S02.E05: Science/Fiction

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Loki traverses dying timelines in an attempt to find his friends, but Reality is not what it seems.

 

Dropping on Disney+ on Thursday, November 2, 2023, at 9pm EDT / 8pm CDT / 7pm MDT / 6pm PDT.

[paigow]

Is Loki passing through a series of causality loops??? Like TNG!Enterprise kept colliding with Bozeman until Data figured out that Riker was indeed correct.. 

[Spartan Girl]

So…the finale is going to be another time heist?

[paigow]

Not a spoiler- One or more Kang variants will show up in the finale as foundation for next gen Avengers movie. Marvel not confirming Kang recast or using completely different villain instead.

[phalange]

It makes so much sense that O.B was a sci-fi writer and a theoretical physicist. And he learned about creating time doors from the TVA manual that he wrote, or technically, will one day write. Another time loop.

When Casey said to his fellow prisoners that they'll be gutted like a fish if they're caught, that was a nice call-back to the first episode when Casey didn't know what a fish was.

So now that Loki can control his time slipping, he can go back to just before the temporal loom exploded. Timely couldn't handle the effects because he's human. It's going to have to be Loki and/or Sylvie who fix it.

[Vikitty]

How the heck are they going to wrap this up in just one more episode? Damn.

[thuganomics85]

Fun seeing what everyone's life was like in their original timeline.  Mobius was obviously a jet-ski salesman, OB was still a scientist but his true passion was wanting to be as sci-fi writer (which he currently was struggling to get off the ground), and Hunter being a pediatrician was a surprise but I can definitely see it.  But my favorite part?  That freaking Casey was one of those prisoners who mysterious escaped Alcatraz back in 1962!  Reminded me of the whole Loki/DB Cooper bit from last season.  I wonder what other examples they could use when it comes to famous disappearances?  The first one that pops into my head is Amelia Earhart.

Glad we got a a lot of Loki/OB moments and Loki/Mobius as well.  Ke Huy Quan really has been a perfect addition to this series and Tom Hiddleston/Owen Wilson continue to be the dynamic duo I never knew I wanted until this show came into creation.

I get why Sylvie just wanted to finally have something resembling a normal life, but it was obvious that this was a problem that wasn't just going to go away and she needed to join up.

The spaghetti-fied scenes definitely were bring back up the Blip/getting dusted memories from Infinity War.

I have no idea how this is all going to get wrapped up in one episode.  Have to imagine that the likes of Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and some form of "He Who Remains" will come back into play as well.

[magdalene]

Two banger episodes in a row! My crack pot theory now is that it is a Loki himself who is leading Loki towards re-creating/creating the TVA.  Loki is the he who remains. What put that notion into my head was that vividly green key lime pie they were eating a couple of episodes ago. Real key lime pie is more of a yellow color.

Am I nuts? I may find out in the last episode.

[arc]

First thing that bugs me, since it came up in the previouslies: the temporal loom is more of a temporal spinning mule, isn't it? "[refining] raw time into a physical timeline" is much more analogous to how fabric yarns and threads are spun from raw staple fibers into a one-dimensional product, rather than a loom that weaves yarns into a two dimensional fabric. (There are many myths about Fates weaving destinies into a tapestry that's basically a sort of sacred timeline, of course, but this show has chosen to make the Sacred Timeline a one-dimensional thing rather than a tapestry.)

Was that girl who broke her arm written to not have lines because that made the most sense, or because they could pay her less if she doesn't have lines? As far as I understand the SAG-AFTRA contracts, she'd be an "under-five" (as in five or fewer lines, totalling 50 words) even if she did get to speak a little.

Whoa, real timeline OB's lab/workshop looks a lot like his TVA workshop.

I didn't recognize Zaniac as a real game, but it turns out it's a deep cut MU reference.

"It's about who" is magnificent cheese and I love it.

4 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

But my favorite part?  That freaking Casey was one of those prisoners who mysterious escaped Alcatraz back in 1962!

Oh wow, I had no idea this was based on a real incident!

