The preceding episodes’ events provided insight into the growing issues that arose with Sylvie’s murder of He Who Remains and the creation of other timeline branches. Dox dispatched TVA officers to destroy several branches at once, adding to the already unstable situation. As we’re thrust back into the End of Time to discover what Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer’s plot entails, “Heart of the TVA” is off to a great start. By displaying a videotape of a moment before her memory was erased to Ravonna Renslayer, Miss Minutes fulfills her pledge to reveal a significant secret. As it happens, Renslayer was once in charge of the army that defeated Kang (the He Who Remains version) in battle.
It was difficult to foresee how events would proceed in the future. While the first half of the season presented a well-defined course, the second half consistently appeared to anticipate the audience’s needs. “Science/Fiction” momentarily simplifies to address its most challenging issue to date: How do you rebuild a multiverse that is fast collapsing after a disaster that has virtually destroyed the laws that kept it together? Naturally, the plot unfolds like a classic sci-fi short story about time travel, but Ravonna Renslayer isn’t the answer we sought, and our company of unanticipated heroes is still there. She’s completely absent from the episode.
Unraveling the Multiverse: Loki’s Ongoing Quest for Answers
We see three unexpected transformations: the dejection of a once-proud Loki, the Temporal Loom catastrophe, and Loki’s shocking turn in fate. In this crucial episode, our main character undergoes a startling metamorphosis as a result of the unanticipated fallout from a large temporal radiation incident. The mission takes a dark turn as the Temporal Loom faces catastrophic failure, leaving us on the verge of an incredible cliffhanger. Once a god of mischief and adventure, Loki now struggles with a new emotion: despair, as cosmic entropy is threatening to tear reality apart.
What is Loki’s true “glorious purpose” anymore after his arrest by the TVA, and being reformed into one of the best staff it will ever have? It is simple, he finds his true purpose in these simple lines of “Science/Fiction”: “I want to have my friends back.” The God of Mischief has now progressed so much in character that he has evolved from wanting to be the ruler of Midgard and eventually, the entirety of space to just wanting his social life back with his time police gang.
Ouroboros And The Time Loops
“Heart of the TVA” already featured a variation of time loops and how they connect to one another. The first and most obvious example is that of Loki unintentionally and inadvertently taking the role that He Who Remains used to fill by trying to create order from all the chaos from the branched timelines.
The second is the case of the TVA handbook. Who wrote it first? Ouroboros or He Who Remains? Perfectly encapturing the mythological concept behind the name “Ouroboros”. As it represents a snake that eats its tail, similarly, the origin of the TVA’s handbook cannot have an actual timestamp or credit as the beginning only leads to a rebirth of its author.
The third loop that brings a sense of continuity to Loki Season 2 is definitely the scene where Loki prunes his past self. It completes the time loop and the question of who pruned Loki in the future, which now has become our present.
However, even with multiple time loops that we get to witness, there is an invisible one that only we as the audience get to see in “Science/Fiction”. Loki creates a chaotic time-loop with him becoming a Godly version of a TVA tempad. This entire episode is one giant time loop that takes us straight back to the ending of “Heart of the TVA” without missing a beat. These two episodes are the Ouroboros episodes as they perfectly encapture the concept and the importance of the character within the span of two hours.
The Multiversal Nexus Event: Implications and Consequences
“Science/Fiction” centers on Loki’s psychological fallout and delves into fascinating parallel worlds for the TVA group via time-travel mischievousness. Divergent timelines lead to the discovery of his friends. In 1962, Casey, the TVA receptionist, attempts to break out of Alcatraz. Hunter B-15 is a doctor in New York in 2012, and Mobius is a jet ski dealer in Cleveland.
There is no complete explanation for this occurrence, and the Lokis (the main one and Sylvie) seem impervious to the temporal collapse. However, the idea that “time threads” may be controlled seems conceivable considering what we’ve seen and the established magic in the series.
He can now control that power and utilize it to “rewrite” the timeline thanks to the most recent episode. This episode is probably the most stressful one so far because of how beautifully it is paced. It is essential to the progression of the plot and will have a greater influence on the MCU overall in addition to laying the groundwork for the Season 2 climax.
The show will have viewers on the edge of their seats from the very beginning. Can Loki preserve the many branches, his companions, and the TVA? Or will they all become dust? Until the very last frame of the episode, viewers will be captivated by these questions on their television screens.
Easter Eggs In The Final Episodes Of Season 2
In the same way as Loki Season 1 used real-life characters to reveal that Loki was actually the enigmatic D.B. Cooper all along, the “Science/Fiction” episode connects to our reality by concluding that Agent Casey of the TVA was actually Frank Morris.
When Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) erupted into noodles in last week’s episode, it brought back fresh memories of the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) viciously shredding Reed Richards (John Krasinski) into a burst of gory strands in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Though hardly discernible on background posters, B-15 makes a big appearance in the episode’s promotional materials, disclosing her true identity as Dr. Willis from the Roger Willis Children’s Clinic and making a subtle allusion to Marvel Comics. In the comics, Roger Willis, introduced in Thor #345, was a war veteran who stopped aging due to the Casket of Ancient Winters, which Malekith tried to use for destructive purposes. Thor thwarted his plans, leading to Roger’s responsibility for safeguarding the Casket.
Also Read: Loki: S2E3: What’s Miss Minutes Secret?
