Who rules Time?
Last time on Loki, Loki followed
his other self, the Variant calling herself Sylvie, through a Time Door into
the heart of the TVA. Sylvie makes it to the Timekeeper’s elevator before Loki
catches up to her, they fight, and then Judge Ravanna Renslayer and her guards
catch up to them. Loki portals them away, but to Lamentis. Sylvie proclaims
this the worst apocalypse her TemPad has on it, as this entire moon is destroyed.
The two are stuck as well, as her TemPad’s battery is dead. The two make a long-distance
trek to Lamentis’ capital in an attempt to recharge it and bond along the way. They
get on a train to the Ark, the ship that will try to take survivors off the
planet, but are found out when a drunken Loki draws too much attention to them.
And the TemPad breaks when they’re thrown from the train. They decide to try to
steal the Ark, rewrite history and escape. They make it to the city just in
time to see the Ark get blown to smithereens. Enough recap, let’s get to it, shall
we?
Episode 4: Nexus Event
Poor little Sylvie has no idea what she's in for.
Opens with a very young Sylvie playing
with her toys when then-Hunter Ravanna Renslayer comes in with her Minute Men
and arrests her for Crimes Against the Sacred Timeline. She’s put through the
same procedure as our Loki was, but when her trial came, she bit Renslayer and
was able to break away and steal her TemPad. She was able to make a portal and
escape. In the present, Renslayer takes the elevator up to the Timekeepers.
Their… office(?) is shrouded in mist that peel back to show the Three Timekeepers
sitting in their chairs, red eyes glowing ominously. We then cut to Mobius
meeting up with Ravanna after said meeting. We get from her that the meeting
didn’t go well. They blame her for the Loki’s getting so close to them. Mobius
asks to speak with C-20 to get information out of her about the Loki’s, but he’s
informed that C-20 is dead. She claims that C-20 had a rapid mental decline after
being returned, but that sounds just a little too convenient given the
information C-20 was wrestling with.
Back on Lamentis, Loki and Sylvie
find a quite spot to sit. Loki apologizes for getting them into this. Sylvie
talks about her Asgard, the little she remembers about it before her capture.
She believes that the universe wants to break free and be chaotic, so it spawns
chaos, like a Goddess of Mischief. The TVA was fine with that at first, but as
soon as her being Loki caused enough differences to the timeline, they came and
arrested her. Explains how she stole the TemPad, how she kept making Nexus
Events as she wasn’t supposed to exist, before figuring out the Apocalypse trick.
She grew up on dying worlds, and now she’ll die on one. Wow, that’s rough.
We cut back to Mobius and B-15 at
the TVA observation room. They’re looking for the Lokis but aren’t detecting
them, even with their scanners having been upgraded after they discovered where
Sylvie was hiding. Mobius lies to her when she asks for any news on C-20.
Just waiting for the end of the world with your
gender swapped self. So a fairly average Wednesday
for Loki.
Lamentis is now starting to get
bombarded by bigger meteorites. Sylvie predicts they don’t have much time left.
She asks Loki if the thing that makes them Loki is the fact they’re destined to
lose. Loki doesn’t think so, he thinks that it’s their ability to survive. He compliments
Sylvie’s ability to survive and run rings around the TVA. Their conversation
causes a major spike in the Sacred Timeline scanning equipment back at TVA headquarters
and they get a lock on the Nexus Event. On Lamentis a massive meteorite hits
and the two hold hands as the shockwave approaches them. Mobius figures out that
this must be the Lokis. Their branch is approaching the redline at almost a
completely vertical pace. The TVA opens doors and save the Lokis at the last moment.
Loki and Sylvie are brought in, Sylvie
being taken by multiple guards to a separate local while Mobius takes Loki to
another location. He’s miffed he only has the two guards and the two of them
start arguing over whom betrayed whom. Loki is taken to the interrogation room
again. Mobius quips that Loki isn’t really the God of Mischief, Loki loses his temper
and asks the “folksie dope” if he’s the God of Self-Sabotage or the God of
Backstabbing, to which Mobius says he’s “Just kind of an asshole and a bad friend.”
