Viewer Log: Loki ep 12

 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. 

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Viewer Log: Loki ep 11

 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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Viewer Log: Loki ep 10

 Let's try to fix time.

Last time on Loki, we got 19^th 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 19^th 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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Viewer Log: Loki ep 9

 A most wretched hive of scum and villainy, the Chicago World's Fair.

Last time on Loki, the hunt was on for the Missing TVA agents lead by General Dox. … Yea, the time skip was weird here. Loki and Mobius found Hunter X-5 living life in the 70s under the alias Brad Wolfe, a movie star. Using some… intense interrogation tactics, they were finally able to get X-5 to show them where Sylvie was hiding out. She’d taken up residence in a Branch Timeline working at a McDonalds in the 80s. Loki tries to talk to her but she’s adamant about being out of all of this. X-5’s fidgeting makes Mobius suspicious, and they get Sylvie to enchant him to figure out why he’s so insistent they leave the Branch. Turns out, Dox plans on using the metric tons of bombs she stole to blow up all the Branch Timelines. The trio go to their base and try to stop Dox, but she ends up destroying most of the Branch Timelines. This might be a good news/bad news thing, as OB is trying to fix the Time Loom to accommodate more timelines but hit a snag where he can’t actually access the facility because it’s locked. Only He Who Remains could open it, or Miss Minutes, so they need to find that clock lady now. Thankfully, they get a hit on Renslayer’s TemPad, so they’ll be off to find her. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 9: 1893

 

We begin in Chicago in 1868. Renslayer steps out of Time Door and is looking for someone, revealed to be Miss Minutes. Renslayer pulls out document that Miss Minutes needed. She tells Renslayer to put the package in a window, as part of He Who Remains contingency plan to “save time.” Miss Minutes promises Renslayer that when this is finished, they’ll be beside a restored He Who Remains at the top of the TVA. Renslayer leaves the package, a young Black boy finding it. He opens it to find the TVA guidebook.

 

Back at the TVA, Loki and the gang are trying to get into the Loom. OB tells them that Dox’s actions slowed things down a little, but the Branches are growing back already, so it didn’t buy them much time. They need to get in there and make the Loom bigger to accommodate the new timelines. Mobius suggests they hack into the system, but no one has the skills for that. They suggests finding Miss Minutes, she has administrative access to open the blast doors. They have two hits from the TemPad to look for, so Loki and Mobius head out.

 

They arrive in 1868, Renslayer’s TemPad having told them she visited this year and the same spot in 1893. Loki wonders why she’d go to the same place twice. They wonder if any pivotal person in history was here, but Mobius can only think of the Chicago Fire, but that was in 1871. They pop right back out again to 1893 to check that year. They arrive in 1893 and only then does Mobius remember this is the location of the World’s Fair. He rather excitedly lists off Hot Air Balloons, the White City, Edison and HH Holms. I get three of these but that last guy is a serial killer. They start searching the Fair, almost immediately running into a paper boy touting a “ghost clock” haunting the midway. They open the paper and see Miss Minutes clearly on it. They start searching. After getting concessions. Mobius is having a good time. They come across a Norse exhibit and Loki is snippy about it. He says it’s about boiling down his culture into nothing, but Mobius thinks it’s because he isn’t one of the three statuses, Odin, Thor, and Baldur are. Side note, I’ve been making cracks about how odd it is that Loki and Thor have never mentioned their other brother Baldur, and friend and sometimes other-other Brother Tyr this whole time, so it’s good to see someone decide to address it even in a gag line. Loki says that Thor isn’t that tall before leaving. Loki spots an advert for “Victor Timely’s Astounding Temporal Marvels.”

