I had to give myself some time to just sit on this one.

The finale of Loki Season 2 and possibly the entirety of the Loki Series wasn’t exactly what I think we thought it would be. For a while, I’ve had to contemplate whether expectations made us feel this or if we just didn’t like the ending. Now, I’m here to say that I think we just didn’t like the ending, as it closed doors we didn’t think would shut and opened ones that only lead down the trail of confusion. After some time away, I can confidently say I can break down the Loki Season 2 finale in a more objective manner, still pointing out where we thought it went wrong, but also being able to discuss the possible future of the Loki characters. If you are interested in listening to our extremely first-hand reactions to the episode, recorded right after finishing it, you can listen by clicking the button to find your platform of choice or listen live in this blog.

Loki, the God of Stories

As a long-term Loki fan, I will say I can’t complain about the amazing development they gave to the character in this season, which was a huge complaint of mine in Season One. Not only was there a large focus on his character, but we saw Loki throughout the season come to terms with the fact he cared about people and didn’t want to be alone anymore. Knowing the mental state this Loki came out of in 2012, this was a huge leap, considering the OG Loki took about 6 more years to have even a fraction of this realization. It was for this reason that Loki made arguably one of the largest sacrifices we’ve seen in the MCU, which was to choose to be alone to save everyone he cared about. Yet beyond that, the sacrifice came in the form that Loki knew it wasn’t just his friends he would save, but the entire Multiverse. The only way to let everyone live and allow the TVA to continue to exist was for him to save the Multiverse himself, becoming the God of Stories and the heart of the Multiverse.

Despite all this growth, this is still a rough ending for those who want to see Loki return again. Putting aside Tom Hiddleston’s comments about the character and focusing on what the show gave us, Loki’s fate seemed fairly permanent. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen a lot of people discussing how a Multiversal War or something with the Kangs wouldn’t be able to take place without bringing Loki into the discussion. I don’t inherently disagree but we have to remember that Loki has quite literally woven the tree of life and sits in the center of it. He has almost become the live-action version of The Watcher, stuck watching everything happen while sitting outside of all of it at the same time. I do hope we see Loki return, even if it is briefly, but his current position seems like a pretty permanent solitude.

Mobius and Miss Minutes Will Return

Two characters I can put into the ring to make their return are Mobius and Miss Minutes. Both have been rumored to return in Deadpool 3 of all things, which only seems to open a slew of questions for us to ponder until next summer. Focusing first on Mobius, his possible return here can be looked at in two ways. Initially, when he was rumored to return, everyone thought it was going to be as a TVA agent. Due to the ending of Loki Season 2, this could still be valid, although Mobius’ ending was left undefined. He watches what his life on the Sacred Timeline could have been from afar, not quite wishing to have it but also not quite content with his life in the TVA anymore. He’s facing a crossroads for the first time in his possibly very long life, one we will have to wait until Deadpool 3 to see play out. He could very easily return to the TVA and continue his work there as if nothing happened. On the other hand, Mobius may end up finding that seeing his original life is what is the spark needed to light the fire to return to it. We’ve seen Brad do it, and we know there’s a possibility, especially with the Multiverse open. We might find that the timeline Mobius returns to ends up being Deadpool’s timeline, connecting the two stories in one place.

As for Miss Minutes, she was rebooted and brought back to the TVA to continue the work she had been helping them do in Season One. I don’t for a second trust her, though. As one of the most powerful AI systems known to man, I don’t expect a reboot and maybe some other tinkering to reset her completely. Miss Minutes has been around for a long, long time and was built by He Who Remains himself. As he had a failsafe for the Loom, it can be expected he had a failsafe for her as well. Regardless of my feelings about her, if the TVA does need to intervene anywhere with Deadpool, Miss Minutes would be one of the characters I expect to see, as she is indirectly the face of the TVA, even with all her problems.

Where Does Sylvie Go from Here?

Sylvie is one of the few characters that is just all-around wonky, having been taken from her original timeline at such a young age, but not being pruned or turned into a TVA agent, allowing her to actually grow up. Her timeline is long gone and so is the one she briefly made a home on after killing He Who Remains. With Loki sitting as the God of Stories, Sylvie for the first time is a fully stand-alone Loki variant at the end of the series. So the question becomes, where will Sylvie go and will we see her again? She might make a nice little home on a timeline, as she did before, or could be forgotten for a while as the MCU focuses on other projects before bringing her in for maybe something like Secret Wars. She could be a fascinating character to have someone like Thor meet, as she not only is a variant of his brother, but she can tell him where (at least a variant) of his brother is now.

The other thing we need to note when talking about where Sylvie might go is the fact she still has He Who Remains’ tempad. I bring this up for two reasons: she can still travel wherever she wishes including the TVA, and this tempad works at the end of time. We know it does, as she used it at the end of Season 1 to kick Loki out of the Citadel and also in this season to send Renslayer there. It’s a more powerful tool than the regular tempads, so the question arises of whether or not Sylvie could technically use it to visit Loki in his new position. Getting an answer to this may be nearly impossible for the time being, but it’s good to keep in mind when thinking both of Loki and Sylvie’s individual fates.

