Time is broken, have we tried turning it off and on?
Last time on Loki, Loki and
his Variant Sylvie reached the end of time and met He Who Remains. He Who
Remains aka Nathaniel Richards aka Rama Tut aka Kang the Conqueror, among a few
other labels he’s gone by. He gives them the whole back story on the TVA, how
he discovered time and interdimensional travel, and how his Variants started a
Time War that nearly destroyed all of the Multiverse. He survived and
discovered Alioth, the matter eating monster that let him prune timelines in
order to ensure no Variants of himself pop up and restart the Time War. He
offers them a deal, to put the Lokis in charge of his project. He’s old,
probably older than any other thing to ever exist and he’s looking to retire.
He says that they can either take his deal, or kill him and suddenly have to
deal with a Reign of Kangs. Loki wants to take him up on the offer, but Sylvie
wants her pay back. The two fight, Loki finally being pushed out of Time Door
that Sylvie opened using He Who Remains’ own TemPad. When alone, she kills him,
He Who Remains going out with an ominous “See you soon.” While that was going
on, Mobius lead a little tiny Coup against Renslayer, proving to the other
hunters that they’re all Variants of humans on Earth. How? By finding the
‘original’ Renslayer, a teacher out in Ohio. Renslayer escapes him, saying
she’s going out to “find freewill.” At the TVA, they watch as their instruments
determine that the timelines are redlining. That meant that enough deviations
are occurring from their ‘set’ path, that once they cross it, it’ll be
impossible to use a reset charge to undo it. They hit that line. Loki goes to
find Mobius, only to learn his friend doesn’t recognize him, and that the
statue of the Timekeepers, He Who Remains proxy in the TVA, have been replaced
by a statue of Kang. Not a great way to end one’s adventure. Enough recap, lets
get to it.
Ep 7: Ouroboros
We open on a close-up shot of
Kang’s statue and Loki running through the halls of the TVA as Mobius and other
agents chase him. Loki gets cornered and he tries to talk to Mobius, but he
claims to not know Loki. Not having any other option, Loki leaps out of a
window, landing in a hover truck. The truck driver freaks out, hits Kang’s
statue causing cracks before crashing back into a TVA office. Loki falls out of
the truck, and dusts himself off, the truck falling behind him. Loki assures us
she’ll be fine. Loki tries to talk to Casey, one of the TVA members he’d met
before, but Casey also doesn’t recognize him. Loki has some sort of distortion fit
and appears in a different room. Casey is there and recognizes Loki this time.
Loki jumps to the idea that he was in another timeline somehow, but then notes
that a crack that he caused with the crash is on THIS TVA’s office floor too.
Casey tells him that that crack has been there as long as he can remember. He
asks where Mobius and B-15 are, Casey starts to lead him to them, but he warps
out of existence.
We shift to Mobius and B-15.
They’re watching the timelines grow exponentially. Mobius asks what they do
now, and B-15 tells him that they’ll just have to let the timelines keep
growing and tell everyone the truth about this place. A power surge strikes and
Mobius asks if that’s really the best call. Imagine how people would react to
learning their “gods are dead and everything you know is a lie.” Casey walks up
to them and tells them Loki was here looking for them. Mobius tries to use his
TemPad to detect Loki or get Miss Minute’s help but neither works. A Minute Man
named X-5 gets his attention and teases him about his Jet Ski obsession. When
Mobius tries to explain some of the nuances of his favorite mode of
transportation, X-5 tells him he doesn’t care. He’s there under the orders of
the new Judges Council. They needed new leadership now that Renslayer has gone
missing. Judge Gamble and General Dox want to see them. They walk to the
elevator and the doors close. A moment later Loki returns and gets pointed to
the War Room.
