Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the Loki Season 2 finale.
The Big Picture
Loki, the Disney+ series from Marvel Studios, has completed its second (and potentially final) season in glorious fashion, bringing the story of the titular God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) to a beautiful culmination. Alongside Mobius (Owen Wilson), B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), O.B. (Ke Huy Quan), Casey (Eugene Cordero), and — of course — Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), Loki has reached the end of time, the end of the TVA, and the end of his story, unless he can find a way to save it all.
Last week, Loki spent the penultimate episode time-slipping through the past, present, and future, attempting to wrangle together his friends after the meltdown of the Temporal Loom destroyed the TVA. Ultimately, the destruction would lead to the death of every branched timeline; everyone and everything around him would fade away in a heartbreaking manner reminiscent of Avengers: Infinity War. Realizing that it’s “not about where, when, or why” but rather “who” when it comes to controlling the time-slipping that’s plagued him, Loki vows to “rewrite the story.” He uses the time-slipping ability to transport himself back to the TVA, just before the Temporal Loom breaks down and destroys everything.
Loki, the God of Mischief, steps out of his brother’s shadow to embark on an adventure that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”
Release Date June 9, 2021
Cast Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant
Seasons 2
Studio Disney+
What Happens at the End of ‘Loki’ Season 2?
Now that he’s back at the TVA before catastrophe hits, Loki has the opportunity to attempt to fix the Temporal Loom, as many times as needed. The Loom is overloaded with the branching timelines that have been multiplying ever since Sylvia killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). Thankfully, O.B. and Victor Timely (Majors) created a device that should allow the Temporal Loom to expand and manage the backlog of timelines overloading it. When they first attempted to launch the device at Loom, Victor Timely was shredded by the radiation the moment he stepped out of the TVA’s blast doors. So, now that Loki has gone back to this moment, they just have to do it faster — before the radiation levels get too high.
Again and again, he resets himself by time-slipping, getting a bit faster each time, but it’s never fast enough. Loki realizes that, no matter how quickly and efficiently they go, they cannot save the Temporal Loom in time. He has to go back further. Loki time-slips to the moment when Victor Timely and O.B. conceive of their plan, and he discovers that their process of building the device to save the Loom takes far too long. Opting to take on the task of building the device himself, he has to learn everything that O.B. knows about mechanics, physics, and engineering, which he’s told will take “centuries.” Then, a title card reads: “Centuries later.” A comical, brutally long length of time has passed, and Loki’s now able to build the device himself. The process is finally quick enough to avoid radiation, and they manage to successfully augment the Temporal Loom to expand its rings and manage the backlog of branching timelines.
However, despite all that time and effort, it doesn’t work. Victor Timely realizes that the branching timelines multiply at an exponential, infinite rate. So, scaling the Temporal Loom to manage the backlog of timelines is not enough, because you can’t scale something to infinity. The finale of Loki Season 2 then takes a surprising loop back to the end of the first season in a manner perfectly fitting for a series filled with the metaphors of a Möbius strip, the ouroboros serpent eating its own tail, and the cyclical nature of Loki’s character arc. Loki time-slips back to He Who Remains’ throne room at the End of Time, to the moment just before Sylvie killed He Who Remains and set off the branching timelines that would eventually destroy the Loom.
Loki Struggles With What To Do With Sylvie and He Who Remains
Here, Loki tries over and over to stop Sylvie from slaying He Who Remains, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot thwart her. Eventually, he pleads to He Who Remains, demanding to know why he never attempts to defend himself. He Who Remains then pauses Sylvie in time, and he and Loki stop for a conversation. It seems He Who Remains lied in Season 1 when he said he didn’t know how the events would unfold after Loki and Sylvie arrived. As it turns out, he knew the Temporal Loom would be destroyed, but it was simply designed as a fail-safe — destroying the TVA and all branched timelines when it overloads, but keeping the Sacred Timeline (his timeline) intact.
He tells Loki that his only options are to kill Sylvie or allow for the destruction of all branching timelines. Seeking counsel, Loki time-slips back to his first meeting with Mobius at the TVA. Essentially, he needs to know how Mobius lives with himself after making the difficult choice to prune someone that the “Time Keepers” deemed a threat to the Sacred Timeline. Mobius reveals details of his past, working as a TVA Hunter alongside Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), recounting a time when hesitation at eliminating a variant led to the deaths of many more. There’s no such thing as the comfort Loki is seeking. “You just choose your burden.”
