The third episode of Loki Season 2 largely revolved around the titular Norse god and Mobius tracking down Renslayer and Miss Minutes because OB said Miss Minutes could use her unlimited access at the TVA to help him fix the Temporal Loom. This expedition led them to a variant of He Who Remains, i.e., Victor Timely. Now, Renslayer and Miss Minutes wanted Timely to come with them so that they could go back to the TVA and restore order. Similarly, Loki and Mobius wanted to bring the man to OB so that he could use Timley’s aura to fix the Temporal Loom. And Sylvie wanted to kill him because she had vowed to herself to kill every variant of He Who Remains. However, when she realized that she was about to take a relatively innocent life, she backed off. That allowed Mobius and Loki to take him to the TVA. They didn’t take Renslayer and Miss Minutes with them, though, so that Sylvie could kick them into the Citadel at the End of Time.
Spoiler Alert
OB, Casey, and Victor Timely Try To Find Out A Way To Fix The Temporal Loom
Miss Minutes plays a flashback of the time when He Who Remains and Renslayer (working as a young hunter) stood at the window in the Citadel and vowed to be with each other till the end of eternity. When Renslayer asked He Who Remains to step through the time door and continue to rule over the TVA, he did the classic “I’ll be right behind you” thing. As soon as Renslayer was gone, He Who Remains pulled up Miss Minutes and told her to erase everyone’s memories. This comes as a shock to Renslayer because she realizes that her tenure at the TVA is longer than she thinks it is. By the way, now it makes sense why Renslayer couldn’t remember what Sylvie’s Nexus event was because she was ripped out of her timeline. Renslayer wasn’t being cocky and trying to rile up Sylvie at that moment. She genuinely couldn’t remember her work as a Hunter because she didn’t have any memories of it. That said, Renslayer is hurt because she can’t believe she worked for He Who Remains, thinking that she was his disciple, whereas in reality, she was his colleague. Miss Minutes senses Renslayer’s anger and proposes the idea to discard He Who Remains, Victor Timely, or any other variant of his and just pave their own way to eternal glory.
Back at the TVA, Timely roams around looking at the murals and artwork before getting hounded by B-15, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie. They assure him that he’s safe with them, but he needs to come with them to give his temporal aura to OB, thereby allowing him to fix the Temporal Loom. While Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie oversee that, B-15 has a conversation with Judge Gamble about the fate of Dox and her team. Gamble tells B-15 to go and convince Dox to focus on saving the TVA instead of simply pruning timelines. B-15 thinks that Dox is too much of a hardliner to listen to her words, but Gamble tells her to not worry about it and focus on convincing Dox. Down at OB’s office, OB gives a detailed explanation of what has to be done to fix the Temporal Loom. So, apart from the extractor, now there’s a new device called the throughput multiplier, which has to be linked with the launcher. After launching, the multiplier will connect with the loom and increase its capacity to handle all the branches entering the loom. That’s where Timely’s little ticking device comes in, because, apparently, that’s the only thing that’ll make the throughput multiplier function properly. While OB, Casey, and Timely work on the multiplier, Mobius thinks that they should get some pie as they wait for the next step of their plan. This angers Sylvie very much because she thinks that Mobius is trivializing the issue, whereas the fact of the matter is that there’s nothing else they can do, and getting angry isn’t going to help.
Renslayer Kills Dox and Her Team
In the holding cell, Brad (or X-5) tries to rile up Dox and her army to begin a rebellion of some kind so that they don’t die there. Dox reminds Brad about his betrayal and how he told Loki and Mobius about her plan to prune the branching timelines. Brad is left kind of speechless because he didn’t expect her to figure that out so easily. B-15 interrupts this moment by entering the cell and asking Dox to come to terms with the fact that pruning isn’t an option anymore, but saving the TVA and the timelines is still a priority. Just like B-15 predicted, Dox refuses to budge. B-15 exhibits hope, and she tells D-90 that they are going to see the correct path eventually. At the pie center (the amount of key lime pies will certainly make you crave for one), Sylvie and Loki have a huge argument about what they’ve done in the past, what they are doing in the present, and what they are about to do in the future. Based on that, Sylvie summarizes Loki’s extremely optimistic vision for the future: Timely will save the TVA; the TVA won’t go back to its old ways; and Timely won’t become a version of He Who Remains. In his defense, Loki says that these are the only options that they have. Sylvie still thinks that after getting a taste of everything that’s synonymous with the TVA, there’s no way that Timely will agree to go back to 1893 and continue to live his life. Loki says that they can view him from afar, nudge him in the right direction, and ensure that he doesn’t do anything drastic. Sylvie says that that’s something that a narcissistic god would say, and Loki aptly reminds him that they are gods.
