I don’t know what it is, exactly, but somehow I’m finding this season somewhat unfocused. I think the stakes are somewhat abstract, for me—I mean, what exactly is the end game? Stabilize the ‘temporal loom’ so that it doesn’t have a problem with branching timelines? What exactly is going to happen if the loom stops working—OB said that they all die, but does that just mean those at the TVA, or everyone? Does the whole multiverse/fabric of spacetime/whatever depend on the loom? Or is that just something He Who Remains built to facilitate the creation of the sacred timeline, and whose malfunction is now threatening all timelines?
Anyway, somehow it seems like just a big… ball of stuff, used to justify various fetch quests, which doesn’t really come together into anything coherent as of now…
Did you ever see The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks? The second Mr. Timely started talking I thought it was an homage to that role. It’s also a lazy way of saying to the audience that this one is different than the one you saw last season, “this one talks funny.”
By sheer coincidence, I just finished reading Devil in the White City by Erik Larson about a week before episode 3 dropped. It was very cool to see the fair (and historical references) depicted pretty close to the book.
This episode was engaging but the show is kind of losing me. I have no idea what Renslayer actually wants and I have no idea why Loki cares so much about the TVA beyond “He’s the title character so he’s a good guy”.
Yeah that’s pretty much it. And he’s the one who time jumped so he really knows the stakes.
I mentioned elsewhere i HOPE the series is setting him up to be the Loki who escapes the Loki Curse. It would tie into all the themes of free will and predestination.
But I don’t have much faith in the MCU to do more then make this series the DLC to the main quest line
Renslayer wants to bring back He Who Remains and is still a true believer of the “Sacred Timeline” dogma.
Loki is trying to prevent all the timelines from being destroyed, although whether this is out of whatever feelings he has for Sophie, the fact that he and everyone else in the TVA are variants themselves, or just because he’s now decided mass murder is bad remains to be seen. I’m assuming it’s the first one primarily.
It feels to me like typically when a genre show does this kind of existential kablooey, the next episode usually winds up with all the main cast separated, in a seemingly normal-ish world with others that know them as friends, lovers, co-workers, etc in some kind of alternate life-reality. Cue at least six to fifteen episodes of the confused characters adapting to their new world, convincing those around them they’re really someone else (or failing to hide that fact), and unravellling the overall mystery of how to reunite and return to their previous reality (if possible).
Yeah, well, we don’t have time for that.
Possibilities…
Everyone is still displaced to alternate timelines, meet some Kang variants, some have Tempad-equivalents they utilize (with or without the owner’s approval) to reunite. Form new TVA? Decide to have new lives, pruning branches was just genocide anyway!
Alternatively, the entire TVA (outside of the Loom Room) is displaced from its out-of-time bubble universe into a timeline (Sacred, Branched, whatever). The TVA clocks start ticking, the whole facility is floating in open space subject to all the normal rules of that timeline. They have time … to decide if OB and the others want to build a new Time Loom and resume the TVA in some form or fashion (but doing what, now?) Or to simply work to return everyone to their original timeline realities.
I assume Loki will wake up in a completely white space and have an in-depth conversation with someone important. Maybe be faced with some critical choice of which the fate of the multiverse depends…
The whole bootstrap paradox exchange between Timely and Ouroboros (which I just realized is the name for the symbol of a snake eating itself) over the TVA Manual was fun.
The story is a bit uneven. In fact, I would say the entire “Multiverse Saga” story line from What If through Loki, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, and Quantumania has felt a bit uneven. They’ve hinted at some of the apocalyptic-level consequences of messing with the multiverse in some of those earlier works. But so far it just kind of feels like they are trying to prevent the shutting down of some weird time bureaucracy and keeping some dork from sitting on his self-appointed time throne at the end of the universe where he does…something.
Oh! I forgot about the White Void Room trope! Yeah, that’s a likely choice. Also lets them save money for other CGI stuffies later on. Or Loki (and maybe Sylvie) could have a talk with a CGI character that everyone will criticize because White Void makes it look even more unreal.
Yes the bootstrap was fun, it also reminded me that Renslayer dropped off the TVA manual in the Sacred Timeline but when everyone went to meet up with Victor, it was noted as a Branched Timeline. So the Sacred Timeline Victor is still free to go branch into all the Kangs Who Remain.
