Transcript

Taylor: Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Sisters Assembled. As you know, as we have been for the last few weeks, we are very deep in our Loki era right now, and this week we are laser-focused on Episode Three. I know I am very, very excited to hear Katie’s take because I didn’t get my usual preview before this recording, so I’m excited to hear her take, break it down for you all, and talk about where we think the series is going from here.

Katie: So I have to say, this is actually the first episode I’ve watched twice. I did watch it at 9:00 Eastern Standard Time last night. As soon as that episode dropped, I was on the couch and that thing was on. But there was a lot in this episode, a lot of things that I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be foreshadowing, things I didn’t know if they were supposed to be callbacks. There was just a lot going on, a lot of new information, things that might affect the present, might affect the past, might affect the future and in this show, that’s all very valid. And so I had to watch it again just to make myself feel good. But it was another good episode. Like I have to say, we’re three for three. I’m excited because I feel as if three was where we kind of started getting off the rails in the first season. And so, so far I’m on the rails still with this season and I’m happy to stay there, but it was a big episode. I mean, they’re all big episodes, but I mean, we got our first Kang variant, so I think this is a big, big moment.

Taylor: Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you were saying. I didn’t watch it twice, but I really enjoyed the episode. I thought it was hilarious and super entertaining. I like that we got to spend the entire episode in one era. You know, I think sometimes with time travel you can get a little bit jump-happy is maybe like the wrong word, but like you’re moving around so much. And I don’t think Loki, especially this season, has really done that. I think last season, obviously, we saw them travel a lot more, but it was super cool to almost have kind of a Wandavision’s first few episodes, like an Era piece and that kind of reminded me of that and I loved it. And I loved, the vaudeville music of the fanfare starting it off and telling you exactly what was going to happen. I loved the tandem bikes and that scene and just all of the little stuff that they did to really play on some of those tropes of that era. I think from a stylistic and storytelling perspective, it just added another layer of fun. And I think sometimes that’s what we’re missing from Season One. It got so serious so fast and then it got so weird after it got serious. And this is doing a really good job of being serious, but also really funny and really fun. And it’s fun to watch.

Katie: Yeah, I agree with that and I also think how you were saying how Season One kind of got serious really fast. I think it also was very and maybe I’m going to be wrong by saying this, but I felt like it was a little more one-dimensional versus I feel I go into every single one of these episodes thinking I understand the direction of the show. I think I know where it’s going to go. I think I know what’s coming next or maybe, you know, who we might consider the main antagonist or something of that nature. And then another episode happens and I’m like we just pivoted completely. I don’t know and I like that it’s unpredictable and not in a bad way, not in a way that I can’t see how Episode One got to Episode Three. I could see how all the steps took place. I could see the puzzle pieces, but I still don’t know what’s going to happen. And I could throw out the theories, but we have no clue. I mean, I still don’t know what the end game is going to be here.

Taylor: Yeah, and I think going off of that, we’ve kind of been on an unofficial trailer clip watch throughout our coverage of this show or this season, I guess. And I think we can officially say we’re 100%. All of the footage from the trailers has been shown, which means that now we are flying blind for the next three episodes. Completely zero context for what’s going to happen.

Katie: Oh yeah. When I went and watched it the second time, that thought occurred to me because I think the first time you are always just so worried about the show. And that’s why I kind of wanted to watch it a second time as well so I can actually, you know, really pick things apart. And that thought occurred to me with the whole Renslayer thing and everything else. I was like, okay, we’ve now seen the end credits scene. We’ve seen what I think pretty much everything that was shown in the trailers. We don’t know what’s going to come next for the second half of the season and it can either keep going uphill and reach a really good point and make Loki Season Two be one of, if not the best Marvel TV show to date. Well, our rankings will obviously come out when the show concludes, but, you know, it could also go the other direction. I don’t know yet.

Taylor: Yeah, I agree. And I think it’s time we’ve danced around it a couple of times. I just want to dive right into the meat because there’s one guy who stood out in this episode and that is, of course, Victor Timely. He was really the star of the episode. Of course, we can’t speak about Victor Timely without mentioning the actor and the ongoing off-screen issues and the court battle and everything. Our stance on that really hasn’t changed. We’re still pretty much waiting until that is decided in the courts but of course, we can’t speak about the character without having in the back of our heads or the back of our minds, you know, exactly what’s going on off screen, because it really does affect your viewing. So just wanted to address that quickly but putting that aside for now, we’re going to jump right back into the plot of the show of the episode. And I think what is so cool about this is you’re right, we get to see the first Kang variant. What’s not cool is it really hurt my brain and here’s why because I’m really confused. And this might be because I am just confused by Kang’s character in general and how he gets to live in so many different eras of time, kind of all at once. But here’s where I’m getting a little stuck, and I’m just going to start here because it’s been bothering me now for 20 hours. 

Katie: Go for it. 

Taylor: All right. He Who Remains is the first version we saw, right? He mentioned he’s from the future. He was a scientist in the future, which pulling on the comic book precedents, the comic book character of Kang, we know is Nathaniel Richards, right? He never explicitly says, my name was Nathaniel Richards, but I inferred that let’s just put it that way. That made sense but here’s where I’m getting stuck. How can he simultaneously be from the 31st century or he didn’t specify the 31st century, I think I either made that up or that’s from Kang. But you know, from the future, how can he simultaneously be from the future, but then also be Victor Timely who she was able to give the TVA pamphlet to in the 1830s? That part didn’t make sense to me because if he’s a variant of He Who Remains, wouldn’t they have to go to where He Who Remains was born in the future, not in the past?

Katie: Okay. So I can’t guarantee I’m going to give any answers here, but here is my understanding of it. Victor Timely, I’m going to hurt my own brain before I say anything, I feel like my brain’s going to implode. Okay, so in the comics, we obviously know Nathaniel Richards is like the start of everything, right? 

Taylor: Right.