 

We cut over to the exhibit, Renslayer and Miss Minutes are there in disguise, and Loki and Mobius arrive a minute later. Mobisu spots her but Loki keeps him from rushing and spooking her. The opening act ends, and the curtain opens. Victor Timely comes out and presents his device, a prototype of the Temporal Loom. Loki is clearly shaken by seeing Timely, whom will be He Who Remains. Timely suggests that Time will be the future of energy. He explains that his loom converts time into energy and weaves into an elegant line. He claims that his device will be able to light the whole of Chicago. A heckler keeps asking condescending questions, and it clearly starts frustrating Timely. He claims that his device will power the whole planet. He claims all science is fiction until it’s fact, his machine overloading slightly and throwing off sparks. Mobius wants to take him back to the TVA to get access to the Lom. Loki isn’t sure that’s a good idea, but Mobius points out they’re on a clock. They lose track of Renslayer, whom approaches Timely. One of the hecklers comes up to Timely and tries to strong arm him into giving him the patent rights for his machine. Timely says no and walks off, another man cuts him off and a bidding war starts for Timely’s machine. The first man offers him a thousand dollars and Timely agrees to it. Loki runs into a giant man. Renslayer is doubtful that Timely will be He Who Remains, but Miss Minutes assures her that this was He Who Remains’ plan, so it should work. Loki banishes the big dude getting in his face and they chase after Renslayer and Timely.

 

Outside, they all try to get Timely to come with them for just a second, but a city councilman comes up and demands a refund for prototype pants Timely sold him. Loki realizes that He Who Remains is a con artist that sells junk to suckers with fake contraptions. Just in time for the guy that bought his device to come in and demand his money back. Timely runs off, leading him on a chase until he and his goons get stuck in a Ferris wheel gondola, Timely slipping out. B-15 calls Mobius, who reports on the He Who Remains Variant. She tells him that Casey detected a weird TemPad reading. Turns out, the reading is Sylvie portaling in to kill Timely. Loki and her start fighting as she tries to kill Timely.

 

Sylvie wants to kill Timely, and isn’t willing to listen about how they need him to save the TVA. While they fight, Mobius tries to get Renslayer to work with them but she refuses. Sylvie accuses the TVA of giving Timely the book, of “Weaponizing” him. She says that Renslayer set him on a path he wasn’t meant to walk, and that Loki is going to make him dangerous. Loki tries to convince her that Timely might be their best hope to save all of time, but Sylvie isn’t listening. They blast each other, Renslayer using Miss Minutes to cause a riot and escape with him. Sylvie tells Loki this is on him.

 

Timely and Renslayer return to his house. He shows her one of his inventions, a self-cooling refrigerator chair. Timely is impressed with Miss Minutes. Renslayer tells Timely the broad strokes, that a version of him made the TVA and was killed by the Loki’s. They promise to keep him safe and Miss Minutes makes it clear that she’s looking to turn him into He Who Remains. He asks why they’re not working with the “Gentleman Wizard” or his butler. Renslayer says they can’t be trusted and that Loki murdered him and often changes side. The Robber Baron shows up to get Timely, they slip out and head for Timely’s lab across the lake. He claims that he sells things in Chicago but works in Wisconsin, lower taxes. That’s how those filthy Cheese Bros get you. (Joke, I’m from Minnesota). They lose Timely and Renslayer. Timely and Renslayer head out on a boat to his lab.

 

On the boat, Timely tells her that his latest invention is a device that will let him understand and manipulate time. He reveals that he was indeed the boy that Renslayer gave the book to, he figures this out and thanks them for it. He shows her the biggest idea he’d discovered in the book, a device to increase the throughput of the Loom. He says that he was always waiting for technology to catch up with his vision. He makes her an origami flower and they have a moment. She says she has high hopes for their partnership. Renslayer falls asleep, but then wakes up as she’s dropped in a lifeboat into the lake. Turns out, Miss Minutes convinced him to ditch Renslayer, as she was talking about a partnership and he doesn’t do those. Renslayer gets the oars ready and tries to follow them.

