#even though it looks like mobius its actually victor

[pokemon1oadvanced]

Loki: rushing through time to save everyone before the loom resets everything*

Also Loki: teases Mobius with centuries worth of arguments the analyst doesn’t remember*

[delyth88]

Mid season trailer breakdown

Finally found some time (ha!) to take a closer look at the mid-season trailer.

It starts with a very brief shot of Loki time-slipping in a spaghettifying TVA that we've seen before, and then a split second shot of Loki walking into the pie room. But the lights in the pie dispensers are all off. Does this mean it's near the very end of the timeline where the power was cutting out? Or is there some other significance to this? Where is my anon who suggested they need to go through enough repetitions of the time loop to eat through all the pies...!

Then we move on to this scene of the gang in front of the model of the gantry and the Time Loom.

OB asks, "Loki, how much do you know?' and Loki replies "Lets assume I don't know much but I'm a fast learner, and I'm a god."

Timely is still holding his device, so this is towards the beginning of episode 4 shortly after Timely arrives in the TVA, and before the pie room or the Dox in a box.

I'm assuming Loki has just explained to them the situation and they're just going with it! :)

Then it skips to this scene where Loki says "Here we go".

Later in the trailer he follows on with a voiceover saying "Listen to me carefully, hit the green button", and then shows this shot again as he says "it can be a little sticky".

When he says "Hit the green button", Loki seems to be quite fearful and intense, with a slightly more whispery quality to the sentence, than the following shot where it's more light hearted when he says "It can be a little sticky".

Now if I'm not just reading too much into this (which to be honest that is exactly what I'm doing in this entire post, but its fun), it looks like this might be two different instances of the same event. Maybe the first is earlier on and the second is later on once it's resulted in destruction a few more times? Or perhaps the other way around once Loki's been through enough repetitions to be confident this bit will go well. *shrugs*

We then see what I assume is Timely again (because he's the only one missing from the shot above) out on the gantry having actually made it as far as the sphere at the end, pressing the green button.

However, we ALSO see this shot of what I again assume is Timely, but from behind this time. He's not wearing a helmet and we can see his hair, and the throughput multiplier is leaning against the wall. The airlock doors have been opened though and he's being spaghettified again.

So it looks like we're going to be seeing this attempt to fix the Loom multiple, presumably spectacularly unsuccessful, times. Poor Victor. :(

There's also shots in the operations centre (what are we calling the room looking out onto the Loom. Oh. Okay that just wrote itself, didn't it? XD). In the LOOM ROOM we have another shot of Loki saying "Here we go" and Mobius excitedly shouting "Yes!" as Loki drags him over towards the control panel / airlock. Which I'd guess is once they successfully manage to get a Timely out to the end of the gantry, or possibly even fire off the throughput multiplier.

There's a shot of Loki in the Loom Room turned back to face OB and the other while it looks like the Loom is exploding. He looks more dishevelled than he was in the scene we saw in episode 4. And I can't tell if he looks sad and defeated or suspicious. He's looking towards Sylvie, OB, Casey, and B-15. There was that whole weird moment with Casey and the throughput multiplier that just seemed off, so really putting my effort into leaping here, could this be that Loki's suspicious Casey sabotaged it?

Then outside the TVA we get those shots of Sylvie listening to music. I'm really not sure where she is - but I'm assuming since she looks to be wearing a T-shirt rather than her armour under her coat that she's on the timeline.

For Casey we get the shot we've seen of him in a tunnel, immediately preceded by this shot of what looks like a searchlight at a prison and audio of a siren. So is Casey escaping from prison? A POW camp?

They show Casey in two short shots in time with the music - does this mean anything? Like indicating the repeating of events? Or does it just look cool.