Katie: But my brain is kind of saying, maybe we need to take a step back from the comics, because I think with Loki, especially as a show, I think we need to take a step back from the MCU. And I think we need to take a step back from the comics because I think Loki as a show, as a series, really falls to we dabble a little, we take one small idea and we blow it into something else. And we’ve noticed that in Season One, and it’s already happening in Season Two so I take very much the comic storyline of Victor Timely with a grain of salt. That being said, and Nathaniel Richards I take both of those with a grain of salt at the moment because none of our variants have said anything about being Nathaniel Richards and we haven’t gotten an Iron Lad yet, so I’m just going to pretend that doesn’t exist for the time being. What I did get, and I got this on my second viewing was if you noticed, and this will circle back to He Who Remains. But if you notice the kid, Victor Timely was living in the 1860s, perfectly fine on the Sacred Timeline. Once he gets the TVA booklet, he is now on a branch timeline, and if you didn’t notice that, I want to point that out because that’s very important. Obviously, his getting the book is not meant to happen and Sylvie even says it. He was supposed to live a harmless life. That being said, this must be the original version of Victor Timely that kid.

Taylor: Right, see, that’s where I’m getting stuck I guess. How could he be a variant of He Who Remains if he existed on the Sacred Timeline?

Katie: Unless they have it backward and somehow Victor Timely as a kid, maybe he does become another- okay, keep in mind Kang and his variants make zero sense to us, even in the comics. We went over this when we did the whole Kang episode. They all turn into each other over time. They all hate each other and there are like 9 million of them, as we saw in Ant-Man Quantumania. So I think that’s kind of a complicated thing to begin with. He’s a complicated character, and because we didn’t start with Nathaniel Richards and we started with He Who Remains, it’s kind of a gray area. My thought process is what we know what Loki this show has taught us. If I take out all the rest of the framework that I’ve seen and look only at what Loki has delivered into my lap, it is the fact that Victor Timely as a child, is said on the Sacred Timeline. Sacred Timelines is gospel, right? He Who Remains decides that or was deciding that himself so that is supposed to be the original where He Who Remains comes from is from a different universe. Maybe he didn’t keep his universe, he kept a different one. That’s where I think this is going.

Taylor: That was kind of as I have been ruminating, that’s the conclusion that I also came to, that the only way it really makes sense for there to be essentially two originals is if he did not preserve his own timeline. 

Katie: And I don’t think he did because and this might go back to our Kang episode. I feel like when we were doing our research about him, something that goes about with Renslayer, which we’ll obviously get to her in a second, is that he leaves her behind on a different timeline. So it’s possible not bringing her into this theory itself, but it’s possible when he was making the decisions of what to cut, he cut his own and walked away from his own timeline.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think that’s the only way if you’re looking at just time moving linearly, which on the circle it does right, like it does loop, that’s why it’s called the circle but within the loop itself, it moves linearly, 1856, 1857. It doesn’t make sense then to have the original in the 1800s, but then also know that the original aka He Who Remains the one who is behind it all is really from the future. That can’t really be a thing unless to your point he found the version of himself that he, you know, could stand, I guess, living.

Katie: Or was the most peaceful because at the end of the day, remember, even Sylvie said it. If Renslayer had not intervened, had not created a branched timeline there and had let Victor Timely in the 1800s live out his life, he would have been a nobody. He would have gone undetected because he never would have been a threat. He would have just lived out his life like he has done again and again and again on the Sacred Timeline. The reason this was all intervened was because, as now Miss Minutes has been saying, this was He Who Remains his plan. It’s not only that I think he kept a version of himself that would be, I guess, docile for the whole time that the timeline keeps going, but also a version of himself that when time was ready, when he no longer could exist, there’d be somebody ready to step into it and who would be better? I mean, the kid was already playing around with inventing stuff. He was a smart kid. It didn’t need to be the TVA pamphlet that got him anywhere. He still created all that stuff. The pamphlet was just saying how stuff works. He had to make it with 1800s stuff so at the end of the day, he was still smart. He had a contingency plan.

Taylor: Yeah. It’s almost like, to your point, Victor Timely was his failsafe. Like smash glass in case of emergency and that’s kind of what he had, you know, obviously Miss Minutes do with the help of Ravonna. And I think it’s time I definitely want to dive into their adventure and also that very fraught relationship and Miss Minutes, girl.

Katie: Dude first off, she is unhinged.

Taylor: Truly.

Katie: Like, whoa, but second, if this is not a warning about AI, I’m just gonna throw that out there.

Taylor: Literally. Can we all just, like, take a moment? I mean, this is also the same studio that used AI on one of their shows a now they’re like, by the way, we made this self programing AI she fell in love with this guy, and now she just wants her body so they can be together and it’s not even the guy who she thinks it is or she knows it’s not that guy and he doesn’t know who she is and it is insane and she was slightly murderous and it was really scary, actually. Miss Minutes was very scary.

Katie: Yeah, she’s unhinged. And I think it’s interesting because I want to focus on her, then I want to focus on Renslayer and then I want to marry their ending together and put it all in a bow. So the first thing with Miss Minutes, I think what was really important about her and this storyline was not that she was in love with He Who Remains, although that was a very prominent thing that happened.

Taylor: And also not really surprising. Like I feel like we got hints of that throughout like Season One.

Katie: I guess if we did, I wasn’t, I guess it didn’t really come to my brain and think that there was an AI clock in love with He Who Remains. You know I think the Loki show writers and well you know they’re knocking it out of the park this season so far but I don’t think a single one of them knows romance and I think they just need to stop writing romance into this series because Loki and Sylvie was not a home run. And whatever they’re trying to do with Miss Minutes and He Who Remains, could have stayed in the writing room like, I’m not sure why that appeared on my screen.

Taylor: It was definitely weird, but I guess what I’m trying to get at is it wasn’t it didn’t feel out of character for me. I think, because she’s so kind of like Ravonna, like she’s like a more unhinged Ravonna, which actually could she be an AI based off of Ravonna from the future? I’m just going to put that out there because she did say she had a secret for her so we’ll get to that in a minute.

Katie: I was going to say, put a pin in that one. 

