Loki is out hunting.
Last time on Loki, Loki
returned to the TVA but discovered he’s the first person in history to “Time
Slip” while there. He shifted from the present to a past where He Who Remains
aka Kang ruled the TVA openly, and hears a recording of He Who Remains striking
a deal with Ravanna Renslayer to rule time together. As the shifts are painful
and sporadic, Mobius takes Loki to see someone who he thinks can help. This
man, Ouroboros aka OB, is able to help, due in part to a time shifted Loki
getting him to set thing up for him a few hundred years in the past. They take
a Temporal Aura Extractor to the Time Loom, the great device that transforms
time into the physical line that the End of Time castle rode on. The plan requires
Loki to prune himself once Mobius has the device in place to pull him out of
the Time stream and plant him solidly in the present. Another sudden shift ruins
this plan as Loki drops his time stick. He finds himself in the future where it
seems some sort of attack is happening. He is drawn to a ringing phone and sees
Sylvie before someone prunes him from behind, sending him back to Mobius just
in the nick of time. At the same time, the new Judges Council of the TVA dispatches
a strike force to the End of Time to find Sylvie. Sylvie, meanwhile, ended up in
a Branch timeline Oklahoma and said she wanted to “Try everything” in a McDonalds.
Enough recap, let’s get to it.
Ep 8: Breaking Brad
We open with Loki and Mobius stepping
through a time door to London, UK circa 1977 in the Sacred Timeline. Loki is certain
that Sylvie isn’t there, as it’s too ‘safe’ a space for her. Sylvie, to his
knowledge, preferred hiding out in war zones, apocalypses or places of other
chaotic nature. Mobius thinks she may have changed her patter after everything that
has happened and points out they got a hit on Hunter X-5’s TemPad here before
it went dark. Loki isn’t sure, but Mobius points out that since General Dox and
X-5 aren’t responding to their calls, this is their only lead. They enter a recarpet
event for Zaniac the movie, starring X-5 under the stage name Brad Wolf.
Mobius thinks maybe he’s undercover, but Loki isn’t buying it. They corner “Brad”
and say they need to chat. He acts happy to see them, offers to buy them drinks,
but then runs the second he’s away from them. He’s cornered again by B-15, she
gets his TemPad away from him as Mobius chase him down. He tells Mobius that
they’ll ruin his life here, Loki blasts him before he can elaborate on that.
They chase Brad into an underground parking garage. Loki asks if X-5 really
thought he could outrun Loki, he says yeah, revealing he’s got another TemPad
and a Looper bracelet on. He loops back on Loki and tries to escape through the
London streets. He gets cornered by some tugs. He tries to hold them off with a
pipe, only to discover their Loki illusions. X-5 tells him to stop with the
magic and fight fair, but Loki says it’s not a fair fight. He finally captures X-5
with his own Shadows. Mobius asks if that was a bit much, but Loki thinks this
was all spot on.
They bring X-5 in and fit him with
a looper collar. B-15 is there and asks him about the TemPad but he plays dumb.
They’re going to bring X-5 in and put him in a holding cell for a bit to see if
that’ll loosen his tongue a little. B-15 tells them to take the TemPad to OB to
have him check it out. They go to his lab and find the recluse building
something. He explains that he’s working on a device to help the Loom handle all
the new timeline branches. They ask him about the TemPad. He’s sure he can get
into it but asks if this is a higher priority than handling a temporal meltdown.
Two of them agree that Meltdown avoidance is the bigger issue and OB tells them
to look through the manual he wrote on the subject.
B-15 goes to Casey and asks him if
he’s gotten any hits on Renslayer’s TemPad. He says no, it’s been difficult because
without Miss Minutes, they’ve had to scroll through all their data manually and
it’s really slowing the analysts down. But Casey did find something else, Renslayer
deleted all her own data but he’s tracked down the last person she contacted
before she left.