The Kangs from Here

We saw our sixth version of a Kang variant in the second season and we also saw him get noodled to death as well. Victor Timely, in his own way, stole hearts and broke them quickly when his death came in Episode 4. Then all of Episode 6 happened and we haven’t quite gotten confirmation on what happened to the adult version of Victor Timely. Don’t get me wrong, we saw that young Victor never receives the TVA guidebook and time moves as it’s supposed to move on the Sacred Timeline, but we never really got confirmation of what went down with adult Victor Timely, the variant that Renslayer and Miss Minutes created in this season. In fact, the last we saw was adult Victor Timely still in the TVA, helping the crew as Loki decided he had to be the one to go out there. We know the TVA is still alive and well thanks to Loki’s sacrifice, so where is Victor?

On top of that big question mark, we also have to question what is going on with all the Kangs. I would love to leave off-screen drama out of this, but Marvel has been rumored to be moving away from the Kang storyline due to Jonathan Majors’s ongoing legal issues. If this is true, where does that leave us in the MCU after the conclusion of Loki? We saw that Loki has essentially surpassed He Who Remains, part of what the final episode was there to show us and he now resides over the entire Multiverse, breathing life into it. So if the Kangs are still coming, well, a fully functional Multiverse seems like their breeding grounds to create chaos. If, and it’s a big if, Marvel continues down the route of Kang Dynasty, then I would have to think that they are right around the corner from becoming a huge problem.

The final question I want to raise is: how will Loki handle the Kangs if they come? Loki’s role right now is still very ambiguous, as he may be like the Watcher and be unable to interfere with events in the Multiverse, or he could be almost an all-powerful being. If the latter is true, then Loki could find a way to wipe the Kangs from existence, but if not, how this all plays out is still very up in the air. Until we get confirmation on what Loki can do, his involvement in either a Kang-level event or Secret Wars remains questionable.

Conclusion

I won’t lie to you all and say the finale of Loki Season 2 was my favorite thing, but it had some huge implications for the MCU and the Multiverse saga moving forward. While there is still a lot to learn from the ending, the biggest takeaway remains that the Multiverse is alive and well. We look forward to whatever this means for the future as more projects come down the pike. As for the podcast, we are doing several deep dives into The Marvels, so make sure you guys keep up with our new episodes and with Marvel, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 6,” Aryan Khanna, SK Pop

We’re getting a second chance at doing this the right way.

Episode 5 was almost a What If? episode in itself, showing us the effects of the loom exploding. Obviously, it’s not clear that it’s a What If? episode until the end, when Loki is able to figure out how to timeslip on command and go back to the end of Episode 4. Yet there were still a lot of important moments that we need to focus on, as this episode taught us that without the loom, the Multiverse would not be able to be stable. The loom has to be fixed, or everything just falls apart, setting up the finale perfectly. I’ll get into all this in a second, but first, you know the deal. Take a listen to our corresponding podcast episode on your listening platform of choice, or listen live now in this blog post.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7J9PlTrG3BaA1dNSqXieb4?si=ZpuLO97qQoSQ4jEUO2YH_A

Loki, a Possible New Nexus Being

One thing I love more than anything is being right, and this episode gave me at least one thing to be right about. Our theory of everyone returning to their original spots in the timeline where their branches could now grow came true, although we had one outlier. Of course, Loki was the only one who didn’t return, naturally, because Marvel couldn’t give us this one thing one time. Yet it’s important to ask the question that I was asking the whole episode which is, why didn’t Loki return to his branched timeline, and why is he starting to timeslip again?

These are great questions that go hand in hand with one another, yet we don’t actually have answers from the series itself, leaving us with theories. The current running theory that I can get behind is that somewhere in the middle of all this, Loki became a Nexus being. As a reminder, there are only a few other Nexus beings that have existed to our knowledge, such as the Scarlet Witch and America Chavez. There is only one version of both of them across the entire Multiverse. As for this variant of Loki, the possibility that he has somewhere along the way become a Nexus being is mainly solidified by him being the only one who doesn’t seem to be affected by anything happening around him. He didn’t return to his branched timeline when the loom exploded like the rest, he’s the only one timeslipping, and he doesn’t appear to start to noodle when everyone else does at the end of the episode. Somewhere along the road, Loki gaining the ability to timeslip may be what makes him a Nexus being, unable to be affected by time and universes.

While we’re on the topic of the timeslipping, it also would check out that Loki has become a Nexus being based on the fact it looks like the timeslipping is here to stay. Episode 5 was primarily here to show us that not only did the timeslipping return, but Loki is learning how to control it and use it to undo the damage done from the loom. Past this, continuing to have the ability to timeslip makes Loki arguably one of the more powerful beings in the universe, similar to our Nexus being buddy America Chavez and her ability to navigate the Multiverse.

The Consequences of Losing the Loom

This entire episode lived in the aftermath of the loom explosion that ended Episode 4. As said before, we were right about the heroes returning to their home branches, but we certainly learned some interesting things about each in the process. No one should be shocked about Mobius being a jetski salesman, as I’m pretty sure that was a theory running already from Season 1. B-15 makes sense as a nurse and O.B. being a science fiction author while still being extremely smart also checks out. I think I speak for the group when the most shocking person’s original life was Casey, who was actively escaping Alcatraz in his timeline. Casey, who is seen as a nerdy analyst in the TVA, was a harder criminal in his life, which is just a crazy 180 from what we know.