Taylor: Yeah and I’ll flesh my brand new theory that just popped into my head out when we get to that. But to me, she’s like a more unhinged Ravonna, right? Her loyalty is to the TVA, but I think she kind of confused that then with loyalty to the man. And so that’s why I think why it wasn’t surprising to me because she is so focused on the TVA and she’s so, like, unquestioning right? And that was why when it became kind of more of a romantic feeling, I was like, this actually is very in-character, this tracks and even though I’m grossed out by it because it’s a crazy AI who’s like, psychotic, I am not feeling like it’s out of left field.

Katie: I mean, that’s fair. I think I just didn’t look at her almost as a character, and I think that’s kind of why when she suddenly was in love, I was like, oh that’s very strange to me. But because I just I mean, what is Mobius calling her? A cartoon clock that is what she is so I guess it was very hard for me to sit there and because she’s not in a cartoon. We’re not watching Tom and Jerry here, you know what I mean? So I think seeing a cartoon clock who I just didn’t really think about, and now suddenly she’s not only interfering a lot more with the storyline itself. I mean, she drove this entire episode, essentially but to kind of hear her feeling emotions, I mean, I guess it just wasn’t really something that I thought was going to happen. But beyond that weird stuff, what dawned on me about her and what makes her very important is she talks about being at He Who Remains side for eons and more importantly, before the Multiversal War. So Miss Minutes is a slew of knowledge who’s been around for a while and she just like O.B. now, has even higher I don’t know, the right word, prominence, I would say, because she has memory of things and that’s going to bring us to what she has to tell Ravonna.

Taylor: Yeah, which I mean, all right, I know we’re playing fast and loose with the comics here, obviously, there’s a couple of things it could be. Like I said, it could be that she was coded based off of Ravonna. To your point, clearly there is a relationship in the comics, maybe He Who Remains who if we’re going to say that he was Nathaniel Richards prior to discovering the Multiverse, you know, maybe he had a thing for Ravonna, either she died, she didn’t return the feelings, whatever it might be. He basically coded his AI to be like her. I think that could be an option. The other option that plays a little bit closer to the comics, which again may or may not be what they followed is Ravonna was a princess in one of her timelines. So it’s entirely possible that Miss Minutes knew Ravonna in the time of, you know, before the Multiversal War and knew that she was a princess and that she had that whole life taken away from her, just even beyond her life as a teacher here on the Sacred Timeline. So there’s so many different versions of her that she could have been living in that time before the Multiversal War, that she was not only taken out of one life, but potentially two.

Katie: Yeah, because now I’m thinking about it, we don’t have any confirmation that this version of Ravonna was a variant from this timeline, do we?

Taylor: I mean, we know that she’s a teacher on the Sacred Timeline.

Katie: Right, but that doesn’t mean that she necessarily had to be a variant of that person. 

Taylor: Right. 

Katie: What if she is the O.G. Ravonna? I say OG with quotes because she is coming, let’s say she came from Kang’s universe, the one that he wiped off the map, but he brought her with but he wiped her.

Taylor: Yeah, no, that’s kind of what I was getting at by saying.

Katie: That’s what I thought, but I wanted to clarify it.

Taylor: Yeah, so it’s kind of like, you know, it could be taken two ways. It could be that she’s just the original, which is one thought or I guess theoretically, and this is where it gets a little murkier for me. She could be almost the original who was then place on the Sacred Timeline, right. Like that teacher version could be essentially the original Ravonna. And then this version is a variant of that original Ravonna on the Sacred Timeline, right? So it’s almost like she’s lost two lives or this one could be the original. There’s so many options here, like I said, and there’s so many verses of Ravonna that are interesting that she would probably be annoyed that she lost that life of Miss Minutes is probably the only person or the only thing- alive is the wrong word- the only thing that exists right now that would actually be able to tell her what she was in that past life.

Katie: I agree. I do want to say Miss Minutes is angry now and that’s what that last scene is about. That’s why she says he shouldn’t have done that to somebody who knows everything about him and we also see the corpse of He Who Remains, we’ll get to that in one second because there’s a few comments I want to make there. But I think what I’m thinking is Miss Minutes has been with him since before the Multiversal War. I want to highlight that again in saying Miss Minutes might have known. I think I don’t think Ravonna is a variant from the Sacred Timeline. I think she’s the OG from his universe. 

Taylor: I agree. 

Katie: I think He Who Remains took her with him and I think she helped him create the TVA and Miss Minutes has seen all of this and for whatever reason, because remember going back to Episode One at some point or another, Kang stopped being the face of the TVA. He disappeared from being the face of it and start playing Wizard of Oz. So at whatever point that happens, for whatever reason, that’s when I think Ravonna is also wiped. I think that she, like everybody else, is subject to that. And I think the reason we see the jealousy with Miss. Minutes the way we do is because I don’t doubt that Ravonna and Kang or He Who Remains likely had a relationship, it’s why he took her with him.

Taylor: I completely agree with everything you’re saying. I’m totally aligned.

Katie: Yeah and I think the last thing she wants to do is see Ravonna now rekindle, or I should say kindle a relationship with another variant of He Who Remains because I’m sure Miss Minutes sat there for years and years and years and all she wanted was He Who Remains but here was Ravonna.

Taylor: Yeah, well, and not to mention then too, from Miss Minute’s perspective, she wasn’t wiped, but Ravonna was exactly. She was the one with him at the Citadel beyond time, not Ravonna.

Katie: Yeah, well, exactly. So that’s why I think because I also couldn’t figure out why so quickly that jealousy seemed to pick up and I was like, listen, I get it, you’re in love with them or whatever, but this is totally a variant of him and I don’t know why it’s so aggressive. But now I’m thinking if she’s so aware of Ravonna’s past and likely the past she had with He Who Remains then I mean, of course she’s going to be jealous, especially if they had a relationship, because to her she’s probably just seeing whether it’s was a variant of He Who Remains or not, she’s just sitting there seeing this happen in front of her again and seeing the person she wants to be with be with someone else.

