[In-Depth Analysis & Review] Loki Episode 2 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Hello!
Today it’s Loki episode 2, which dropped on Wednesday 16 June — the points worth flagging, the theories, and predictions for where all of this goes next.
Quick notes on everything that caught my eye on the first watch, the Easter eggs, and the theories after that.
Spoilers ahead
The WandaVision episode reviews from earlier are here!
Click the image below for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews!
Check the image below for the Loki episode reviews!
Contents
What I’ve been into lately
Started photographing Hot Toys figures for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time it was Ueno and a few other places.
Episode 2, “The Variant”
The Renaissance fair
America has this whole culture of Renaissance fairs, where the streets and the clothes of the medieval Renaissance get recreated. Even though the country itself shouldn’t have existed back then… lol
What if a branch crosses the red line?
That red line the branches keep creeping up on turns out to be the border past which a nexus event can’t be reset any more!
All sorts of Lokis
Apparently the TVA has “pruned” all sorts of Lokis before now — a footballer Loki, a Hulk-looking Loki, a middle-aged cult-leader Loki.
Why the shape changes that much is a mystery. Maybe next week explains it?
Holding out for a hero
The song playing in the episode is “Holding Out for a Hero”!
Lady Loki
Just as plenty of people had been saying, the Loki in the black hood does turn out to be Lady Loki, played by Sophia Di Martino! What she’s after goes in the theory section later in this post!
There’s a nice clear write-up on the comics version and this Lady Loki, so here it is.
There is a character called Lady Loki in the source comics, and the female Loki who turns up in episode 2 was probably inspired by her. The Lady Loki drawn in the Thor comic that began in 2007 came into being when Loki, who can change shape at will, took advantage of Ragnarok, the fall of Asgard, to take over the body of Lady Sif, the warrior woman who also appears in the Thor films. Which tells us that, at this point, the MCU Lady Loki newly introduced in Loki is not following the setup from the comics.
— The River
Right, right. Sif looks like she’s in Thor: Love and Thunder, so it’d be fun if something came of that!
Duplication casting
Duplication casting seems to be a different thing from illusion casting.
Illusion casting draws a version of yourself that the outside world can perceive, while duplication casting apparently copies your own body exactly and builds it. It’s like a holographic mirror of your molecular structure.
Surviving takes the Time-Keepers’ permission
Ravonna is the one who tells us that even a fate that ends in death is fine as long as the Time-Keepers give their permission.
The death toll from Ragnarok
The film made it feel like most people got out alive, and yet the dead came to 9,717…
The eruption at Pompeii
The eruption at Pompeii was a huge disaster in Italy in the year 79.
Terrible enough that pyroclastic flows wiped an entire town off the map.
A sudden climax
Episode 2 turns into a shocker — Lady Loki’s attack with the reset charges throws out the Sacred Timeline!
As the second image above shows, branches seem to be opening at points scattered across time and place — Tokyo, the planet Titan, Ego from the second Guardians of the Galaxy film.
After watching episode 2
What Lady Loki is after
Lady Loki got the Time-Keepers’ location out of Hunter C-20, so the reason she set this whole run of incidents going is presumably to reach them. As for why she wants to reach them — Ravonna says in episode 2 that a Loki can live if the Time-Keepers allow it, so my read is that Lady Loki, a Variant marked for pruning, is after permission from the Time-Keepers to live.
Wonder how episode 3 handles it. And if the Time-Keepers turn out not to exist at all, that would be its own kind of fun, wouldn’t it.
Is there only one Mobius?
The exchange between Ravonna and Mobius in episode 2 led me to a thought: maybe there isn’t just one Mobius, and a new Mobius gets made every time he dies. The grounds for it:
- Ravonna always confiscates the souvenirs Mobius brings back
- No memory of having given her the snow globe
- No memory of the mark left by the glass either
- The remarks about where Loki and Mobius came from
- The remarks about identity — everything decided by fate, no such thing as free will
That kind of thing. Numbers 1 to 3 especially look like setup for a different Mobius having existed in the past.
Or else, as in the comics, it’s Ravonna’s lover Kang who’s been bringing them.
And as for 4 and 5, maybe they’re setup for the identity Mobius currently believes in getting overturned.
If permission from the Time-Keepers is the way to overturn a fated death on the timeline, then a moving turn where Loki finally gets that permission for Mobius and sacrifices himself feels very possible. Though I don’t think Loki actually ends up dead lol
And there’ll probably be a jet ski at the end. Hmm, wonder how it goes~