I think the Multiverse might have been a bridge too far for mainstream audiences. I love alternate histories and parallel universes but I’m a sci fi nerd. I have more than one friend who is not at deep in it who have checked out of current Marvel because “it’s too weird”. It worked in Spider-Man because the Multiverse stuff was really just hand waving to make a meta joke about how many times that character has been rebooted in films and that worked.
I had always felt the villain after Thanos should have been The Red Skull. Before they made him a toothless monk, he was the one Villain more evil and probably the most terrifying to have access to the Infinity Gauntlet. Moreso than Thanos even. If fact, that was my personal fan theory before Infinity War where the story might go. But they went a different way.
To be clear I love the concept of infinite universes. Those kind of stories are often my favorite but I think it is hard to get the “normies” on board and they have been coasting on fumes and good will in this current phase.
I assume the MCU audience accepts a certain amount of “weird”. The problem IMHO with multiverses is that it tends to render everything moot. Consequences don’t matter because they can always be reset or moved to another multiverse where things are favorable. So then the writers need to set up arbitrary “rules” and “guardrails” to drive the story.
In all fairness, ‘Loki’ has done a great job of making us feel like each variant is an actual person from their own actual universe and not just some “copy” to be used as cannon fodder or a “spare” to drive the story. i.e this “Loki” is actually a separate person from the one we know from Avengers through Endgame. The different versions of Spiderman. So on and so forth.
OTOH, there are some aspects of the multiverse the MCU has not done well or has done inconsistently. For example:
In all the infinite multiverses, could Wanda not have found one where her children were orphaned so she wouldn’t need to go on a crazy rampage (although IIRC, part of her rampage was acquiring the power to travel the multiverse).
Where was the TVA to take Doctor Strange or Ultron to task in “What If?”
And I know it’s part of the fun of time travel / multiverse shit, but how does “time” actually work in the TVA? Like:
OB hasn’t seen Mobius in 400 years, relative to what?
They can travel to 1893 or 2023 or the end of time itself as easily as opening a door. And they can see a representation of the timelines from start to finish in that Time Loom thing. So is everything literally happening everywhere all at once?
Loki keeps warning that “Kang is coming”…but when?
If they are running out of time before the Time Loom thing explodes, can they just jump back a few days or weeks in the TVA so they have more time to prepare their device?
I guess I don’t want them to explain it too much beyond letting us know when things are “urgent” vs “oh lets travel back to this date”. I can except that the Time Loop is a visual representation of a nonlinear, non-subjective big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff we can comprehend.
Also, when Loki pruned himself in front of Sylvie and told her “it will make sense”, I had forgot about the first or second episode where Loki pruned himself to stop the time slips.
I also liked the exchange between Loki and Sylvie when she says all this “feels like playing God” and Loki glibly tells her “we are gods”. It wasn’t in Loki’s characteristic style of declaring himself a “god” and demanding people obey him. More like they’ve been declaring themselves “gods” forever and now they’ve been saddled with actual god-like responsibilities to save or destroy universes.
Which reminds me. Someone up-thread suggested they should show what happens when a universe is pruned so we can get a sense of the apocalyptic nature of what is actually happening to untold trillions of sentient beings. Does the universe simply wink out of existence before anyone realizes what happens or does everything go crazy like during Dr Strange’s crazy experiments before collapsing into a singularity?
Like they are still pretty casual about the TVAs power. That made sense in the first season (ie the drawers filled with Infinity Stones as paperweights).
Miguel does exactly that, replaces himself in another universe so he can have his family back. The universe collapses on him anyhow. Also, the Darkhold was impacting Wanda’s ability to be rational about things.
My theory on the TVA not showing up elsewhere/when is because those branches don’t veer off far enough to get pruned or they somehow otherwise fall into a “supposed to happen” category. We could also speculate that while the TVA seems all-powerful there are some things they miss.
They cannot time travel within the TVA, only outside of it. The first episode of season 2 had numerous characters saying it was impossible for Loki to have been in a past or future TVA. In later episode they know that he has done it because they have seen it but they still can’t do it themselves.
So I think I missed something, or possibly several somethings. For one, how did Renslayer, supposedly abandoned at the end of time, suddenly show up at the TVA? Did she have access to a time pad? Or is Ms Minutes just somehow able to open time portals?
For another, what exactly is her motivation? Revenge? Power? Just seemed kinda out there, all-out murdering Dox and her crew like that.
