Let's see where all our favorite TVA agents are from.
Last time on Loki, time was
running out. Almost literally. While Victor Timely (He Who Remains’ Variant)
worked with OB and Casey to expand the Time Loom’s Throughput to stop the Loom
from exploding, Renslayer began her play. She attempted to recruit General Dox
and her loyalists to take back the TVA. Dox, moved by B-15 plea to help her
with the new TVA, refuses and so do most of her Men. Except X-5. He grabs
Timely and tries to force him to show them where the Loom throughput expander
is. Loki and Sylvie go to save him. After setting up the first Episode, Loki
seeing the TVA under attack before being pruned, they get OB to reset the TVA’s
systems. This reboots Miss Minutes, taking her off the table, but also
disabling the anti-magic system in the TVA giving Loki and Sylvie access to
their powers. They save Timely and Sylvie prunes Renslayer. Hope she enjoys
meeting Alioth. Timely lobbies to be the one to fix the Loom, suits up and goes
to place his device. He makes it maybe ten steps before the Temporal Radiation
spaghettifies him and he disintegrates. A huge blast from the Loom fires off
and seems to consume Loki and his team. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 11: Science/Fiction
The episode begins with Loki
opening his eyes to find himself alone in the Temporal Loom viewing area. The
Temporal Loom is still weaving behind him, but the Timelines are visibly
distorted. He goes out of there and finds the TVA completely deserted. An automated
message is playing, saying fail safe mode 1229 has been initiated. And to make
matters worse Loki starts Time Slipping again. He slips back to the TVA
observation area to see an indistinct figure looking through the guidebook
before Slipping back. He then walks to the observation area, picks up the
guidebook and starts looking through it just in time for himself to see him do
it. This is gonna get weird. And on cue the whole area around Loki starts
breaking down and stretching, spaghettifying, if you will. He then Time Slips
again, and we see Fail Safe Mode Initiated flashing on the sign behind him.
We cut to a prion ward. A group of
men attempt to break out, lead by Casey. We learn that this is a Branch
Timeline of 1962 San Francisco. Loki Timeslips into the area as they make for
the water. Casey’s friends run off as he approaches them. Casey asks who he is
and how he got here, which obviously frustrates Loki. We also learn that this
guy is called “Frank,” not Casey, so I guess we’re dealing with a variant of
his. He says he doesn’t know Loki and tries to get back to escaping. Loki Time
Slips to Sylvie’s McDonalds, a dealership of some sort and then to the TVA
interview area before Slipping again.
We arrive in New York, 2012, Branch
timeline, where B-15 is a doctor. Would not have guessed that. She has pretty
good bedside manners for a girl with a broken arm. Loki Slips in and then out
again, probably making Dr. B-15 feel like she’s tripping on something. We then
cut to Mobius riding, you guessed it, a Jet Ski. In 2022 Cleveland, Ohio,
Branch Timeline, I guess he runs a dealership and is named Don. He’s trying to
make a sail, but the guy he’s talking too is more interested in dirt bikes.
Loki Slips into Don’s lot, Piranha Powersports. Loki tells him that the TVA is
gone, but Don doesn’t know him. He gets distracted by a call from his son and
Loki slips away.
We jump to 1994, Pasadena,
California, Branch Timeline, with OB. He’s buying a SciFi book, the Zartan
Contingent by AD Doug. It’s only then that we realize that he’s AD Doug and
that he brought his own book into the store to try to drum up business. Poor
guy. He’s given the other books he planted and is told to leave. He returns to
his lab and gets to work on a program as Loki Slips in. Doug is the first
person he’s able to stay around long enough to explain, and he believes Loki…
but he’s a SciFi writer, so he somewhat lacks the skill set Loki needs to fix
things. Loki says he’s doomed, but then Doug reveals he actually is a PhD
physicist, he had to get the credentials to keep teaching at Caltech, until his
writing takes off. Loki tells him that he needs to get back before the Time
Loom explodes, Doug says that’s impossible, but he shouldn’t let him stop that.
Loki scratches his head on that one, until Doug explains that if he’s Time
Slipping to a place that has no time and doesn’t exist anymore, then anything
is possible. Doug tells him he needs to learn to control the Time Slipping.
Loki thinks its random, but Doug points out that not only is he only Slipping
towards people he wants to find (or at least their Variants) but he’s also
Slipping through Space to reach them. He
says Loki’s like a TemPad now but better. He asks Loki why he needs to do this,
and Loki says it’s because the TVA is the only line of defense against what is
coming. Doug tells him to focus on that Why. He tries… but doesn’t Slip. He tries
a few more times but can’t do it. They try another tactic, focus on the
science. To do this, Doug zaps Loki with a stungun and then tries to scare him,
to force the Time Slip, neither works. Loki says that the TVA doesn’t exist
anymore, but Doug points out that if he Slipped back to the Time Theater, then
it probably does still exist, he just doesn’t know where it is. Doug suggests
that he try to get the band back together, to get all his friends together to
get their temporal auras together to transport them back to the moment in time
they need. But they’d also need a TemPad. Loki doesn’t have one and Doug says
that on his own it could take a lifetime to develop. Loki, remembering the
guidebook in his pocket, gives it to Doug and asks if that’ll help. Doug says
it will, just before Loki Slips again.
