Loki season 2 picks up right where the first season left off, with a cliffhanger that sets up new challenges for the God of Mischief in his second solo MCU adventure.
In the premiere episode of Loki season 2, the protagonist faces a new reality: a TVA that is ruled by Kang the Conqueror. Moreover, Loki’s former friend, Owen Wilson’s Mobius, has no memory of him as the trickster starts to travel through different points in time.
The episode focuses on Loki’s dilemma as he tries to find a way to restore Mobius’ memories and escape Kang’s tyranny. He learns that the reason why Mobius does not recognize him is because he accidentally jumped into the past, which also leads to some Easter eggs for the fans.
The episode is full of chaos and confusion, as the present timeline shows Loki, Mobius, and Ke Huy Quan’s O.B. trying to stop Loki’s temporal jumps before they cause irreversible damage, while the rest of the TVA deals with the consequences of He Who Remains’ demise. To help you understand the complex and time-bending plot, here is a detailed explanation of Loki season 2, episode 1’s ending.
1. Where Loki Travelled in the Past and Future
Loki season 1’s finale continues with Loki time-traveling to the TVA’s past. He dodges the TVA soldiers who chase him and runs into a building where he meets Casey, who does not recognize him. Loki then accidentally returns to the present as he looks for Mobius to tell him what is happening. He keeps switching between the past and present while searching for Mobius until he ends up in the TVA’s War Room in the past.
There, he sees videos of He Who Remains and Ravonna Renslayer from the Multiversal War and notices that the War Room walls have the original images of He Who Remains’ face. Loki then comes back to the present and finally meets Mobius and B-15, who remembers him, bringing together the characters for Loki season 2. Loki tries to explain the complicated situation to everyone there, but Mobius decides to take Loki to Ouroborus (or O.B. for short) to try to fix the time-traveling.
Loki keeps time-traveling more often from then on, which is sometimes funny because we don’t see where he goes until O.B.’s first scene. In this scene, Loki speaks to the past O.B. while Mobius talks to the present O.B. Finally, Loki comes back to the present but Loki season 2, episode 1 has another surprise in the end.
The last time-travel of the episode takes Loki to the TVA’s future. Here, everything is a mess. Loki desperately looks for a Timestick to do his part in O.B.’s plan to stop the time-travelling but he meets Sylvie in the future before that. Sylvie acts like she has been looking for Loki before someone unknown prunes him, sending him back to the present with Mobius and O.B. before the episode is over.
2. How Does Loki Stop Time-Traveling?
The explanation of how Loki stopped time-traveling is a bit complicated. O.B.’s plan to stop Loki’s time-traveling was to make Loki prune himself to erase all his traces from every timeline. But for the plan to work, Loki had to prune himself at the same time as Mobius turned on a device called a Temporal Aura Extractor. O.B.’s idea was that these two things happening together would let Loki be pulled back into the present to stop him from slipping through time.
At the end of Loki season 2, episode 1, this plan is executed. Loki travels to the TVA’s future as he looks for a Timestick to prune himself when the time is right. Mobius sets up the Temporal Aura Extractor, connected to the Temporal Loom – the part of the TVA that turns raw time into physical timelines. Finally, Loki is pruned in the future by someone unknown which means the Temporal Aura Extractor can pull him into the present, stopping the time-traveling for good.
In this context, there are three other questions that need to be answered.
3. Who Pruned Loki in the Future?
The big question of Loki season 2, episode 1, was who the person was who pruned Loki in the future. As Loki is surprised by Sylvie’s sudden arrival, someone prunes him from behind before he can learn anything else, leaving both Loki and the audience clueless. Also, Loki goes back to the present, so it is not shown who was the one who pruned him. The probable answer is that it was Loki himself who did it. Loki now knows that, at some point, a version of himself will show up at that exact moment in time needing to be pruned to stop the time-travelling so he decides to do it himself.
4. Why is Sylvie in the TVA?
The identity of the person who pruned Loki in the future is not the only mystery in this scene. Another one is the reason for Sylvie’s presence in the TVA. The answer to this is unknown as of now. It is possible that these events will be revealed from the viewpoint of Loki and Sylvie as the season progresses since they occur in the future. It can even be revealed in the final episode as the season explores more complex time-travel narratives than its predecessor.
5. The Mysterious TVA Phone Call
The source of the TVA phone call in the future is another unresolved mystery in the Loki season 2 premiere. As Loki encounters Sylvie just before being pruned, a phone can be heard ringing in the TVA. The phone is emphasized by both Loki and the camera, implying that the caller will be significant for the series’ overall plot. However, the identity of this enigmatic caller remains unknown as of the end of Loki season 2, episode 1.
6. Loki S2 Premiere Changes MCU’s Time-Travel Rules
The Loki season 2 premiere has a fascinating aspect in that it alters the established time-travel rules of the MCU. In Avengers: Endgame, Hulk said that it was not possible for someone who had gone back to the past to change the future. Hulk clarified that anything that happens in the past just creates a new timeline. However, Loki showed otherwise.
Loki was directly affecting the events of the present when he time-slipped into the past, as shown in his conversation with O.B. This could be because of the different time rules of the TVA, but still, it shows that the MCU’s time-travel rules are changing with Loki season 2.
7. All About ‘The Temporal Loom’ in Loki S2
Loki season 2 introduces a new element of the MCU multiverse: the Temporal Loom. O.B. explains that the Temporal Loom is the part of the TVA where raw time is processed to produce physical timelines. O.B. also says that the infinite branching of the timeline because of He Who Remains’ death is making the Temporal Loom overload which is causing Loki’s time-slipping and the power surges at the TVA.
The implications of this for the MCU multiverse could be enormous. O.B. mentions that he will try to modify the Temporal Loom to cope with the endless growth of branching timelines. This could imply that the events of Loki season 2 essentially create the multiverse as O.B. solves this problem which allows countless timelines to coexist. The Temporal Loom’s other effects on the MCU multiverse will hopefully be revealed in the next five episodes of Loki season 2.
8. What General Dox Wants to do with Sylvie
The main objective of General Dox for Sylvie in Loki season 2 is to obtain information. The TVA is in turmoil after the death of He Who Remains, which makes higher-ups like General Dox somewhat anxious. As a consequence, Dox states that she needs to learn exactly what transpired at the End of Time.
To achieve this, Dox starts deploying every single available TVA agent to pursue Sylvie and extract an account from her, something that will surely create problems in future episodes of Loki season 2.
9. About Loki
Loki is an American TV series created by Michael Waldron for Disney+ and Marvel. It is based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name and is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with events of the series taking place after Avengers: Endgame.
Tom Hiddleston reprises his role as Loki along side new faces like Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant, Sasha Lane, Eugene Cordero and Erika Coleman.
After stealing the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, Loki is apprehended by the mysterious Time Variance Authority (TVA) and their Time-Keepers. Loki is given a choice between fixing all the timelines he broke with the Tesseract and death at the hands of the TVA.
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