Loki is back, and picking up right where things left off! When we last saw our protagonist, he and Sylvie (his gender-swapped variant and love interest) made their way to The Citadel at the End of Time, met He Who Remains (a Kang variant who pruned the timelines to prevent even more Kangs from coming forth), fought each other, and then utterly broke the multiverse. So, what’s next? Let’s take a look and see…
1. Continuing From Where We Ended
The last minutes of season 1 ended with Loki returning to the TVA from the End of Time, only to find that Mobius and the other TVA agents don’t remember him at all. The statue outside showed not the Time Keepers, but Kang/he Who Remains, suggesting to us that the TVA’s history has already been changed and a Kang variant took over.
And so, it seems like it’ll be back to square one, as he’s chased down for being a variant.
At first, this struck me as a concerning reset, after all the character development we’d seen for characters like Mobius, Hunter B-15, and even Ravonna Renslayer (even if her development was of a more villainous sort). In my review of last season’s finale, I also pointed out how changing the TVA’s history would also cause a temporal paradox that would stop itself from happening, but it turns out that’s not a problem, because the show tricked us.
Although we saw the timelines splitting in the TVA Loki arrives at, the show’s continuity is still very much intact—we just arrived at an earlier point than expected.
2. Let’s Do the Time Slip Again
As Loki goes on the run throughout the TVA, trying to find someone who remembers him, he’s pulled ahead in time to the show’s present, and we quickly learn that he actually arrived at an earlier point in the TVA’s history (despite Mobius’ stating that the TVA, as an organization that exists outside of time and space, shouldn’t technically have a history). It handles this in a decent way, by showing the effects of damage Loki did in the past carrying over to the present. Now we can see that what Loki does in the past does impact the future, at least as far as events in the TVA are concerned, although the future doesn’t change until we see him change it.
From here, we get some neat uses of Loki’s sudden trips through time. We see it when he destroys a wall to reveal the images of He Who Remains underneath, because he saw it in the past, and we also see him finding a recording of HWR talking to Ravonna, which will undoubtedly be more important down the line.
But the most entertaining use of the time travel is when he slips into the past mid-conversation with Ouroboros (who we’ll get to in just a moment). From there, the show cuts between two simultaneous conversations: one with Loki in the past, and one with Mobius in the present, both of whom are talking to Ouroboros. As it cuts back and forth, we can see the different parts of their conversation, and observe as Loki’s actions in the past lead to changes in the present, with Ouroboros remembering things as soon as we see them happen.
It’s wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, but it’s good fun.
Although we also get some ominous foreshadowing when he slips into the future, complete with a mysterious ringing phone and a quick appearance by Sylvie, so we’ll see how that ends up playing out.
3. Meet Ouroboros
This episode introduces us to a new character: Ouroboros, or O.B. for short, the TVA’s chief and only engineer, played by Ke Huy Quan.
O.B. is a cheerful and friendly sort, who doesn’t seem to mind spending hundreds of years on his lonesome in the R&A Department, working indefinitely without break. He’s also knowledgeable about the ins and outs of Loki’s time slipping, the Temporal Loom, and all the other technical terms involved with time travel, the multiverse, and the TVA.
It’s amusing how cheerfully he explains that, should anything go wrong, Mobius will lose his skin and Loki will be turned into temporal spaghetti, and how he patches up Mobius’ protective suit with a bit of duct tape. But despite that, the stakes are quite real, because as much as he hesitates to close the doors to start repairing the Temporal Loom, he knows it has to take priority over Loki and Mobius.
Continued belowBut does Ouroboros have a comic book counterpart? Well, the name refers to the image of a snake eating its tail (an image Full Metal Alchemist fans will be familiar with thanks to the homunculi), so it’s not an uncommon name for characters. Marvel’s had the Oculus Oroboros, Admiral Ouroboros, and a group in “Contest of Champions” called Ouroboros, but most importantly, there was a Mr. Orobourous in “She-Huk” back in 2005 (and yes, the spelling is different across the different Ouroboroses), who served as a judge for the TVA. However, this O.B. seems to just have his name, and will not likely bear any resemblance to his comic book counterpart, like with Owen Wilson’s Mobius.
All in all, though, he’s a likable new character, played by a talented actor, so it’ll be fun to see how his character fits into this season.
4. Trouble in the TVA
Between the time slipping and Temporal Loom technobabble, there are some serious issues afoot in the TVA. Last season revealed that all the TVA agents are themselves Variants, whose memories have been wiped, and the Time Keepers they served were robots.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot of fallout to deal with.
Hunter B-15 takes a key role here, as she argues with Judge Gamble and General Dox that they can’t keep destroying branching timelines, because they’re literally wiping out universes, and everyone there had lives before the TVA took them away. However, not everyone shares her concerns, and so there’s certainly going to be some internal strife in the agency, as we already see some of the higher-ranking members making their own plays.
Loki’s trip to the past also reveals some interesting twists, as no one in the TVA (except for O.B.) seems to remember that they even had a past. Loki’s temporal shenanigans, the massive statue of Kang, and everything related to it happened, but it seems someone (likely either Kang or Ravonna) erased it from the TVA agents’ minds.
So that seems to be our subplot this season. Not all is well in the TVA, and we’ll certainly see it play out over the coming episodes.
5. Where’s Sylvie?
One major character has been absent for most of the episode, and that’s Sylvie, the variant Lady Loki (with a bit of Enchantress mixed in for good measure). We see her briefly when Loki is sent into the future, but there’s no context behind her presence, and it’s very brief.
Instead, we get to see more of her in a post-credit scene, as she emerges into… Broxton, Oklahoma in 1982. Longtime “Thor” readers will immediately recognize the significance of Broxton, as Thor brought Asgard there, where it remained until the “Siege” event. Of course, it’s unlikely that the same will happen here, as the MCU already has New Asgard in Norway, but it’s still a fun Easter egg.
At this point, Sylvie is introduced to the beauty of… McDonalds. Oh hi, product placement. But yes, considering how much of her life Sylvie has had to spend running and hiding in places about to face imminent destruction, getting to actually relax and eat fast food must be quite nice. But her running and hiding isn’t over yet, as the TVA’s General Dox is sending out a large force to hunt her down.
We’ve also seen that Sylvie will appear in McDonalds from trailers and a cross-promotion where the fast food joint turned one of its Brooklyn locations into a retro restaurant filled with gear and costumes from the show, but this all raises several questions:
What happened to Sylvie after she killed He Who Remains?
What will she do next?
Why Broxton in 1982 of all times and places?
How much did McDonalds pay for this level of product placement?
These, of course, are questions that will be answered in the episodes to come, so for now, we can wait and see what comes next.
All in all, it’s a solid start for the season, so let’s see if they can keep the momentum.
