The following story is going to get into heavy spoilers for the current season of Loki, so stop reading now if you aren’t up to speed, and don’t want details ruined.
There was a scene in the first episode of Loki Season 1 where the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) is learning just how powerful the TVA is, given its ability to control and manipulate time and space. You can (and should) revisit the episode using your Disney+ subscription. After pursuing the Tesseract, believing it will help him overtake The Avengers, Loki sees that the TVA agents essentially collect Infinity Stones and use them as paperweight.s Stunned into an uncharacteristic silence, Loki wonders aloud:
Is this the greatest power in the universe?
It’s hard not to see how that would be possible. Loki, so far, has been one of the best Marvel television series, and Season 2 has only expanded on the power of the TVA, hinting at the ramifications this organization is bound to have on upcoming Marvel movies including Deadpool 3 and, likely, the two Avengers movies that have been announced. But something incredible happened in episode 5 of Loki Season 2. Loki figured out how to control his time slipping (an irritating power that was transporting Loki willy nilly to different points on branched timelines). We watched him – after seeing his friends turn into Temporal Aura spaghetti – skip back a few seconds. Then a few minutes. Then a few more minutes. He now has the power to control his time slipping.
So, doesn’t that make Loki the most powerful being in the MCU? That’s a question I posed to Eric Martin when I got the chance to speak with him following the ending of episode 5. And he introduced an interesting caveat when he told me:
I think it depends on how much control he has over that. But I mean, it's a pretty powerful thing. And, you know, I think it's a new skill of his. And so I think there's a lot of exciting things that can happen with that.
The episode ends with Loki time slipping back to the moment when Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) is about to step out onto the platform to try and repair the Time Loom. As we know, Timely unravels, because the temporal energies are too strong. The team fails, and the TVA appears to explode. In the Loki seasons finale, we assume that the God of Mischief is going to use his new powers to save Victor, restore the TVA, and (possibly) assume control that once belonged to He Who Remains.
But, this is Loki. He’s usually playing a deceitful game that we don’t see, and has been a villain in every Marvel story up to this point. While I had Eric Martin available, I asked him if Loki is expected to use these new, incredibly beneficial powers, for good. Ahd Martin hedged his bets by revealing:
I think people are more complicated. And I think Loki's more complicated than ‘good or bad.’ I think even when he was a villain, I think he was more complicated than being just bad. I think there was a wounded person there, acting out in pretty awful ways. It's the same thing with anybody that has great power. Do you always use it for good? And I think a lot of times that's just a point of view, anyway. Some groups might think it's good. Some might not. That's really just a perspective thing. I think it's pretty complicated.
He’s right. Which is why the season finale of Loki Season 2 has so much to address as it brings this story to a close. And if Martin is to be believed, the story will conclude, as he poured cold water on the idea of a Loki Season 3, even though the story of the TVA can continue in other MCU projects. Either way, we will be glued to our TVs on Friday, when the finale of Loki drops, and hopefully clears up all of these mysteries.
