After six weeks of watching in anticipation, we’ve reached the end of Loki’s journey. What awaits him and Sylvie at the end of time? What will happen to the TVA? All these questions, and more, may or may not be answered.
Ready? Then brace for spoilers, and let’s go.
1. The Last Temptation of Loki
As Loki and Sylvie enter The Citadel at the End of Time, they come face-to-face with… Miss Minutes, the TVA mascot (impeccably voiced, as always, by Tara Strong). Yes, the true ruler of the TVA, the one who has pulling the strings the entire time, is Miss Minutes…’s boss, “He Who Remains.”
Still, Miss Minutes clearly knows more than she’s letting on, even to the TVA. More importantly, she has an offer for Loki and Sylvie from He Who Remains.
They can be inserted back into the time stream non-disruptively. They get to live, the TVA gets to keep doing what it’s been doing, and all is well.
Yet the idea of inserting them back into the timeline without changing things is instantly muddled as Miss Minutes provides even more offers. What if Loki beat the Avengers? Killed Thanos? Took the Infinity Gauntlet and Asgard for himself? Obviously that would mess up time a fair bit, but the important thing is the temptation.
This is a classic scene at the end of a character’s journey. When they start, they have a clear “want” in mind – for Loki, it was to defeat the Avengers and rule Asgard. Then at the end of the journey, they’re offered everything they initially wanted, only to discover that their true desires, or at least what they need, has changed. It’s a good moment for showcasing character development.
So of course, Loki and Sylvie don’t bite, saying “We write our own destiny now.” Well, as we’ll see in a bit, that still may or may not be true.
2. Kind of Kang
Okay, so I was partially wrong. I thought there was no way that Loki would introduce Kang the Conqueror before he made his MCU debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I thought all the little nods to Kang were just easter eggs leading up to his actual debut.
Well, we finally meet He Who Remains, and guess who it is? Welcome to the MCU, Jonathan Majors, who we also know is cast as Kang in Quantumania. His character mentions being known as many things, including a “conqueror,” even if he’s never referred to as Kang. But as a 31st century scientist, it’s pretty clear who he is.
To an extent.
According to He Who Remains, this version of him wasn’t interested in conquest, but other versions of himself were. He discovered a multiverse and made contact with alternate versions of himself – and time travel is pretty different from multiverse exploration.
Putting aside how time and alternate universes are being used somewhat interchangeably, the whole inter-dimensional war mentioned in the first episode was mostly versions of He Who Remains/Kang going to war with each other. If he dies, worse versions of himself will be allowed to wreak havoc on the timeline and take over the TVA.
Now, Kang from the comics is no stranger to dealing with multiple versions of himself. Immortus, Iron Lad, Scarlet Centurion – the list goes on and on. Some versions are in direct conflict with their past or future selves. He’s got so many paradoxes wrapped around his own personal timeline that it’s practically impossible to sort them all out.
So this person we see is probably not be the same Kang we’ll meet in Quantumania. It will likely be one of his Variants, or a past version of himself. But it’s still a version of him nonetheless.
He Who Remains is a version of Kang that’s a lot more cheerful, energetic, and laid-back than we’d expect from a world-conquering Marvel villain, so it was an unexpected but interesting take on the character.
3. Choice versus Destiny
Once more, we return to the main theme of Loki and the conflict between free will and predestination. Loki and Sylvie believe that they’ve broken free of the TVA’s preset timeline, and their choices are their own. Then He Who Remains demonstrates otherwise when he shows them that he’d already predicted everything that would lead them to where they are, down to the very dialogue.
Continued belowUp until a point, at least. There’s a distinct moment where He Who Remains runs out of pre-planned material, and leaves the rest up to Sylvie and Loki. Suddenly they can make a choice where the answer hasn’t already been predicted. They have the option of taking over the TVA for themselves. Then they’d have the power… to take away other peoples’ choices.
The show never seems to exactly settle on a side. Loki and Sylvie espouse free will, but then He Who Remains provides proof that it’s all still predestined, right until the point where it isn’t.