They open a red bordered Time door and prepare to shove him in. Mobius let’s
Loki say some last words, to hear the last desperate trick from the desperate
trickster. Loki tells Mobius that the TVA is lying to him, but he doesn’t buy
it, and Loki is imprisoned.
Inside, he’s in a courtyard on Asgard.
A moment later, Sif comes in, her hair obviously cut. She walks up, punches
Loki in the face and tells him “I hope you know you deserve to be alone and you
always will be.” He makes a snide remark, and she knees him in the balls and
punches him out, knocking him to the ground. He gets up and pretends that that
interaction didn’t bother him at all, insisting it was just a bit of fun. And
then she comes back and does it again, to Loki’s astonishment. And again. He
tries to convince the construct to help him, but she just punches him out
again.
Mobius visits Renslayer. He should
be interrogating Loki, but says he’s “softening up” in the Time Cell. He asks
to interview Sylvie, but Renslayer doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He needs to
focus on his Variant and figure out what caused that massive Nexus Event spike.
Mobius thinks it’d be faster to get info from both of them, but Renslayer refuses.
Mobius walks out, grumbling about having to work his Loki. He goes to the “Time
Theater” that is holding Sylvie, being guarded by B-15. They have some offhand
chatter about how weird it is that the two orphan demi-gods are the biggest
pain in the ass before trying to walk off. B-15 stops him and asks if Loki said
anything when they were in there. He tells her about the “TVA is lying” tidbit.
She seems tries to play it off as curiosity, but you can see something is up in
her face.
The face you make when you're both angry at your
friend and judging their life choices.
We rejoin Loki in the Time Cell.
Sif comes in for another beating. He tries to beg her for forgiveness,
admitting he is a terrible person. He claims to crave attention because he’s a narcissist
and because he’s scared of being alone. She helps him to his feet… but then
just changes up her line about being alone before walking off. Then Mobius comes
in, asking if Loki is ready to talk. They exit the Time Cell back to the
office. Mobius asks about the TVA lies line, but when Loki doesn’t answer right
away he rights it off as a lie. He tries to interrogate Loki, asking how long he’s
been working with Sylvie, when he denies it and is a bit weird about it. Mobius
is clearly hurt by Loki’s betrayal. It’s sad to see friend’s fight. Loki isn’t
willing to tell him anything, though, as they’ll just prune him after. He threatens
to put Loki back in the cell, and Loki agrees to talk. He claims that he was
the one in charge, that Sylvie contacted him decades ago, they went to an apocalypse
and hatched a vaguely evil plan. Mobius claims Sylvie was already pruned, claiming
B-15 pruned her after she tried to escape. Loki pretends he’s not broken up about
it, but its an obvious lie. Mobius jumps to the conclusion from his reaction
that Loki has a thing for Sylvie… this is complicated, I’ll explain it at the end.
He thinks that two Gods of Mischief, two incarnations of the same being developing
a romantic connection could definitely break reality, as it’s already breaking his
personal one. Loki demands to know if Sylvie is alive, which Mobius confirm.
Loki and Mobius fight a bit before Loki loses it and just tells Mobius that he
and the rest of the TVA are kidnapped Variants with altered memories. He tells Mobius
that Sylvie can access their memories through enchantment. Mobius doesn’t
believe him, though, and mocks Loki a little more. Again, he’s hurting. The
guards grab Loki and put him back in the cell. Loki claims Mobius is the biggest
liar in the TVA, for the lies he tells himself.
B-15 is having some kind of moment
out in one of the hallways. She sees a motivational poster reminding her to
verify Variant deaths by deletion and powers up her prune stick. She goes into
Sylvie’s cell. B-15 powers down her stick, opens a portal and tells Sylvie to
come with her. Ominous.