 

At his Lab, Timely summons Miss Minutes and starts gathering his devices and notes. One of the machines is the Loom throughput enhancer. Timely prepares to leave, but Miss Minutes suggests maybe they lay low for a while instead. There’s a real creepy vibe as Miss Minutes gushes about how important he is and what he did for her. She talks about the eons they spent together, how she was originally a chess playing AI that he enhanced and kept with him through the multiverse war and the TVA. She asks him why he, meaning He Who Remains, never made her a body. She suggest making her a real body and making her his girl. This scares Timely enough that he shuts off her display despite her pleas. Renslayer arrives and holds a Prototype pruner on him. She tells him that from now on she’s in charge now, just as Loki and Mobius arrive. Mobius tries to convince her to work with them, but she’s not listening. Renslayer has a rant, saying how she was the only one that kept the TVA together, that all that matters is order vs chaos. They all get knocked back by Sylvie’s magic. Timely begs for his life, saying that he hasn’t done anything and that he isn’t He Who Remains. He says he’s not the man she thinks he is. His pleas reach her and she tells them to get him out of here. They open a Time Door for Timely and he and Loki and Mobius head out. Alone, Sylvie starts beating on Renslayer, working out some aggression on her. She claims to have killed Renslayer thousands of times and that kind of obsession is crippling in it’s own way. She realizes that Renslayer wants, a seat at the end of time, and she decides to give it to her. She opens a Time Door behind Renslayer and shoves her through. She arrives at the End of Time and He Who Remains’ corpse. She reactivates Miss Minutes. She’s feeling miffed at being scorned and that Timely made a mistake out of making an enemy of someone who knows all the secrets. She says she knows a big one about Renslayer and that finding out about it will make her real angry. And the credit’s roll.

 

Once again, I find myself annoyed at how good of an actor Jonathan Majors is. With the revelations of his abusive and violent nature, I really can’t praise his acting without a bad taste in my mouth. So, yeah, I guess he’s better in this than he has any right to be. I think I am slightly confused at how Variants work at this point. So, all of He Who Remains wiki entries refer to him as Nathaniel Richards from the 30^th Century, a time traveling scientist that made the TVA and did space/sci-fi stuff. But I guess with the mechanics of the multiverse, alternate timelines throw him out at alternate periods of history? I really just need a sciency type to sit us down and explain how Variants work to the best of their ability. Whatever, Renslayer found a Variant of Nathaniel and gave him the means to develop his tech. Neat. The fact that he uses that tech to be a con man as the technology over all is too advanced for him to do anything with is a nice twist. Miss Minutes’ new… dimension was interesting. Having a sufficiently intelligent creation fall in love/obsession with their creator is an old story, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein old. But up to this point, while Miss Minutes was shown to be intelligent and autonomous, I don’t think we got any hints of her being capable of emotions. So, her sudden declaration of love and a desire for a body for them to rule together just kind of comes out of left field. It works, it’s a very creepy scene, I just would have liked to see more of this obsessed with my boss angle sooner. I feel like the secret Miss Minutes knows about Renslayer will probably lead back into that recording Loki heard in the past, but we’ll see. I liked that Timely himself is what convinced Sylvie to not kill him, that defending himself and saying that he has free will to not be He Who Remains was a good way to go about that. Not sure what Sylvie is going to do now or how the situation gets worse, but we’ll see about that next time. Have a good night. 

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Viewer Log: Loki ep 8

 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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Viewer Log: Loki ep 7

 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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Viewer Log: Loki ep 6

 Don't let him fool you, a monster hides behind the carefree façade. 

Last time on Loki, the titular character awoke at the End of Time and met himselves. He explored the end with Classic Loki, Boastful Loki, Kid Loki and Alligator Loki. They’re hounded by the monstrous cloud snake Alioth and by other Variants of themselves that Boastful Loki lead to them. The Loki quartet meet up with their fifth self, Sylvie, and Mobius. Sylvie had gotten to touch a piece of Alioth and saw a vision of a castle floating in the void. She wants to try to enchant it, which Loki begrudgingly agrees to help with. Mobius, meanwhile, is going to use the TemPad Sylvie brought back to return to the TVA and ‘burn it to the ground,” as Loki once said. Their plan doesn’t work out great, until Classic Loki steps up and shows them how powerful they can become. The oldest looking Loki is able to create a to-scale illusion of Asgard to draw Alioth’s attention. He sacrifices himself to give the other two Lokis the time they need to enchant the beast. Doing so opens up a gate to the castle floating in the void. They step through.