Taylor: Yeah, it’s just reopening old wounds and those are the easiest to spark, right?

Katie: Well, right and that would explain to me the level of jealousy that we seem to have, because to me that really stuck out because I was like, whoa, that’s a lot for 5 minutes with this variant.

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, she definitely turned on a dime and then had Ravonna dumped into the lake.

Katie: Which I mean, I didn’t mind because Ravonnas annoying.

Taylor: Girl played it. I was honestly like, dang Miss Minutes. You made that happened. Look at you.

Katie: I supported her for a second there. I’m not going to lie.

Taylor: I do want to go back to what you were saying about seeing He Who Remains’ body because I was simultaneously excited by that cause I was like oh we’re leaning a little horror here, like I thought that was cool. I also just didn’t really expect us to have that happen. I also think it was interesting to watch Ravonna’s reaction, right, because she had met a version of him now, and now she’s seeing the one who she really didn’t know that she was essentially worshiping. But she was and this is the version that she is probably most aligned to versus Victor Timely. Now she’s seeing his body. And I think the other thing, when you were talking briefly, you mentioned obviously their trip back to the Citadel. It made me realize that with the decaying body, it gives you the sense of a passage of time. And I was surprised by how decayed the body was because I expected him to be not very far along, but he was like, really moving along in that process. So that tells me and I mean, granted, you got to take time passage there with a grain of salt, but that tells me that there’s more time passing here than I think we thought. To me, it only seems like a couple of days since Sylvie did her thing, which we’ll have to circle back on Sylvie later as well, but it seems like not very long. But then all of a sudden we’re looking at this body that’s pretty well along on a path to complete decay.

Katie: Yeah. That is what actually caught me the most, too, was the level of decay. And again, you said it with a grain of salt, because at the end of the day, this is the end of time and quite frankly, I couldn’t tell you what that means. I couldn’t tell you at the end of Season One, I couldn’t tell you now. I don’t know, so it’s fine. But I was shocked because I also got the impression it’s only been a couple of days from Loki, but I don’t necessarily get that from Sylvie. To Loki, if you look, it does seem to be a couple of days. Season Two, we start exactly where Season One ended right as Loki came through that time door. He was in the past. He’s slipping. He gets back to the present. Cool. That was all of Episode One, not going to recap at all. But that probably I mean, to me it was like, we spent about a day doing that. We figured out his timeslipping within a day. Cool. Everything as transpired quickly. I could maybe say it’s been a week, maybe, but the time loom is literally falling apart. So at the end of the day, they’re not, you know, just taking their good old time, this is a high priority problem. However, if you look at how Sylvie’s spent her time since coming out of the Citadel after killing He Who Remains, she’s got a job, she likely has a place to live already, she had a car.

Taylor: She has made relationships with her fellow employees.

Katie: Exactly. To me, that reads that a lot more time has passed because if it’s only been a week, I mean, that’s a pretty established person for a week.

Taylor: I definitely can’t make a whole life in a week like that so kudos to you, Sylvie, if you did.

Katie: Well, exactly. So I’m just throwing that out there that there does seem to be a little bit of a discrepancy of, I shouldn’t say discrepancy because we know time moves differently in the TVA. But there does seem to be a little bit of an opening of understanding what that looks like when you see how Sylvie’s life is progressing on a branched timeline, which I assume time is going is moving relatively the same because it probably well it did, it branched off the Sacred Timeline. So I assume it moves the same to us versus how Loki seems to be moving while in the TVA.

Taylor: I agree. I think it hints that time moves more slowly. Like essentially if I were to put very rough, I don’t want to say even numbers, but a very rough kind of metaphor to it and it’s not  really metaphor but that’s the best where I can think of right now, like a day in the TVA could be more like a week on a timeline, right? Because again, like what you were saying, like we caught up with Loki seconds, not even, in the exact moment of the end of Season One. And from there, like you said, they’ve been moving, doing their thing, following the clues, trying to solve all of the problems quickly. We don’t really get a sense of a passage of time because there’s no sun, moon, any of that.

Katie: No one seems to sleep.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, that’s a whole thing, but that’s fine. But I definitely don’t get the impression that it’s been like a very long time. Like they all seem very pressed. They all seem like it’s, you know, still a new problem. Whereas to your point, Sylvie’s established and she has this whole life that to me we’ve both had to establish entire lives, you know, after graduation. That takes months to build friends, to build relationships, to get a job, to find a place to live. That can take years, which I don’t think it’s years by any means, but I definitely do think it’s a significant amount of time. So I think we’re starting to see that, though we don’t necessarily have a strict formula of one day in TVA equals one week on Sacred Timeline. We can say it is implied right now that TVA time moves slower than the Sacred Timeline and the subsequent branches.

Katie: Yeah, I definitely think it’s helpful to kind of start to put that into perspective because how many times have I said, you know, we pulled 2012 Loki out of here, what does that mean? Because even we’re doing the Doctor Strange replay, I was like, well, technically he was pulled out here. Does that mean that this could all be happening prior to 2016 and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse is open? That was a whole question we had. Still can’t confirm that but it’s definitely good to know that it appears TVA time is moving slower. Things on the Sacred Timeline are moving faster, and that’s at least a starting point. And I’ll take a starting point.

Taylor: And I think what I would like to just quickly extrapolate and throw out a theory, and it may be very wrong because you know how great I am at time travel theories. I would like to say and throw out you know, we talked about the chaos trio of Loki, Doctor Strange and Wanda and I will say this theory that time moves slower in the TVA would seem to support that it was the three of them. Because if time is moving that slowly in the TVA, we could have actually gone the 2012 to what was it, 2023 for Wanda, 2024 for Wanda, and then roughly 2024, 25 for Strange. So we could have actually been at that time just based on knowing that time is slower in the TVA. So it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long for Loki, but it’s been 12/13 years on the Sacred Timeline, and that seems to make that a little more plausible. Again, we don’t know any of that concretely, but it does help to make it seem like that is what the MCU is trying to tell us, and that that’s where they want us to kind of go versus us having absolutely zero direction in how the TVA time works against any timeline, regardless of whether it’s a branch or the Sacred Timeline itself.

