#Kid Loki killing Thor for example also wasn't elaborated on

[worstloki]

Can I just add, how deeply manipulative it was for Mobius to discredit the validity of the Nine Realms as something divine and important, because Loki was legitimately unnerved, and disturbed by *what turned out to be the more pleasant cover story* origin and operations of the TVA.

the way Mobius talks about how the TVA fills in the role Loki had applied to the Nine Realms was one great way to get him to work with them though yeah it was a bit cruel :')

but also take note that LOKI didn't bring any mystical belief aspects into it. That was Mobius, after Loki started asking questions about his heavily-propaganda'd belief and what made his version of things real. Which works well on the idea of theology in my opinion.

Loki: Three magic lizards...

Mobius: Time-Keepers.

Loki: ...created the TVA and everyone in it...

Mobius: Right.

Loki: ...including you?

Mobius: Including me.

Loki: Every time I start to admire your intelligence, you say something like that.

Mobius: Okay, who created you, Loki?

Loki: A Frost Giant of Jotunheim.

Mobius: And who raised you?

Loki: Odin of Asgard.

Mobius: Odin, God of the Heavens. Asgard, mystical realm, beyond the stars. Frost Giants. Listen to yourself...

Loki: It's not the same. It's completely different.

Mobius: No. It's not the same. It's exactly the same thing.

Loki only referring to names and planets while Mobius was the one to bring in mythological aspects of divinity was certainly........a choice, especially because Marvel itself was insistent on the Not Gods, Just Aliens That Humans Looked Up To side of things before.

A theme I liked that the first two episodes had going on was free will/choice, and it's because Loki in Episode 2, in this conversation especially, was bringing up legitimate questions about the TVA. He even calls them out on their propaganda and sanitizing rhetoric at the start of episode 2.

So then after Loki's entire spiel about how if he wins it'd be because it's his choice and he simply believes he has some glorious purpose (a belief that gets shattered after he watches his death at Thanos' hand, you'd think??) they go on to the above conversation about beliefs, and Mobius justifies his own faith in the TVA with

"it's real because I believe it's real"

right after saying

"Because if you think too hard about where any of us came from, who we truly are, it sounds kinda ridiculous, existence is chaos, nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it... And I'm just lucky that the chaos I emerged into gave me all this... My own glorious purpose."

It doesn't just explicitly mirror Loki's own previous explanations (which Mobius did back in episode 1 too! What a hypocrite!) but the conversation leads us onto questions which DO become significant later in the show.

The fact that Loki's role in the narrative is significantly reduced after this episode drops the themes with his involvement almost entirely and fails to revive them in the final episode when Kang reveals that everything since he was pulled out of the Sacred Timeline was also predestined to happen in favour of Sylvie's revenge narrative and being frustrated with her own 'reality' of being insignificant.

It follows the theme of "It never stops," in regards to higher powers after the Time Keepers being fake is supposed to be a surprise until the moment it does stop (Kang saying he no longer knows what will happen) and Loki's "then who created the TVA?" leaves the end of the show at "it never stops" again.

I think setting up such major themes only to fail exploring them at more than surface level was definitely a way the show lost potential, but it clearly tried to establish good concepts.