As Mobius and B-15 walk to their
day in court, Loki warps in and tries to get their attention but he can’t seem
to stay solid long enough to talk. Loki follows them into the War Room to find
it empty. He clearly warped to another Kang ruled dimensions as there’s a mural
of his face on one of the walls. In Mobius’s Timeline, the judge’s council are
listening to Loki’s message about the Timekeepers being fake. The judges start
grilling them about what happened with B-15’s order to stop pruning timelines.
Loki turns on a recorder and hears
He Who Remains thanking someone for working with him. He plays it back a little
and learns He Who Remains was talking to Renslayer, saying that he’d be happy
to rule with her.
The Judges council asks B-15 under
who’s authority did she decide to stop pruning timelines. B-15 says they didn’t
have time to follow proper procedure, and again stresses how they’re all
Variants, people kidnapped out of the timeline. Mobius tries to down play the
situation, saying that the sky isn’t falling despite the branching, but X-5
points out the robot head sitting on the table and insists the sky is falling. B-15
insists that their job hasn’t been protecting things, but destroying real
people and lives with each pruning. B=15 insists that the TVA needs to change
and now. One of the judges agrees that they need to stop pruning. Loki flashes
back into the room and tells Mobius that he found ‘him.’ Mobius asks who “him”
is, and Loki decides to be dramatic. He takes the pruning stick from X-5 and
uses it to burn the mural of the Timekeepers, revealing Kang’s face behind it.
He loudly announces this is who stole their lives and who is coming back. Mobius
takes his friend away. X-5 is ordered to go to the end of time to try to find
Sylvie.
Loki fills Mobius in on the things
he missed after he and Sylvie got past Alioth. He seems to be having a nervous
breakdown upon realizing what was unleashed by killing He Who Remains and
trying to understand why Sylvie did it. Loki insists that this, where they’re
standing, is He Who Remains’ kingdom and is certain that Mobius doesn’t
remember this because he had his memory wiped. Loki wants to talk to the
judges, but Mobius wants to know where Loki came from. Loki says that he’s
traveling back and forth in time. Mobius says that can’t be true as time
doesn’t work like that in the TVA. Loki vanishes to prove the point. Mobius
takes to medical to look him over. Mobius theorizes that being forced through
He Who Remains’ TemPad may have caused Loki’s shifting and that they’ll need to
talk to an expert to find out why it’s happening.
They enter a hidden office and meet
Short Round… I mean Waymond Wang… I mean Ke Huy Quan… I mean Ouroboros. AKA OB.
Mobius clearly has no memory of OB, but OB remembers him. He is the only member
of his department. Loki vanishes again, and OB says that he Time Slipped. Mobius
asks if he can fix that, to which OB says no. Loki appears in the office in
front of a younger OB, dubs him OB and asks for his help. In the present, OB
says that it’s impossible to Time Slip in the TVA again, only to remember
talking with Loki about it in the past. Apparently, as Loki is altering the
past talking to OB, OB is remembering the conversation in real time. Trippy. Loki
asks him how to stop Time Slipping in the TVA. OB says they need a Temporal
Aura Extractor. Loki has OB whip one up and then leave it for when Mobius comes
for it. In the present, OB remembers the Extractor and tells Mobius he needs to
take it to the Temporal Loom and use it to pull Loki directly from the
timeline. OB says that the process isn’t too bad, but if Mobius dawdles too
long, the time energy will rip his skin off. When Mobius points out that that
doesn’t SOUND easy, OB says that he meant that it’s easy compared to what Loki
has to do. Loki, it turns out, has to remove himself from time and space, AKA
prune himself, so the extractor can pull him out. Loki vanishes again and
returns to the present.