Katie: Right and I’m actually going to take that nugget and run with it for a second of Loki and the Sacred Timeline. We talked about in Episode Two, how he actually went back to the Sacred Timeline for the first time ever. And I want to point out that we’ve gotten a lot of nods towards his time on the Sacred Timeline and his family in this season. And if you really do go back to Season One, if you haven’t yet gone back and we watched it, you really should just for comparison, truly, because and maybe this is two writing, maybe whatever, but we get almost no reference past the first episode to his life that he either should have lived or lived in the Sacred Timeline.

Taylor: With the exception of the of the torture chamber with Sif, where she knees him repeatedly.

Katie: Yes, yes but beyond that, I mean, like what we see in the MCU especially as well, right? I was like, what are you talking about? It took me a second because I was thinking Frigga for some reason, and that was, yeah, okay. Anyway, we have now and they’ve been prominent, gotten a couple references to his life. Last episode we got him talking about his invasion of New York and not even just talking about it. He straight up was like, I was angry at my dad and my brother, they kind of sucked. So I invaded a whole world and then I couldn’t control Tony Stark, so I just threw him off a freaking building. 

Taylor: One of my favorite lines of all time.

Katie: No, literally, because me after Civil War like. But honestly, it was like, clear as day, right? Because to him, that maybe was only a month ago. 

Taylor: I know, I know. 

Katie: So that’s why I thought it was weird in Season One, and I said it multiple times that we didn’t get more reference because it literally just happened. But either way we then get a very prominent reference again in Episode Three, where we have the Norse gods and we see Odin, we see Thor, then we see not Loki, and he has his little, you know, tiff about one, not being there, even though he wants to act like he wasn’t upset about it, he was.

Taylor: Totally in a classic Loki move.

Katie: Well, right. And two, of course, he’s all upset because he’s like, Thor is not that tall. And I was like, you know what?

Taylor: Which is a classic little sibling move. How often, listeners, I’m going to give you a little peek into our lives. I am the older sibling, as you probably know. If you’ve been listening to us, you know, for any length of time, Katie is the younger sibling, and occasionally she’ll just roll up next to me and be like, I thought you were taller. Literally words that have come out of her mouth. And I just I saw the clip ahead of time because I was one of the ones that they were using to promote the episode and immediately I was like, that is such a younger sibling thing to say and then it got me again when I watched the episode and I was like, they are finally leaning into Loki as the bratty younger sibling, and I am here for it.

Katie: Honestly, I loved it. I really I did. But I think in my brain, I’m going to throw some wild crap out onto this mic right now. My brain is like they’re setting something up. 

Taylor: I agree.

Katie: Immediately. I mean, I have to say, the first time in Episode Two, I kind of was like, interesting that we’re going to talk about this because again, Season One didn’t bother. And then now that we have another reference that came around, I’m like, okay, again and I’ve said it once and I haven’t said it just once, I’ve said about ten times, but as long as Thor exists on that Sacred Timeline, I refuse to believe Loki will not see him again.

Taylor: I agree and I also want to point out, I think it’s important to note what Mobius says in that scene, too, where he says, I always forget you’re one of them, but you are. And it almost to me was a reminder, not to Loki, it was a reminder to the audience. Hey, this is who you’re dealing with. They reminded us last episode. Yes, it’s a different guy, but his essence is still the God of Mischief, son of Odin and Laufey and brother of Thor and Balder. But nobody cares about Balder because he got cut out of one of the films he was supposed to be in. But you know, that is a reminder that I think they’re giving us kind of a subliminal message about Loki. Different Loki, it’s a variant, not your guy who did all of his redeeming in the subsequent movies. However, at his essence, this is who he is. This is his family. And I think what that might be telling us is he’s going to be reunited with his family. Where we are in a timeline, I don’t know. Is his father going to be alive? I don’t think so. I think we’re going to meet with the current Thor. But I think it’s going to be an interesting reunion because, again, this is not the Loki who has done all of his healing. So it’s going to be emotional for sure. I mean, out Thor is going to cry, especially in his current state. He’s a very emotional dad now, and I love that for him. But I think he’s going to have one set of expectations and this Loki is going to have a whole different reaction that we can’t even imagine yet because he hasn’t gone through all that. So I think they’re kind of priming us by showing us different guy, same base instincts, same foundation. So be prepared for some out-of-left-field reactions when this reunion does happen. It’s not going to be all roses, but it is going to be a good time.

Katie: Well, maybe this all comes down to the fact that the writers remembered the name of the show and were like, crap, we actually need to focus on this character. And that’s maybe why this seems so prominent, but and why it didn’t in Season One, because they were like haha Sylvie and just ran with her. But yeah, I mean, I think it can’t be a coincidence in my mind, one that we’re getting these reminders of his last minutes on the Sacred Timeline, of his family, of his abilities, of who he is to the core, and which we really saw with Brad in Episode Two. That’s not getting coasted over and I think that’s that needs to really be noted and pointed out. I am not going to as surely say that this reunion is happening just because I don’t want to be disappointed. Although I do think and I’ve been passionate about saying, I think it’s going to happen, but I can’t put it in like a concrete thing until I see it because that’s just who I am.

Taylor: And they’ve disappointed us a few times, a lot on various things.

Katie: Yeah, but that’s why I just I don’t want to get myself excited. But I do think with all of these hints towards kind of bringing us back to the character and actually seeing it be Loki, who knows though, again, maybe now that the writers have remembered who they have to write, maybe that was just a weird fluke in Season One, and instead they got carried away with Sylvie, ignored the actual character, like the right character growth that would have made sense for Loki in Season One and now they’re just doing it in Season Two. And so maybe it’s nothing, you know what I mean?

