Let's try to fix time.
Last time on Loki, we got 19th
century up in here. As part of He Who Remains’ contingency plan, Renslayer and
Miss Minutes went to 1800s Chicago to try to turn a Variant into He Who Remains.
Loki and Mobius pick up on the hops and follow them to the Chicago World’s
Fair. There they all see Victor Timely, the now adult He Who Remains Variant
that used the information Renslayer gave him, a TVA handbook, to try to build
some of the devices inside it. But he’s kind of limited by the technology of his
age, so instead builds fake inventions to fleece rubes. Everyone tries to grab
Timely, including Sylvie, who arrived to kill him. They lose Timely in the confusion,
him escaping with Renslayer. They head for his lab in Wisconsin, Miss Minutes
convincing him to ditch Renslayer when it seemed like she wanted to be his
partner instead of his underling. At his lab, Miss Minutes makes her own pitch
to have Timely make her a body so they can be together forever, but this freaks
Timely out and he shuts her down. Everyone shows up at his lab, Sylvie getting him
at a sword point. Timely begs for his life, saying he isn’t who she thinks he
is and she relents, letting Loki and Mobius take him to the TVA. She takes her
own revenge on Renslayer, opening a Time Door to the End of Time and pushing
her through it. On the other side with He Who Remains corpse, Miss Minutes
reveals to Renslayer she has secrets to share. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 10: Heart of the TVA
We start with a brief history of
time. Sort of. Miss Minutes at the End of Time plays a video for Renslayer from
the past. It’s here and He Who Remains at the End of Time, planning to rule the
universe together. He compliments her and says she made a difference in the war
and thanks her. He lets her go ahead to the TVA. Once alone, he summons Miss
Minutes and has her initiate Protocol 42, erasing all the memories of the TVA
members. He says he’s sorry as the playback ends. Miss Minutes reveals that Renslayer
was the commander of He Who Remains’ army, and realizes that she did all the
work to keep He Who Remains sitting in his ivory tower, metaphorically
speaking. Renslayer and Miss Minutes decide that maybe they don’t need him
after all.
We shift to the conference room in
the TVA, Timely steps through the Time Door and see the various He Who Remains
Murals. He starts wondering alone through the TVA, as he does in the background
we can hear that some kind of catastrophe is happening. B-15, Mobius and Loki
find him at a mural of the Timekeepers. They try to convince him to come along
and help them fix the Loom but he’s obstinate. That is until he realizes his
Loom was built and it’s on the frizz.
B-15 has a meeting with Judge Gamble
as to what they should do with General Dox and her rebels. They’re being held
currently but they don’t have the resources for a full-time prison. Gamble says
that back in the old days they’d just prune them and be done with it, but that quick
and clean end isn’t acceptable anymore. Gamble thinks that they can bring Dox back
into the fold, they just need to convince her the new TVA is worth protecting
like the old on. B-15 isn’t sure that will work. Gamble says not to be so sure of
that, as B-15 convinced her.
They take Timely towards the Loom, keeping
the scientist from wandering around, and bring him to OB and Casey. Timely is
start struck at meeting OB as he wrote the TVA Handbook. OB thanks him but says
that he based all his work on a 19th century inventor that he
thought would be bigger than Einstein if he had the resources. Yes, Timely
based his work on OB’s work and OB based his work on Timely. An Ouroboros. OB
pulls out a weirdly perfect model of the Loom and Loom chamber. The plan is to
get someone into the chamber with the Expansion device, set it up and fire it
at the Loom. Which will help it process all the new branches of the Timeline.
He lobs a dirty look at Sylvie for having caused all of this before they
continue. He points out a huge problem with their plan being that there’s more
temporal radiation in the chamber now than when Mobius pulled Loki out before.
Mobius says that Loki will really have to hoof it. OB says that this is also
only theoretical because they can’t make their throughput multiplier last long
enough. Timely says that he had the same problem, and that’s why he built is
prototype device to hold off the decay. OB thinks it’ll take too long to do,
but Timely has faith in him. Loki and co leave the scientists to work.
Mobius suggests that they get some
pie while they wait and Sylvie goes off on him for not caring about this situation.
That despite all of his grand words, the timelines are just lines on a graph to
him. They aren’t real, as he hasn’t even bothered to look for the timeline he
came from. She storms off and Loki follows her.
We join Dox, X-5 and their guys in
their holding cell. X-5 tries to rally the troops. Dox gets frustrated because
he’s not charismatic and she knows about how he blew off their plan to be an
actor. The door opens and B-15 comes in. Dox tells her she has no authority to
keep them there, but B-15 ignores that and tries to convince Dox to help the
TVA. She asks how she can trust B-15 and B-15 says that they both care about
the TVA so she can trust that. They leave them, B-15 hoping they’ll mull it
over.
Loki finds Sylvie in the pie
breakroom. She took a wrong turn and got lost. Loki goes to bat for Mobius and
points out Sylvie is here after abandoning him again. She says she’s here now,
but Loki says she’s only there because she couldn’t kill Timely. She says she
couldn’t do it because he seemed scared and that was so unlike He Who Remains.