 

Episode 6: For All Time, Always

 

I don't know if the line is literal or metaphoric,
but it is impressive.

We begin with the top lines off all the Marvel Films played layered on top of each other, and shots of the solar system, pulling farther and farther out into the cosmos, splicing in the top soundbites of the last century, culminating in Loki and Sylvie standing on the asteroid where that castle sits in the void. The two walk across the alien landscape to the castle. They’re both clearly nervous about stepping through the door and meet the man behind the curtain. They dawdle for a few minutes before the door opens on its own. They walk inside and are greeted by… Miss Minutes? Huh, didn’t see that coming, but she is clearly the scariest thing that could be there. She welcomes them to the Citadel at the End of Time, and tells them that He Who Remains is eager to meet them. Miss Minutes offers them a deal, stating He Who Remains has made some adjustments to the timeline and is offering to reinsert them into it in a way that won’t disrupt history. The TVA can keep doing its work, they can live their lives, everyone wins. Miss Minutes offers to let Loki win in New York, kill Thanos, and claim the Infinity Gauntlet and the Throne of Asgard. And for Sylvie, a lifetime of happy memories and a home, both of them together on the timeline. Both realize that this is a major Faustian bargain and turn it down. Miss Minutes vanishes, saying “good luck with that,” to their desire to try to forge their own destiny.

 

Back at the TVA, Renslayer is downloading files off the TVA network, with Miss Minutes arriving a moment later. She’s vague about what she was doing, which feels odd for the possible AI. When Renslayer notes that the files on her TemPad aren’t the ones she was looking for, Miss Minutes claims “He” thinks they’ll be more helpful.

 

He Who Remains, and oh what an accurate title
that is.

The Lokis penetrate deeper into the Citadel. They enter another chamber and are greeted by He Who Remains… Well, shit. Okay, we all know who he is, but I’m going to keep referring to him as He Who Remains until the closing paragraph. Kay? Kay. He Who Remains seems like a pretty chill guy, and is just in general excited to see them. He mentions that he finds the name mildly creepy but Miss Minutes keeps using it, and he also still likes it. He leads them up to his office.

 

They have a super awkward elevator ride up where Sylvie tries to kill him repeatedly but he just loops around them until finally looping up to his office before them. He pours the two tea and offers them a seat.

 

Mobius meets up with Renslayer, who is packing up her office. He is pretty casual about his return, though does bring up a few times the whole pruning him thing. She tries to justify pruning him, and then calls in Hunters, but he tells her that’s not going to work out how she thinks it is, pulling out her pen as he does so. We jump to Fremont, Ohio in 2018, where B-15 leads the Hunters following her to the office of Renslayer. Or more accurately who Renslayer is a Variant of. Cats out of the bag, Judge. Maybe don’t keep the pen of your past life next time, ma’am.

 

Back at the Citadel, He Who Remains is impressed with his guests and is still acting pretty chill. He loops out of the way again when Sylvie tries to decapitate him. He pulls out a file and shows it to them, it’s the scene they’re in. Much like the print outs of everything Loki said in the first episode, it’s basically a screenplay of everything that they’ll say and do here. Loki thinks it’s a parlor trick, but He Who Remains claims to know how this is all going to go down and has preloaded his TemPad with the Loops necessary to dodge their attacks. He claims to know all the things they did on Lamentis, all the things the TVA doesn’t know, and even their moment by the lake at the Void. He claims that every step they took was arranged by him. He paved the road, they walked down it. He shows them the rest of how this will go, or at least getting out the pages. Sylvie wonders why they’re even doing this then, and He Who Remains gets all Meta and says they can’t get to the destination without being changed by the journey. It needs to happen, to get them in the right mindset.