I do wonder if they're going to make some of the really likeable characters have a despicable past on the timeline and use that to further the discussion of free will and the power to choose to be different. That could be interesting. But I'd like Casey not to be a horrible person. :(

There's a couple of shots of a new location we've not been to, but one that still looks like it's within the TVA. There are pneumatic tubes behind Loki and great big fans. Some old armchairs on one side, and a pinboard on the other. The shot starts with what looks like spaghetti strands with Loki's magic radiating out from the centre.

As the magic fades we see the strands have disappeared and there are some other people in the room with him.

B-15 in plain clothes, and Sylvie just moving out of shot as the camera zooms in towards Loki. It also looks like Sylvie is in her outfit with the grey T-shirt.

So does this indicate Loki can use magic to hold things together to stop them from spaghettifying, even if only temporarily?

We get a fairly horrifying shot of Loki being distorted in front of spaghetti.

And I'm afraid this next image is going to give me nightmares, but it looks like this is in the same room - we can see the yellow on the wall and the same ceiling lights behind him.

By the time he's slipped away the spaghetti is gone. So again, is this because he somehow carries this destruction with him? Or is this a shot shown in reverse because time really got all timey-wimey on him and time is actually flowing backwards at points? (That would be pretty damn cool to see how he deals with it!)

Then we get another shot of that room and Casey, OB, and Mobius are there with Loki. All in their plain clothes. But this shot is flipped around from the one above that had the chairs on the other side of the room. Again, is that meaningful, or just somehow one of the versions looks cooler? Or does the room just have a pneumatic tube gizmo at both ends?

There's also this shot which I can't figure out where it is. Sylvie's still in her T-shirt, and Loki is either pointing at the ceiling or making some magical gesture. All around them are spaghettified strands. I still don't quite understand how it's possible for people to be in the same space as anything else that's spaghettifying (I never thought I'd need to use that as a verb so often!), without becoming spaghetti themselves.

It looks like that record player Sylvie was using might be in the background, if so does that mean the last thing Sylvie was doing while the universe crumbled around her was listening to music? And then Loki turns up to get her out of her timeline and take her to the TVA to help? Or is the spaghetti somehow related to Loki?

It looks like we get the final shot of episode 4 in reverse. My bet is this is the opening of episode 5.

And finally we get to see Mobius on the timeline. And the house he lives in.

Loki visits him at work and says "The TVA is gone."

Mobius has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. So I think we can assume that Mobius is the first person Loki tries to find on the timeline and he wasn't expecting Mobius not to know him. I wonder how on earth Loki manages to convince him about the madness that is the TVA!! I think that's going to be a fun conversation. :)

I also wonder how Loki is actually able to find them all? Does he jump back and look everyone up in the system? Does he use HWR's special tempad?

I'm not usually a big fan of trailers mid season, but there's still so much unknown at the point that I've really enjoyed looking through this and trying to work out what might be happening. :D

Tagging my partners in wild speculation @pinkpondofasgard @woodelf68.

[theitcharchives]

I caved. I watched Loki S2

Loki season two was fine but too many of you are being insufferable about the series itself and its lore. Timelines and universes are not interchangeable things–a universe contains timelines according to the series' lore itself and I don't understand how people do not understand this. MCU Loki now holds the timelines of 199999. Quit throwing the 616 thing around (looking at you Feige) and talking about "worlds". Variants are the same people across timelines according to logic, that's why some of the Lokis in S1E5 (iirc episode number) made no sense–Mobius did.

The first season remains one of the worst things I've ever had the misfortune to see, so to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the second is something.

Be warned–pleasantly surprised does not mean "omg it's perfect" it means "I did not expect this measure of respect for character and narrative, there's some good points and there's definitely bad points".

Still, the first three episodes were boring. The narrative in them and in some places of the second three was clunky. Things were underexplained and impersonal, both rushed and scattered. X-05 did not appear outside of the first season premiere, not even the first season proper (according to the internet because I indeed had zero recollection of him and refuse to rewatch S1) yet the second season treats him as if the audience is familiar with him–and it's confusing as heck. I cannot even properly recall what exactly happened in those episodes because it was so clunky and scattered and half explained. Especially the characters and their goals and stakes. I barely cared for Loki's, let alone anyone else's–well except Ouroboros. I love that guy.