Meanwhile, back in the TVA, we see that Mobius is now very much on Team Free Will, arguing that they can’t take that away from other people. The rest of the TVA seems to be coming around to his way of seeing things as well, once they start learning the truth. Except, of course, for Ravonna Renslayer, who believes that only the one in charge gets free will, otherwise it’s just “chaos and death.”
So what does Ravonna do? She goes off “in search of free will,” even though, as we see…
4. Ravonna’s Devotion
At this point, Ravonna Renslayer knows the truth about the TVA. But that doesn’t change her devotion. She still believes that there must have been a purpose for everything they’ve done, and it’s a necessary lie. She believes that the ends justify the means, because if they don’t, then what was it all for?
This is a pretty human reaction, actually. It’s like how people will double down on their beliefs when presented with evidence to the contrary. She’s devoted her life to the TVA, and has to believe it was for a good reason, because to accept the truth otherwise would mean abandoning everything she is and has ever stood for.
Well, everything she is now, at least. We get to see that she was once a high school principal, before being taken as a Variant.
The fact that she is so desperately trying to hang on to a purpose for the TVA to exist is telling for who she is now, and even if it makes us dislike who she is, it’s good character work. Too bad we never see what happens to her after that. (Will we see her again in Quantumania as well?)
5. You Maniacs!
At last, we get to the episode’s conclusion. After a brief fight scene and a shared kiss, Sylvie tosses Loki back to the TVA and kills He Who Remains herself. Yet he warned her that someone would fill the void he left, probably a worse Variant of himself. Even as he dies, he winks “see you soon.”
Well, time branches off every which way, far past the redlines. And in spite of everything that literally just happened at the TVA, Mobius and B-15 are just watching it on the screen.
Then when Loki goes to warn them about He Who Remains… they don’t recognize him. It’s heartbreaking to see Mobius have no idea who Loki is after everything they went through, but then we get a “Statue of Liberty on the Planet of the Apes” moment, as Loki sees the statues of the Time Keepers have been replaced… with a statue of Kang/He Who Remains.
Alright, let’s unpack what went down here.
So Sylvie kills He Who Remains. Her doing so freed the timeline from the TVA’s pruning, which meant that an infinite number of timeline changes could happen retroactively. Therefore, a different Kang will have already existed and taken over the TVA for himself. Except Loki and Sylvie must have had to do everything they did this season for it to exist in the first place, which couldn’t have happened in the changed TVA…
Hey, I love analyzing time travel stories as much as the next guy, but sometimes a little clarification would be nice. Cause and effect are no longer connected as each one changes the other in a paradoxical time loop.
And that’s how it ends. It’s certainly a twist ending that leaves us wanting more, and one that raises so many questions, but exactly how it all plays out chronologically gets more than a little complicated when you start thinking about it.
Continued belowWell, hopefully this will all be explained in season 2, because we get a nice big “Loki will return” stamp for our post-credits scene. There are still so many loose ends to tie – from the new Kang who retroactively took over the TVA to where Judge Renslayer went and what information Miss Minutes gave her.
That brings season 1 to a close, with some mixed feelings but an overall enjoyable series. Now we begin the wait for season 2, where hopefully we’ll get more answers, and we’ll see how these changes play out in future Marvel shows and movies.
Now then, let me know what you think: am I completely off the mark with the time travel analysis? Is it all clear and I’m just overthinking it? What did you think of Loki overall? What’s next for Ravonna Renslayer? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll see you all next season.
Extra Thoughts:
– Mobius didn’t get his jet ski. Maybe next season…
– The whole show has been a little muddled on the concept of the multiverse vs alternate timelines. If there’s only one sacred timeline, how can there be so many Variants with such vastly different lives? If it’s a multiverse thing, why should one universe’s timeline impact the rest of the multiverse that already exists? It needed to be more clear on how exactly that works.
– And again, we already know Marvel’s cinematic multiverse exists. Unless it was always meant to exist eventually, thus allowing it to retroactively exist until it was made. (Yeah, language gets complicated when cause and effect are no longer linearly consistent.) Let’s file that under “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”
– Will these branching timelines be the various What If… universes?
– Will any of this impact Quantumania, or even Multiverse of Madness?