Mobius signs the paperwork closing
the case in Renslayer’s office. They cheers the case being closed. She asks him
where he’d go if he could, but Mobius isn’t in the mood for small talk. He asks
why he couldn’t interrogate Sylvie. She’s deflective and circles back to the
time question. Mobius claims he’d just like to stay there, doing the work. She
tells him the Timekeepers want to personally prune the Lokis and that they want
Mobius there. He’s clearly not jazzed about that, and asks about C-20. Renslayer
deflects again. Renslayer claims she kept Mobius from interviewing Sylvie for
fear of his sanity. She feeds him the propaganda about protecting the Sacred
Timeline and that seems to placate Mobius a little. He asks what she’ll do with
Sylvie’s sword trophy, and she goes to place it on her mantel. With her back
turned, Mobius swaps their TemPads and then tries to bail quickly
unsuspiciously. It seems to work.
They're getting a lot of use at this superstore parking
lot.
Sylvie and B-15 go to the Roxx-Cart
parking lot. B-15 asks what Sylive showed her while she was being controlled.
Sylvie tells her that it was from her life before the TVA. B-15 doesn’t believe
her, but Sylvie insists she can only use what is there. B-15 asks to be shown
again. We don’t see her memories, but whatever it is visibly shakes B-15. She
says she looked happy when the connection is broke, and then asks what now.
Back at the office, Mobius goes to a
filing area. He takes out Renslayer’s TemPad. He uses it to look up C-20’s information,
confirming her death. He opens her
debriefing file and sees C-20 telling Renslayer that what she saw real. C-20
tells them all that they’re Variants, just before Renslayer ends the file.
Loki gets up after Sif hit him
again. A frantic Mobius comes in and asks him if really believes deserves to be
alone, and warns the two Loki Nexus Event could bring down the whole TVA. When
Loki doesn’t get it, he makes Loki swear that Sylvie didn’t implant the
memories in C-20. Mobius accepts the word from his friend and asks Loki to
trust him to save them. The two head out, to find Renslayer and a bunch of
Minute Men. She figured out he has her TemPad. She takes the TemPad and it’s
clear the jig is up. Mobius says that if he could go anywhere, it’d be back to
the life he had before the TVA, maybe riding on his Jet Ski. Renslayer has him
pruned before their eyes. Noooo! Mobius!!!!
Loki is taken to the Elevator.
Renslayer goes to collect Sylvie, and sees the Loki Variant is obviously
drenched. She learns that B-15 was in there with her, and Renslayer puts a hit
out on her. Sylvie is also taken to the Elevator, meeting up with Loki. The
guards leave and Renslayer takes the Loki’s up. On the ride up, Sylvie confirms
that Renslayer remembers her. She asks what her Nexus Event was. Renslayer
smiles viciously as she claims not to remember. They enter the Timekeeper’s
chambers. The trio are still there, seated in their weird triangle formation.
They ask the Variants if they have anything to say for themselves, and the Loki’s
get snide, as they tend to do. The Timekeepers order the Loki’s deleted. B-15 comes
in, then, disabling their Loop collars and saying “For All Time, Always.” She
throws Sylvie her sword before being knocked out. Loki and Sylvie battle the
Timekeeper’s guards. Sylvie kills two and faces off against Renslayer. Loki
fights the remaining two and keeps them on the ropes. Loki kills his two guards
as Sylvie knocks out Renslayer. The Timekeepers claim that they could talk, and
Sylvie beheads the blue one. The Timekeepers laugh maniacally before going silent.
They examine the severed head and learn the Timekeepers are androids. It seems
the mystery isn’t over just yet.
Loki goes to give Sylvie a peptalk
and admit his feelings, but he ends up getting pruned by Renslayer before he
can get a word out. Loki! Nooo! Sylvie gets the Prune stick from Renslayer.