Wow, we have to save all these freed timelines? Sure. I mean it's the right thing to do, so let's do it. It would've been so easy to actually get the audience to personally care–have Loki realize in those infinite timelines, there were some he could be happy in. His mother, his brother, even his father to whom his attachment is not resolved, there had to be timelines where they were happy and safe, perhaps even with him. In some of those timelines, Loki gets his revenge on Thanos, he gets to heal. He comes to term with his birth and heritage, he remedies the wrongs he has been done and has done to others in turn. Yes, those timelines deserve to exist, because Loki should know he deserves to be happy too. His "friends" too. Those stories deserve to exist.

Speaking of under-explained... so at one point Loki just... gains control over time jumps? Like that? Did I miss something in the whole thing? Like if it's because it's him, according to The Who being what is important ("in magic", I would have expected) then say it.

Some pieces were predictable. The whole interrogation of X-05 match one and two, the ending path itself (I was surprised by the tree thing though), Loki pruning himself (did that scene really need to be drawn out like that? We get what's happening, get on with it).

Some pieces were drawn out like the self-pruning, like retrieving Victor Timely. The whole time I was like "You've seen him, you can block objects in mid-air and teleport people in cages, snatch him and throw him in a portal so he can see the TVA instead of just talking to him and convince him–why does he need to be convinced?? Show him!!?" Details like these, like the machine that makes the shrinking cubes being left at all in the cell, Ravonna not actually looking to see if any other minutemen were considering her offer before compressing them all (I guess they had to slim down the cast, but man), Loki the Jotun with super strength having to run kilometers to catch one human–silly.

Things that were left out–Thanos, completely. The Jotun heritage. Loki being the scapegoat child in the narcissistic royal family, all his conditioning. It is said he wants a throne, it is never acknowledged why: being groomed to do so since childhood through mentions he was born to be a king, upbringing, education, treatment by family and society. The gender fluidity and sexuality, though with the MCU's regard for those things, it's likely better they left them alone–though the lack of shapeshifting was miffing. New York was handled better than I would've expected, but still breezily.

Now to be fair, many things were good. B-5 outright stating that the pruning the TVA does is an atrocity and convincing others. I'm ambivalent about Loki and Mobius–their relationship in the first season was a terrible one, but they genuinely roped me in in the second. Some things were funny in that delicate way that doesn't need clownery and one-liners that I'd been missing ever since the first two Thor movies. Ouroboros (especially in episode 5–ouch, too close to home). The soundtrack, amazing. The acting came across as more heartfelt. I even managed to tolerate Sylvie in the last few episodes–and oh yeah, leaving romance of any kind out, completely. Thank fuck. Loki actually being the main character of his own series. The fifth and sixth episodes. The sets, the props also felt real. The final outfit is growing on me. The dialogues, the interactions, the camera work, my gods, some parts were amazing. I am willing to rewatch it to make more sense of things, and look at other MCU works to see if it will impact them. I had given up on the MCU–Loki roped me in, Loki gave me back some interest when I thought it was dead for good.

Oh I'm still mad all my searches for comics appearances are cluttered with MCU stuff. I'll be mad until it calms out. "What if it never-" then I guess I'll never stop holding a grudge and complaining.

In the end, I'm just glad Loki got his not-terrible ending. I don't like that his final choice and chance was to sacrifice himself and all his needs for others, sitting in a tree holding the 199999 universe's timelines together, alone after saying teary eyed that he doesn't want to be alone. But it's still better than how he was treated and discarded from T:Ragnarok to Infinity War, and it doesn't exclude Loki from showing up again, some way or the other.

Obligatory link to the Loki comics reading list.