In Season 2, Episode 6 of Disney Plus’s Loki series, titled “Glorious Purpose,” we delve into the journey of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) as he works to save the TVA. Using time slipping, Loki returns to the TVA minutes, hours, and days before the Temporal Loom explodes. He does this repeatedly at various points in the past to ensure that Timely (Jonathan Majors) fixes the Temporal Loom, which succeeds. However, it takes centuries for Loki to ensure the mission succeeds. Suddenly, the problem resurfaces when Ouroborus (Ke Huy Quan) checks the monitor and sees the Temporal Loom overloading again. Timely believes the problem is that the timeline branches are duplicating and expanding at an infinite rate. In other words, it is a scaling problem because the Temporal Loom cannot accommodate an infinitely growing multiverse.
Loki believes the solution is to travel back further and ask He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) for the solution minutes before Sylvie kills him. Loki has to stop Sylvie multiple times before He Who Remains freezes Sylvie in time to have a proper dialogue with Loki. He Who Remains tells Loki that he gave the Norse God of Mischief the ability to time-slip to ensure the TVA’s survival. He Who Remains also explains that the Temporal Loom did not fail because it is a failsafe: when the Loom is overloaded with branches, it deletes the ones that aren’t supposed to be there—everything except the Sacred Timeline. However, the TVA will be collateral damage as a result, but it can rebuild if given the right time, people, and resources. Nevertheless, He Who Remains’ Variants (The Council of Kang) will always appear in the present day and cause chaos, but Loki is undeterred by the warning and promises he will find them.
Knowing that saving the infinite timeline branches is nearly impossible, Loki believes he can if he changes the equation after breaking the Temporal Loom. He Who Remains is shocked at the idea because he sees the Temporal Loom as a necessary tool to prevent another Multiversal War. Loki disagrees with the idea but promises to find a way to end the Multiversal War without sacrificing all the timeline branches. Amused, He Who Remains gives Loki the choice to let Sylvie kill himself or have He Who Remains live long enough to help Loki find another solution.
Refusing to kill Sylvie, Loki travels back to when he talked with Mobius in the TVA interrogation room when Loki himself was a TVA Variant prisoner. Loki asks Mobius how he takes comfort in deciding who gets pruned. Mobius states he finds no comfort in pruning Variants. However, he knows he has to make the right decisions in pruning the Variants because he must protect the Sacred Timeline and prevent deaths on a grand scale. Mobius made an example when he could not prune an 8-year-old boy Variant, which led to 5,000 people dying due to the creation of many timeline branches. His partner, Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), pruned the boy before the Sacred Timeline breaks. Overall, there is no comfort, only how you choose your burden as you commit yourself to your duty. After learning what Mobius says, Loki returns to the present day when the timeline branches were getting spaghettified to talk with Sylvie.
Loki shows and tells Sylvie he learned to control time-slipping and tells her everything he learned during his journey. Loki starts to falter and believes the TVA should exist to ensure the Multiverse survives. However, Sylvie states she saw enough apocalypses growing up to know it is wrong to replace one nightmare for another: the oppression the TVA brings on the Sacred Timeline by pruning many timeline branches, killing billions in the process. From Sylvie’s statement, Loki learns he must be the one to go out to the Temporal Loom to save the Multiverse from collapsing into nothingness.
Loki uses his time-slipping powers and magic to break the Temporal Loom and free and preserve the timeline branches without destroying the TVA. As the timeline branches are dying, Loki uses his magic to save the branches from dying. He later teleports himself and the timeline branches to The End of Time to spend eternity laboring to preserve and protect the timeline branches. At The End of Time, Loki sits on his throne surrounded by infinite timeline branches he helps protect in the shape of a new Temporal Loom and Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life.
In the aftermath, the TVA follows Loki’s leadership to help protect and preserve the new Temporal Loom and the Multiverse. Ouroborus and Casey (Eugene Cordero) create and program a new version of Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) to help oversee the TVA, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) leads the TVA’s operations, and Mobius monitors the reports on the Variants of He Who Remains. Mobius informs B-15 that one of He Who Remains’ Variants, Kang the Conqueror, caused chaos on Earth 616 adjacent realm in the Quantum Realm, but Ant-Man and his allies stopped him. Later, Mobius meets B-15 to resign from the TVA to spend time relearning his original life as Don, the father of two sons and an employee of Piranha Powersports. A young Victor Timely never gets the TVA manual, freeing Timely from the time loop of becoming He Who Remains. Renslayer finds herself trapped at The End of Time, and Alioth confronts her. The episode ends with Sylvie overseeing Mobius as he relearns his original life as Don and Loki sitting on his throne at The End of Time to protect and preserve the timeline branches For All Time. Always.
Loki’s Glorious Purpose: Protect All Time
In Season 2, Episode 6 of Loki, Director Justin Benson, Director Aaron Moorhead, and Writer Eric Martin crafted an extraordinary and mind-blowing finale. This finale revealed that Loki could save the timeline branches by destroying the Temporal Loom, freeing the timeline branches, and combining his time-slipping powers and magic to prevent the branches from collapsing. Under Loki’s leadership at The End of Time, the TVA now aims to protect the timeline branches from the Variants of He Who Remains (The Council of Kang) and to confront them if necessary. Mobius’s mention of Kang the Conqueror’s defeat in the events of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantamania is a fantastic detail to note, given that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is presumably designated as Earth-616, even though the MCU takes place in Earth-199999. Overall, the season finale ends positively, leaving the TVA well-prepared to defend the Multiverse from the Council of Kang and threats beyond space and time.
When it comes to Renslayer, there is a possibility that she will survive and return because Alioth might recognize and protect her. After all, she used to be He Who Remains’ general during the Multiversal War. Furthermore, Renslayer might attempt to tame Alioth and enlist his help to fight against Loki and the TVA in her crusade to preserve the Sacred Timeline and destroy the Multiverse.
Rating: 9/10