(Image via thecosmiccircus.com)
Business Manager: Brendan Flaherty
Email: bflaherty1@umassd.edu
BEWARE: LOKI SEASON 2 FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD
After much anticipation, the finale for Loki’s second (and likely final) season has been released on Disney+ – and fans love every second.
This series aired on June 9th, 2021, and took the Marvel fan base by storm. According to an article from Looper, “‘Loki stands at the top of the heap for Day 1 watchers with a whopping 890,000 viewers.”
This is impressive compared to the Day One viewer counts for other Marvel shows, such as WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Neither of these shows’ Day 1 viewer counts matched the hype this show had to offer.
For those unfamiliar, the show follows an facinating character from the Marvel cinematic universe named, you guessed it, Loki.
Loki is known as a trickster, a villain, and an overall well-rounded and compelling character to watch whenever he appears on the screen.
Tom Hiddleston’s depiction of Loki is really well done and fairly funny from time to time.
It’s honestly a shame that we hadn’t seen much of Loki before this show, as until the show, there wasn’t enough content for viewers to fully understand his character.
Thankfully, the season finale has given us a satisfying conclusion to Loki’s story.
Fans of the character know very well that Loki tends to come and go throughout the Marvel films and shows, but this conclusion feels solid and final.
The character has “died” a multitude of times throughout the various movies he has been a part of, such as Thor, Thor: The Dark World, and most notably in Avengers: Infinity War.
However, as revealed in Avengers: Endgame, Loki escapes his death in Infinity War, granting him the chance to become a main character in his own show.
The version of Loki that escapes death is an older iteration of the character, which sets up the start of an enthralling character in which the trickster learns that he doesn’t always have to be the story’s villain.
However, before reaching the finale and the close of Loki’s character arc, Loki season two followed up with all of the previous season’s characters that hadn’t finished their storylines. This included characters that were already established, as well as some new ones, too!
For starters, the character of Mobius, played by Owen Wilson, returns for the second season, finally getting more depth to his character.
Some other characters get to share the spotlight as well, including Ravonna Renslayer, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, He Who Remains, played by Jonathan Majors, and Sylvie Laufeydottir, played by Sophia Di Martino.
One new character introduced in the second season is Ouroboros, played by the popular Ke Huy Quan. Ouroboros is a genius technician and scientist who works for the Time Variance Authority, or the TVA.
Ke Huy Quan’s performance in the show was amazing, as always. Fans can be sure to look forward to his performance throughout the season.
The Finale
The plot of Loki season two revolves around Loki being stuck in a state of random and unwanted “time slipping,” where he randomly teleports from place to place throughout the endless possible universes.
Although it initially seems a bit random, there’s a reason for this time slipping.
It is quickly realized that the new branching universes stem from the loss of He Who Remains and the sacred timeline, which is the plot of the season one finale.
Loki and the gang are tasked with upholding the stability of the infinite timelines emerging.
They plan to work with a version of He Who Remains to fix the timeline. But the plan does not succeed, and Loki is forced to watch as the world he knows and the TVA are destroyed.
Loki then time slips from one universe to another, showing him all the different versions of the people he knew before they were converted to being TVA members.
We see that in another universe, Mobius is a Jet Ski salesman, finally bringing purpose to his love for Jet Skis.
We also see Sylvie’s longing for a simple life and the ability to enjoy the smaller things. Although this was met with criticism from fans, it does make sense with her character, having never been able to relax and always be on the run.
By the end of the finale, Loki learns to use his powers and realizes that he must rewrite history. But each time Loki tried to fix the machine that upheld the life of all the timelines, new problems emerged.
It was funny to think of all the times that Loki had gone through the same event, over and over again, just to try again to fix the machine.
However, time and time again, Loki fails, making him think back to how this was all caused. The cause is that Sylvie killed He Who Remains, effectively plunging the multiverse into chaos.
He tries to stop her from killing him, but she is so passionate in her pursuit that there is no way for Loki to stop her. She quite literally says over and over again, “If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to kill me.”
This leaves Loki with the difficult choice of either killing Sylvie to protect the multiverse or fixing the machine that upholds all the timelines – both of which seem impossible.
As a viewer watching this episode, I wondered what Loki could do. It was fun to figure out how Loki might fix this problem.
After much contemplating and talking with Sylvie, he figures out what to do.
He then takes it upon himself to fix the machine by becoming the conduit for all the timelines to exist within. The last thing he tells his friends is: “I know what kind of god I need to be, for you, for all of us.”
Thus, Loki takes all the timelines and allows them to thrive using his powers, creating a sort of tree-like structure for them to exist on. Going along with the “branching timelines” theme, no pun intended.
This also plays into the episode’s title, “Glorious Purpose,” as Loki has found his purpose.
The finale brings an overall satisfying conclusion to Loki’s story. It allows Tom Hiddleston to move on from this character, as he has played Loki for over a decade.