However, beyond being able to see everyone’s true lives, the real consequences of losing the loom come down to the fact the branches are noodling. When the loom exploded, we theorized the real Multiverse would form, no longer being held back by being sucked back and woven into the Sacred Timeline. Clearly, this is incorrect, as we saw the branches falling apart, but why? The last time we saw a noodling was Victor Timely and it was because there was too much temporal energy. It may be safe to assume that the loom explosion spread high levels of temporal energy throughout the Multiverse, tearing through timelines and destroying them before our very eyes.

What is the Timeline of Loki? – Again

As much as we would love to avoid this topic, it continues to come up in importance as the stakes of Loki continue to increase. Remember, Loki Season 1 supposedly opened the Multiverse and allowed for No Way Home and other Multiverse-related works. We have to assume that Loki Season 2 would have just as important effects in the larger MCU. So here we are, once again trying to figure out when exactly the Loki series takes place in the MCU.

Here’s our current theory coming out from Episode 5. Loki Season 1 takes place close to 2012 when this Loki variant is picked up after deviating from the path of the Sacred Timeline. The events all take place along the 2012/2013 timeframe, and then the Multiverse is actually opened during this area of the timeline. This then explains why in Dr. Strange, the Ancient One references the Multiverse multiple times. Then, Loki Season 2 takes place somewhere between 2017 and the present time in the MCU. This will allow the events and whatever comes from the conclusion of Season 2 to affect the current state of the Multiverse, which would be Phase 4 and 5. We can’t continue to act like the loom exploding, branches being bombed, and various branches noodling aren’t affecting the greater MCU. We especially can’t avoid it when things like Multiverse of Madness tell us that we are currently facing an Incursion and we have something called Secret Wars slated in our near future. For now, this is the best we have thought as far as the timeline of Loki itself, but again, this may change by just watching the finale, meaning we have to wait and see what’s coming next for us.

The Possible Return of Victor, Miss Minutes, and Renslayer

We have three characters who may or may not return in the finale, especially now that we are timejumping back to the last few moments of Episode 4. The most notable here might actually be Victor Timely. The jump point takes us back to right when Victor descends the stairs and is getting ready to go out to the loom. Logically, the only way to not make the same mistake as before would be to stop Victor, which would stop him from dying. Now, I’ve been clear on how much I adore Victor and how his death genuinely shocked me. However, I have to say bringing him back awakens the fear in me again that he will turn into He Who Remains. The only thing keeping that fear at bay is how strongly Marvel is trying to avoid making a bigger deal out of Jonathan Majors’s characters, meaning if that was the ending, it’s possible they changed it.

Another character I do expect to return is Miss Minutes, as she is the only one who isn’t dead or ‘banished’ I guess we can say. She was rebooted out of the system, but that means when the system comes back online, so does she. She’s a menacing force and quite frankly, is terrifying, meaning Marvel will for sure want to have her return. I’m not sure what role she would play in the finale if one at all, but I do think her return could ominously lead us to a set-up for Season 3 if the studio plans to go there with the Loki series. As we know from Season 1, we won’t get any confirmation on this until we finish the finale and they keep all talks about it silent. If they do plan to do another season, though, I could see Miss Minutes being set up to be the opposing force they face.

Lastly, we have Renslayer who we last saw be pruned by her mind-controlled buddy Brad. We’ve seen people return from being pruned before and I do think it could be a big miss if we don’t see her character return in some way. However, as I said before, I think Miss Minutes is the bigger threat across the board, so I’m not sure Renslayer really has a purpose for returning. As far as what they’ve shown us, her character has pretty much run her course for the current storyline, so unless things really ramp up in Episode 6, I think her character may be sidelined for a while.

Season Finale Predictions

We are one episode away from wrapping up Season 2 of Loki, which means we have to make some solid predictions regarding what could happen in Episode 6. While I’ve already mentioned a few, there are two notable ones that Taylor and I both want to pitch in for the finale of Loki Season 2.

My theory that I want to throw into the mix for the finale is that I think Loki will use his new timeslipping capabilities to fix the loom. There have been several notable moments that have hinted at this happening, including the argument between Loki and Mobius about who is going to do it in Episode 4. But the best piece of evidence is all of Episode 5. We learned that Victor couldn’t be the one to do it as he would fail, and we also learned that Loki now has control over his timeslipping, which happens to bypass the rules about timeslipping not being able to happen in the TVA. It seems all of this has been leading to Loki being the one to timeslip out to the machine and widen the loom.

Taylor’s theory can be looked at two ways in regards to mine. It can either support mine or pretty much throw mine in the trash, which always makes a good theory. She believes that Loki is going to have to prune all the branches to save the team time on fixing the loom. This could go with mine in saying he does this to give himself more than 3 seconds to timeslip into the temporal energy that is radiating off the loom and timelines. Or it could go against, saying that if they prune all the branches to begin with, the temporal energy will decrease enough that Victor would still be able to be the one to fix it. We’re definitely excited to if either of these come to fruition and who might be right as we finish Loki.

Conclusion

You might be sick of me saying it, but we are on the final episode of Loki Season 2 and the ending really is anyone’s game. The fate of the entire Multiverse rides on our misfit team of heroes and we might get to see multiple variations of an ending in Episode 6, which could be pretty cool. As we gear up for that to come Thursday night, don’t forget that early showings of The Marvels also start Thursday, so make your watch plans, as we have a crazy double header coming in only a few days. With this wave of content, make sure you keep up with Marvel and all of our corresponding podcast episodes, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 5”, Therese Lacson, Collider

Can we have one Episode 4 that doesn’t stress me out?

