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
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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 the Multiverse that He insisted would infinitely expand in the event that the Sacred Timeline was exposed. 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 for his actions during the previous Multiversal War that He Who Remains eventually ended. 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-Multiverse 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 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 WITHIN THE MCU HEADING INTO LOKI: SEASON TWO
Avengers: Endgame introduced the concept of time travel into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Time travel was a significant plot device that had widespread ramifications on not just Avengers: Endgame, but on the entire MCU. 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 approached 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 grows up as Rhodey suggests in the film. Time travel (at least in Avengers: Endgame) does not work that way. By doing that, The Avengers would create a Branch from off the (Sacred) Timeline and would merely kill that Timeline’s Thanos and spare that Timeline Thanos’ wrath.
This is where the “Many Worlds” angle comes in, and what this theory suggests is that the Universe exists in a state of constant expansion in which it is continually splitting (or Branching off) into extensions that exist initially as duplicate Parallel Universes that evolve into a range of either very similar or very different New Realities. These Universes comprise what some have labeled the “Multiverse.” This theory is directly referenced in Loki: Season One when the Sylvie character exclaims that “the Universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos.” Exactly who and what the Universe wanted to “break free” from fueled the plot of the First Season of Loki and carried over into its Second Season as well, with that entity being revealed as He Who Remains, a man who rules over the 616-Multiverse from His Citadel at the End of Time with claims that it was He who ended the first Multiversal War after which he isolated the Sacred Timeline and founded the TVA to ensure that a “proper” Flow of Time is followed by all of the Realities that comprise the Sacred Timeline. There is a precise script that must be followed, and free will is not allowed. A violation of one’s destiny results in Branched Timelines which are not allowed by the TVA in order to keep the constrained 616-Multiverse free from the threat of another Multiversal War.
The concept of the Multiverse is not new to comic book readers, and it has been a Marvel Comics plot device since the 1970’s. An attempt is made to explain how this ties into time travel through the dialogue of several characters in Avengers: Endgame. As it is told in that film, the mere act of traveling back through time will create one of these aforementioned (and largely forbidden) Branched / New Realities. Upon the arrival of a time traveler or time travelers, the Universe executes a sort of copy / paste initiative in which a New (Branched) Reality is spawned / created. The time traveler / time travelers now exist in this new Parallel World; one that shares the exact history of the world from whence they came … up until the moment that they arrived in the past. This is why people and places look and act identical to the same people and places from whence the time travelers came … Because they are. They are for lack of a better word, Cosmic Copies of the people and places that they knew.
From that point of 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 Reality that they’ve spawned and when this occurs the TVA registers it as a Nexus Event and the person who caused it is accused of a “Crime Against the Sacred Timeline” and they are arrested while the Branched Timeline that they’ve created is reset / pruned. In terms of the chronological release dates of MCU productions, Avengers: Endgame was the first Nexus Event that was seen on-screen, and this happened when 2012-Loki escaped with the Tesseract. Due to this escape from Avengers custody, Loki’s destiny would be dramatically different from its intended course, as in this new, Branched Reality, Thor would not take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard following the Battle of New York, Loki wouldn’t inadvertently cause the death of Frigga after being taken back to Asgard, and Loki would not be murdered by Thanos. In Loki: Season One, TVA Judge Renslayer explains that Loki has been arrested for Crimes against the Sacred Timeline because him escaping with the Tesseract was not “supposed to happen”, but that The Avengers’ Time Heist was.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
With all of that being said, the Marvel Studios Disney+ series Ms. Marvel that first streamed in 2022, added a new twist to the rules of time travel within the MCU. Young Kamala Khan (through the power of her Bangle) traveled back in time to the Partition of India in 1942. There, Kamala saves her grandmother, who was a small child at the time, and ensures (through a projection of stars) that she gets on the train with Kamala’s great-grandfather. Only after the event plays itself out does Kamala realize that she was all along a part of the stories pertaining to that night that she’d always heard told by her family.
Curiously, when Kamala went back in time, she did not create a Branched Timeline. She landed on the very same 616 / Sacred Timeline that she came from! Her saving her grandmother was part of a Closed Loop upon the Sacred Timeline that the TVA obviously allowed. Kamala was always the person who saved her grandmother, and her grandmother was saved by Kamala before Kamala was ever born. Time Travel!
Therefore, the rules that were laid out in Endgame don’t exactly apply here, but I believe this was due to Kamala’s Bangle.