[Sakura12]

So was this their variant life or their original timeline life? If it was their variant life then we all doing something they weren't supposed to do. Or is it a time loop and Loki is now the one that took them from their lives and put then in the TVA? 

Making Casey one of the Alcatraz escapees that were never found or seen again was great. OB being a physicist and science fiction author also made sense as with Mobius being a jet ski salesman. I guess that's why B15 was crying when Sylvie showed her, her life. She was a pediatrician that was helping people. 

 

[paigow]

Loki definitely did not retrieve the TVA crew from the Sacred Timeline. However, it is unclear if they were scattered at different points on the same branch or on completely different branches as well.

[MissL]

Ok I like Sylvie but even I’m tired of her being super special. How does she have a temp pad? How did she know where to go to find them? 
 

This show breaks my brain. I think the acting saves all of it. 

[Sakura12]

22 minutes ago, MissL said:

Ok I like Sylvie but even I’m tired of her being super special. How does she have a temp pad? How did she know where to go to find them? 

Slyvie stole He who remains temp pad after she killed him. As for how she found them, Loki may have told her where they were all were. Or she followed his aura with the her temp pad. 

If Mobius was in 2022 did his wife disappear in the Snap? Everyone came back in 2023. Or did that not happen in that time line.

 

[paigow]

The Hiddleston Variant we see now was either removed from his timeline before meeting Alt!Thanos or Alt!Thanos did not behave the same as Prime!Thanos.

[Athena]

Finally an episode of strong character work. Up until now the show has been trying to lay the plot and the ground work on why we should care. I only care about the characters so the plot and villains were secondary.

OB/Loki was great. Ke Huy Quan has really made a difference this season. I liked that he was guiding Loki on the time slipping.

Loved Loki recruiting Dad!Mobius and pleading with him to join. It was almost romantic how Loki said, "You saw something in me," So sweet.

I like Sylvie more when she and Loki are comrades rather than any romance. Their scene in the bar was probably my favourite of hers.

 

[Spartan Girl]

Damn, Loki really has come far. The way he admitted he actually grew to care for Mobius, OB, B15, and Casey and that he wanted to keep having his friends in his life because he didn't know who was alone was just so tragically poignant. Gold star, Tom Hiddlestone.

Of course Mobius was a jetski salesman. The internet is going nuts at how Loki fixed himself up before going to see him. LOL that for a minute he was moving just like that waving inflatable.

I have really enjoyed this season. It was just what I needed after the crap with Secret Invasion.

So if Loki can control his time slipping, might I hope that the stinger in the finale will be him timeslipping for a visit to Thor? Come on, I need closure!!!!!!!!

[arc]

2 hours ago, paigow said:

The Hiddleston Variant we see now was either removed from his timeline before meeting Alt!Thanos or Alt!Thanos did not behave the same as Prime!Thanos.

Yes, per the first episode of the series, he was caught by the TVA almost immediately after escaping with the Tesseract/Space Stone in branched 2012.

[tv-talk]

So is Loki Dr.Who now but with no need of a TARDIS? I feel like I missed any explanation of why he gets to jet around thru time and timelines while everyone else gets spaghetti'd.

It may have been too much for a jet ski salesman to realize, but by leaving with Loki he was in fact leaving his boys. In his reality, he disappeared and his boys were abandoned. Just because Loki could drop him back at the point before he left doesnt mean he didnt leave nor that his boys didnt suddenly lose their father.

Edited November 3, 2023 by tv-talk

[Sakura12]

1 hour ago, tv-talk said:

may have been too much for a jet ski salesman to realize, but by leaving with Loki he was in fact leaving his boys. In his reality, he disappeared and his boys were abandoned. Just because Loki could drop him back at the point before he left doesnt mean he didnt leave nor that his boys didnt suddenly lose their father.

That's why I agreed with Sylvie, Loki is selfish, he just wanted his friends back, he didn't care about their lives or families on that timeline.

They are varients so they are not living the life they were supposed to. They were unfulfilled in their life, that's why they choose to leave with Loki.

