Double Trouble in Loki Episode #2

He’s faced thunder gods, Avengers, fire giants, and even his own death – and now, Loki’s facing what may be his greatest challenge of all: on the job training. As a coerced consultant for the TVA, Loki’s tasked with tracking down his variant self, but being a team player has rarely been one of the God of Mischief’s greatest strengths.

Armaan Babu: It’s time for Loki to face one of his darkest selves. Thankfully, I don’t have to do the same, as instead of another Time Variant Armaan from last week, I have the good fortune to be discussing this with guest writer Reagan Anick! Welcome, Reagan, would you like to introduce yourself?

Reagan Anick: Thanks Armaan. Hello there! I’m Reagan, Loki has been my favourite character ever since I first saw Thor (2011) at age 10 and I’m super excited to get to talk about him today. I have many thoughts about this episode and am looking forward to unpacking them with you Armaan.

First Day on the Job

Armaan: Excellent! So, after a rather murderous opening showing us just how dangerous this variant version of Loki is, we get to catch up with the version of Loki we’re more familiar with. It turns out that he’s not just giving advice, but is being trained to know everything that a full TVA agent themselves would know, trained by Miss Minutes herself. 

Reagan: I loved the interaction between Loki and Miss Minutes, so far all of the moments of levity have really worked. Sometimes with the MCU it will get to the point where things can become quippy in a way that becomes grating like with some moments in Whedon’s Avengers movies and to a certain extent Guardians of the Galaxy but Waldron really balances levity with more serious scenes really well. 

When you have the god of mischief as your main character, you really need someone who can do that or the show isn’t going to be as fun as it should be. 

Armaan: The levity is great – what I’m also enjoying is the way Loki is adjusting to his new circumstances. He’s in over his head, dealing with people who are both more powerful than him but are also more boring than he quite knows how to deal with. He has two standbys he falls back on: Knowledge is power, and theatrical trickery.

Unfortunately, neither of them really impress anyone in the TVA as much as he hoped it would. Nobody cares about the technical differences between illusion projection and duplication casting – just like, later, nobody falls for his attempts to leverage a few advantages for himself as a bluff.

Before we get to that latter bit, though, we’re treated to a glimpse of a number of other Loki variants. It appears that Loki has been trying to disrupt the Sacred Timeline a number of times, and in a number of different ways. How did you enjoy the glimpses of the alternate Lokis we got?

Reagan: I’m glad that we’re being shown multiple variants of Loki because of how the concept of variant Lokis ties back to how many different version of Loki we’ve seen in the comics. In fact, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that  a few of the variants that we caught a glimpse of in this episode are taken directly from the comics. That being said, I think my favourite of the variants we saw was cyclist Loki because it’s just so unexpected and our Loki’s reaction to it was great. 

Armaan: Hiddleston’s look of “I’m not sure if I’m confused or disturbed by this turn of events” is one that consistently sells a lot of the humor of any scene Loki’s in. 

Reagan: Hiddleston has been doing this for long enough and more importantly has enjoyed playing Loki for long enough that he knows exactly how Loki would act in any given situation and he nails it everytime, even in the more subtle moments. 

Armaan: He also nails Loki’s love for monologuing every chance he gets. Now that Mobius has given Loki some incentives beyond “Help us or be erased from existence” – namely, a possible audience with the Timekeepers – Loki jumps at the first opportunity for a shortcut he sees. Examining the massacre his variant self left behind, Loki tries to convince the assembled TVA team that his other self has left behind a trap, and that the only way out of it is to give him some…assurances. 

As I said before, nobody’s buying it – but the fact that Loki had to work as hard as he did on his bluff really underlines just how weak a hand he’s been dealt.

Reagan: The TVA is full of people who know more than him, both about the world and himself. Mobius says it best when says that he’s studied Loki’s entire life, and it isn’t just this Loki that they know. Think about how many variations they’ve seen in however long they’ve existed. Loki himself has been around for a while and the TVA has been around for either just as long or a little bit longer and they’ve been keeping an eye on everything. It makes sense that they wouldn’t fall for his tricks and it makes sense that they’d be wary of him. They aren’t Thor picking up a snake, they’re the ones who watch the timeline and keep it from deviating. 

Armaan: And yet, it’s a Loki that’s giving them more trouble than any other variant they’ve had to deal with. Maybe not the Loki we’re familiar with, but no matter what the timeline, Loki is Loki – and even the one we are familiar with is causing some problems.