Seeking further assurance, he time-slips to one of his final moments with Sylvie before the breakdown of the Temporal Loom destroys the timelines. After a brief, heavy exchange, Sylvie is quickly aware of the choice that Loki faces. She won’t give him her blessing to kill her, though, because who is Loki to say that “we can’t die trying?” Saving He Who Remains takes away everyone’s free will, so even if they’ll die without him and the TVA, it’s just “replacing one nightmare with another.” This seems to be the moment that Loki realizes the burden of his glorious purpose. “If there’s a hope that you can replace that thing with something better,” he wonders aloud.
Loki Sacrifices Himself For You, For All of Us
Finally, he time-slips back to the moment before the meltdown of the Temporal Loom. This time, however, he doesn’t attempt to fix the Loom. He turns to Mobius and Sylvie and softly says, “I know what I want. I know what kind of god I need to be… for you. For all of us.” He opens the blast doors and walks out along the gangway. The radiation from the Loom rips his clothes apart, revealing a brand-new outfit that includes his classic horns. He uses his magic to rip the Temporal Loom apart, releasing all the branched timelines, but the branches begin to die. When Loki grabs a branch, a jolt of his magic, marked by a bright green light, flows through it. Slowly, he grabs every single branch, one by one, and marches toward the throne at the End of Time where He Who Remains once sat.
Seated on the throne, he ignites his magic, breathing life back into every timeline. We zoom out, revealing all time and existence within Yggdrasill, The World Tree. We jump forward in time, and the title card reads: “After.” The TVA, now run by B-15, is running again, this time with the goal of preventing any He Who Remains variants from detecting their existence. While B-15, Casey, a reconfigured Miss Minutes, and O.B. remain at the new TVA, Mobius decides to part ways and return to his timeline on Earth, so that he can see what it is that they’re fighting to save.
Meanwhile, we see that Ravonna, who was pruned two episodes ago, has arrived at the Void at the End of Time, where she seemingly awaits her death at the hands of Alioth. This is followed by a touching moment with Sylvie, who’s joined Mobius as he watches a variant of himself enjoying life with his two sons. “It’s weird that Loki’s not here, isn’t it?” she admits before they finally part ways. In the final shot, we return to Loki, sitting on his throne at the End of Time, keeping all time alive. He smiled slightly. He’s alone, but he’s fulfilled his glorious purpose.
Loki Has Completed His Arc and Found His Glorious (and Burdensome) Purpose?
Loki’s had a long journey – one that began in the first phase of the MCU. Starting with Thor in 2011, Loki has teetered back and forth between villain and hero. Ultimately, Loki’s story was always a tragic tale of an adopted brother living in the shadow of Thor (Chris Hemsworth). He’s viewed himself as a lesser god, the mere God of Mischief below the God of Thunder and Odin (Anthony Hopkins) himself. His villainous actions in Thor were ultimately a plea for acceptance from his father. Before seemingly falling to his death, he exclaimed to Odin, “I could have done it, father! I could have done it… for you! For all of us!” He’d return, of course, as the theme of death and resurrection has always lingered in Loki’s story.
In 2012’s The Avengers, Loki was the villain that brought the first roster of Avengers together. Facing off in The Battle of New York, the original six thwarted Loki’s attempt at taking over Earth and becoming its ruler. “There’s no throne,” Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) warned Loki. “There’s no version of this where you come out on top.” That version of Loki, the one we knew throughout the first three phases of the MCU, would meet his demise at the hands of Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Avengers: Infinity War. “No resurrections this time,” the Mad Titan proclaimed. Not for that Loki, at least. Thanks to our heroes’ trek back in time during Avengers: Endgame, a past variant of Loki was able to take the Tesseract and escape, drawing the attention of the TVA and beginning the two-season journey that brought Loki’s incredible arc to a close.
Toward the end of the series, Loki comes to realize that he doesn’t desire a throne; he simply wants to save his friends and not be alone. He’s always wrestled with the notion of his “glorious purpose,” and now he’s finally found it. He was always meant to fail, time and time again, until at least accepting that perhaps he’d always been destined to be alone. In an act of true selflessness, a throne forms before him, and he takes up the mantle of the God of Stories and Time. Echoing his words from his first appearance in the MCU, he turns to his friends and softly admits that he’s doing this “…for you. For all of us.” Completing what may be the best arc of any character in the MCU, Loki is truly a villain no longer. He’s a hero.
You can stream Season 1 and 2 of Loki on Disney+ in the U.S.
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