[In-Depth Analysis & Review] Loki Episode 5 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Hello!
Today it’s Loki episode 5, which dropped on Wednesday 7 July — 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 back when it aired, 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 shooting all sorts of things 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 5, “Journey into Mystery”
Where the title comes from
The original-language title of episode 5 is Journey into Mystery, which is the title of the comic Loki first appeared in.
The truth about the Void and pruning
Turns out everyone who gets pruned is thrown into an era at the end of time called the Void, and eaten there by Alioth, a monster like a living storm!
And on top of that it’s doubtful the Void is even the end of time — the mastermind of this show is using Alioth to dam it up.
Alioth
Alioth, a snake-shaped monster like a living storm. Couldn’t quite work out the comics source for it. There seems to be a reason it’s a snake, too.
The old Loki from the future
And it seems this Loki is the one who fooled Thanos with duplication magic in Infinity War and survived by disguising his real body as rubble!
The reason the TVA found him being that he tried to go and see Thor — that was so good… The future Loki is properly decent as a human being and turned into a favourite character! Portals, duplication magic, conjuring up Asgard at the end — an extremely powerful sorcerer. Would be nice if the young Loki gets to show off magic on that level in Loki season 2!
Boastful Loki
Why even his race changes never did get explained in the end lol
He said he killed Iron Man and Captain America and collected all the Infinity Stones, but it smells like a lie lol
Kid Loki
Kid Loki, who became a Variant by killing Thor as a child. For someone who killed his own brother he was awfully kind to the other Variants lol Handing over a sword and so on.
People are saying he might end up a member of the Young Avengers, the next-generation Avengers made up of teenage heroes.
Alligator Loki
Apparently he ended up in that shape after eating the wrong cat lol
Waddling about. Unbelievably cute!
There were a few little mysteries too, like Mobius not remembering Alligator Loki.
The Thanos-Copter
The famous Thanos-Copter from the comics turned up in the show lol
Frog Thor
Down in the dirt there was Mjolnir, and a Thor who’d been turned into a frog, probably by Loki lol
The presidential-candidate Lokis (Vote Loki)
The presidential-candidate Loki who stood out so much in the trailer, the one everyone calls Vote Loki, turning out to be a different Loki lol
Lokis being incapable of banding together in the end was exactly as expected.
The source must surely be the Vote Loki comic.
Flashback
This is the flashback to Sylvie being caught by Alioth, and there’s a castle built on something like a meteor. Who’s behind it is covered in this article’s theory section!
USS Eldridge, DE-173
The USS Eldridge 173 that shows up partway through is the ship used in that famous urban legend, the Philadelphia Experiment.
What the Philadelphia Experiment was in the first place:
1. The US Navy’s “Rainbow Project,” planned in the 1930s, was about making a warship invisible with a powerful magnetic field.
2. After a string of invisibility tests using unmanned ships, the “Philadelphia Experiment” was carried out in 1943.
3. The warship Eldridge, used in the experiment, teleported a distance of 470 kilometres. The crew were left with tragedy brought on by the abnormal conditions.
— GetNavi
That’s the story. Meticulous detail!
The Triebflügel
That strangely shaped fighter that turns up partway through is the Focke-Wulf Triebflügel, a prototype that really existed.
The disc from Titan and Thanos’s mothership
Plus the disc from Titan that appeared in Infinity War, and Thanos’s mothership.
Way too many Easter eggs this week lol
I’m going to burn it down
The scene where the two of them steel themselves and say goodbye was the best! Got a bit teary.
“I’m going to burn it down.”
“Thanks for the spark, Loki.”
A small joke built on everything they’d said to each other up to now — felt very Mobius to me.
After watching episode 5
The mastermind
Has any Marvel show ever strung the mastermind out this long? Probably because whoever it is becomes the main villain in the films as well. With that in mind, there are two candidates in my head right now.
The first is Kang the Conqueror, brought up on this blog before, especially in the episode 1 analysis. If he’s the MCU’s main villain going forward, that is a seriously exciting direction!
Kang the Conqueror goes by a lot of other names, incidentally: Nathaniel Richards / Iron Lad / Rama-Tut / Scarlet Centurion / Immortus, among others.
And why has the TVA gone this far off the rails? Maybe because the era the TVA sits in is the deep future (the 100th century or something?), and they’re protecting the single road that leads to the era the TVA is in now — the Sacred Timeline.
The second is Doctor Doom. He’s one of the main villains of the Fantastic Four. An MCU Fantastic Four is confirmed to be in production, incidentally, so Doctor Doom joining the MCU at all is a certainty.
The basis for it is that in the flashback above there felt like there might be something resembling a pair of folded arms, so it went on the list this time.
Doom and Kang have a history with each other, as above, incidentally.
Is the Sacred Timeline Loki alive?
The future Loki said he survived by fooling Thanos with duplication magic. And the point worth flagging was “the TVA found him because he tried to go and see Thor.”
Meaning surviving in itself may have been the Sacred Timeline’s set path all along.
If that’s the case, it’d be fun to have the Sacred Timeline Loki turn up again later!
The multiverse unlocked?
I still think one of this show’s themes is the TVA collapsing, or being put right, and the multiverse getting unlocked in the MCU.
Curious how Mobius moves next week!
Is Sylvie Loki’s sister?
There’s plenty to wonder about — who the mastermind is, where the multiverse goes — but the fact that why Sylvie became a Variant still hasn’t been revealed is nagging as well.
Watching this one, the thought came up: Loki and Sylvie love each other, but are they going to end up romantically involved?
Which sparked this — the theory that Sylvie is Loki’s sister. What I’m thinking is that among the Frost Giants there was a Sylvie as well as a Loki, and that Sylvie was born out of a timeline where the one Odin picked up was Sylvie rather than Loki.
Looking forward to next week!
The multiple-Mobius theory
Not knowing Alligator Loki, the thing in episode 2 he has no memory of giving Ravonna as a present, the souvenir being confiscated — there are several mysteries around Mobius.
As said in the episode 2 analysis, maybe it’s because every time Mobius, Ravonna’s favourite, dies, another Mobius gets brought over from a different point in time?
In the released Loki trailer you can see Ravonna forcing someone down onto the floor, as above. Maybe in episode 6 Mobius goes back to the TVA to find a different Mobius working there, poses as that Mobius to get into Ravonna’s room, and gets caught — something along those lines?
One episode left. Really looking forward to it!