Now this is getting into Ke Quan Huy's Everything, Everywhere, All at once territory. Lol

[tennisgurl]

So was that who everyone was in their original lives, or are they from other timelines? They do seem to line up, Mobius is a jet ski salesman (in Ohio!) and single dad, OB is a scientist and struggling author, B15 was a pediatrician, and best of all, Casey was one of the Alcatraz prisoners who famously escaped and was never caught! That's hilarious, I love it, and I loved the call back to Casey not knowing what a fish was in the first episode. Shit is certainly getting real, I don't know how they're going to wrap all of this up in one episode. 

I'm glad that we got some good moments between Mobius and Loki and Loki and OB, he really has been an absolute blessing this season. Its really cool that OB built the machinery needed by reading what he already wrote in the TVA like how he and Timely inspired each other, Ouroboros really was a perfect name for him, he's all time loops and snakes eating tails. 

Finally Sylvie realizes that she cant just ignore everything happening to live her own life, shit is going bad and its going to find her no matter what. 

Loki really has grown, he even admitted that he needs the friends he's made and is worried that without them he will fall back into old habits. Its selfish, but understandable that he wants to have people he cares about back after everything even if they might be better off in their regular lives. If Loki can time skip, will he go back to get some closure with his family? 

What's worse, getting turned to dust or getting turned into spaghettis? 

[arc]

5 hours ago, tv-talk said:

So is Loki Dr.Who now but with no need of a TARDIS? I feel like I missed any explanation of why he gets to jet around thru time and timelines while everyone else gets spaghetti'd.

It may have been too much for a jet ski salesman to realize, but by leaving with Loki he was in fact leaving his boys. In his reality, he disappeared and his boys were abandoned. Just because Loki could drop him back at the point before he left doesnt mean he didnt leave nor that his boys didnt suddenly lose their father.

There was no explanation for why Loki started time slipping, no. Maybe they'll cover it in the next episode or maybe it was just a very plot-convenient side effect of killing HWR.

As for Loki and Mobius: yes, in one sense Loki was selfish. Some of the best moments of this show have been when Mobius (in s1) and Sylvie here break past Loki's self-deceptions to get to real truths. But while Sylvie was right in the bar, Loki's pretext for gathering his friends wasn't entirely wrong either: ignoring the apocalypse doesn't mean the apocalypse will ignore you.

Also, I'm of the opinion that if someone leaves and then returns with time travel to the instant they left, functionally they didn't really leave. Although if they left for a really long amount of perceived time from their end and had life changing experiences, then maybe.

[paigow]

Mobius had to abandon his boys to protect them. Not going with Loki would definitely kill them, while going with Loki was a 50-50 shot....

[tkc]

Fun episode, lots to digest! New Rockstars on YT picked up on a lot of Easter eggs, but this one is great:

On one of the shelves in A.D. Doug's lab (Douglas Adams' lab?) there's a Yankees ball cap. Look familiar?

Edited November 4, 2023 by tkc

[paigow]

4 hours ago, tkc said:

Fun episode, lots to digest! New Rockstars on YT picked up on a lot of Easter eggs, but this one is great:

On one of the shelves in A.D. Doug's lab (Douglas Adams' lab?) there's a Yankees ball cap. Look familiar?

Then the real He Who Remains must be...

[Fool to cry]

Okay I'm putting "spaghettification" as one of the top "things CGI can do better than practical or optical effects" I've seen. Up there with suitcase armor in Iron Man 2!

[tv-talk]

On 11/3/2023 at 8:19 PM, paigow said:

Mobius had to abandon his boys to protect them. Not going with Loki would definitely kill them, while going with Loki was a 50-50 shot....

Oh I get that. However Loki told him his boys would never know he was gone. That isnt how it works. His boys would be searching for him and wondering what happened to their Dad. Police would end up involved, people would say he just up and left them. That's what their reality would become, their string of spaghetti would be one where their Dad disappeared. And the only way to get back to that reality would be Morbius turning back up once he was done saving all of time and reality. Point being, time and reality dont stop because you step into the TARDIS or thru Loki's little door, time keeps moving forward for the people you know- just without you there.

