How do you break a time loop?
Last time on Loki, we got to
learn where all the members of the TVA came from. Ouroboros is a variant of a
physicist and failed SciFi writer, Casey is a variant of a bank robber, B-15 is
a variant of a doctor, and Mobius is a variant of a Jet Ski salesman. We all
could guess that one. Loki, once again unstuck in time, Time Slips around to
try to get his friends together to try to get back to the Time Loom and stop it
from exploding. He needs Sylvie’s help as well, but she says no. She gets him
to admit this is about getting his friends back more than stopping He Who
Remains. It’s revealed that they can’t just live and let live, as all of the
Branch Timelines are breaking down and spaghettifying into nothing. Loki is
finally able to learn to control his Time Slipping to mentally send himself
back to the Loom. Enough Recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 12: Glorious Purpose
The season finale of Loki
begins with Loki arriving just before Timely went out to try to fix the Time
Loom. There’s a cool shot of Loki merging with himself before saying they need
to get Timely out of there. Timely runs out and Spaghettifies again. Loki takes
a moment and asks OB what they could have done differently. He says they should
have done it faster. Loki Slips multiple times and tries to rush through the
process. When that doesn’t work, he goes back farther and tries to get Miss
Minutes to help speed things up. He goes back farther and farther, and Timely
only makes it another step or two before dying. Loki goes so far back that he
repeats episode 4, speed running introducing Timely to the crew and to explain
the plan to fix the Time loom. It’s kind of funny to see Loki try to sprint
through the explanation. Loki, also realizing that maybe this won’t be enough,
begs OB to do his best to tutor Loki on everything he knows about physics,
engineering and temporal theory. OB is skeptical, but Loki insists he’s a fast
learner and a god, so he can do it. OB and Timely tell him that it’ll take him
centuries.
We get a “Centuries Later” title
card, and Loki speed runs them through the plan, including telling Timely to
avoid trips, slips, or putting the Multiplier down or it’ll roll off the
gangway. Mobius, tires of being weirded out by this, demands to know what’s
happening, Loki just tells him to trust him. Loki opens the door. Timely says
this feels aa bit rushed, but Loki tells him that it only seems so to him, if
he stops he dies. Timely steps out but doesn’t disintegrate. He marches forward
one step at a time and finally reaches the end of the gangway. Loki stops him
from letting it roll off the gangway. Timely gets to the device and loads the
multiplier, aims it, and hits the green button. It doesn’t work. Loki tells him
to hit it again because it ca be a little sticky. He slams it this time, and it
works. Loki tells him to run back, encouraging him to get back the whole
way. Timely does and they all cheer,
Timely saying Pumpkins for some reason. The Multiplier seems to be working,
integrating with the Loom, and expanding the throughput. But then the readings
come back to OB off. The Loom is already starting to overload again. Loki says
that’s not possible, but it is. OB thinks there are just too many branches.
B-15 says they need to escape. Timely stops them, saying that the branches are
growing and dividing infinitely, and that no matter how hard they try, they’ll
never be able to make the Loom big enough to hold infinity. It’s like trying to
divide by zero. Loki, defeated, sits down, and realizes that this is
inevitable. Sylvie says that it’s almost as if as soon as the branching
happened this was doomed to occur. The big explosion comes and Timely says that
he’s sorry.
We leap back to when Sylvie tried
to kill He Who Remains at the End of Time. Loki current takes over and forces
Sylvie back. He tells her that killing He Who Remains leads to the end of
everything. She says he’s been seduced by a throne, and that if he wants her to
stop, he’ll have to kill her. She kills He Who Remains and Loki keeps looping
back to try to stop her. It never works. He keeps going back and but it never
works. After multiple Loops, Loki finally asks him why he never fights back. He
Who Remains then pauses Sylvie and they have a proper chat. He asks Loki how
many tries this has been for him, and then laughs at Loki for not having
figured out how to pause time yet. He then teleports Sylvie away and asks how
many times they’ve had this conversation. He gloats, pointing out that he
orchestrated all of this, including Loki’s Time Slips. He asks if Loki REALLY
thought he’d just it back and be killed by Sylvie and that’d be it. He Who
Remains says that this is a lot to take in, and why don’t they do this fight a
few thousand more times and then Loki and he can have a proper conversation. He
calls Sylvie back and restarts her, but then Loki pauses time again and asks if
He Who Remains really thinks this is the first time they’ve had this
conversation. He Who Remains is impressed and he banishes Sylvie again.