As we previously learned in 2016’s Doctor Strange and would later learn in 2023’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, there are relics, artifacts, and devices that can be utilized to travel through time without creating a Branched Timeline. The Variant of Kang the Conqueror that appears in Quantumania utilized a Time Sphere (Time Chair) to traverse the Multiverse. With it, Kang could apparently go anywhere and any when as confirmed by his promise to take Janet Van Dyne back to her Timeline when they were working together. This Variant of Kang had killed trillions and had eradicated countless Timelines while warring against his Variants, and he was driven by a mission to finish the job. He was banished to the Quantum Realm presumably by the aforementioned trio of his Variants known as Pharaoh Rama-Tut, the Centurian, and Immortus during the Multiversal War that Miss Minutes and He Who Remains spoke of in Loki: Season One. Kang’s Time Sphere was powered by a Multiversal Core, which was damaged when he crashed into the Quantum Realm. The plot of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania revolved around the Conqueror’s efforts to get his Time Sphere up-and-running again.
While the Time Sphere appears to be a mechanism invented by Kang that exists as a technological marvel, Kamala’s Bangle in Ms. Marvel appears mystical in nature, akin to the Infinity Stones; specifically, the Time Stone, which could be wielded to literally rewind time itself or to peer into possible and predestined futures alike. When Doctor Strange rewound time in Hong Kong during Dormammu’s attack, there was no indication that any sort of Branched Timeline resulted (the 2023 book Marvel Studios – The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline confirmed this) and there was no sign of the TVA. This leads me to believe that magical / mystical artifacts such as the Time Stone, the kamala’s Bangle, and probably even the Ten Rings can be used to manipulate time within one’s own Reality without creating a new one. In fact, Kang’s Time Sphere may have utilized some sort of mystical energy itself, as may TVA devices such as TemPad’s, Time Twisters, etc. In the 2023 film The Marvels, Kamala Khan’s Bangle was revealed to be one of a pair that were revered throughout the Universe as the “Quantum Bands.”
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
The (Now former) Dogma of the TVA:
“Long ago, there was a vast Multiversal War. Countless unique timelines battled each other for supremacy, nearly resulting in the total destruction of … well, everything. But then, the all-knowing Timekeepers emerged, bringing peace by reorganizing the Multiverse into a single timeline: the Sacred Timeline.” – Miss Minutes.
Loki: Season One introduced viewers to the Time Variance Authority; an organization that policed the Sacred Timeline by ensuring that no Branched Timelines that grow out from off the Sacred Timeline as a result of one violating his or her intended destiny, are allowed to grow into a fully functioning Branched Reality if the violation registers as a “Nexus Event”; a crime against the Sacred Timeline. Such a Reality would not only mean free will but would mean unabashed chaos that could lead to another Multiversal War, and the TVA could not allow such a Reality to exist.
The TVA served a mysterious trio of what were more or less Space Lizards called “The Timekeepers.” TVA Agents were taught that the Timekeepers created the TVA and its workers in order to prevent a new Multiversal War and TVA Agents were armed with numerous devices that assisted them in their efforts, including TemPads, Time Twisters, Time Wands, Time Cells, and Reset Charges. They were also assisted by a unique Artificially Intelligent program / hologram known as Miss Minutes. From TVA Headquarters, the TVA Agents monitored the Sacred Timeline, searching for any signs of Nexus Events and potential Branched Realities. The Sacred Timeline was also monitored by the Timekeepers, who the entire TVA answered to. Only TVA Judges were permitted audience with the Timekeepers and the TVA Judge oversaw all cases of Variants; people who were apprehended by the TVA for violating the Sacred Timeline. When a Variant was found guilty, they were mercilessly “pruned” and the Reality / Timeline from whence they came was reset (a nice way of saying purged).
TVA Agents are groomed to believe that they were created by The Timekeepers and that a sort of blissful and heavenly existence at the End of Time awaits them as a reward by The Timekeepers for their work.
This was the way of things … or so it was said.
Over the course of Loki: Season One and Loki: Season Two, the true nature of the TVA and how it came to be would be revealed as the many lies that He Who Remains told were exposed. In actuality, TVA Agents are themselves Variants and time seems to “move differently” in the TVA and it is difficult for TVA Agents to determine how long they’ve worked for the TVA due to routine memory wipes that are carried out by He Who Remains. TVA Agents aren’t just denied free will, they’re denied their very selves while being manipulated into murdering trillions upon trillions of people with their methods of pruning / purging.