[KerleyQ]

25 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

And the only way to get back to that reality would be Morbius turning back up once he was done saving all of time and reality.

I think this is what Loki was leaning on, that Mobius would come with him, they'd fix everything, and then he would be able to drop him right back to that exact point (similar to Hulk's assurances to The Ancient One in Endgame). 

He was being kind of simplistic and optimistic in his explanation, but, to be fair to him, if Mobius didn't go with him, and they don't fix it, he and his boys would just be spaghettied right out of existence, so... 

I thought it was cute that Mobius's kids were basically Loki and Thor. You have the mischievous one causing trouble and the more responsible one who likes snakes. 

[arc]

6 hours ago, tv-talk said:

Point being, time and reality dont stop because you step into the TARDIS or thru Loki's little door, time keeps moving forward for the people you know- just without you there.

Yeah, but like Bruce said about time travel  in Endgame, that timeline is effectively wiped out when you time travel back and replace the missing thing as if it had never left. (And, given this show, I guess the TVA prunes divergent timelines.)

If the actors' ages are the characters' (bio) ages, then Casey is 12 years younger than Mobius but actually he's 48 years older than Mobius, as ”Frank” was plucked out of 1962. Time travel!

The time loom breaking down and threatening all of existence implies it's foundational to reality, which raises the question of how it was ever built in a universe that didn't initially have one.

[SueB]

New to this forum (Loki, I’m on plenty of other Primetime forums).  
Rewatching this morning and picked up a TON of clues from just this one episodes:

1)As others have said, I believe it IS Loki popping about the timeline and likely the one to rebuild the TVA (or what comes after?). Evidence that someone (Loki maybe vs Victor) is ‘paving the way’ again may be the little bits from at least 3 timeline that seem to go missing or get spaghetti’d
— the TVA book is conveniently there for Loki to pick up 
— The coffee press goes missing (and an ‘invisible something’ opens & shuts the door from the 1982 Oklahoma Record Store
- OB’s ‘tempad’ (from 1994 or 19 month later … not sure) goes missing
- Maybe the McDonald’s Slyvie had  

2) ‘It IS Fiction’ - OB and ‘… not why but who…’ -Loki.  These two quotes plus Loki’s realization that he can control the timeline are what drive me to think Loki is the one controlling things (now).  Facts:
— Loki is immune to Temporal Radiation. Sylvie isn’t (she spaghettifies) but Loki does not.  Loki automatically time jumps away from ‘the end’.   And he can hear the spaghetti (now there’s a phrase I would never expect to say) and touch it (scene in hanger). 
— I think Loki knows only HE can expand the temporal loom because he is immune to temporal radiation.  
 

3) I think OB, Casey, and maybe Victor Timely build the actual TVA.   The technology is all from Casey’s era (late 50’s … Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz in Jan ‘60) and he was the brains of the escape.  So if OB is the temporal mechanic (along with Victor), then Casey is the builder.  That’s where the 1950’s vibe comes from (the phones, the line lie automat), etc….  There’s also later tech but that probably comes from OB.   I think OB wrote the fictional story about 3 aliens (modeled after himself, Casey, and Victor) who control the timeline.  I don’t know when they pick Victor back up again but somehow OB/Victor interact before the brain wipe.  Casey as well.  I think OB has the longest memory.   I think Victor builds Miss Minutes.  
 

Bottom Line: S2EP5 had a ton of clues.  

[kickingnames]

On 11/5/2023 at 3:20 PM, KerleyQ said:

I thought it was cute that Mobius's kids were basically Loki and Thor. You have the mischievous one causing trouble and the more responsible one who likes snakes. 

Someone please tell me this was on purpose — it’s too adorable to be an accident!

[Lassus]

I'm glad people liked this episode but for me it simply put on a plate everything we were told and were able to ascertain from the context anyhow.  Everyone had their own lives and were just grabbed for the TVA.  Loki and Sylvie are the McGuffins.  I'm sorry, I want more surprises and better writing.  This was not that, to me.