Yet again, Marvel has come out swinging with the fourth episode of Loki Season 2 being one of the most jaw-dropping pieces of content we’ve gotten in a long time. One might even argue that this episode bordered the horror genre, with some dark moments that we will be dissecting. On top of all of this, we have to rip the band-aid off on discussing how the heck the ending of this episode might be affecting the larger MCU. We have so much to discuss, but as always, make sure you listen to our corresponding podcast episode by clicking the button to find your platform of choice or listening live with the link provided.

Bye Bye Loom, and Maybe Everyone Else

There’s no point in ignoring the most important part of the entire episode, which took place in the last 5 minutes. The loom has officially exploded, with Victor failing to be able to fix it and it officially becoming overloaded. So now nothing is stitching together the branches to create one Sacred Timeline, which creates what could possibly be the real Multiverse. Let’s get into this idea.

All the branches being fed into the loom were coming off of the Sacred Timeline and being fed back in to help continue building the Timeline. I am aware that sounds like a cursed sentence but just stick with me on this. As long as the loom existed, those branches wouldn’t fully be able to become their own universes, as they were consistently being pulled into the loom. But now that the loom is gone, the branches can actually form full timelines, which could confirm my earlier theory about how the Multiverse is essentially a bunch of universes stacked parallel with one another. This could be the larger implication unless Marvel just blew up a huge part of the Multiverse, which I doubt they just did.

The series-specific question, though, is what happened to not just the TVA, but everyone in it? The TVA is supposed to sit out of time, although some things throughout this season have started to make it seem that the rules we were taught in Season 1 are no longer being followed. From the beginning, we learned timeslipping wasn’t supposed to happen in the TVA and then this episode graced us with what appears to be a time loop, something I would have to think can’t happen in a place outside of time. With the very fabric of the TVA being threatened, the loom exploding might just mean there is no TVA to return to anymore. And as far as everyone inside, well, our current running theory is that they aren’t dead, but were instead hit by different branches as the loom exploded. They either are now all scattered on different timelines, or they all returned back to their variant’s place on the Sacred Timeline, aka the moment that made them a variant. Now that the TVA isn’t there to prune them, the branch they should’ve created can be created and turned into a full universe. I will be insanely shocked if the TVA is still standing and our heroes are all still in one place come Episode 5.

Renslayer and Miss Minutes Return to the TVA

Our least favorite pair made another appearance in this episode and went above and beyond, returning to the TVA. Yet, before I get into that, I want to quickly discuss the scene in which Miss Minutes not only shows Renslayer the truth but also confirms a theory we’ve been working on since Episode 1. Renslayer was in fact with He Who Remains at the beginning, but we learned some valuable details regarding timing. Both Renslayer and the TVA, while not perfected yet, had already existed prior to the Multiversal War and actually were He Who Remains’ foot soldiers during it. The TVA members were then wiped once the war was over and put into ‘order’ mode if you will, doing the jobs we were introduced to in Season 1 blindly and without question. Miss Minutes not only was there but also knew this whole time, which is pretty interesting considering Renslayer doesn’t seem to be angry at Miss Minutes for never telling her the truth. Then again, they may be partners, but they are 100% not on the same page.

However, these two singlehandedly tried to force a coup on the current TVA and while it ended gruesomely, it was almost hilarious how badly they failed. Renslayer and Miss Minutes originally try to make Dox and her loyalists join their team, but instead are turned down. This then leads to one of the more horrific scenes of the episode, where Renslayer essentially squishes Dox and her team to death while Miss Minutes, terrifyingly I might add, watches. Then Miss Minutes tries to go through and hack the system, just to have Loki’s team reboot it and shut her out. But Miss Minutes naturally can’t go out without some sort of freaky last word, in which she tells Victor Timely he will never be He Who Remains. And then they come up really empty-handed when Sylvie gets into Brad’s head and ends up having him prune Renslayer, which ends up being one of the most joyous moments of the entire episode. So all in all, I’d say this was the worst coup I’ve ever witnessed.

The question remains on whether they will return. We’ve seen Loki be pruned in Season 1 and return, although it took quite a bit of work to do so. And of course, the loom has exploded and so the whole idea of the end of time and the wasteland is super up in the air as well. There’s no telling where Renslayer has been sent now that she was pruned. We definitely won’t see the end of Miss Minutes, as she was only rebooted but without a TVA for her to infiltrate, it will be interesting to see where her capabilities might take her. She’s clearly an enhanced AI, but we haven’t ever seen her outside of TVA-related instances. She could very much go full Ultron on us still, although right now I do think our heroes may have bigger problems other than these two.

Saying Goodbye to Victor

A part of me has to admit I’m happy that Victor went out as a good guy. I was worried to see him truly take the turn into villainy and become He Who Remains because he was so sweet. I also really didn’t want him to prove Sylvie right by becoming one of the variants of Kang that they would have to worry about. Yet, in the end, Victor is gone and we are now back down to zero Kang variants in the Loki series. So could this confirm that we are seeing another one in Episodes 5 or 6?