Taylor: Yeah, and I think, you know, it’s interesting because this show doesn’t exist on the same timeline as the MCU. They can do that and it doesn’t actually affect anything that he is going to do in the future. I do think he’s going to rejoin the characters at some point. There’s no way he’s out having these Multiversal adventures and we’re in the Multiverse Saga and they’re not going to bring him in. He ushered in the Multiverse. He’s protecting the Multiverse. So he’s going to be in it.

Katie: I said this leading up to, I think, Season Two, but this is a show to me that I always wonder how many seasons of this will they be able to do, because obviously we needed Season One to open the Multiverse, or at least theoretically, we needed it to open the Multiverse. That’s kind of hairy. Season Two, we’re seeing the repercussions of Season One but I’m like, the stakes continue to need to get higher in a show like this. And I also just eventually like, are we going to leave the Multiverse open? How is that going to work? Who knows? I don’t know how many seasons I need to expect to see of this, but they can’t just kill him, you know what I mean?

Taylor: They saw what happened the last time they killed him, so.

Katie: Well, and it just wouldn’t it be very weird. 

Taylor: I agree. 

Katie: And also, how would you even kill him at this point? Because we thought pruning people killed them but it just sends them to the end of time in which he came back.

Taylor: I think you just have to actually physically kill them.

Katie: But can you even do that?

Taylor: Well, it would be like what Sylvie did to He Who Remains. He’s dead. That doesn’t mean that he’s not going to have another variant.

Katie: I mean, I guess I should say, in the TVA. Can you kill someone? 

Taylor: Yeah. I don’t see why not. 

Katie: I don’t know. 

Taylor: I mean, they’re flesh and blood, right?

Katie: Yeah, I guess I just didn’t because they don’t really, they just prune people.

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, look, they make everything extra complicated. Why they couldn’t just, you know, go stabby stab. Look, I’m not you know, promoting violence here, but I’m just saying, you know why they couldn’t go stabby stabby on somebody, I don’t know. Instead, they had to do this very complicated method of pruning that wasn’t actually killing anybody until they got eaten by Alioth.

Katie: But to be fair, they thought they were killing people by by pruning them. They didn’t know that they weren’t until Loki came back or not Loki, who, I forget, whoever came back, Mobius.

Taylor: Well, right but all I’m going to say is you never have to question if you stab someone to death because they’re just dead. They overcomplicated it.

Katie: But hasn’t Loki been stabbed like four times, and then he just lives.

Taylor: Well Loki’s special.

Katie: Okay, but still just saying, just a thought process.

Taylor: Look, I’m talking about the non Norse god people of the TVA. Loki, you probably have to stab more than four times. I’m sure there’s a way to kill him through flesh and blood. Not that I’m advocating for it or anybody getting stabbed.

Katie: Or breaking his neck. 

Taylor: Why? 

Katie: It seemed to stick for Thanos so just saying.

Taylor: I’m over it. I can’t. I do want to talk about the other Loki in this series, Sylvie. She would be offended by calling her Loki. The other variant in this series, Sylvie. I don’t want to be rude, but she’s just getting on my nerves.

Katie: I agree, and it mainly is because she wants to live a quiet life on her timeline, then do it. Then just do it. Why are you interfering? And I guess I’m annoyed because she’s all like, well, the TVA shouldn’t exist at all, whether they’re trying to do good or not and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, then drop them. If you know how to get there, blow them up and call it a day.

Taylor: Or even if you want this quiet life and they’re not bothering you, just go live your quiet life, work at McDonald’s and I’m not saying that to diminish what she’s choosing. That is the life you chose. It’s a perfectly valid choice. It’s a perfectly valid life and you are happy. If that is the truth, then go live your life, make friends, work at McDonald’s, and just have a simple life that you never got to have growing up. If that is your end goal, stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and mucking it up for the people who are trying to make it better for other people. It’s intensely selfish because she has this one track mind about the TVA, refuses to acknowledge that there might be good things going on, and they’re not perfect yet by any means, but it doesn’t happen overnight. They have been doing the same thing for eons. Give them a minute to try to figure it out instead of getting in their way every step. And it’s just so infuriating and her just overburdened sense of righteousness. Where do you get off, girl? Where do you get this from? You literally have murdered people. Why do you think you are the end all be all decider of what is right and wrong for the Multiverse? I’m sorry, what?

Katie: You say a couple of good points in all of that. 

Taylor: Thank you. 

Katie: I know, I hated that. But the first thing is, I mean, to your point about the TVA, they are just figuring it out at this point. It doesn’t help when they have people like Dox and her loyalist bombing timelines. That doesn’t help them figure out how to protect the whole universe and the Multiverse, when you have people like that, literally destroying them. So hello, not really their fault they’re working on it doesn’t help when they’re being backtracked constantly. But I agree with you said she murdered people. The irony can’t be stronger with her because you didn’t just murder people. She was murdering hunters. And those hunters all worked for the TVA and were all variants who once and should have if obviously at the time the TVA wasn’t pruning branches, but also had a life, which is her whole thing, right? Freedom and the chance to choose and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and obviously we see that’s why she lets Victor go, because Victor says to her, I’m not him. I have a right to choose how I live my life. I have a right to make my own choices here, and that is why she lets im go with Loki at the end of the day. I mean, do I think that’s a very clear like there’s two ways to read that. I think you can read that as either we’re fully setting up the rest of the series and we’re going to see him turn and this is going to be bad or there’s going to be a real shock. We might run into a different variant and Victor, Timely has never been the threat. Who knows? I think those are your two ways of looking at it. But putting that back aside, you know, you say her righteousness, exactly, though. Where does that come from? Who gives you the right to murder variants first off. Granted, Victor, this Victor shouldn’t have existed the way he did, but the Multiverse is open and allowed him to. That’s what you wanted, right?

Taylor: Well, I think what is important to note with Sylvie is she has become the exact thing she killed. She has become the next version of He Who Remains deciding what is right and what is wrong for everyone, and sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong because she doesn’t think the TVA should exist so she’s going to stop them every chance she gets. She even has his version of a Tempad. She hasn’t realized that yet, but she is him now and it’s one of those classic things. What does Harvey Dent say in one of the Batman films? You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. 