He Who Remains knows Victor and
about the “scaling problem.” He reveals that that isnt’ the real problem. The
Temporal Loom is his ultimate failsafe. If it ever gets overloaded, it deletes
the non-Sacred Timelines and so what if it destroys the TVA. It’s easy to
rebuild. His Variants already exist out on the Timelines, as well. Loki says
that he won’t be stopped and He Who Remains is entertained by him. He tells
Loki that the equation always remains the same, he loses. Loki says he knows
and gets up. Loki realizes that he needs to break the equation, to break the
Loom. He Who Remains says that doing that will lead to a Multiversal War
that’ll destroy everything. He tries to convince Loki not to do it, as every
moment of Peace Loki has had was do to him. He claims that he’s offering mercy.
Loki says he’ll find another way. He Who Remains says okay and he calls Sylvie
back. He says he can either break the Loom and doom them all, or kill Sylvie
and they’ll protect what they can.
We jump back to Loki being
interviewed by Mobius. Loki possesses himself and predicts everything that’s
about to happen. He tells Mobius that he needs his help, how do they decide who
lives and dies. Mobius says that the “Timekeepers” choose and that it’s not
comfortable and you won’t find that at the TVA.
He tells Loki a story about a mission where a group of Hunters go out to
the Black Sea to prune a Variant that would cause 5000 deaths, 5000 that
weren’t a part of the proper flow of time. The issue? He’s an eight-year-old
boy, just swimming at a dock with his brother. One of the Hunters hesitated,
and the timeline started to branch and more variants started to show up.
Another Hunter pruned the kid, but by then the damage had been done and other
Hunters died. He tells Loki that most purpose is more burden than glory, and
that you never want to be the guy to avoid it cause you can’t handle it. Loki
asks how he handle it, and Mobius says scar tissue. Loki realized that Mobius
was the one that couldn’t do the Pruning and asks what happened to his partner,
the one that did the deed. His partner was Renslayer. You know how that goes.
He says there is no comfort, you just have to choose your burden. Loki thanks
his friend and they shake hands just before he disintegrates. The whole room
vanishes and Loki travels back to when all his friends Spaghettified in Doug’s
lab. He stops time before Sylvie cand disappear. He tells her they’re outside
time. He tells her that the Loom is a failsafe and he’s out of options. He
tells her that the only way anyone survives is if she never kills He Who
Remains. She tells him she’s not giving her blessing. Sylvie says that it’s not
enough to just protect the Sacred Timeline, that he’s replacing one nightmare
with another. She goes on to say that she grew up in apocalypses and that they
taught her that sometimes it is okay to break things. Loki agrees, so long as
there’s a chance to build back better. He restarts time and disappears.
He returns to when they try to fix
the Loom. He goes down to the gangway. He locks everyone out and preps to walk
out on his own. He says he knows what kind of god he wants to be, for all of
them. He opens the door and gets hit with Temporal radiation. I guess his Time
Slipping Powers let him stay solid even when he should have spaghettified. His
outfit turns into his classic robes and horns. He pulls the Loom apart and
destroys it. Threads of time scatter about him as the others watch. Loki grabs
a thread and enchants it, turning it about. OB says the branches are dying. He
keeps grabbing branches and enchanting them. A portal opens before Loki, and he
walks towards it. The threads follow behind him and vanish. Sylvie says he’s
giving them a chance.
In the vast abyss, Loki keeps on
enchanting timelines and trying to shape them. He arrives at the End of Time
and keeps weaving. He drags the timelines to He Who Remains throne and wraps
them around himself as he sits down. Loki merges the treads, reweaving them
into a great tree of time. Glorious Purpose indeed.
