We’ve passed the halfway point for Loki season 2, which means things are about to get even crazier. There are plots and betrayals every which way, and it’s hard to tell what’s been predetermined and what’s going against any Kang variant’s carefully laid plans. So let’s take a look at episode 4 and see what awaits.
Oh, and given how this episode ends, there will be spoilers.
1. Time and Responsibilities
The main danger in this episode is the Temporal Loom overloading, as has been the building threat since episode 1. Even though Loki and Mobius brought Victor Timely to the TVA, O.B. and Casey are still having trouble with the device they need for fixing it.
Mind you, exactly what any of these devices do or how they work is superfluous; it’s all technobabble for them to work on together as the clock ticks down. The more important character beats come between that, as Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie continue their debates, philosophical and otherwise.
To be fair, each of them have a few valid points. Sylvie notes that don’t know if they can trust Victor Timely while branching timelines are dying, and calls out Mobius for not even knowing which timeline he came from, or if it even survived (this is the second time it’s been brought up, so it’ll likely come back around eventually).
Loki, on the other hand, has a newfound sense of responsibility to the TVA after Sylvie killed He Who Remains. While he acknowledges that General Dox and her crew destroyed countless lives from the branches they pruned in the name of the TVA, he wants to fix the organization for the good people there.
That’s quite a change for the trickster god, making him far more hopeful and even altruistic than he once was. Team Free Will has indeed set the timelines free, and now he feels responsible for protecting them. But as Loki reminds Sylvie: they are gods (for however much that’s worth in the MCU).
2. Ouroboros Paradox
This episode gives us Ouroboros and Victor Timely meeting for the first time, and each of them basically has a fanboy moment over the other. Victor learned everything he knew from the TVA Handbook, while O.B.’s work on the Handbook was inspired by Victor’s journals.
This, of course, introduces an ontological paradox: where did the information within the TVA Handbook even come from? It forms a closed loop, where each one inspired the other with no clear starting point (except if Victor is a variant of He Who Remains who’s been moved from his original timeline to become his replacement, then how that fits into the picture isn’t entirely clear). This is a classic paradox, but it’s notable that the characters describe it as “like a snake eating its own tail,” which, as we all know, is called an Ouroboros.
What does this mean for the TVA, Victor Timely, and Ouroboros himself? Fans have theories, but that will have to wait for a later episode, because the time travel shenanigans have only just begun.
3. Time Loop Completed
Early in the series, as Loki was being pulled back and forth through time, we saw him pulled into the future in the TVA. The Temporal Loom was nearing the point of disaster, the TVA seemed abandoned, and Sylvie emerged from an elevator as if she were expecting him, before someone pruned Loki (which was just what he needed to happen at the time). We weren’t sure how far off in the future that was or what the circumstances around it were, but now we know, as this episode brings us to it.
As Miss Minutes begins taking over the TVA’s systems to lock everyone out, Renslayer captures Timely, and the Loom nears the point of going critical, Loki and Sylvie rush to action and… Sylvie gets stuck in an elevator. Loki managed to get his hands on a pruner device, and rushes to regroup, but finds his past self from when he was flung into now.
So yes, Loki is the one who pruned Loki, thus completing his time loop. It’s not a particularly shocking turn of events, but it does bring that question to a close effectively enough.
Continued belowOh, and the mysterious ringing phone? It was O.B. and Mobius, nothing too crazy there.
4. Untimely and Unlikely Ends
This episode has a lot of death (and that’s even before the last scene, which we’ll get to in a minute), although not all of it feels likely to stick.
On one hand, we get the slightly horrifying end of General Dox and all of the Hunters under her command. While B-15 did try to convince them that the new state of the TVA is still one worth fighting for, and Ravonna Renslayer tried to turn them to her side, in the end, Dox and her Hunters remained true to their stance all the way to the grave. Dox even got a badass line about how all of them would rather die than follow Renslayer, but the sounds of crunching and screaming coming from offscreen still made it sound like a very nasty death.
Oh, except for Brad. He decided to take Renslayer up on her offer, because Brad is just the worst.
But Miss Minutes and Ravonna also seemingly get their comeuppance, as Miss Minutes is basically deleted when O.B. resets the security system. Even she goes out with a hard-hitting line, telling Victor Timely he’ll never be He Who Remains. (Although since she is an AI, she’ll also be the easiest to bring back.)
As for Ravonna Renslayer, her death appears to be the most sudden and least dramatic, as an enchanted Brad ends up pruning her. However, as Loki has demonstrated, it is possible to come back from being pruned, so it’s unlikely that this is the last we’ve seen of her—especially after this episode revealed that she fought by He Who Remains’ side and helped create the TVA before he erased everyone’s memories. There’s still so much more to do with her character, so this almost certainly isn’t her end.
5. Time Falls, Everyone Dies
As the episode nears its end, the Temporal Loom is ready to explode, but the team seems prepared to stop it. They’ve finished their device, Victor’s temporal aura allowed them to open the blast doors, and he was ready to bravely go forth and save the day.
Victor Timely, who it seemed was being set up to become the next He Who Remains, tells himself it’s time to be brave and steps forward, then immediately turns into spaghetti.
Obviously there was going to be some kind of complication, especially since we already had a scene where a character steps forth to fix the Temporal Loom and barely makes it back in time this season. But the instant switch from “he can do it” to “nope, never mind” made it all the more shocking.
At that point, it seems like all hope is lost. The characters are out of ideas, the Loom explodes, and the last thing we see is the characters engulfed in light, even cutting off the music in an instant.
So, is everyone dead? Did the Marvel Cinematic Universe just explode? Obviously not, we still have two episodes left, and Disney will never let the MCU end as long as there’s money to be made from it. But it was still an unexpected twist to end the episode on, and now we have a week to wait and see how they resolve it.