Since everyone may currently be transported back to their original places on the timeline and the TVA may or may not still exist, I actually am not sure we’re going to see a full Kang threat at all in the final two episodes. Maybe an end credit scene may show one of the three from the Quantumania end credit scene, but in all honesty, there is nowhere to put a full other Kang variant right now. I’d be shocked if the writers tried to incorporate another Kang into an already crazy storyline, one that likely has most of our heroes scattered across the Multiverse. We may have witnessed our one and only Kang variant for the show come and go within the span of two episodes.

Timeslipping and Now Time Loops in the TVA

As briefly mentioned at the start of this post, we were shown a time loop taking place during Episode 4. This wouldn’t be too strange, as Endgame and Ms. Marvel allowed us to see enough of time travel that a time loop isn’t inherently a weird concept. And if you’ve watched Agents of SHIELD, the concept of a time loop is even less crazy. But the problem is we saw it happen in the TVA, watching as Loki in the present realizes he is the one who prunes his past counterpart from the first episode of Season 2. As mentioned before, this from the start should be enough of a hint that the TVA is absolutely falling apart, but I really do think the chances are pretty high that the TVA might have been getting shoved onto a timeline of its’ own. Logically, that’s the only way a time loop especially could be happening in a place that is supposed to sit outside of time.

Conclusion

We know that the noodling that happened to Victor Timely isn’t going to be the only place we see it, as other clips from trailers have shown it happening to another Loki variant. With this knowledge and what just happened at the end of Episode 4, we are only on the path to more mind-blowing moments from Loki Season 2. We’re excited to keep covering it as the second to last episode makes its’ debut tonight. As always, keep up with Loki Season 2 and The Marvels, which is right around the corner, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Lokie Season 2 Episode 4”, Joe George, Den of Geek

We are all aware of how badly taking Victor Timely to the TVA will be right?

We are 3/3 in my books so far for Season 2 of Loki, yet it seems as if one disaster only leads to another. There are many sides still fighting for different things, which you know will only make this situation a lot worse. Don’t worry, I have some great ideas on how they might all start to see eye to eye, which I’ll share in a moment. But we now have a Kang variant on the board, as I called, and the stakes of this game are only increasing as Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer make their reappearance and team up clear. We’ll get into all this in one second, but first, you know the drill. Take a listen to our corresponding podcast episode by clicking the button below to listen on your platform of choice, or start listening live with the link provided.

Victor Timely – Here Comes Another Kang Variant

The sixth distinct Kang variant has made his official appearance in this episode. Victor Timely is Kang’s variant that lives on the Sacred Timeline and who should have passed through his life there fully undetected, like most others. However, we know that the path he is now on was set forth by Miss Minutes and Renslayer executing a plan by He Who Remains, even if it isn’t going according to plan.

First things first is addressing the fact that He Who Remains, a Kang variant, is still likely a variant or version of Nathaniel Richards, as in the comics. It is likely that He Who Remains chose a variant of himself that not only has a different name but that he knew would be unharmful to be the one that lives on the Sacred Timeline. Now, you might be asking why he bothered to keep a variant of himself at all, and quite frankly, the answer is to execute this contingency plan when the time is needed. He Who Remains knew he wouldn’t live forever, he saw that his time would quite literally end, so he made sure to have a variant set up to take his place when he needed it. A variant, again, that would sit quietly until needed and would maybe be slightly less homicidal than the others.

Yet on that note, things with Timely can go one of two ways. Remember they are messing with how things are supposed to have gone, as they created a branched timeline by giving Victor the TVA guidebook. No matter how sweet he appears to be or how adamant he was to Sylvie that he can make his own choices, we can never forget he is a Kang variant. By taking him back to the TVA, he might be able to help them fix the loom not just through his temporal essence but by helping O.B. and Casey create the new loom. Or, he could make his way to the TVA and begin to turn into the villain. Now that we are through episode 3, we might start having a little bit more of a clear direction on the true antagonist in this season, so it is possible we will see his spiral into villainy.

Another theory, going off Victor remaining pure, is that we instead run into another variant, possibly one we already saw. The second end credit of Quantumania showed a stadium of Kangs, yet we were introduced to specifically three at the end. To help bring that storyline through as well, we could see another Kang variant appear to play the big bad of the season. It would also help with continuity, as we are pretty limited in works about the Multiverse in the next two years as we lead up to Kang Dynasty. Loki Season 2 is one of the first places that a Kang variant showing up would make the most sense, but I think this all depends on Victor and how he acts when we see him next episode in the TVA.

Miss Minutes and Renslayer Team Up

We finally have our official return of Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes and we can confirm they are up to absolutely no good. Our welcome-back introduction to them begins with them messing with Victor Timely. Miss Minutes gives us the vital information that He Who Remains had a backup plan, as we mentioned before and these two just so happen to be the ones who take up the job. However, things don’t go according to plan for them for a few reasons.

Let’s just move right past the elephant in the room and mention the weird love Miss Minutes has for He Who Remains and subsequently Victor. It was one of those things you slowly began to see coming but just wished it wouldn’t because it was so uncomfortable. But it did foreshadow something that could be pretty interesting, which is if Miss Minutes were to get a physical body, aka getting that Jarvis update. We know that He Who Remains, whether on purpose or not, chose not to ever allow her to fully be a solid being, so let’s say he had a reason for this. Remember that Miss Minutes is one of if not the most advanced AI that has untapped access to the entirety of the TVA and pretty much all of time. If she were to get a real body, she could go full Aida (Agents of SHIELD reference) and control everything, locking everyone else out or doing a whole lot worse.