OB notices that his lamp is
flashing, Mobius says that they’ve been having power surges all day. OB is
clearly shocked by this information. The boys meet up with B-15 as OB explains
the surges are probably what’s causing Loki to Time Slip. OB says that the
branching of the Time Lines is overloading the Temporal Looms, which is bad. He
says that they should all known this stuff, as it’s in the manual that he
wrote. They reach the Temporal Loom. OB says that this is where time is extracted
and worked into a physical timeline. It wasn’t designed to work with so many
branches, so that’s why it’s overloading. OB says that Miss Minutes is the one
that handled the Day to Day stuff, he just had to run diagnostic checks every
few hundred years. He tells them they need to start pruning branches, B-15
refuses, saying they won’t kill countless people anymore. OB says that then
he’ll need to try to jerry-rig the system to handle multiple timelines. He’ll
need to seal the chamber to protect the rest of the TVA. Oh, and they’ll need
to fix Loki now or never.
The plan is for Mobius to go out
into the time stream room and launch the extractor, Loki will then prune
himself and the extractor will pull him all the way through to their time. He
gives Loki a timer synced to the Loom and tells him to only prune himself
moments of it turning green. They have one hour… until the glass cracks, then
they have five minutes. Another Minute Man arrives and says that Dox’s people
are raiding the armory and preparing to go after Sylvie. Loki wants to help but
they need to focus on fixing him. Loki tries to tell Mobius something for if he
doesn’t come back, but he then Time Slips again, dropping the Pruner. Damn. He
reappears in the same room, determining that he went into the future this time.
In his present, Mobius is suited up in a time-space suit and OB tells him how
to use the extractor. He has to hurry or the time energy will rapidly age him
into nothing. When he notes there’s a crack in his helmet, OB puts tape on it
and says he’ll be fine. OB leaves, opens the blast doors and Mobius heads out
to save Loki.
Meanwhile, Loki is running around
the TVA looking for a pruner. Mobius puts the Extractor in and powers it up.
Loki looks around the TVA but can’t find a pruner. While he searches, we see a
monitor showing the expanding timelines, but it then shows things reverting
back into a single line, how odd. Mobius has a little trouble getting the
Extractor going, but then it powers on. Loki is still looking for a pruner. OB
tells Mobius they have thirty seconds for him to pull Loki before they close
the blast doors. Loki doesn’t make it in time and hits the blast door button. Loki
hears a ringing phone and goes towards it. He sees Sylvie trying to force open
an elevator door before getting pruned from behind. He gets launched out of the
timeline, hitting Mobius, and knocking them free of the Loom. He tells Mobius
they need to find Sylvie.
Meanwhile, Dox and a large
battalion of Minute Men suit up and head out. B-15 asks if all of this is to
capture Sylvie and the other Minute Man says he doesn’t believe it. The plot
thickens.
A post credit scene has Sylvie appearing
in Broxton, Oklahoma in a branched time in 1982. She walks into a McDonalds of
all places and orders ‘everything.’ She looks around the place as she says
this, implying that she wants to try everything in life, but the server things
she just wants a lot of burgers, it seems.
Okay, this is an interesting start
to Loki season 2. I think having Loki shift through time and space to
give us clues as to the origins of the TVA is a decent idea to start the
season. From the context of the scenes we were shown, there was a time when He
Who Remains/Kang was actively ruling the organization, at least he was in
charge enough that he felt like he needed his statues everywhere. The question
of why he decided to switch tactics and remove people’s memories of when he was
actively in charge is probably going to be a main plot point of the season.
Adding Ke Huy Quan was a brilliant use of 2023’s Best Supporting Actor
according to the Academy Awards. I’ve just really enjoyed seeing his star rise
after returning to acting in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. But,
his character of OB was interesting, quirky, and I even liked that they had a
decent explanation as to why he wasn’t in season 1 despite being a major part
of the TVA. Namely, he has a department he runs alone, and Miss Minutes handles
most of his day-to-day tasks. I can buy that. I’ll be curious to see how they
handle Sylvie going forward, as her actions at the End of Time are clearly
having ramifications across time and space. The future look that Loki got of
her doing something while the TVA is in an emergency situation was a
decent teaser for the future. So… yeah, good start. I’ll see you tomorrow when
we do number 2.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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