 

Mobius tells Renslayer that it’s time to tell everyone the truth. She insists its for a reason, a greater good, but Mobius is definitely not buying that anymore. Seeing the Void makes being Pro-Void very hard. Renslayer insists that its to prevent chaos, death on a cosmic scale and that it is worth it. When Mobius brings up Freewill, she claims the only one who is allowed that is the one in charge. Renslayer is hurt by Mobius swapping teams for the Lokis. She opens a Time Door. Mobius thinks that maybe they can make the TVA something better. He goes to try to prune her, but she easily disarms him. She grabs her bag and walks off. Telling him she’s going in search of free will.

 

Meanwhile, He Who Remains does admit that he gets their moral objections to the TVA, that his methods are deceptive, but the reason behind their mission is a good one. Without it, without him, everything burns. When Loki asks what He Who Remains is so afraid of, he says its him. Or more accurately his Variants. He claims he’s been given many names by many people, that he’s been a ruler, a conqueror, He Who Remains, and a jerk. But those are just names, he’s much more than the names he’s been given.

This was a really cool effect.

 

He activates the TemPad on his wrist and makes a liquid projection. He tells them a story from eons ago, when a scientist, let’s call him… something generic… oh, I know, Nathaniel Richards, lived on Earth in the 31^st century. He figured out the Multiverse is a thing, and so did other versions of himself. They used their technology to meet, shake each other’s hands and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. And for a time, there was peace. They shared technology and knowledge to improve all realities. But eventually, other versions of him saw new worlds as new places to conquer. War broke out, with each Nathaniel fighting to preserve themselves and their universe. I’m getting serious Highlander vibes here, there can be only One! He claims this was almost the end of everything. Sylvie guess that the Timekeepers came and saved them all. After making a mocking A-men, He Who Remains tells her the truth behind the dogma. He, the OG Nathaniel (at least in his own mind), discovered a creature that had been created by the tears in reality, something that could devour energy and matter and time. Alioth. He Who Remains experimented on and eventually weaponized Alioth. He used it to defeat his Variants, and then, after isolating his timeline, used it to make sure no new branches formed. He ends his presentation by saying that, if they think he’s evil, just wait till you meet his variants. He’s the devil, but he’s the devil they know. And this is their dilemma, order or chaos, one man dictating the flow of time, or a horde of Conquerors chopping up slices of time and space. He claims that, after living a million lifetimes and going over every scenario, this is the only way. And then he offers them a deal.

 

He offers them two options, they can either kill him and release the infinite evils that are waiting, or they can take over and run things as they see. When Loki calls bull and asks why he’d give up control, He Who Remains reveals that he’s tired, and far older than he looks. This is a game for the young and the hungry, and he can’t keep up anymore. He finally settled on letting the Lokis taking over for him. He’ll even let them be benevolent rulers, going back to the TVA and explaining to them who they are and why they do what they do. Sylvie is clearly not on board, pissing He Who Remains off. He calls her out, pointing out everyone here is a villain, that they’ve all done terrible, horrible, horrific things. Looking directly at Loki with every word. But now they can do them for a good reason. It’s at this moment that He Who Remains looks around, telling them they’ve crossed the threshold into the unknown. He doesn’t know what is going to happen after this moment. He drops a pen and looks weirded out about it. We get a wide shot from the Citadel, seeing branches already forming farther down the timeline from them.

 

They're going to need so many more reset charges.