He appears outside a house in the
suburbs, seeing Don trying to discipline his kids. Seems difficult as his boys
are… difficult. Loki goes to talk to him, which is obviously creepy seeming.
Loki brings up the TVA again, but Don doesn’t register what that means. Don,
trying to make a sail, offers to sell Loki his late wife’s Jet Ski. Loki tries
to get Don to remember he’s Mobius, but it doesn’t seem to work. Don, thinking
he’s nuts, almost hits him with a wrench, but then Doug comes in, having built
a prototype TemPad. Loki is astonished he made one so fast, but according to Doug,
it took him 19 months. He’d have done better, but he lost his job and his wife
left, so he took a month off. They walk through a Time Door and Loki tries to
get him to work with them. He asks about his sons, and Loki says that they’ll
be fine, as he can just bring Don back to any moment in time, demonstrated by
watching Loki approaching Don again. Loki tells him that if he doesn’t help his
sons will be in danger, and Don agrees to help.
They shift to the Doctor’s office
to get B-15, and then the California beach outside of Alcatraz to get Casey. They
get everyone back to Doug’s lab and start trying to figure out how to get to
the TVA proper. Loki still needs to get Sylvie, but he was clearly dreading it.
We cut to her McDonalds, she tries to get into her truck, her food
disintegrating when she’s not looking. Loki arrives and tries to give her the “this
is going to be strange,” but she actually recognizes him. Seems like, while
everyone else was thrown into Branch Timelines into their pre-TVA lives and had
their memories repressed/erased, it didn’t happen to Sylvie. Mobius starts
Slipping again but holds on, Sylvie saying they’re going to get a drink. Loki
tries to get Sylvie to help, but she says that everyone being forced back into
their ‘real’ lives is a good thing. Loki tries to convince her that, given the
option, all the people they knew at the TVA would have stayed to help, not given
up. That Mobius only knew the TVA and he liked it. She says that that wasn’t
his choice, it was He Who Remains, and they can’t force people away from their
‘real’ lives. He needs her help to give them a choice, but she isn’t interested
in helping. She says that she wants a life, she wants to live. Loki says that
he wants to save everything, she keeps needling him until he admits that what
he really wants is his friends back, to not be alone. She orders them some
bourbons and says that his friends are back where they belong. Loki asks
without them, where does he belongs, and Sylvie tells him to go write his own
story.
Back at the lab, Frank seems to be
angling to steal the TemPad to break into a bank vault. He at least asks a lot
of questions about it. Don tries to get B-15, Dr. Willis, to buy a Jet Ski.
Frank tries to take the TemPad, but Loki portals in then and tells them to all
go home.
Sylvie stops at her local record
shop to buy some records. Lyle, the clerk, offers her record that will either
cure what ails her or make it worse. She puts the record on and listens. As she
listens, people and things spaghettify and disintegrate behind her. Guess
Sylvie can’t sit this one out after all. Lyle gets her attention before he
disappears, giving her time to escape. Guess she had a TemPad the whole time.
Back at the lab, Don grills Loki
about picking them up and telling them they’re the key to saving the universe
and then just telling them to leave. Loki says that it was more about what he
wanted than that, so they should just go. Doug asks about the TVA; Loki tells
him they’re just fine without it. Sylvie then portals in and says that the
Branches are dying. Loki wants to go back and stop the Loom from melting down. They
need t he TemPad to work, but it’s gone. They think Frank took it, but then he
disintegrates, as does Doug, Don, Willis and then Sylvie. Loki, alone, hears
his friends voice as he tries to fix things. He’s able to rewind time to just
before Sylvie disappeared. He forces it back farther to when Sylvie arrived. Loki
says it’s not about where, when, or why to control the Slipping, but who. He
focuses and transports himself back to before the Loom exploded, saying he’s
going to rewrite the story.
This was an interesting penultimate
episode. I’ll give Loki season 2 for focusing on the disaster that is
the Time Loom exploding than on a wholly new villain. Sure, they’re villains,
like Dox and Renslayer, but they seemed to overall be villains of the week compared
to the Time Loom explosion overarching villain. This is more than likely to
build up the dangers of an attack by multiple Kangs, shame that accusations of
violence against Jonathan Major’s put the Kang Dynasty in danger of
never being made. I liked seeing where everyone was from. Mobius’ pre-TVA
existence was pretty easy to guess, his Jet Ski obsession was way too specific
to not tie into his past, and OB being a physicist also makes sense, but I was
utterly shocked by Casey the prisoner and B-15 the doctor. I wonder if we’ll
learn what about these people made He Who Remains decide to pluck copies of
them out of the timeline to make them part of his army. Like, did they do
something, or did something happen to them to make them good targets? Like,
making a doctor into time traveling headhunter, or a salesman into an analyst are
not somethings I’d think to make happen. Odd. I liked that the whole episode
was really just about making Loki admit that he likes his friends and doesn’t
want to lose them. The man has never really had anyone other than Thor, really,
so the idea of friends is something I don’t think he’s completely able to wrap
his mind around. And I liked that (when he thought it was an option) he was
willing to give up his desire to fix things since letting them live their lives
like they were meant to is more important. Shows some growth from the very
selfish man that Avengers 1 era Loki was. So, let’s see if he can fix
all of time this time. See you tomorrow for the finale.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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