On the other side of this story, though, is the final scene of the episode, with Miss Minutes and Renslayer standing in front of He Who Remains’ body at the end of time. Miss Minutes sets a very ominous tone when she tells Renslayer that she knows a huge secret about her and Renslayer is going to be really mad about it. Now for those who may have listened to our season 1 reactions, we did talk about Renslayer having a relationship with Kang in the comics and that there is a likelihood we might see it come to fruition in the show. We never saw it in season 1, but season 2 is already planting the seeds between Renslayer and Victor, strengthening the chances of seeing some sort of relationship somewhere. We also know that Loki heard Renslayer talking to He Who Remains on a recording from the past. So here’s the theory: Renslayer is from He Who Remains’ timeline and he kept her with him after winning the Multiversal war against his variants and creating one Sacred Timeline. For whatever reason, one we’re sure will be revealed, He Who Remains created the man behind the curtain ruse in the TVA and that would be when Renslayer was wiped and forced to forget him while he lived at the end of time. They very likely had a relationship and she probably helped build the TVA, which is what Miss Minutes knows and also would be why she is so jealous of Renslayer throughout this episode.

Loki Faces His Past, Again

Before Loki Season 2 debuted, one of our recent newsletters took up the debate of whether we could ever see Loki return to the Sacred Timeline. Yet now that we are watching Loki Season 2, there seem to be more and more hints that either a reunion or some ‘facing his past’ scene might be coming our way. Episode 2 gave us two of these hints, teaching us that a variant has been able to return to the Sacred Timeline and then having Loki reference his invasion of New York, which happened really not too long for this Loki. Then episode 3 came around and we got another great easter egg with Loki traveling back to Chicago and coming face to face with statues of his father and brother.

Yet it’s actually Mobius who makes the most interesting comment by saying something along the lines of “I forget you’re one of them”. It’s as if the show is going out of its way to remind us that Loki is still from the Sacred Timeline, even if he isn’t the one we saw get his neck snapped in Infinity War. So now we revisit the debate: could we ever see this Loki return? Now, of course, I could be reading into things, but if these little nuggets aren’t leading to a possible reunion with this Loki and the Sacred Timeline in the place where his brother is, then I would genuinely be shocked. There are too many easter eggs, including Loki already returning to the Sacred Timeline himself, to make me think he wouldn’t be curious about his return, especially, when he is egging on Mobius about his past life as well.

Sylvie Cosplaying as He Who Remains

The final moment we need to emphasize is Sylvie again entering the situation that she claims to not want to be involved in. Yet we all know it’s bigger than that and she makes that very clear in Episode 3. Sylvie swears that it is her job to take out all the Kang variants that could come and that’s why she comes after Victor. In the meantime, she has begun to play the role of He Who Remains, albeit a smaller version of it, but is deciding the fate of those on the timeline.

We all know Victor should’ve lived his life quietly on the Sacred Timeline and never even raised a red flag, something Sylvie herself even confirms. But how does Sylvie know that? We know she has He Who Remains’ tempad, so is she getting information from that? And who is she to decide who can and can’t live, who can be a variant and create a branched timeline, and who can’t? She is taking on the role of He Who Remains, deciding that his variants, no matter who they are, have to be eliminated. Doesn’t scream giving people free will to me.

We know that by the end of the series, Sylvie will appear at the TVA one more time and have to make some hard decisions with Loki. We threw the theory out earlier that they might as a duo take on the role of He Who Remains, ‘playing god’ to decide what stays and goes. While I don’t think the TVA will return to snipping branches, it may be possible that the team realizes they can’t just let it all happen freely. As Sylvie already seems to have decided to step into He Who Remains’ role, it wouldn’t seem a far stretch to combine their needs and the needs of the Multiverse into one system with Loki and Sylvie at the top.

Conclusion

We have now seen almost every scene from the trailer in the first three episodes, so from here on out, we are flying nearly entirely blind through this series. Anything could happen when a variant of Kang and two Loki variants are involved. We are ready for episode 4, so make sure you are, too. Continue keeping up with Loki Season 2 and our podcast reaction episodes, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 3”, Philip Ellis, Mens Health

Episode 2 turned dark very quickly, and we’re still recovering from it.

Loki Season 2 continues to hit it out of the park with yet another strong episode. From a breaking Temporal Loom and a timeline bombing from the TVA loyalists, the stakes are rising to fix everything before the TVA and possibly the Sacred Timeline cease to exist. All this, and we are only on the second episode. Before getting into some of the details of this episode, tune into our reactions episode to get our raw reactions to the episode firsthand. You can find your podcast listening platform of choice by clicking the button below, or start listening live in this post by hitting play on the link provided.

X5/Brad’s Expedition to the Sacred Timeline

This episode covered a lot of uncharted territory, which began with X5 disappearing on the Sacred Timeline after being sent to find Sylvie. It is discovered then by Mobius and Loki that X5 hasn’t disappeared and has instead jumped back into his spot in the timeline itself, taking on his actual life there as Brad. As usual, this leaves us with more questions than answers, as we now have witnessed a variant return to their previous life for the first time.