Katie: What a good quote though, man like that is so good. That trilogy.

Taylor: Those are some of my, I mean, I know I’m a Marvel girl, but those are some of my favorite superhero films of all time. They are just so impeccably done.

Katie: They’re so good and they were so good always, but unfortunately not unfortunately. But I am dating a person who thinks he’s Batman half the time, so it’s always kind of a very prominent thing in my life. But yeah, no, those films I like, we just watched them not that long ago. I guess it was longer than I think it was, but they are the blueprint of a superhero movie.

Taylor: 100% So good. I watched them all the time in high school. They were amazing. But, to take it back to Sylvie, you know, I don’t think that she was necessarily a hero in Season One.

Katie: No.

Taylor: In some ways you can view her as a liberator, but she’s always been, at best, an anti-hero. But I think the essence of the quote still stands that you either die or you live long enough, and in that survival, you end up becoming the thing that you hate the most and that is exactly what she’s become. And I think if you think about the voiceover that we quoted in the trailer that we have not yet heard them say, which is either way, something along the lines of either way, we have to play God, oh but we’ve always been gods. She’s already doing it. She’s already playing God, she’s already taken over for him, and she just refuses to acknowledge it.

Katie: Well, and granted, I get it. Her thought process of I said I’d take out his variants because He Who Remains said they’re going to suck. 

Taylor: You’re not going to like them. 

Katie: Yeah, to sum that all up, he’s like, my variants are going to come and they’re going to suck. And like I said, this can go one of two ways with Victor. He could be the big bad at the end of all this, or he could just be Victor and just kind of do whatever. And then we see a different variant come in and be the bigger challenge or be the version that comes out of this. At the end of the day, she doesn’t know and killing him regardless of Ravonna and Miss Minutesmessing with him or not messing with him, it doesn’t matter. You know, he is a fair variant and at this point, is he really a variant anymore? Because the Multiverse that’s really weird because the variants were being considered the people who kind of went off the Sacred Timeline and then were getting pruned. I don’t really know if we can consider him a variant when you don’t really go off anymore, you just create a different timeline but either way-

Taylor: Well I guess technically that’s more of what a variant is. Creating a branch than it is necessarily-

Katie: Yeah, I guess it just, I guess we should moreso say we have to change what the definition is of it, because what we were taught initially.

Taylor: Well, right, because there’s no more concept of a variant, it’s more just this person is a walking nexus point essentially.

Katie: Right, okay, so technically just to throw it out there. The definition of a variant is no longer what the TVA was considering variants, it’s more the variant, whatever, we don’t need to go down that whole path. Either way, this variant or whatever you want to call him still has the right to live his life. Taking that is not changing anything.

Taylor: It’s very He Who Remains of her.

Katie: It is. And I mean, did he not set that up?

Taylor: He told her. He said, you can either kill me or you can become me. She did both.

Katie: Exactly. That’s my point. He set that up for them, whether it was for both of them or not. And I do have to say, I want to point out the parallel in the Ferris wheel as well, with Loki trying to stop her and I think she even points it out. She’s like, isn’t this familiar?

Taylor: We’ve done this before.

Katie: It’s almost like you’re getting a second chance to not make a stupid choice.

Taylor: And she actually makes the right one this time. I do want to toss out a theory because you’ve mentioned a couple of times that, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen with Victor. Obviously, he now knows way more than any man of that time should, however, with that being said, I think I genuinely liked Victor. I actually thought he was funny.

Katie: I did, too. 

Taylor: And so, you know, I kind of wanted to protect him. And so I think at his core, I think my read and he could just be playing us because I don’t I don’t know. But my my read is that Victor is a pretty good dude. And I think that Victor’s not actually the bad guy here. I think he might try to help them. I think that what we’re going to see is the ramification of the first end credit scene of Quantumania, because if you remember, I don’t remember which version of Kang said it, but one of them says to the other two, they’re getting too close, they’ve discovered the Multiverse, or they understand- well, understand is a bit of a stretch, but basically they’re getting too close to the Multiverse, was the gist of the conversation. And so I think who’s closer to the Multiverse than the TVA? Who’s probably stepping on their toes more than the TVA? So that’s why I think we’re actually going to see that probably Council of Kang’s end up at the end of this episode. Could they be the bad guys? I don’t know, because we have a whole Kang Dynasty, but maybe this leads us right into that, right? Maybe from a Multiversal standpoint, this is the thing that sets that up because as we’ve talked about many times, we really don’t have any other or many other Multiversal projects between now and then. We don’t really have any natural places for us to see Kang between now and Kang Dynasty. So why don’t we just bring them in? Why don’t we just show the Council of Kangs in a place that makes sense, and then they’re going to do what I hate the most. They’re going to put the Multiverse on ice and put us on street level for two years or I guess it’s two years. I don’t know. I don’t even know what year it is. But they’re going to put it on ice while we get other stuff put together, introduce new characters, do all that good stuff, and then we’re going to hit Kang Dynasty while we’ve already got this whole thing set up.

Katie: Yeah, I don’t disagree with you at all in that statement. First things first. I think with Victor, the big thing that sticks out to me and I was kind of saying this when I said we kind of have to leave the comics behind, but in this case, I want to leave the comics behind, but I want to use them as a reference point in which Victor Timely is a variant of Kang. He is not, and when I say it in this way, I say it as he is not born, raised, whatever he is, he comes in because he is literally a version of Kang coming in and being like, I’m setting up shop here. And he plays himself like Kingo does for like three generations as mayor of the town and everything. We don’t see that here. Obviously this has been very clearly set differently. So to me that doesn’t necessarily read he’s going to take a turn because he’s inherently a good person. He’s not, I mean, he’s still a variant of Kang in general, but he isn’t Kang himself. So I want to point that out because you’re saying it as well. I don’t know if he’s going to really make that turn. I don’t know yet and we’ll just have to see. I think we’ll start to see that in Episode Four because he’ll be in the TVA. But honestly, I’m so ready for him to like fangirl over O.B. because he literally was like loving O.B.

