Loki Season 2 Premiere Review

Get your Big Mac ready and your pointy golden helmet on! Loki is back! After a whirlwind season 1, season 2 of the hit Marvel series has already left fans excited for more.

Below, let’s recap and review the season 2 premiere. Plus, we’ll make some minor predictions for the rest of the season.

---

You’ve Got Mail

Unlike poor Loki, there aren’t any time skips in this premiere. It plows full steam ahead, picking up right where the season 1 finale left off after Sylvie kicked Loki through a Time Door. Loki, a fugitive and trespasser, runs from Mobius, who doesn’t recognize him. But Mobius isn’t the only one who doesn’t know Loki. It’s everybody. Loki flees as a familiar face looms over an unfamiliar TVA — one decorated with idolatry for He Who Remains.

Minutemen quickly corner Loki, so he dives off the side of the building and lands in a mail cart. After breaking a massive statue depicting He Who Remains (or possibly Kang), Loki then crashes into a room where Casey is sweeping the floor. Casey obviously doesn’t recognize him. Then, Loki time slips. He figures out he was in the past when he lands in a different version of the office and notices the spot where he crashed into the floor has a crack, one that he just made moments ago.

---

“Make it make sense.”

Yes, in the past. Even though there isn’t supposed to be a past for the TVA. That’s not how things work there. Yet Loki is nonetheless time slipping between the past and the Prime Timeline. Meanwhile, in the Prime Timeline, Hunter X-5 antagonizes Mobius and Hunter B-15, who are still processing Loki’s revelation that everyone at the TVA is a variant. X-5 summons them to the War Room, where General Dox and Judge Gamble of the new judges’ council are waiting.

All the while, Loki continues to time slip. It seems very painful. He tries following Mobius and B-15 but ends up in a past version of the War Room. There he discovers tape recordings from He Who Remains, speaking with Ravonna Renslayer and praising her as his co-conspirator. It’s not a huge shock or revelation that Ravonna is working with He Who Remains, but it’s good to know exactly where her loyalties lie.

---

Change Starts Now

B-15 pleads her case that the TVA is destroying rather than protecting. Remember, each timeline pruned equals millions of lives lost. Surprisingly, Judge Gamble is swayed and decrees no more pruning. Not all of the TVA officials agree with this decree. Tensions grow as secret plots threaten the stability of the institution and its hierarchy.

In hopes of convincing the other leaders to help his cause, Loki stabs the mural behind the judges’ table with a Timestick. He exposes a relief of He Who Remains and reveals who they’ve all been working for this entire time. Some people buy it. Others ignore the warning, preferring to blame Sylvie for this disturbance.

---

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

Dox dispatches X-5 to find Sylvie. The TVA hopes to uncover exactly what happened at the End of Time because they don’t fully trust Loki. We have to admit that’s fair. The only person who fully trusts the trickster is agent Mobius. Mobius gets the full story and helps Loki find a solution to his time slipping because he wants a “Loki That Remains” — which is perhaps one of our favorite jokes in the entire episode.

---

Repairs & Advancement

Mobius takes Loki down to Repairs & Advancement. This secluded TVA office is where our favorite duo meet with Ouroboros, AKA O.B., who says he hasn’t seen Mobius in 400 years. However, Mobius continues to blank on these vital memories, which is more evidence that He Who Remains (or someone working for him) wiped the TVA employees’ minds multiple times.

In a fun little sequence, past and present conversations loop into one another and merge as O.B. reveals the next steps — mirroring the mythological story behind O.B.’s full name. Loki and Mobius need a complex device called a Temporal Aura Extractor to possibly stop Loki from time slipping. With Loki’s information, Mobius’ guidance, and O.B.’s skill, the trio manage to gather everything they need. Now here comes the hard part.

---

Spaghettification

Of course, the process of using the Temporal Aura Extractor is not easy (or safe). Loki must prune himself so he is released from time, allowing the Extractor to pull Loki completely back into the present. Mobius also has to attach the Extractor to the Temporal Loom. Sounds easy, except he’s gotta be quick about it or else the Loom will peel his skin off by slowly eroding him from time itself. No pressure.

O.B. figures out that the power surges (and Loki’s time slipping) are caused by an overloaded Temporal Loom. The Temporal Loom is “the heart of the TVA” because it refines raw time into physical timeline. With all of the branching timelines caused by Sylvie’s attack, the Loom is getting super overloaded. So to the loom we zoom!

---

The Loom Where It All Happens

B-15 joins our heroes as they head to the Temporal Loom. O.B. suggests just pruning all the branching timelines but B-15 says no — a very favorable bit of character development from our season 1 antagonist. Once with the Loom, O.B. explains that he might be able to retrofit it to handle all the new timelines.

Loki and Mobius therefore have to start in on their Extractor plan right away. As O.B. explains the plan once again, Mobius traces “SKIN?” into some dust along the side of a machine. Get this man some chamomile tea, ’cause he is capital-s Stressed. We empathize, though. After all, Mobius and Loki must be especially fast since O.B. needs to close the blast doors immediately. If he doesn’t, this rampant temporal energy will destroy everything. Unfortunately, this is when Loki suddenly time slips … to the future.

---

Call Waiting

Though they’re in different times, Mobius and Loki go ahead with the plan. They have no other choice. Mobius reaches the Loom and attaches the Extractor. In the future, Loki struggles to find a Timestick he can use to prune himself. Just as their time is about to run out for the mission to work, a ringing telephone draws Loki toward an elevator. Someone is struggling to open it from the inside.

Sylvie reaches through the elevator and says, “There you are.”  The lovers’ reunion, however, is cut brutally short. An unknown assailant prunes Loki from behind and the Extractor pulls him back to the present. He’s propelled through the air by the Loom and launches into Mobius, successfully pushing both men through the closing blast doors. Not leaving time for celebration, Loki says they must find Sylvie.

Meanwhile, Hunters B-15 and D-90 witness hordes of Minutemen being deployed by General Dox. They question whether it’s really all just for Sylvie. We’d bet all of Asgard that it’s not.

---

One Fry Short of a Happy Meal

But wait, there’s more! We get a post-credits scene because it’s a Marvel project, duh. The scene takes place in 1982, on a branched timeline of Broxton, Oklahoma (the location of New Asgard in J. Michael Stracyinski’s 2007 Thor comics). Sylvie steps through a Time Door onto a field. Her bruises and general downtrodden demeanor suggest that she’s just come from her confrontation with He Who Remains in season 1.

Sylvie makes her way into a McDonald’s and asks the cashier how all of this works. He rattles off all of her options while she takes a look around. Seeing the happy humans, she says, “I wanna try everything.” We guess she’ll figure out the bill later.

---

What’s Next?

Of course, the premiere sets up the entire rest of season 2. Everyone is looking for Sylvie. Civil war is brewing within the TVA. All of He Who Remains’ variants are still at large/coming soon to a theater near you. And although Loki is (hopefully) no longer time slipping, we imagine he’ll do a great deal of timeline hopping as he and Mobius set out to avert what could very well be a multiversal apocalypse.

---

What did you think about the Loki season 2 premiere? Share your thoughts in the Sideshow Social Network, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!