The first big question is: what happened to the real Brad, the one that is living his life on the Sacred Timeline? If X5 jumped back into his place, then it means he had to do something to the original version of himself who was properly living his life. Due to X5’s attitude, it wouldn’t seem entirely out of character for him to have pruned him to take him out of the picture. Although if that happened, there will now be a hole, creating a new branch now that X5 is also not playing as Brad on the Sacred Timeline.

What seems even more interesting is that X5 was loyal to Dox originally but instead became a pretty passionate supporter of everyone returning to their rightful life. While he clearly went from one extreme to the far other one, X5’s return to Sacred Timeline life has seemingly made him an advocate for everyone going back to the lives they are ‘supposed’ to be living. He now doesn’t even believe the TVA should be around and that everyone working there needs to find their true lives, the ones that had been taken from them. It’s an interesting 180 and clearly one that makes one hectic character. I wouldn’t be shocked if X5 fades into the background now in season 2, as he has served the purpose of not only showing one of the best hunters switching points of view but also, as said before, that a variant has successfully reentered their life on the Sacred Timeline. Pretty good piece of knowledge for us to have when you have a character like Loki still on the board.

Sylvie Returns – Sort of

Sylvie has made her official return to the Loki series but she doesn’t exactly seem keen on staying. Episode 1 introduced us to Sylvie’s whereabouts right after killing He Who Remains, as she calmly finds herself a place to stay on a branched timeline. By episode 2, she seems like she has set up a nice little life for herself working at McDonalds, until Loki, Mobius and Brad came to crash that party. Obviously due to to Brad letting the group know they needed to get off the timeline as soon as possible and why, Sylvie accidentally ends up back in the TVA, even when she said she’d never go back. But we also know thanks to Loki’s timeslipping that this won’t be the only time she returns to the TVA.

Sylvie continues to hate the TVA, even though a good portion of them are now trying to protect the branched timelines. We will get to the bombing in a second, but what’s critical about the bombing happening is that it still reiterates Sylvie’s point, at least to herself. She doesn’t think the TVA should exist at all and even the version that is supposed to be ‘helping’ can’t seem to protect the branches. Yet one line continues to play in my head from the trailers and it’s along the lines of “we would be playing god.” Sylvie isn’t going to sit quietly on her timeline, something else pulls her back in after what she saw as a disappointing show of this new TVA. She’s likely going to have to save her timeline and I think the threat of losing it will be what brings her back in.

The Branch Bombings

The TVA loyalists bombing the branched timelines is arguably one of the darkest things we’ve seen in a Marvel TV show in a while. Trillions of people were forcibly removed from existence because Dox and her team believe the TVA should continue pruning branches. Obviously, the big difference here is that these branches aren’t just small variant actions but instead whole timelines with people living full lives there at this point.

So for one second, I want to deviate from my rule of avoiding the bigger implications in the MCU and actually consider what the branch bombings might mean for the Multiverse we’ve seen so far outside the Loki series. We’ve only seen small parts of the Multiverse outside of 616, but I think the best work to look at with this new development is MoM. We see a glimpse of a few different universes in that movie and also know that an incursion between the Sacred Timeline and another timeline is taking place. So how does this branch bombing possibly effect the things we’ve seen in that movie?

At the end of the day, Loki’s logic and the rest of the MCU’s logic are very different, but it’s possible that some of the universes we peeked through in MoM now don’t exist. I’m not going to pretend that the timeline of the Multiverse isn’t very hairy, as 2016 Dr. Strange and America’s existence prove it’s been open far longer than we have supposedly been told. But going off what we just saw, various universes were just forcibly wiped off the map and I have to think we will see that effect show up somewhere in the MCU, even if it’s just minor. We have to remember that the ending of Loki season 1 opened the Multiverse conversation, so events in season 2 will just as much effect what we see in the larger MCU.

On an internal level, the branch bombings, while a huge hit for the new TVA, may have bought O.B. some time. Keep in mind the loom is being overloaded with branches, which is what is causing many of the current issues we are seeing and driving the main plot forward. If the branches have been cut, the loom may have been given a small break, allowing O.B. more time to make a new loom and Loki and Mobius time to find Renslayer and He Who Remains. In the worst way, there is a positive to the massacre of timelines we saw and we will see that hopefully play out as the team recovers from the attack in episode 3.

Finding Renslayer and He Who Remains

From the predictions episode, Taylor and I discussed this season being all about finding He Who Remains possibly at the beginning before making the TVA. Yet as episodes 1 and 2 have come and gone, we have learned the search is much bigger than that. Renslayer is still very much a player in this game, as she escaped in season 1 and has yet to be found. Yet another silver lining in the branch bombings was that it exposed Renslayer’s position and she is going to lead them right to He Who Remains who will be Victor Timely, as seen in the Quantumania end credit scene.

We also learned in episode 1 that Renslayer has more of a past with He Who Remains then members of the TVA are aware of. We, of course, thought that we would see this moment, as Renslayer has a relationship with a few of Kang’s variants in the comics. But it appears that she likely either is remembering something of her past or also might have discovered a piece of her story that links her to Kang. Either way, we know that Renslayer is about to be found with a variant of Kang, as we know that Loki has no clue they’re about to go on the path of Kang. Two birds with one stone.

