Loki, Season 2, Episode 6: Glorious Purpose
And finally we finish another season of MCU's Disney+ material. And... I still don't think this is anywhere as good as the first season of Loki, or some of the better Disney+ shows like Moon Knight or WandaVision. But it definitely picked up the steam hard in the third episode, and stuck the landing.
The plotline of what went in the final two episodes aren't anything particularly special. After a huge devastating loss at the end of the fourth episode, Loki ends up learning about his innate power, realizes how important his friends are to him, and spends this episode basically using that power -- time-slipping and the ability to shift into himself in various points in time -- and save the day. To cut a long story short, in the last half of this episode Loki realizes all he's doing is for naught, and as that poster helpfully points out, Loki realizes that the solution isn't in how perfectly he's able to navigate the Deathloop time-loop, but on what he, Loki, God of something-or-other, is able to do. And he makes that choice for the right motivations, and takes his place as the new He Who Remains, as Loki, God of Time, Loki, God of Stories, and sits within the throne, burdened with the most glorious of purposes at last.
There is a huge question as to where this variant of Loki will go, and if he would ever appear again -- the fate of being cursed-and-blessed simultaneously as the lynchpin of time seems to be pretty final for this Loki. Of course the TVA's stories are pretty open-ended, and at the very least I do still feel like there's a lot to be told about Ravonna, Sylvie and Victor Timely... and most definitely the more villainous versions of Kang (who barely gets screentime here).
The episode itself isn't something that any self-respecting sci-fi geek haven't seen before. Agents of SHIELD, Legends of Tomorrow, Star Trek, Dr. Who... lots of science fiction and superhero material have dealt with the idea and concept of a constantly repeating time loop, and a character trying his best to fix everything by doing things just right. It's absolutely fun to see, with, of course, all the dark comedy of seeing just how Victor Timely keeps dying and dying and dying... and at some point we get to see Loki get so exasperated as he keeps being reminded of all of the ways things could go wrong. The device could roll off the side of the bridge, or his constant repeated insistence that O.B.'s model is just fine for the purposes of the demonstration. Obviously, the comedic highlight is the fact that O.B. tells Loki that it'll take centuries to learn enough time-science to speed up the process of fixing the time-fixing plot device. And then smash cut to 'Centuries Later'. That's hilarious and kind of disturbing if you give it any length of thought.
Of course, turns out that around halfway through the episode, Victor Timely finally manages to escape the umpteenth time of being spaghettified and manages to enlarge the rings in the Time Loom... until we get the revelation that the Time Loom was never designed to be a solution. Even with them implementing the solution, the Time Loom blows up anyway.
Which leads Loki to finally time-slip back to a (disappointingly minor, once again) confrontation with He Who Remains, as we get to see them face-to-face at end-time as we repeat the climax of the first season finale. Loki keeps trying to stop Sylvie from stabbing He Who Remains... and eventually Loki and He Who Remains ends up talking face-to-face. He Who Remains gloats that he knows that this Loki is a time-slipper from further on in the timeline (again, quoting O.B. from last episode, as much as that makes sense in zones 'beyond time' like the TVA and end-time). He Who Remains shows that for all of his newfound power, Loki is still trapped. He can't let Sylvie kill Kang, otherwise the whole Time Loom destruction happens. But he loves Sylvie, and the only way to stop Sylvie is to kill Sylvie. Not to mention that finding a third option -- modifying the loom -- seems to be doomed with how He Who Remains had designed it.
And then after several darkly comedic moments of fighting with Sylvie, Loki finds himself all the way back in the series premiere, sitting across Mobius in the TVA's interrogation room, and quickly surmises that S01E01's Mobius is just trying to psycho-analyze him. Again, Mobius is as always excellent here, even if this is a hardened, less-friendly Mobius who ends up divulging a surprisingly intimate recollection of a particularly sobering mission with Ravonna Renslayer and the burdens of purpose and the necessity of the TVA.
And Loki returns to the beginning of this episode (oh boy, time-slipping) and Loki decides to take matters into his own hand, literally. Loki decides to replace Victor Timely and walk out into the Loom of Time, and it's a glorious scene as he wordlessly struggles against the storms of time to grab the spaghetti strands, using them as strings as he morphs from the (IMO always hideous-looking) TVA uniform into a variation of his cloaked, horned classic look. The soundtrack and Tom Hiddleston's expressions really sell the scene here, as Loki walks to the End Time, finally sitting down on He Who Remains's throne as he holds onto all of the timelines, sending his own green energy coursing through them... but then we spin it around and see that Loki has moulded not a single strand, not a branching strand, but a giant tree not too dissimilar to Yggdrassil. We don't really get any huge O.B. exposition about this, but the visual imagery is kind of clear in that Loki has decided to make himself the God of Time, the guardian of the new multiverse, with him in the 'heart' of the tree. He has found his 'glorious purpose', his burden, his crown, his throne, and it's a lonelier, more tragic ending than he probably had expected.
And... we cut back to what seems to be business as usual at the TVA. It's kind of interesting and even a bit tragic to see the TVA characters just discuss things seemingly as if nothing's really happened. Mobius and Sylvie, in particular, venture out into the timeline to see their previous lives. Renslayer still lives, in wherever that dimension where all pruned things go, but otherwise I can't really muster much excitement about her. Victor Timely also doesn't get disturbed this time around since there isn't any Renslayers to chuck TVA handbooks at his head, though I'm not even going to try and unravel the minutiae about the timeline changes. While Loki's there... not quite suffering per se but just alone and holding all of reality together.
It's an interesting ending for the character, one that I feel sticks the landing fairly well. I wouldn't say Loki's second season is my favourite Disney+ project, but after the previous couple of MCU efforts having been rather disappointing, it's nice to see this one at least stick the landing... even if it's an unconventional one.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Before Loki walks into the Temporal Loom, his final words to his two closest friends Sylvie and Mobius are "For you. For all of us." which are the exact same words he said to Odin and Thor in his first fake-out death in Thor.
- Loki weaves all of the strands of time into a shape resembling Yggdrassil, the world-tree of Nordic mythology.
- Perhaps coincidentally, the Time Stone in the MCU is the green one, corresponding with the colour of Loki's magic.
- In addition to being referrential to Loki's famous line from The Avengers, 'Glorious Purpose' is also the title of the first episode of Loki's first season.
- In the new TVA, Mobius mentions a variant of He Who Remains causing trouble on 'an adjacent of 616'. Since within the MCU itself, the Sacred Timeline is referred to as 616, this most likely refers to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
- Loki is all but stated to become the new god of time. In the comics, particularly the Loki: Agent of Asgard series, Loki would eventually take on the new mantle of the God of Stories.
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