Mobius and Loki work on getting
into the TemPad. Since neither is particularly technically minded, it’s not
going well. B-15 and Casey come over and tell them that Miss Minutes was
working with Renslayer. Loki remembers hearing that conversation between Renslayer
and He Who Remains. He thinks they were partners. Casey sees them tinkering
with the TemPad and asks why they’re doing it. Loki tells him that X-5 told
them that it blocks time tracking. Casey doesn’t think so, he takes the TemPad
and because he is technically minded, he thinks he can get into it for
them. They go to interrogate X-5.
Mobius reminds the other two that
they just need to find out where Dox is, what the TemPad does and where Sylvie
is. He reminds them that Brad is an asshole and not to let him get under his
skin. They ask him what the TemPad does and he lies to them about it again. He
insists he’s Brad now and that they don’t have the authority to hold him. Loki
tells him there are lives at stake, and Brad starts laying into Loki for trying
to make up for constantly making things worse. He brings up Frigg, and Loki
doesn’t take kindly to being reminded of his mother. Loki thanks him for giving
his perspective and says he has point.
Maybe he’s just been biding his time, waiting for an excuse to do terrible,
awful things to Brad. Brad is intimidated for a moment but then tells Loki he’s
obsessed and should seek therapy. Mobius suggests that he starts playing ball
so they can release him back to the Sacred Timeline. Brad seems to have had a nervous
breakdown since he left the TVA looking for Sylvie, as he tells Mobius how none
of this is real, how Mobius isn’t an analyst, Brad isn’t a hunter, it’s all an
illusion. He asks Mobius if he’s ever though about who he “really” is, what his
real name is, Mobius says he hasn’t given it thought. Brad insists he needs to ‘wake
up’ or he’s a nowhere man. Mobius gets angry and slaps him. Loki pulls Mobius
out and leaves him with B-15. Loki asks what happened there, but Mobius tries
to play it off. They head to the break room and get some pie to try to
recenter. They get key lime.
After eating some pie, Mobius
admits that he lost control in there. Loki says that it happens to everyone, him
going with the example of when he was so mad at his father and Thor that he attacked
New York. That wasn’t tactical, that was emotional. Loki asks if Mobius is even
curious about where he came from on the timeline. Mobius says that’s the last
thing he should be thinking about. Mobius says no, as that isn’t his life. Loki
says that he understands, better to not think about the path not taken. Mobius
admits that he could handle it if his pre-TVA life was bad, it’s if it was good
that scares him. Loki thinks X-5 isn’t going to talk, but Mobius isn’t sure. They
theorize, and decide that X-5 found Sylvie, found her but she didn’t realize
it. He decided not to turn her in for some reason and then went on to living
his best life as Brad Wolfe. They just need to make him talk. Mobius has faith
in the God of mischief to handle it.
OB has finished his device and
prepares to use it to stabilize the Temporal Loom. He plugs his device in and
tries to power it up, but gets an alert that he has invalid access.
Loki goes to Brad and admits he’s going
to try some hard ball tactics on him. Mobius wheels in a device. Brad doesn’t
seem that intimidated by the device. Loki tells him they forgot the controller
and heads out to get it. Loki locks him out and says that he’s going to make Brad
talk. He pulls out the controller for the device and plugs it in. He asks if
Brad found Sylvie. Brad is clearly starting to get scared when Loki gets the
machine running. He apologizes for bringing up Loki’s mom and for being a dick.
Loki uses the device to trap the chair in the time bubble and shrink it down.
He traps Brad in a time cube. Brad says he doesn’t know where the others are.
Loki shrinks his box down and makes Brad panic. He says that he was ordered to
find Sylvie but he bailed. Loki doesn’t believe Brad would do that and put the
squeeze on him, Brad finally cracks, saying that she has a new life. Mobius
comes in and reveals that was planned out. They help Brad up and tell him that
he’s going to show them where Sylvie is.
B-15 brings Casey to OB to try to
help him out. OB comes in and tells them they’re all going to die. He explains
that the blast doors are stuck. After Casey gushes a little at meeting THE Ouroboros,
OB explains the situation. The blast doors are shut and locked and the only way
to open them is with the Temporal Aura of the person that designed them. Obviously,
He Who Remains is dead, so that’s not an option. Their only alternative is to
get Miss Minutes back and get her to help them override the lock. They need to
hurry or they’ll all die.