Conclusion

Episode 2 has left us with some solid direction on what might be coming in the next episode of Loki. Be ready, as I wouldn’t be too shocked if we run into a variant of Kang in Episode 3, coming your way tonight at 9pm or tomorrow if you don’t feel like staying up for it. We are ready for hopefully another amazing episode, as Loki season 2 is so far moving up on our list of favorites, so let’s keep the good vibes going. Make sure you watch Loki and listen to our reaction episodes as they come out, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 2”, Fran Ruiz, Space

Loki returns to the TVA, at least sort of. 

Marvel didn’t hold back in the first episode of Loki Season 2. We jumped right back in where season 1 left us almost 2.5 years ago, and it seems things are only getting crazier in the TVA. Before we get into the main moments of the episode, I do want to mention that for the time being, I’m going to try and avoid talking too much about the wider MCU implications of the Loki series. I think we can all agree we can go in circles each episode if we open that can of worms, so I’ll try my best to focus mainly on the episode’s events and how they might affect the series as a whole. With that said, make sure you also have given our full reactions episode a listen by either clicking the button to find your listening platform of choice or by listening live with the link provided. 

Loki and His Timeslipping

From the second the trailers dropped, fans were made aware of a new term known as timeslipping, and it’s the main problem Loki faces in this first episode. It also helps to explain what the finale of season 1 meant, as we got the answer to why Mobius didn’t know who Loki was. He wasn’t in a different timeline, but instead in the same timeline at a different place on it. Either way, we see him timeslipping not just through the past and present of the TVA, but we do see him slip once into the future, giving us a glimpse of what may be coming by the time we reach the second half of this series. 

Loki’s timeslipping into the past gives us vital information on the TVA itself and strengthens our running theory from the predictions that we may be following the track of the history of the TVA. This season may be an exploration into its origin to fix it, and it looks like after the first episode, that theory is still very much on the board. The most important thing we know about the TVA in the past is that there was a moment in which it was controlled by Kang openly, rather than the ruse of it being the Timekeepers. We also have learned that during that time, Mobius was already around, meaning that Mobius was clearly wiped between the point in which Loki interacts with him at the end of season 1 and the Mobius we know in general. It opens the door for questions about how many times people have been wiped and the time that has passed, as time moves differently in the TVA.

Yet the glimpse into the future we see shows that not only does Sylvie make her way back into the TVA, but it seems that things are still in utter chaos. Episode 1 establishes two opposing sides of the TVA since the death of He Who Remains: one that believes branches should not be pruned (Loki + team’s side) and the other side that wants to continue business as normal. With the glimpse into the future we get, it wouldn’t be entirely shocking if the chaos is being caused by a form of civil war taking place inside the TVA as the Sacred Timeline continues to overload outside.

Meeting O.B.

One of the most important moments in episode 1 was meeting O.B., who works in the repairs section of the TVA. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable, but his gained importance comes from the additional years he seems to have on others. O.B. clearly recalls when he met Mobius 400 years ago, even though Mobius had no memory of their first interaction. This appears to be because Mobius was very likely wiped within the timeframe of 400 years for whatever reason, but it also opens a new branch of information that makes O.B. an insanely prominent player in this game. O.B. not only remembers meeting Mobius years ago, meaning he hasn’t been wiped since then, but he also labeled the time since their meeting, saying it had been 400 years. As even said earlier in this post, time supposedly moves differently in the TVA, yet O.B. is able to calculate and measure the amount of time passing while in it. For the first time, we might get real information on what time moving differently in the TVA really means and could help us place how time has been working.

O.B. also has another very important job, which is that he is the one who has access to the time stream. This is the loom-like thing that we see knitting all the branched timelines together into the Sacred Timeline. While I will get to the loom in a second, the important thing is that we’ve seen it and know someone who has helped ensure it has worked correctly for at least 400+ years. Obviously, we know a lot of the information that O.B. has on it came from Miss Minutes, but it still makes him once again a vital character in understanding how essentially the crux of the TVA works.

The Time Loom

Prior to the first episode, we were directed by the Loki series that the Timekeepers aka Kang sorted through the infinite universes and put together one working timeline. We now see just how exactly that was working. The time loom pulls in all the branches and we can assume Kang would communicate to the loom which scenarios from the branches should be pulled into the Sacred Timeline and which ones should be destroyed. Going off this belief, the big question still remains on how it works now with the Multiverse being fully open. In the episode, O.B. is the one to tell us that there are too many branches trying to pull into the loom, so it’s being overfilled. Yet the question is how are these branches being fed into it?

Again, going off the information that Kang would sort through the different timelines and put the right ones through, how are branches from the Sacred Timeline ending up back into the loom for sorting? We know the loom is building the past, not the present, which was our previous belief. Yet any branches that continue to come from the past would end up where exactly? There is definitely some needed clarification, especially now that we have the loom itself in the picture. It’s a surefire way to predict that Loki and Sylvie might just end up having to step into Kang’s role afterall to stop the chaos because what exactly is going to happen if the loom gets destroyed?

Conclusion

As we move through season 2, more answers should come our way pertaining to the time loom and the fate of the TVA. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, especially about the time loom, as I think this will be the impetus for many of the actions Loki and team take this season to try and preserve it. They may have fixed Loki, but the chaos is far from over. Tune in today for the new episode of Loki Season 2, with us returning to our Monday reactions episode now that we are back from vacation. Get excited, as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Loki Season 2 Episode 1”, Christian Bone, We Got This Covered