Loki starts telling her Thor’s story, about being banished from Asgard for a
week and that he came back different. He thought the time away weakened him,
but he doesn’t think so anymore. He says that mercy saved Timely and will save
countless people. Sylvie is still a bit on her high horse, saying that Dox is
part of the TVA so all the horrors she committed destroying timelines is on the
TVA too. She asks what if he’s wrong, it’d be easier to burn it to the ground
and start over. Loki says breaking things is always easy but fixing things is
hard. That Hope is hard but worth it. Sylvie isn’t sure, she’s still worried
that the TVA might turn Timely into He Who Remains. Loki says that it’s up to
them to do better than He Who Remains. Sylvie says it still feels like playing
God, but Loki then points out that they ARE gods.
X-5 tries to convince Dox to figure
out an alternate plan in case B-15 screws them, but then Renslayer comes in.
She offers for them to work with her to take the TVA back. She wants to “restore
stability to the TVA.” She offers to give anyone who helps her a life on the Timeline
if they do. Miss Minutes powers up the machine to emphasize the situation. Dox
says that for once she’s seeing the bigger picture. X-5 sides with Renslayer,
but everyone else is crushed in the energy box. Dox asking Renslayer how it
feels to know that all of them would rather die than follow her. Renslayer
tells X-5 it’s time to go.
Back in the lab, Timely, OB and
Casey get the device set up. Mobius comes in and impresses Timely with Hot Cocoa.
They realize that all their TemPads are down. D-90, another guard, takes Timely
to see the Hot Cocoa machine while they try to figure out what’s happening with
the TemPads. B-15 finds the remains of Dox and learns that her TemPad is down
too. Timely offers D-90 some Hot Cocoa, which he takes and they both enjoy. D-90
is then pruned by X-5, who says he’s sorry. He asks where the device is.
OB notes that all their files are
being corrupted in real time. He realizes that Miss Minutes is taking over, so
they grab the device and rush to find Timely. The group find the spilled Cocoa
and bring everyone up to speed. Loki realizes that Renslayer wants the TVA, not
Timely, so they’re still here. Timely is brought to Renslayer and she asks
where his device is. They threaten Timely and he starts talking.
We get a glimpse at the Temporal Loom,
and it looks like it’s about to burst. Loki and Sylvie run to the elevator, Sylvie
gets in but the doors shut, separating them. She goes up in the elevator, Loki
runs up the stairs. Mobius and co try to the device for when they get Timely
back. Sylvie hacks the elevator to keep going up. At the same time, Loki from Episode
7 is running around having Time Slipped. Sylvie forces the Elevator open, sees
Loki and says there he is, unbeknownst to past Loki, current Loki prunes him
from behind. Loki hear the phone ringing and picks it up. It’s OB asks where
they are. OB says that he can reboot Miss Minutes to stop her, but that has
risks. All the safety measures will go down, including the block against Magic
at the TVA. Hearing that they could have
access to their powers, both Lokis yell at OB To turn it off.
Timely is trying to distract his
captors by giving them a very technical explanation of his device. Miss Minutes
starts shorting out as they reboot her, Timely feeling like her stop starting
is mocking his stutter, before she powers down. Before powering down she tells
Timely that he’ll never be him, meaning He Who Remains. The lights shut down
and Loki and Sylvie come in, magic blazing. Sylvie grabs X-5 from behind and
enchants him. X5 comes in, distracts Renslayer long enough for Loki and Sylvie
to grab Timely and then prune her. They run off and leave a confused X-5 in the
office.
They reach the Loom and they have
Timely use his aura to open the blast doors. OB says that it’s worse than he thought,
and they have to act fast. Loki offers to go, but Timely insists he needs to do
it. Timely gets the suit on, the doors open, and he runs to try to get the
device in place, but spaghettifies feet into the room. The temporal radiation is
just too high to stand. Theres one more huge pulse and everyone is seemingly
killed. Good thing there’s still two more episodes to go!
Okay, I did like this episode. The speech that Sophia Di Martino gave as Sylvie about Mobius not really caring about the individuals on the Timeline was great. Like, we know at this point that Mobius puts on a pretty blasé attitude as a defense mechanism for how scared he is, but I can see where Sylvie is coming from and saying Mobius doesn’t care really does hurt him. I remember that idea that Mobius isn’t looking for himself on the Timeline more because he’s afraid to see that his life was good than it being bad. Yeah, I can see that fear keeping me away too. I liked how this version of Loki is a big enough man to admit that he was wrong about what happened to Thor, that learning compassion is a good thing and that empathy can save lives. I still feel like Dox is being given too much focus for a character we didn’t meet until this season, but her last words to Renslayer were hard core and I love them. Defiance in the face of death is always cool. Renslayer got pruned, so I hope she’s looking forward to meeting Alioth. The reveal that she was He Who Remains’ General before he betrayed her and wiped all their minds was a solid twist. In the comics, Revanna Renslayer is Kang’s wife, so giving them an additional connection besides employer and employee is a nice nod to that. So, the Loom is broken, something weird is about to happen, and Loki has two episodes to fix all of Time. No worries. Next time, the penultimate episode.
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