X-5 takes Loki and Mobius to
Broxton, Oklahoma, 1982. Mobius promises that if he’s lying to them he’s going
back into the Gizmo. X-5 is incredibly jumpy about this and tries to stay back.
The trio enters the McDonalds and find Sylvie working the counter. Loki goes to
talk to her. She tells him that her breaks in five minutes and they’ll talk
then. They head outside. Loki tells Sylvie about his time travels and that Sylvie
was at the TVA during the big cataclysm. Sylvie says she has no idea what is going
on and she doesn’t care. She isn’t running and she’s happy here. Loki says that
he saw it happen, so it will happen, but Sylvie insists that she stopped inevitability
when she killed He Who Remains. Inside, Mobius enjoys some fast food with X-5. X-5
is anxious to leave the branch and get back to the Sacred Timeline. Mobius
senses something up. Loki asks Sylvie what she’s going to do when more Kang’s
show up and she says she’ll kill them too. Mobius comes out and tells them that
X-5 has been holding something back. He tries to play dumb, but insists they go
back to the TVA before they all die. Sylvie grabs and enchants him. She
realizes the plan Dox came up with was to use all the armaments they took to
bomb this and all other branched timelines back out of existence.
They return X-5 to the TVA as B-15 and
the others start detecting charges being set up on all the new branch
timelines. Mobius radios in and tells her Dox’s plan to basically burn all the
other timelines out of existence. She warn them they need to stop them now.
Loki and his team find their base
of operations with the memories Sylvie spied. Dox’s crew are opening a lot of Time
Doors and dropping charges across time and space. They’ve already destroyed 30%
of the new timelines. Loki goes to distract them. Dox sees them and says their
mission is compromised. They work to try to set off as many charges as they can.
They fight off a bunch of Minute Men before Loki and Sylvie grasp hands and
blast them away. They capture Dox and bring her and her soldiers in. Everyone
returns to the TVA and sees that nearly all the alternate timelines are gone.
Casey gets a hit on Renslayer’s TemPad. Loki goes to Sylvie and apologizes for
failing her. She says that the TVA is the problem, that it’s rotten to the
core. She leaves in a huff.
Sylvie returns to her Timeline and
relaxes on her truck. One of her coworkers asks if she’ll be in tomorrow and
she says she will. When alone, she looks over a glowing pendant. How odd.
I like the stuff that OB is doing.
The idea that the Loom is being overloaded because it wasn’t designed to handle
more than one… we’ll say type of timeline. I don’t think there was ever just
one perfect timeline, just one accepted course of events that the TVA forces to
play out repeatedly. The fact that the repairs he needs to make are impossible
without He Who Remains or Miss Minutes just adds to the ticking clock. As to
the rest of the episode… I feel like we’re missing some story beats. Like, last
episode ended with Dox and her Minute Men leaving to find Sylvie, and now we start
where they’ve been clearly missing for days, if not weeks subjective time, and
X-5 has had long enough to be “Brad Wolfe’ for a while. Feels like there’s a
whole episode missing. Something like Loki and Mobius searching for Sylvie on
their own, maybe see hints of what Dox and co are doing, before we realize how
long they’ve been gone and what damage they’ve been doing. Speaking of Dox and
X-5… I feel like we’re speed running these two characters that either didn’t
appear at all or didn’t matter in season 1. Dox I know didn’t show up, and if
X-5 was in season 1 he was background at best. But the show seems to be
treating it like it’s a big deal who these two are and what they’re doing. I
supposed that’s what happens when the focus was mostly on Loki, Mobius, and
Sylvie last season. Sylvie… hm… I like that she’s trying to live a normal life post
killing He Who Remains. Cliché? Yes, but it’s Cliché because trying to move on after
getting what you want is a basic story beat. I hope we get more of her ‘real’
life as the story goes on, just because a chaos god just living as a cashier in
the 80s seems like a neat idea. I’ll be curious how she gets pulled back into
things when she so clearly wants to be out. So yeah, I’m still interested in
seeing more even if it feels like we’re speed running this story. We’ll talk
about episode 3, see you tomorrow.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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