We get a title card for After. The
TVA is up and running. OB is trying to bring a new Miss Minutes online. B-15
tells Casey to save her a seat at the war room and he goes ahead. She goes to
talk to Mobius; he’s been tracking He Who Remains Variants and they don’t know
about the TVA yet. One caused trouble in the 616 Adjacent Realm, but they
handled it. I assume this is Kang in the Quantum Realm. Mobius says he’ll meet
up with her. He joins her at the Time Keeper Mural a little while later, saying
that maybe they should keep it up, to remind them of their past. Mobius tells
B-15 that he’s leaving. He doesn’t think the TVA will miss him, but she says
that there are a few that will. He says he wants to go out and see all that
he’s been protecting. B-15 says that a seat will be waiting for him if he
decides to come back. B-15 asks if he’s scared, and he says yeah. She goes into
the War Room and we see a busting crowd of people working. With OB, he opens a
fresh batch of TVA handbooks. The Child Victor Timely is making Candles. Ravanna
Renslayer wakes up in the void and almost immediately crosses paths with
Alioth. Ummm, bye, Renslayer.
We see Don playing with his kids,
Mobius watching from across the street. Sylvie joins him and says the yard
could use some work. Mobius disagrees, saying it’s the best house on the block.
She says it’s weird to be here without Loki, and Mobius agrees. He asks where
she’s going to go, and she says she doesn’t know. He says he’s going to wait
around her for a bit, let time pass.
We cut to Loki, sitting on his
throne of time, smiling. The end.
Honestly, I was expecting this
ending to be nowhere near as good as it was. Like I said last time, the
disaster that is the Loom exploding was the true villain of this season.
Revealing that He Who Remains specifically designed it so that it would destroy
everything and thus allow time to loop around so that he might live and rule
again was brilliant. It allowed He Who Remains to be the villain of this season
despite being dead. Also, Loki attempting to break a time loop to escape a
predestined doom is a nice nod to both the comics, which establish the Norse
Gods are stuck in a Ragnarok time loop, and to the mythological figure himself,
dude tried to kill all the other Gods so he could rule. The idea that he gets
what he wants, to rule everything, and every variation of everything, but can’t
interact with the people he loves is a nice bit of tragic irony to this story
about the Variant of Loki Odinson. While we only got snippets of it, Tom
Hiddleston did an excellent job showing how defeated Loki felt after spending
literal centuries trying to make the damn plan work, only to learn that the
Loom is designed to fail, and how hard it was for him to choose the Burden that
would go with his Glorious Purpose. Nice, ‘careful what you wish for, you just
might get it,” nod. Owen Wilson was amazing as Mobius. If you told me one of my
favorite MCU show characters would be played by Hansel from Zoolander
back when I started watching Loki, I’d have been shocked. He’s a quite
character with a lot of heart, and I like that he ultimately proved to be
Loki’s moral compass in the end. The one to tell him that there’s no perfect
answer, but just the answer you can live with. Or that’s how I took it. Again,
Jonathan Majors is a good actor, shame he’s a dangerous person. Sophie Di
Martino is great as Sylvie. The custom character based on Amora the Enchantress
got what she wanted and then doomed all reality, which is perfect for a Loki. Ke
Huy Quan is great addition as Ouroboros, and Wunmi Mosaku as B-15 and Eugene
Cordero as Casey were great and I’m glad they got expanded roles this season. Honestly,
this was a night and day difference from Secret Invasion. I was invested
the whole way through. While the plot was extremely weird, I was able to follow
the ‘rule of cool’ mentality of how time travel/multiverse theory worked. I
would have liked someone expressly stating how Variants worked, or why Nathaniel
Richards and Victor Timely can be Variants of each other when one was born
thousands of years before the other. But I guess I can’t expect perfect world
building, though, with all the issues Disney has had lately with its shows. So…
yeah, I liked Loki season 2. Have a good night everyone.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/93791472
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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