Loki is confused by this, why he’s so carefree about not knowing. He shrugs and points out the obvious, either they take over for him and everything is fine, or they kill him and there shall be an infinite rain of Ka… Variants of him raining down. So, no skin off his nose there either. He claims there’s no lie, no manipulation, that that is the honest truth. He takes off his TemPad and admits he loves all this honesty. Sylvie goes to kill him, Loki stopping her. He wants to talk about their options. Loki believes him and is legitimately freaked out by the vision of the future that He Who Remains has painted. Sylvie, blinded by her anger, doesn’t believe He Who Remains and plans to kill him. Loki tries to convince Sylvie to work with him and run the TVA. She thinks he wants to rule. He swears that it’s not about a throne, but Sylvie doesn’t believe him. We come down to the philosophical problem here, she can’t trust, and he can’t be trusted. Loki tells her to wait, just wait and see, but they end up fighting. Magic and blades clash. Loki keeps trying to convince her this a decision that’s too important to rush into. She goes to kill He Who Remains, but Loki materializes in front of her, staying her blade. He tells her that he’s been where she has, feels what she feels, and that all he wants is for her to be okay. Sylvie drops her sword and kisses him… odd… but then says she’s not him, and shoves him through the Time Door she opened using He Who Remains TemPad.

 

She shoves his desk aside, and approaches him slowly. He doesn’t beg, or cry, or rage. He just takes the knife to his chest and tells her “See you soon,” laughing before he dies. Sylvie sits down in front of the corpse and watches out the window as the Sacred Timeline falls apart, branching into infinity. Let the Lord of Chaos Rule, I guess. Bonus points to you if you get that reference.

 

Kang is coming.

Back at the TVA, B-15 and Mobius see the infinitely branching timeline. He says there is no turning back, and she agrees. They say For All Time, Always, as the new branches cross the redline. Loki sits by himself looking heartbroken for a while. He gets up and rushes to find Mobius. The TVA is on high alert now, people rushing around to handle things. Loki rushes to the Archive and finds Mobius and B-15. They’re discussing the 63 new timelines that have branched in their unit and speculating if “He” wants them to just let them all branch. Loki goes up to them, to tell them what has happened, but Mobius doesn’t recognize him. B-15 calls in backup to handle the seemingly crazed analyst. As ominous music plays, Loki looks out on the statue in the center off the Archive. It’s no longer the three Timekeepers, He Who Remains puppet leaders… No. It’s someone far more terrible. He Who Remains. Nathaniel Richards. Rama-Tut. The Scarlet Centurion. Immortus. All of these have been his names, but the one he is known best as is… Kang. Kang the Conqueror. And then the credits roll. But they do promise Loki will return with a second season, which is neat.

 

I’ll start off by giving major props to Mr. Majors. When I first heard that Jonathan Majors was cast as Kang, I was a tad skeptical. But then I watched a few episodes of Lovecraft Country, and learned that he has significant acting chops. And, showing this version of Nathanial Richards as this kind of chill dude with sinister undertones will, I think, really highlight how scary he’ll be when we’re introduced to THE Kang. I think he’s going to be terrifying. I liked how he presented his backstory, with that liquid/liquid metal projection. The reveal that He Who Remains used Alioth to force reality into his image was brilliant. Making both Alioth the metaphorical Dragon of the story, as well as the McGuffin that allows the plot to happen was just great storytelling. Oh, and I should point out that I totally saw the Kang reveal coming. He is Marvel’s most famous Time Traveler, there were a number of visual ques like including a sword in the TVA Logo and pyramid/sphinx in the background, and Ravanna Renslayer. She’s his wife in Marvel comics. The sword is significant because is ship is called the Damocles. This was a really well-done episode even though the majority of the plot is just Jonathan Majors being menacing and expositing. I can’t pretend I was shocked by Sylvie’s betrayal, she made it pretty clear early on that vengeance was all that drives her. No, what hurt was Loki going up to Mobius and his literally only friend didn’t recognize him. I hope they get the team back together quickly in season 2, I’d be disappointed if it’s just Loki trying to get Mobius back while a Kang spreads his influence across all timelines. I think that Loki has set up an amazing big bad, and I can’t wait to see more of Kang, and how Loki will delay his ultimate attack on the Avengers until it’s time for them to assemble again. So, yeah, it was a solid finale. Have a good night!

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