The first episode of Loki: Season Two picks up right where the Season One finale leaves off. He Who Remains is dead, slain by Sylvie at the Citadel at the End of Time and the Sacred Timeline is Branching infinitely with every second that passes. Loki Variant L1130 has meanwhile been kicked through a Time Door by Sylvie and has landed back at the TVA where neither Mobius or Hunter B-15 recognize him and where a statue of He Who Remains stands alone within the Headquarters of the TVA.
According to the 2023 book Marvel Studios – The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline, the Headquarters of the Time Variance Authority is located on its own Timeline, separate from the Sacred Timeline. Loki: Season Two reveals that this TVA Timeline has a past, present, and future than can be (and ultimately is by Loki) traversed. The Official Timeline book does not include the events of Loki: Season Two, so it isn’t known exactly when its events transpired as they relate to the Sacred Timeline, but I believe it is safe to assume that the series takes place over the course of Phase Four and into Phase Five, with various events (such as Doctor Strange’s botched spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home) happening due to the death of He Who Remains and the overloading of the Temporal Loom. The evidence for this is found in the fact that at the end of Loki: Season Two, the 616-Multiverse is made over into a new image by Loki that resembles the World Tree: Yggdrasil which means any views of the chaotic Sacred Timeline that is Branching uncontrollably would have taken place before Loki’s ascension to Godhood (What If …? Season One and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania each show this). Furthermore, Mobius verbally alludes to the events of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania at the end of Loki: Season Two, which means Loki’s makeover of the 616-Universe certainly happens after that film. In a nutshell, the death of He Who Remains, the exposure of the Sacred Timeline, and Loki’s rule over the MCU 616-Multiverse all begin happening prior to What If … Season One and conclude prior to What If …? Season Two.
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 616-Multiverse. 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 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 on a Branched Timeline in 1982 in Broxton, Oklahoma where she visits a McDonald’s restaurant.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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 seems that’s going to be the case this Season as well!
This Season of Loki also seems like it is going to try and further explain how time travel and the Multiverse work within the MCU. Already, in the first episode, we’ve gotten a possible answer to one of Marvel Studios’ biggest lingering threads, and that was what happened with Steve Rogers after he returned the Infinity Stones? Loki: Season One logic dictated that Steve would have been confronted by the TVA for crimes against the Sacred Timeline, but here, we see the physical Temporal Loom and learn that it was created to tie Branched Timelines together into a linear rope where they could exist parallel to one another without chaos. This confirms what many speculated all along, that select Branches were allowed to grow, and that not every Branch was pruned. Therefore, we can now assume that the Branch that Steve created to be with Peggy was allowed by the TVA / He Who Remains, and that said Branch was weaved into the singular rope that was the Sacred Timeline via the Temporal Loom. Though Loops such as the one Kamala Khan participated in with her grandmother were allowed, the fact that Steve was not using a mystical relic (such as the Bangle or the Ten Rings, or the Time Stone), means he would have created a Branched Timeline in the 1940’s where he lived with a Variant of Peggy Cater that was created the moment that he arrived.. Case closed!
We also learned a lot about the TVA’s past! It turns out that TVA Agents have 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. We furthermore learned that He Who Remains did not create the TVA alone. Loki uses a Time Stick to prune a TVA mural and behind it is a mural of several Kang’s! This shows us that the TVA was ruled at one time by several Kang’s and that He Who Remains most likely seized control of the TVA at their expense. So, there is a lot more to the history of the TVA than we as viewers first realized, and that He Who Remains foretold!
I also need to address Ravonna Renslayer, for during this episode, a recording can be heard of Ravonna 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! Knowing what we know about Renslayer from Season One, it’s obvious that her mind was erased sometime after this conversation. This raises the question of just how many times the workers at the TVA have actually been brainwashed? It would seem to be a lot and this throws into question a whole lot of things that we learned in Season One!
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’s because of my own Loki fandom. Maybe it’s because of my fandom for Loki: Season One. Maybe it’s because (like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three earlier this year), this series is a return to form for Marvel Studios after what has 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!
On top of all of that, the closing moments of this episode threaten to slaughter just about every single fan theory pertaining to the MCU Multiverse that has been out there in the two years that have followed since Loki: Season One ended.
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 Bad 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 quiet 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.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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.