Renslayer tells her to do it, but Sylvie refuse, demanding Renslayer tell her
everything she knows.
Loki, meet Loki, Loki, Loki, and this little fella is
Loki.
In a mid-credit scene, Loki wakes
up in a field. He asks if this is Hel and if he’s dead. An offscreen voice
tells him not yet, but he will be if he doesn’t come with them. Loki gets up
and sees four Loki Variants. There is a tall Black version of Loki dressed in Asgardian
furs with a golden hammer that’s later dubbed Boastful Loki, much older version
of Loki in his classic Marvel Comics costume dubbed Classic Loki, a teenage boy
Loki in a green suit with a gold headband they call Kid Loki, and an alligator wearing
a Loki helmet. Yes, he’s a Loki too. What fun.
So… the Loki/Loki romance angle… I’m
not exactly a fan of that for a number of reasons, but I do think I should
explain a few things about that. The shows director Kate Herron has explained
that while both Loki and Sylvie are Loki’s, they aren’t technically the same
person. A Loki is a role, a job that a person is required to fulfill. A good
percentage of the time, we’ll say like 90%, it’s filled by the runty Jotunn son
of Laufey, adopted by Odin and Frigga and raised as the step-brother to Thor,
whom he develops a grudge against and tries to overthrow. The other times,
other infants are adopted by Odin and Frigga, filling in the role without being
the same Loki. This also explains away how their can be a Black version of
Loki, but I don’t think it explains the gator. So, from Herron’s perspective,
the two falling in love isn’t exactly “self-cest” as they are two
different people, that just grew up similarly. All that said, it still feels…
ookie. But, what are you going to do? I think that the story could have still worked
even if it was just the two Loki’s befriending each other, as two inherently
untrustworthy, untrusting people bonding with anyone should cause disruptions
in the flow of Time, but that’s just me. Oh, and I think I should explain how I
think the “Sacred Timeline” works. The way they frame it in the show, it sounds
like there is just the one timeline that is patrolled, occasionally fractured,
and restored by the TVA. But… just given how long some of these radically
different versions of history can last, Sylvie was clearly a decade or more
old, and there’s an adult Loki of an entirely different Race and one
significantly older than anyone else, I think that that is just the TVA’s
Dogma. I think it’d be more accurate to say the “Sacred Timeline” is more like
a script or scaffolding the TVA forces other realities into. A certain amount
of ad-libbing is allowed, different Lokis, slightly different characters in
specific roles, but so long as the Big Events, like the New York invasion,
Thanos, and the like do occur, that’s all that matters. It’s just a hypothesis,
but it feels like a strong one, as we’ll learn soon. I do like how Loki got
Mobius onto his side, that he basically stuck a bug in Mobius’ ear that he kept
fussing with until he discovered the truth. And seeing Jamie Alexander back as
Sif. Fun fact, the hair cutting thing is based off of Norse Mythology. Though,
MCU Sif might have gotten off a bit easier. In the old Norse tail, Loki shaved
her lushes blonde locks clean off (he was drunk and drunk Loki apparently makes
poor decisions) and when he was forced to fix it, replaced her blonde hair with
black dwarven hair. An uneven cut doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Getting B-15 on
their side was a nice twist, as was the reveal that the Timekeepers were just an
illusion. Figureheads to hide whomever is really behind all this. I was legit
shocked when Mobius got pruned, but obviously, if Loki is alive where he is,
Mobius is probably too. Still, my heart stopped when I saw Owen Wilson of all people
disappear and I was not expecting that. And I just loved the reveal of Loki’s
variants. I liked the design of the Kid and Boastful Loki costumes, and seeing
Richard E. Grant in something as ridiculous as the classic Loki costume was just
great. More on them next time. So yeah, the timeline thing is confusing, the
Loki/Loki love off putting but not exactly… horrible, and a lot of fun and heartbreaking
stuff mixed in. Sums up this episode nicely. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Have a
good night everybody.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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