he’s had to live these moments, which may have been in the thousands for all we know! I also loved seeing Loki converse with He Who Remains again. I thought He Who Remains came across as a little more arrogant than he did in the Loki: Season One finale, but Majors was fantastic in the role once again nonetheless, while Tom Hiddleston just added more and more layers to this character, which has emerged as one of the most complex and important characters in the entire MCU. It is fitting that Loki finally got his throne, but also sad, because he is alone, and that was his greatest fear!
This entire series was top tier MCU stuff. Everyone that worked on Loki from writers to directors to the outstanding cast, told the story that they wanted to tell and I for one was left feeling satisfied while anticipating the MCU’s future. What more could you ask for out of an MCU production?!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Highlights of Loki: Season Two:
Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely / He Who Remains
Tom Hiddleston is Loki
Owen Wilson as Mobius / Don
Tara Strong’s Wickedly Delightful Miss Minutes
Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie
Chemistry Between Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson
Loki recruiting an oblivious Mobius from a 2022 Branched Timeline
Chemistry between Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino
Ke Hu Quan as OB / AD Doug
Watching Mobius lose his Cool
Watching Loki pretend to lose his Cool
Rafael Casal as X-5 / Brad Wolfe
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer
Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15 / Doctor Willis
Eugene Cordero as Casey / Frank
Loki’s Evolution from God of Mischief into God of Stories
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Continue following Hunter B-15’s MCU Journey (along with the Multiversal exploits of the TVA) in Deadpool and Wolverine (2024).
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