Where that leaves the MCU is anyone’s guess!
For the TVA, there is still the problem of the overloaded Temporal Loom. While the pruning of so many Branches will certainly help, the problem pertaining to the Loom that was set up in the first episode still looms and OB reveals in this episode that he can’t fix the Loom without Miss Minutes and / or the Temporal Aura of He Who Remains.
How all of this ends up is WAY up in the air! Will the Sacred Timeline be restored? Will the TVA continue to exist? Will Loki or Sylvie have a part in running it? Will Mobius ride a jet ski!?! What of the Incursions? There’s so much to come, and I am thoroughly enjoying the ride so far!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
1893 – Directed by Kasra Farahani. Written by Eric Martin with Kasara Farahani and Jason O’Leary
I think I have a new favorite Marvel Studios streaming television series! I have adored and rewatched WandaVision and Loki: Season One several times since they were first released in 2021. On my personal list of Marvel Studios productions, those two shows are second only to Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War with Loki: Season One standing at # 3 and WandaVision standing at # 4, but it’s looking like Loki: Season Two may top each of them! Of course, we are only half-way through, and the series needs to stick the landing, but so far, this is top tier MCU stuff for me!
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! C’mon, how cool is that!?!
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. In fact, depending on how you choose to view time, this may have actually been the original Nexus Event if we are viewing time as a circle (which I think we should be), but for now, it’s important to understand that when Renslayer ventured to 1893 and the World’s Fair in Chicago, this was an 1893 that was a continuation of the Branched Timeline that she created in 1868.
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 he 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 in some circles to say good things about Jonathan Majors at this time, 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 is easy to see why Marvel Studios decided to cast Majors in the role of every Variant of Kang. He has the skills to make them all different interpretations in a believable 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.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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 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 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 modern-day 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 and I really don’t know what to say! After this episode, I don’t even have any theories in terms of what comes next, and that’s because some of the big things that I expected to happen in the finale happened right here in episode four! So, I’ll just get straight into what happened!
From the top, the “secret” that Miss Minutes alluded to last week was revealed: Ravonna Renslayer helped He Who Remains end 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 in the present 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.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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 continues 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! Yes, yet another loop!
OB goes on to shut down the TVA dampeners that prevent magic 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. What!?!
Then, the Temporal Loom EXPLODES, and the blast wave engulfs the TVA and everyone in it! And that’s the end of the episode! So, yeah, I don’t know what to say other than I loved it. I did believe there was a good chance that the finale would reveal who pruned Loki and I thought the Temporal Loom would explode in the finale as well, but both of those things happened here in Episode Four, and I have no idea where we are going from here!
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.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
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 and 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 and much to her horror however 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. There is just one more episode to go and it should be a doozy!
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 sort of 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 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 616-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 Kang the Conqueror that was defeated by Ant-Man and The Wasp. It appears that 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 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, which I guess means that Branch is now clipped, and the Kang Variant known as Victor Timely that we knew in this series now never came to be.
And that’s the end of this series. No credits scene. Nothing else in terms of further explanation. It’s the end. So, what did I think about it?
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I loved it. I really did. I love this entire Season in fact, and I feel like it was even better than Loki: Season One, which was my third-favorite Marvel Studios production ever. 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 ending seems to imply that whatever “Loop” the Sacred Timeline and its inhabitants were stuck in has now been broken and that a new future is now possible for all involved. Even if a Multiversal War is still coming, it seems like this will be a new Multiversal War, and not the one that Ravonna and He Who Remains previously waged as many people theorized, for this is now Loki’s story, which is a really neat callback to what Renslayer told him when he first stood before the TVA: “This is not your story Mister Laufeyson, it never was.”
Well, it is now!
I figure we will see the God of Stories again at some point, but we sort of don’t need to see him again either. His arc from Variant to true Godhood was wrapped up pretty perfectly and the TVA can continue to appear within the MCU without Loki ever needing to be seen.
it’s all quite ambiguous, but in a good way!
This was top tier MCU stuff. Everyone that worked on it from writers to directors to the outstanding cast, told the story that they wanted to tell and I for one am both satisfied and anticipating the future. What more could you ask for out of an MCU production?!
UPDATE … The arrest and eventual conviction of Jonathan Majors for assault has obviously cast a large shadow over this series, as well as over the entire Multiverse Saga. I did a lot of praising Jonathan Majors for his talent as an actor in this review but 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.
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
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