Even when Loki’s second season has been having immense fun with time slipping, variants and other such multiversal gobbledygook, there’s been a real sense that the show has kind of running in place as its plot circles round itself like a snake eating its own tail. Aside from a refreshing romp around 1890s Chicago, we’ve mostly been richoceting around different time periods within the Time Variance Authority in order to keep the plot looping the loop while the constant threat of multiversal collapse huffed its panicked breath down the back of our hero’s necks. As a result, it felt like a little bit of the first season’s sparkle had been lost as some of the beloved characters, such as Owen Wilson’s Mobius, having to take a backseat to Loki’s temporal backflips – but as we arrive at the season finale, it’s time for the show to open up and get to the point. After all, the very future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be at stake…
All of Loki’s time hopping antics to get the Temporal Loom to adapt to all the new branching timelines has apparently failed and reality itself has simultaneously come unravelled and blown up in his face. However, the trickery god apparently has one last card to play as uses his ability to control his time slipping to simply redo the actions again and again over a matter of centuries (relatively speaking) in order to finally succeed and get the modifications working.
However, Loki learns the hard way that despite all of his efforts, it’s simply impossible to avoid the Loom’s destruction and so he realizes that to avoid disaster, he’s going to have to go back even further and make a tough choice – stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains in the first place.
Of course, Hel hath no fury like a Norse variant scorned and after countless failed attempts, Loki finally hits an epiphany when He Who Remains himself reveals something of a seismic revelation – even the events after his death at the hands of Sylvie were paved and the Loom and the TVA were never desitned to survive. This leaves Loki with something of a Sophie’s choice moment as the only way he can stop his vengeful variant is to kill her.
However, this is Loki, the god of mischief and worming his way out of certain death is what he does. Thus after a quick leap forward in time to have a heart to heart with a later version of Sylvie, Loki finally realises what sacrifice actually has to be made and takes on a burden unlike anyone has had to handle before.
When it’s all said and done, Loki will finally accept that the glorious purpose he always sought in his villain days can only come with an unimaginable burden. Kind of like a buy one get one free offer on a multiversal scale.
Those who agree with my statements earlier about season 2 kind of feeling it was taking an incredibly ambitious journey in order to kind of stay in the same place where it started will no doubt be relieved by the final episode that not only justifies its zig-zaging over the same moments, but actually pays it off in a way that’s not only moving, but stupendously epic.
Once again helmed by the appropriately tricksy directing duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, the episode starts with more quasi-humerous/quasi-stressful moments of Loki solving impossible problems by using his time slipping to Groundhog Day this shit into submission via trial and error that takes hundreds of years to perfect. This is the sort of shit Tom Hiddleston excels as his keen sense of timing (pun intended) helps the episode enjoyably breeze through something of an overused trope. Of course it’s all a red herring and Loki has to cast his net even further back in order to try and effect any real change. Thus the season’s obsession with going over the same events time and time again takes up back to the Multiverse Saga’s most pivotal moment with the introduction of He Who Remains – or should I say, the most pivotal moment so far.
Revealing himself after Loki’s endless attempts to thwart Sylvie, it’s a genuine surprise to get more time with the slightly more lucid Kang variant and rather than feeling like a retread of the tense, yet chatty final episode of the previous season, it feels like a devastating add on that literally rewrites everything we know going forward.
But first, to address some of the character issues that noticably seemed to arise thanks for the season’s need to cover and re-cover the same ground, Glorious Purpose actually gives its supporting cast something the MCU is notorious at denying its denizens – closure.
The scattered moments where Loki leaps back and forth to spend last moments with both Mobius and Sylvie during various moments on the time line does a lot to readdress the balance. Also possibly getting something of a noble farewell is Jonathan Major’s constantly scheming He Who Remains and if his recent legal troubles do lead to him being ousted as rumoured, its weirdly fitting that the show that introduced his character is the one that bids him adieu.
However, the real headline here is the script-flipping ending that somehow ends up being utterly huge on an unprecedented scale and simultaneously emotional. Simply put, in the dying moments of the universe and with Sylvie’s advice ringing in his ears, Loki finally steps up and accepts the throne he’s always desired, however, it comes with a cosmic catch that truly shows how far the character has come. Using the time bending powers he’s been struggling with the whole season, Loki steps out to face the exploding Loom and the subsequent scattering timeline and starts physically pulling as many of the threads of time he can together and repowers and reknits them to make a whole new universe that mimics the shape of Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree. The catch is that Loki has essentially gone from being the God of Mischief to the God of Stories as he takes the place of He Who Remains and is destined to watch all all of time for evermore – or until Avengers: Secret War, at least…
It’s a magnificent shift in the MCU status quo and the sight of Loki sprouting the latest version of his famous, horned helmet as he ascends to his destiny is genuinely moving considering how far the character has come since his big screen debut way back in 2011.
Ridiculously epic, Loki’s season 2 finale succeeds in its mission to keep the flagging momentum alive for the Multiverse Saga as a whole (respect to the throwaway mention to the events of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania) and provides a much needed high point for the beleaguered fifth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Glorious Purpose, indeed.
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