Things weren’t looking so hot at the TVA at the end of last week’s episode of Loki on Disney+. After Timely was vaporized by temporal radiation and the loom seemed to suffer a complete meltdown, we were all left wondering what was going to happen to our heroes. Well, the penultimate episode of the second season is here and we no longer have to wonder.
This fifth episode, titled “Science/Fiction,” wastes no time at all answering some questions. We see Loki open his eyes still a very much intact TVA, but he’s all alone. He wanders the halls looking for answers but instead he begins time slipping again. He finally sees another person in the distance but time slips away before he gets their attention. He runs back to where he saw them but finds the room empty and instead picks up a TVA guidebook. In the background, we see Loki, but not our Loki, arrive and try to get his attention before time slipping away. He’s caught in a time loop. However, before he can do anything about it, he watches as the building around him begins unravel, very much like what we saw happen to Timely. Loki time slips away as the TVA disappears around him.
After the title card, we see Casey, a prisoner in some kind of cell. He breaks out of the prison with two other men and we see that he’s in Alcatraz in 1962 on a branched timeline. As he and the other two men reach the beach, Loki arrives and begins asking questions. However, it becomes evident very quickly Casey has no idea who Loki is and has no recollection of his time at the TVA.
Loki time slips again and finds himself at a McDonalds, then again to a personal watercraft dealership and then to the time theater at the TVA. He then slips again to New York City in 2012 on a branched timeline, where we see B-15 as a doctor. After she wraps up with a patient, B-15 sees Loki arrive in her office and then time slip away.
We then join Mobius, who is fittingly a jet ski salesman named Don in Cleveland in 2022 on a branched timeline. After the fails to close a sale, we Loki arrive mimicking the motion of the wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-man behind him. He enters the shop and tries to explain what’s happened to Mobius but again he is met with confusion and a lack of memory. In the conversation, Mobius, um… Don, reveals that he has two sons and he’s a single dad. Loki slips away again, leaving Mobius (I’m sticking to his original name) alone and confused.
We then get to Pasadena in 1994, again on a branched timeline, where we see O.B. trying to trick a book shop cashier into selling him his own book before the manager catches him and tells him to stop putting his books on the shelf. He returns home and we see that O.B. is a failed writer, with stacks of his unsold book. He’s then startled when Loki time slips in and tells him he has something that is going to be hard for him to believe.
We then cut to O.B. pretty easily believing Loki and explaining he’s essentially one of his stories come to life. Loki is disappointed to learn O.B. is a writer until he explains he’s also a scientist just to earn a paycheck. Loki, excited to learn that O.B. can help him, begins explaining the problem. After a long, confusing back and forth, O.B. tells him he needs to try to control the time slipping. Loki fails to do so and they go back to the drawing board. Eventually, they realize they need the whole group together to match the temporal aura of the moment the TVA disappeared, but they’ll also need a TemPad. Loki realizes he has the TVA guidebook in his jacket and gives it to O.B. to help him build a TemPad before he inadvertently time slips away.
Loki finds himself outside Mobius’ home and watches him struggle to parent his two young sons. Loki approaches him and Mobius tries to sell him a jet ski out of his garage. Loki turns down the jet ski and begins to explain the TVA to him, even calling him Mobius. Mobius begins to feel threatened and doubts what Loki is saying until a time door opens and O.B. walks through. Loki questions how he built the TemPad so fast but O.B. explains that it took him 19 months and he lost his job and his wife. Remember, O.B. was building the TemPad in 1994 and jumped ahead to 2022.
Loki explains to Mobius what is going on and shows him that they can jump to any point in time, by taking him back to the moment in which he arrived at his home. Mobius still doubts the idea of leaving his sons until Loki tells him they’re in danger without the TVA. He finally agrees and we see Loki quickly jump back 2012 to get B-15 and to 1962 to get Casey.
Now, with most of his team together, Loki is almost ready to fix the TVA. It’s ironic that this is a loki who was plucked from the moment in which he had just lost to the Avengers and now we watch him assemble his own team of heroes. B-15 questions if they have everyone and Loki tells her there’s one more.
We then see Sylvie exit the McDonald’s from earlier, with a bag in her hand. As she goes to open the door of her truck, the bag of food disappears in the same way the TVA did. She hears a time door open and turns to see Loki. He begins to explain, in the same way he did to all the others, but she cuts him off and tells him she knows everything. We never really get an answer as to why she remembers everything, but I would assume it’s because she’s a variant of him. She offers to buy Loki a drink.
At a bar, we see an arcade game for Zaniac. It looks like Brad Wolfe’s movie career is thriving in this timeline. Loki and Sylvie debate what they should do with their friends – leave them to live their lives or take them back to the TVA and let them choose. Sylvie asks Loki what he wants and pushes him until he explains that this all boils down to him wanting his friends back and not wanting to be along. This is a storyline that has been brewing for some time now. Loki has been fighting to save the TVA but we haven’t really known why or who he is even fighting. He’s been trying to prevent a threat that was promised by He Who Remains, but no threat has shown itself yet. Sylvie explains they all have to write their own stories now and leave Loki alone at the bar.
Back at O.B.’s, Casey begins to realize he could use the TemPad to rob a bank and Mobius tries to sell B-15 a jet ski before Loki returns. Looking emotionally defeated, he tells the team they should all go home. Meanwhile, Sylvie arrives at a record shop where she seems to have a friendly relationship with the cashier. He gives her a record and she sits in the back of the shop with headphones on. The song is “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” by The Velvet Underground and as it plays we watch the entire timeline start to unravel around Sylvie. She finally had that life she’s wanted all this time and just like that, she has sweet nuthin’.
As Loki tries to explain to the team that they should simply return to their lives, Sylvie arrives to let him know it’s all falling apart. Loki realizes they’re now all together, so they have the temporal aura they need. O.B. reaches for the TemPad but notices it’s disappeared. He blames Casey but then he begins to disappear as well. It begins to feel very reminiscent of Avengers: Infinity War as O.B. also fades away, followed by Mobius and B-15. Syvlie also disappears before all of the surroundings begin to fade away. Loki grasps for anything he can hold onto as we hear Sylvie’s voice from season one saying “do you think what makes Loki a Loki is the fact that we’re destined to lose?” He lets out a scream and then time slips back to moments before Sylvie vanished. Realizing what he’s done, he forces himself to slip again and goes back to the moment Sylvie arrived.
Loki realizes he did it and he stands to tell O.B. he controlled his time slipping. He then says he can “rewrite the story” and jumps back to join O.B. in the TVA before the loom meltdown as the episode comes to a close.
This felt like an incredibly intimate episode for a story that just saw the potential end of all time and space. It was a lot of character building and some great development for both Loki and Sylvie in particular. It was also maybe the biggest cliffhanger for the MCU since the aforementioned Infinity War, so this next week is going to feel like an eternity as we eagerly await the finale. Are we going to see Renslayer in the void? What role will Victor Timely have to play? We He Who Remains’ threat come to light? There are a lot of questions for this season finale to answer.
The second season of Marvel’s Loki is now streaming on Disney+, with new episodes coming every Thursday night.