Loki’s TVA has always existed outside of time and space. They manipulate and control time, but they aren’t affected by it the same way we are. Morbius and company have worked there for as long as they can remember, and they don’t exactly get paid time off. It seemed like the perfect setup for a cosmic law enforcement agency, but Loki Season 1 revealed cracks in the organization, and Season 2 Episode 1 blew them open.
Now, Loki is “time-slipping” within the TVA itself, despite the little fact this should be impossible. This “time-slipping” completely changes the Season 1 finale cliffhanger, so here’s exactly what it means... and whether it was in the works all along.
Warning: Spoilers for Loki Season 2 Episode 1 follow!
Flashback or Flash-Sideways?
In the Season 1 finale, Loki returns from The Void to a TVA he doesn’t recognize, one where all the Time Keeper imagery was replaced with statues of Kang the Conqueror. Even more worrying, the TVA didn’t recognize him. Mobius, who’d become Loki’s closest ally, was suddenly a total stranger.
A common fan interpretation was that Slyvie’s slaying of He Who Remains changed the very fabric of reality, creating a world where the Time Keepers never existed. Even Season 1 director Kate Herron interpreted the new TVA as belonging to an alternate reality, but Season 2 proved that wasn’t the case.
In Season 2, Loki eventually glitches back to his TVA and reunites with Mobius. Together, they figure out what’s happening: Loki had visited the TVA’s past, before He Who Remains erased the memories of every agent and started fresh under the façade of the Time Keepers. According to Loki’s executive producer Kevin Wright, this was always part of the plan.
“We talked about everything,” Wright tells Inverse. “There were some versions where we talked about other scenarios, that were not bad but also did not pick up immediately. It always felt wrong, and it always felt like we were fast-forwarding past really exciting drama. Fairly quickly, it revealed itself as the right path we needed to take, and it was the only serious path we ever went down.”
So Loki is reunited with his old buddy, but there are bigger problems at hand. Why is he time-slipping? Why did He Who Remains erase everyone’s memories? What did Mobius used to know? What secrets lie in the TVA’s past, a past we just learned existed? Loki may be asking more questions than it’s answering, but at least we finally have an explanation for Season 1’s shocking finale.
Does Loki Season 2 Episode 1 Have a Post-Credits Scene?
Any Marvel fan knows to stick around after the credits just in case there’s something extra at the end, and Loki Season 2 Episode 1 is no exception. After the stylized first credit sequence, we get a glimpse with the character everyone’s been discussing all episode: Sylvie.
While where she ends up isn’t a surprise to anyone who has kept an eye on the show’s McDonald’s tie-in marketing, it’s a clue that we’ll finally catch up with her and her new life in Episode 2.