Back in the holding cell, Renslayer and Miss Minutes appear through a time door and ask Dox, Brad, and the rest to join and restore stability in the TVA instead of letting B-15 establish her new order. The prize for doing this mutiny is a regular life on the timeline. Since Brad is a greedy individual, he sides with Renslayer. However, Dox and the rest of her army refuse to side with Renslayer. And in a moment of pure horror, Renslayer puts them in that translucent box and squeezes them until they explode. It’s not an R-rated horror show; that’s why we don’t see the aftermath of Renslayer’s actions, but the sound of blood dripping through the floor paints a vivid picture. Oddly enough, this is followed by a scene where Timely asks for hot cocoa, and he is assisted to the vending machine by D-90. B-15 finds out what has happened in the holding cell, and when she tries to alarm everyone, it doesn’t work because Miss Minutes is blocking all transmission. That allows Brad to sneak up on D-90 and prune him. He asks Timely about the little device that goes into the multiplier, but Timely doesn’t give him a straight answer. OB figures out that Miss Minutes is in the building and messing with the TemPads and everything else that she can get her hands on. Mobius rushes to get to Timely, only to find nothing but a discarded Time Stick and spilt cocoa. He assumes that Renslayer has taken him back to his original timeline, while Loki assesses that they are still in the building because they need to fix the Temporal Loom. It turns out that Loki is right, and Brad, Miss Minutes, and Renslayer are holding Timely hostage in the War Room and trying to make him talk about the device that’ll save the Temporal Loom.
Is Victor Timely Dead?
When Sylvie and Loki try to access the elevator and look for Timely, Miss Minutes uses the CCTV camera and the elevator to separate the two of them. Why is that a vital piece of information? Well, when Loki gets to the floor where the elevator has stopped, he sees a version of himself from the past standing in front of the elevator doors as Sylvie opens it. That answers the question of why Sylvie would come back to the TVA. It also answers the question of who pruned Loki in the first episode. It was a future version of himself. By the way, doesn’t this mean that Loki hasn’t been freed by time because he and everyone else are stuck in some kind of loop? Is everything a loop, or, as OB says, like a snake eating its tail? I don’t know. Loki says that it’ll all make sense, so I’ll just take his word for it. With all that out of the way, Loki picks up the telephone near the elevator, and the caller turns out to be OB. Loki tells him that Miss Minutes is disallowing him and Sylvie from getting to Timely. OB says that he can reboot the whole system. That’ll send Miss Minutes back to her factory settings and disconnect her from the TVA’s system. When Loki and Sylvie learn that it’ll also shut down the power dampeners that prevent them from performing magic in the TVA, they scream at OB to reboot it immediately. Miss Minutes goes out with an ominous message to Timely, where she basically says that he’ll never be as great as He Who Remains. Sylvie and Loki overpower Brad. They prune Renslayer. Then they rush Timely to the Temporal Loom’s control room.
At the end of Loki Season 2, episode 4, OB extracts Timely’s temporal aura, and that finally opens up the blast doors. They see that the radiation emissions have worsened since Mobius walked out there. That means whoever goes out there to pull off the throughput maneuver, they won’t have a lot of time because the suit will be incinerated. Loki decides to go out there because he’s a god. However, Timely says that he should go because it’s “fitting.” Maybe in the show’s most unexpected moment so far, as soon as Timely walks through those blast doors, he disintegrates and turns into thin strands of matter. Of course, that renders everyone speechless, and they are left with no other option but to watch the Time Loom explode and engulf everything around them. Now, if I am remembering this correctly, Season 1, episode 4 of Loki did something similar by pruning Loki. Back then, we knew that pruning meant instant death. But when Loki was pruned, we learned that they were sent to a place near the End of Time. So, I’m guessing they are doing something similar here as well. We have been told that the destruction of the Temporal Loom is going to destroy everything. What if it doesn’t, though? If you re-watch the trailers, you’ll see Loki starting to time slip again. That said, he isn’t limited to the TVA. He teleports all over the multiverse, probably. We also get glimpses of Casey and the rest of the TVA walking through ruins. So, it’s possible that the explosion destroys the TVA, but it also frees the timeline and allows it to go in unexpected directions. So far, Loki has consistently questioned the need to govern time. Therefore, maybe in the final two episodes, we’ll see what uncontrolled time looks like. It’s not the end yet.
