Key Release Dates
Warning! This article contains spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 1.
Summary
- Loki season 2 picks up right where season 1 left off, with Loki finding himself in an unfamiliar TVA and bouncing through time uncontrollably.
- The mystery of Loki’s location is quickly revealed – he has been sent to the past, explaining why Mobius doesn’t recognize him.
- Loki is suffering from a condition called Time Slipping, being pulled between past, present, and future. The events of the premiere may have stopped this effect, but it remains to be seen.
Loki season 2 is finally here, and the MCU’s latest streaming show premiere delivers plenty of answers – and even more questions. Kicking off immediately after Loki season 1’s cliffhanger ending, the titular god of mischief finds himself uncontrollably bouncing back and forth in time. Loki season 2 episode 1 centers this condition as the primary conflict, though it’s clear that all is not well in the TVA.
Loki season 2 episode 1 follows much of the classic Loki cast and also introduces newcomers like Ke Huy Quan’s Ouroboros as they try to navigate the sudden and explosive growth of the MCU timeline. In expected Loki fashion, every answer raises even more questions. While the overarching story of Loki season 2 is reasonably straightforward so far, there are still plenty of reveals that form the foundation for the season to come.
It doesn’t come as much of a shock, but Loki season 2 opens up immediately where Loki season 1’s cliffhanger left off. Having been kicked through a time door by Sylvie, Loki has arrived in an unfamiliar TVA, complete with He Who Remains imagery and a Mobius who doesn’t recognize him. Fortunately, and more surprisingly, the mystery of where – or rather, when – Loki ended up is answered quite quickly.
11 Loki Season 2 Starts In The Past, Not A Different Timeline
When Loki ends up in a different TVA at the end of Loki season 1, it appears as if he may have found himself in an alternate timeline branch from where he started. However, Loki season 2 quickly clears up that that isn’t the case. Instead, Loki has been sent to the past. That clearly explains why Mobius doesn’t recognize him (they haven’t met yet), but the visual changes to the TVA remain a mystery.
10 Loki Is Suffering A Condition Called Time Slipping
For reasons unknown to him and viewers, Loki is suffering from a condition called Time Slipping. Because of this, he finds himself being pulled back and forth between the past, present, and future. The events of the Loki season 2 premiere have supposedly stopped this effect, but time will tell if it actually worked.
9 He Who Remains Was A Public Figure In The TVA’s Past
The big plot twist of Loki season 1 is that the Time-Keepers are not, in fact, real, and He Who Remains is secretly pulling the TVA’s strings from the end of time. However, Loki season 2 reveals that wasn’t always the case. In the past that Loki keeps unwillingly revisiting, imagery of the Time-Keepers is replaced with paintings, statues, and references to He Who Remains. At some point, presumably shortly before a TVA-wide mind wipe, the Kang variant changed his mind and removed himself from the picture.
8 Ravonna Renslayer Helped He Who Remains In The Multiverse War
When Loki first finds himself in the past TVA, he plays an audio recording from a device on a wall. The voice is clearly Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains. Interestingly, the recording captures him thanking the TVA’s Ravonna Renslayer for her help in his victory during the Multiverse War in which countless Kangs all battled and almost destroyed time itself. Whether she remembers this period in her life and what it means for the future is yet to be seen.
7 Time Does Seem To Exist In The TVA After All
One of the unique elements of the TVA is that it supposedly exists outside of time. However, Loki’s Time Slipping seems to imply that’s not the case. Ouroboros seems familiar with the condition, but he seems to think that it’s impossible, given that traveling through time in a place without time doesn’t make sense. However, since it’s clearly happening – and since the episode teases more about the TVA agents’ mind-wiping – the TVA must exist in a more traditional environment than previously thought. Where or when that is, however, remains a mystery.
6 Ouroboros, The TVA’s Engineer, Is Full Of Knowledge & Mystery
One of the best reveals in Loki season 2 episode 1 is the introduction of Ke Huy Quan’s TVA engineer, Ouroboros. On the surface, the man who literally wrote the book on the TVA and its mechanical workings can certainly reveal plenty of interesting tidbits moving forward in the season. However, there appears to be more going on with him. Given he remembers Mobius visiting him 400 years earlier, but Mobius has no recollection, he may be the only TVA agent who’s never had his memory wiped. Or, at least, it’s been a lot longer.
5 Loki’s Time Slipping Seems To Break The MCU’s Time Travel Rules
Given that Avengers: Endgame introduced time travel as a major element, it makes sense that it also defined how time travel works in the MCU. Simply put, any changes made in the past don’t affect the time traveler’s own future. Instead, changes create a new branched timeline. In theory, this avoids grandfather paradoxes in which a time traveler can undo their own existence. However, Loki’s actions in the past contradict this, having immediate effects on the future. For example, Ouroboros instantly remembers meeting Loki as Loki is simultaneously speaking to him in the past. The ability to affect the future from the past is wildly powerful and may be a key to the fight against Kang moving forward.
4 The Temporal Loom Is The Key To Keeping Time Functional
In Loki season 2, episode 1, the TVA is suffering power issues. Ouroboros immediately recognizes that this must be because of a problem with the massive Temporal Loom. How exactly the device works isn’t explained in detail, but, in the abstract, it takes every branch of time and collects them into a single, physical strand with a defined and stable shape. However, as the TVA has (perhaps temporarily) stopped pruning, the Temporal Loom is overloaded with timelines. Short of resuming pruning and killing millions, no answer is presented as to how to fix it.
3 Loki And Mobius Use The Temporal Loom To Stop Loki’s Time Slipping
Loki’s Time Slipping is understandably frustrating, and O.B. explains to him and Mobius that the Loom can be used to stop it. Mobius has to walk into the seemingly endless chamber containing the device and then harpoon Loki out of the timeline after the latter can prune himself at precisely the right time. It’s convoluted, but the plan seemingly works. Time will tell if Loki’s Time Slipping is really fixed or not.
2 Loki Temporarily Finds Sylvie In The Future
As Loki is waiting for Mobius to prepare the Loom, he Time Slips into the future for the first time. There, the TVA is evacuating – possibly because of the Loom breaking down in the past – and Loki can’t find a Time Stick. While wandering the halls, he sees Sylvie appear in an elevator, though he’s soon after pulled back into his present time. Who pruned him – and why a phone was mysteriously ringing in his presence right before Sylvie appeared, are mysteries left for another episode.
1 Sylvie Travels To Broxton, OK, In 1982
Loki season 2 episode 1 contains a short mid-credits scene that seems to reveal where Sylvie went after killing He Who Remains in the Loki season 1 finale. She ends up in Broxton, Oklahoma, in the year 1982 and doesn’t seem to have chosen that time or place on purpose. Once there, she walks into a fast-food restaurant and is seemingly swept away by her newfound freedom. She closes the Loki season 2 premiere with the optimistic line, “I want to try everything.”
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