I kinda hope OB becomes the villain.  Or perhaps Sylvie.  I hope there's at least ONE surprise in the finale.  I'm not hopeful.  I feel like it will wrap up and it will be as if nothing had happened at all.

[SueB]

45 minutes ago, Lassus said:

Everyone had their own lives and were just grabbed for the TVA.

….

 I feel like it will wrap up and it will be as if nothing had happened at all.

I think it raises the stakes for our characters because I think they will be given a choice to be part of the TVA or not. And a free will choice ti stay in the TVA is better than taken without a choice. 
Casey - TVA is better than jewel thief. He’ll stay
OB - this is his fantasy come true.  He’s all in. 
B-15: she was a doctor so she may choose ti stay because it’s to help mankind
Mobius - he’s a Dad who wants to go home.  If he stays, it’s a tremendous sacrifice. He’s Loki’s best friend, we’ll see Loki offer to sacrifice his relationship with his best friend rather than be able to see him.  So Mobius might go. 
 

I think the entire season IS an ouriboris and we are supposed to start the TVA and the sacred timeline again.  The wrinkle is Renslayer and Victor Timely/Kang/He Who Remains.  Will Renslayer/Timely be back or will Loki be in charge.  Not sure. 

[Lassus]

30 minutes ago, SueB said:

I think it raises the stakes for our characters because I think they will be given a choice to be part of the TVA or not.

Fair.  Subjectively, for me, it just sorta turned into TOO MANY characters to try and care about over the course of this few amount of episodes.  

[Gummo]

I love the character work on this show but the plot has basically climbed up its own ass and disappeared. 

WHY did all the TVA people get amnesia when they were bounced out of the TVA? WHY are they all on variant timelines, not the original, sacred timeline? So were those their real lives or just more variant nonsense?

Sylvie is a goddess of Asgard. Why is she so set on living on Earth of all places? WHY not a variant Asgard? Or some other, more advanced planet/realm?

Loki is the God of Mischief and a powerful sorcerer. Too bad everyone involved with the show's forgotten that, to the point whete they have to deus ex machina him some new, undefined time-shaping power.

I'm still enjoying the season, but I can't help feeling they missed the mark somehow and made the story needlessly complicated. 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Gummo

[johntfs]

3 hours ago, Gummo said:

I love the character work on this show but the plot has basically climbed up its own ass and disappeared. 

WHY did all the TVA people get amnesia when they were bounced out of the TVA? WHY are they all on variant timelines, not the original, sacred timeline? So were those their real lives or just more variant nonsense?

Sylvie is a goddess of Asgard. Why is she so set on living on Earth of all places? WHY not a variant Asgard? Or some other, more advanced planet/realm?

Loki is the God of Mischief and a powerful sorcerer. Too bad everyone involved with the show's forgotten that, to the point whete they have to deus ex machina him some new, undefined time-shaping power.

I'm still enjoying the season, but I can't help feeling they missed the mark somehow and made the story needlessly complicated. 

Haven't actually seen the episode yet. but I think I can take a shot at these.

Why TVAmensia? Because plot.  Maybe they're on variant timelines because they were variants.

Think about Sylvie's life for a bit.  From the (Asgard equivalent) age of maybe 8-12 she's been running from the TVA and hiding in places where everyone there dies over and over and over again.  She slew the person ultimately responsible for all that and apparently that somehow made things worse.  Maybe she doesn't want to work at Mickey D's forever, but just wants to chill out there for maybe a good decade where her worst problem will be "Oh shit!  That guy did want fries with that after all!"

[ItCouldBeWorse]

10 hours ago, Gummo said:

WHY did all the TVA people get amnesia when they were bounced out of the TVA? WHY are they all on variant timelines, not the original, sacred timeline? So were those their real lives or just more variant nonsense?

Haven't we been told they were all variants since the 1st season?  B-15 got very upset when she found out, Mobius didn't want to know who he had been, etc.