I’m amused by how the show doubles down on its dry, office bureaucracy aesthetic. Immediately after Loki’s failed attempts at manipulation, we’re treated to a scene between Mobius and his boss, Ravonna Renslayer, giving us a little insight into what office politics are like. Senior management – the Timekeepers – are taking a more active interest in this Loki case than usual. Perhaps they sense just how much of a threat a Loki can really be – or perhaps, like Mobius, they see the potential that Loki has to be a force for good.

Either way, their active interest is causing a lot of stress for those just trying to do their job, and like all corporate hierarchies, that pressure is being pushed downwards. Mobius is on thin ice.

I Will Not Sit Long in Any Box Built For Me

Reagan: Mobius already being on thin ice prior to the end of the episode makes me wonder how Loki stepping through that portal is going to affect him. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself there.

One of the things that really stuck out to me in this episode was Loki’s reaction to reading that file on Ragnarok. This is 2012 Loki, the last he saw of Asgard was when he had taken it over during Thor and was set to destroy Jotunheim, only to be stopped by his brother and father. The last Loki saw of Asgard involved his father Odin’s disapproval of him. His reaction here, as well as the times when he refers to Asgard as his home and Asgardians as “his people” are so important. Especially when this is coming from 2012 Loki.

Armaan: Last week, it was watching his mother die, directly because of his actions. This week, he reads about the fall of Asgard. Time and time again (if you’ll excuse the expression), he’s being shown horrific events playing out in a timeline he has no control over, that the “proper” version of him was powerless to prevent.

Loki’s a pretty villainous guy, yes, but you start to see why there are so many Loki variants all trying to change his timeline. Loki was never going to be someone who’s comfortable in a box – and the box the TVA are trying to keep him in is pretty terrible. On an instinctual level, there’s no version of Loki that’s not going to try and find a way out of it – which is why this Loki’s able to find the one loophole that everyone else in the TVA has missed. 

Reagan: It’s in his nature to think outside of the box. By virtue of who Loki is, he’s thinking differently than anyone else in the TVA is. He sees the places where trouble can be made without consequences and he knows that if it was him, that’s where he would go. 

Armaan: He is a master of chaos, and even his methods of explaining himself are suitably chaotic, ruining both Mobius’ and poor Casey’s lunches in an attempt to make his point: apocalypses are the best place to hide out from people monitoring every aspect of the timeline, because what you do there makes no difference.

I love how this works as a metaphor: there is freedom in being doomed. When nothing you do matters, your choices are your own.

Last episode seemed to establish pretty firmly that with one sacred timeline, free will is a lie. Just one episode later, however, and we’re seeing at least three holes in that idea, two of them found by Loki – the freedom to be found in the moments before an apocalypse. The fact that the TVA agents are all free to operate as they please, placed as they are outside the timeline. The biggest revelation of all, however, comes from Mobius – the Sacred Timeline isn’t complete. The future? That’s still unwritten. 

I was fascinated by these conversations. What did you think of it?

Reagan: I was raised religious so every time that the concept of the sacred timeline has come up, it’s reminded me of the concept of predestination – the idea that there is a plan for everything that has ever happened and ever will happen and that we’re just following along the way we’re supposed to. At times, that concept has been a comfort to me, but other times, it becomes a chafing point. Both the idea that some force outside of my full comprehension has decided that some people should suffer and the idea that I’ll never have free will so long as something has a plan for me have bothered me at different times in my life.

At this point in my life, the idea that the future is what I make of it and that my fate is in my own hands brings me comfort. It reminds me that I have the power to make decisions that are my own and that those decisions matter. 

I think that the idea that “when nothing you do matters, your choices are your own” is a little faulty in that, when your choices are your own they become what matters because you’re the one making them. By virtue of having free will, everything matters. 

Armaan: That’s beautifully put, and hopefully something the TVA can agree to by the series’ end.

Of course, Loki’s theory is just that – it needs to be put to the test before it can be proven, with a hilarious scene in Pompeii. No matter how outrageous Loki acts there, it makes no change to the timeline, because Pompeii is doomed.

I find the joy Loki displays here to be heartening. After a thoroughly miserable experience of being defeated by the Avengers, captured by the TVA, finding out his glorious purpose is all for naught and being outwitted at every turn by agents who know him so well his moves are predictable, Loki finally gets to let loose and be a little chaotic. More importantly, he finally gets to be right. 

What I’m seeing here is two things that seem to be directly related to each other: A Loki who’s happy, and a Loki who gets to go full nerd.