Taylor: The amount of excitement that I have for him, Casey and O.B. to have a conversation, it should not I should not be that excited about three people who love to talk about time travel but I am. It’s like the next iteration of the Jonas Brothers. Let’s just put them together and talk time.

Katie: Well, that’s what I mean though. I just can’t see him and I can be wrong and things change characters. But from what we’ve been introduced to and what I know he’s supposed to be like from the comics, I don’t see that Kang explicitly being the be all, end all bad version. I just don’t. I mean, he’s got to go do some other crap and if he can make it through Miss Minutes being all weird and everybody else kind of screwing with his brain for 30 minutes. I mean, what else can surprise you? I don’t know. But then you were saying to the Council of Kangs, I wouldn’t be against that. I wouldn’t be against seeing another variant. Even if it’s not the Council of Kangs, whether it’s, you know, the Scarlet Centurion or whatever, I wouldn’t be against them coming in and them making their next appearance. I’d like to see another variant actually appear. I think it’s important. We’ve seen, I think, solidly six. Obviously, we’ve seen the whole stadium, but I think we’ve seen six that we’ve actually heard speak and communicate and see explicitly, unless I’m missing one.

Taylor: And importantly six that have distinct identities, right. Like there are so many versions of Kang and then you have, you have a few that are a little more like recognizable, very distinct. They are almost characters in and of themselves and those are the ones that we’ve seen. I think obviously we know the glaring one that we’re missing is Iron Lad. Do we take this opportunity? I mean, Season One introduced us to Kid Loki. We haven’t seen him again, but maybe we will. But you know, maybe they take this opportunity to bring in our really one of our last Young Avengers. We’re almost there, we have I think three more. Iron Lad might be one of them.

Katie: It depends on the direction they go of course.

Taylor: Right but from the ones that kind of are a little more prominent, we probably have three that we’re missing. One of them being Iron Lad. Maybe they use that opportunity to bring him in and he’s the, I don’t think he’d be the bad guy because obviously Iron Man is a Young Avenger. He’s a hero, he’s not a villain. But, you know, if you’re bringing in a bad variant, why not bring in the good one? Is that how we then get Loki out of wherever Kid Loki out of wherever he is, and bring him in to a place where he can interact with the other Young Avengers. Maybe. I just want some of these things to start coming together. And I think that’s what you were starting get at too, is we have so many puzzle pieces that go together. We just haven’t put them together yet. So I really hope that this series, because it is so Multiversal and so focused on the timeline and things like that, this is the glue. Let’s start putting the glue together and start putting the pieces together, because having all of these disparate puzzle pieces that aren’t touching, driving me nuts and we’re getting far too far down this road for them to not be touching yet.

Katie: I agree. And I think and that was kind of where I was going because I think you talking about the Council of Kangs, even if we see one other variant that we’ve been introduced to, I think that’s important to bring together and, we did see one of the end credit scenes, obviously we saw the whole Victor Timely scene. But I think it’s important to start putting those pieces in place as they progress. Now, again, we could be wrong and Victor Timely might take his turn for the worst show that he’s a real Kang variant and run away with it. But even then now, I mean, it’s not great to have him in the TVA, but he’s still not yet on the Sacred Timeline, so I’ll take that as a win for the time being. It will be interesting. I’m not really sure and maybe this is because things are so disconnected right now. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen with Kang’s, you know, in general, what they’re I guess I should say, what their villain origin really is going to be. I think I can understand the origin, but not really what the track is going to be, what they want, other than to defeat each other but if they’re working together.

Taylor: Well, I think it goes back to that line from Quantumania, right, that they don’t want us, us being the heroes that we followed, they don’t want us in the Multiverse. They want to conquer it for themselves. They want to be the masters of the Multiverse.

Katie: Right. I guess I just that gets kind of muddy to me. It’s not really I don’t know. It’s not really powerful as a plot line, in my opinion.

Taylor: It’s definitely not as much of a smart goal as I would like to half the population of the universe.

Katie: Yeah, I guess I just don’t, yeah, I don’t know. Either way, again, Victor can go one of two ways that’s going to have to be an Episode Four kind of thing. We see he’s going to be in the TVA. What does that mean? I don’t know, man. That could that could go either really bad or be perfectly fine. We might see the loom get fixed. Who knows? Or maybe, I mean, he is a variant, so his essence, his temporal energy is supposed to work, but maybe it doesn’t and maybe that’s how they bring in the fact we need to find another variant.

Taylor: Very possible. I mean, I truly don’t know what to expect from the rest of this show, let alone Episode Four. I don’t know. I think all options are on the table. All I know is I think I’m getting more and more excited every week. Every episode makes me more excited for the next episode, and that’s a really good trajectory to on. Hopefully we’ll have, you know, maybe our first show that does six for six. I don’t think we’ve ever really had one, let alone nine for nine. So, you know, let Loki be it. We all know that they’re going to kind of adjust how they’ve been doing shows so this is probably one of the last shows other than the some of the ones that are already in production but This is one of the last shows that are going to be run kind of in that early Disney Plus manner. So let’s go out with a bang and then we’re going to have all five star shows from here on out. I am really hopeful. So I think that’s it for me in terms of analyzing this episode, Katie is giving me a thumbs up. We are very excited for the future of this season. It’s so far so good. You can follow us on your podcast platform of choice to continue to hear our analysis and our theories as we continue through the rest of the season. Definitely make sure that you are also checking out the website, it is our central hub and you can also support the show from our home page.

Katie: You can also follow us on Twitter at SisAssembledPod and Instagram and Threads at SistersAssembled to keep up with the show as news episodes come out, blog posts and everything fun that we decide to do. And we’re halfway through already, which seems a little wild, but they’ve been again three for three. I’m liking it. This is coming from me who is anti Loki Season One, so this is exciting guys. Let’s hope we keep this going into Episode Four, which we’ll be covering next week. And as always, make sure you’re keeping up with Marvel, especially as new episodes come out and keeping up with us as Marvel just blew your mind so let’s talk about it.