Loki clearly an intellectual, but he’s grown up in the warrior society of Asgard, always in the overpowering shadow of his jock brother Thor. Though he’s been forced into it, the TVA is finally allowing him to use his mind. To sit down, do research, test his theories, and have that mean something. You start to see the kind of potential that Mobius sees in him – despite how much they’re determined to eradicate free will, life as a TVA agent might actually be happy with.

Reagan: It’s such a fun scene, Loki’s utter delight at getting to cause mayhem is on full display and you can tell that Hiddleston is having so much fun doing that scene.

We Have Ourselves A Multiverse

Armaan: After a little more research, where Mobius proves to be an adorably encouraging mentor, and a heart-to-heart about faith in one’s purpose, the two are finally able to track down the most likely location that the Variant Loki is hiding out in.

It’s here the mood switches from a certain coziness to something a lot more tense. Of course, part of that tenseness is the fact that they’re visiting an apocalypse in the future – not the safest of places. There’s a more immediate threat here, though, if Loki turns out to be correct, because this Roxxcart mall is the lair of a very dangerous, and very lethal variant. 

This Loki is a body-hopper, meaning we get to see a few of the show’s actors do their own version of the Norse god, and I want to give a special shoutout to Austin Freeman, the man who played Randy/Loki. I can’t imagine the kind of pressure he went through having to do his best Tom Hiddleston impression with Hiddleston himself as a scene partner.

Reagan: And that’s on top of the pressure that would already come with having to play a version of Loki, easily one of the most popular characters in the MCU.

Armaan: Ha, yes. I enjoyed this Loki vs Loki confrontation, but it was definitely more of an appetizer than a main course – I’m looking forward to seeing more conversations between the two in upcoming episodes.

The fight the two Lokis have is merely preamble to two major reveals: one, the confirmation that this variant Loki is, in fact, a Lady Loki that fans have been hoping for, but that pales in comparison to the second big reveal: Lady Loki’s plan involves using stolen TVA tech to sent little timeline reset bombs through a number of varying points in history, all at once. This creates too many branching timelines for the TVA to be able to deal with, meaning that as far as they’re concerned, the worst has happened – we have ourselves a Multiverse.

Reagan: I’m not 100% sure that that is Lady Loki, the blonde hair being the biggest factor towards my disbelief. 

But aside from that, there are some notable locations that can be seen on the screen when the timeline starts to diverge. Sakaar, Ego, and Titan just to name a few.  I love seeing easter eggs like that, they’re always fun little details and it’s not hard to imagine how the timeline may have diverged in those locations.

Armaan: All the files and video screens at the TVA necessitate a LOT of pausing just to catch up on all the easter eggs – the show is having a lot of fun with these.

Back to our Variant, however, the blonde hair has some fans thinking this is the MCU’s debut of the Enchantress, but to me, I’m still thinking it’s Loki. The blonde hair intrigues me, because it looks like a version of Loki who chose to look like her mother, Freyja, and that feels like a deliberate choice, given how much they focused on reminding viewers what Freyja looked like, last episode. 

With multiversal madness (sorry, Doctor Strange, Loki got here first) now on the table, though, it’s not impossible that we’re somehow both right – or both wrong. I look forward to finding out. Either way, Sophia Di Martino makes one hel of a first impression, and I can’t wait to see more of her.

I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to have a multiversal breakdown of the sacred timeline so early into the series. With Loki managing to escape from the TVA, the format I assumed the show was going to have has been thrown right out the window. How are you feeling about this ending?

Reagan: I had hoped we would get a little bit more of Mobius and Loki playing off of each other but honestly, I think it’s for the best that we leave the TVA office behind for the time being, that way it doesn’t get too stale.

I’m excited to see where this portal takes Loki and what locations and times we get to see. As well, the trailers promised a sword and as someone who loves swords, I want to see that sword.

Armaan: I am also extremely pro-sword. Pro-sword, pro-chaos, and of course, pro-Loki. We’re getting at least one of the first of those, a lot of the second, and twice as much of the third as usual, so honestly, I’ve got everything to look forward to!

Reagan: In one way or another, I’ve been waiting for Loki to have his spotlight since I was ten years old and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Timely Variant Afterthoughts

• My favorite part of the Loki-Mobius conversation is that, despite Mobius’ frustrations with Loki, he had genuine sympathy for Loki’s loss in regards to Ragnorak.

• Even though Doctor Strange was the first MCU movie to mention the Multiverse, there wasn’t actually one before the Variant created it – only she created branches far in the past. Meaning the Multiverse was created some day in the future in such a way that it’s always been there. Time travel!

• It’s always a treat when Holding Out For a Hero is used in a fight scene, this is probably my second favourite use of it after Shrek 2.