#loki series speculation

[nerdy-frog98]

So for experiments’ sake, I asked my straight brother who doesn’t consume Marvel, romantic media, or LGBTQ+ media often this question - “if a person fixes their jacket collar and smooths their hair before going to talk to someone, can that be taken romantically?”

He asked if it was a business thing, and I told him that it was more a reuniting thing. His response - “I mean, pausing to fix my appearance would only happen if I was about to see my wife again or if I was about to have a business meeting and my appearance mattered.” I explained the scene of Loki fixing his appearance with Loki (but didn’t use names and kept my words gender-neutral… plus a little context), and he said “Oh yeah, that’s super romantic.”

When I watched the episode with my sister, she told me at the end of the episode that she didn’t realize Loki was in love with Mobius until that exact same moment, the appearance fixing.

There was absolutely no fucking need to add that if Lokius isn’t endgame. I understand the whole “men should be allowed to be friends without getting shipped” but it just simply doesn’t apply in this situation. It is coded romantically.

I will be delusional and believe Lokius is endgame, and if it doesn’t happen, I will be so sad. Loki is canonly bisexual- PLEASE give them this Marvel 🙏🏼

[saturn-valleys]

The only thing making hopeful about Lokius maybe possibly being cacon in the next episode is the fact that Loki and Mobius are rumored to be in Deadpool 3 and if THATS the case, there's no way Deadpool wouldn't not only flirt with Mobius but also make sex jokes between Loki and Mobius.

It'd be very ooc if Wade doesn't ONCE mention their unresolved feeling for each other

[percheduphere]

I think we need to look at how the finale might play out from a non-shipping lens.

Hear me out.

Under this lens, the hardest thing Mobius can do, which is in direct answer to Ravonna's claim he never could make the hard decisions, is to leave his timeline in order to protect his kids.

Don can never protect Kevin and Sean as fully as Mobius can. His sacrifice will be protecting his children's timeline (and thus all timelines) forever, at the cost of not being there to experience his children's growth and love.

As for Loki, there are 3 themes that have been consistently set-up with a need for payoff since S1:

1. Loki's fear of being alone

2. Does what make a Loki a Loki the "fact" they are destined to lose?

3. Selfishness vs Sacrifice

The thrust of the entire series is Loki breaking out of the narrative constructs that necessitate his position as "villain". The answer to these set-ups, in order for the series to fulfill its thesis are:

1. Loki will NOT be alone.

2. Loki will win.

3. Loki will sacrifice.

His sacrifice will take 2 forms: 1. His personal safety in preventing the Loom Boom, 2. His emotional safety in allowing Mobius to return to his children.

Yet by letting Mobius go, setting Mobius free if you will, Mobius will have the opportunity to choose him the TVA, in an act of his own sacrifice.

Under the non-shipping lens, choosing the TVA to protect his kids is primary. Mobius's reward to make this sacrifice more bearable is an eternal friendship with Loki.

I am feeling fairly optimistic we will get a korasami-esque ending.

[elodiah]

Ever since I read the interview excerpt about the completely scrapped 2x5 episode, I’ve been thinking that not only was it possibly the reveal of canon Lokius (popular theory), but that it was executed in a romcom style.. e.g. Loki had to “woo” Donbius to get him to come with him, and all their scenes were played like something out of Love Actually or whatever. And that’s why we still had tiny elements of that scattered in the aired episode, such as “seeing him through the window”, “fixing the jacket and hair” and “flustered stammering”. Little references to what would have (SHOULD have) been…

[loki-who-remains]

I’ve been thinking about the significance of three.

The time keepers, however fake, were originally three. The war room has a triangular table where three people are supposed to be sitting at an equal distance from each other. Although there are five Kangs on the wall. In the end, there are many shots where people stand in three and almost always form an equilateral triangle. Yeah, it’s very cinematic and beautiful, especially in wider shots, but imo also symbolic in our case.

What if for the TVA to work properly it would actually require three people?

Someone who is practical and cares for order and people’s safety; someone who is more chaotic and can act quickly and effectively in ever changing circumstances; someone who thinks clearly, can mediate and decide at every moment how much chaos and order they need at any particular moment?

What if they have to be three?

[eddiewithcat]

i think the thing that annoys me the most about the “mobius odin variant” or “mobius thor variant” theories is the fact that.

like.

is it seriously that hard to believe somehow outside of loki’s family could love him?

like can mobius just … not be his own person? why does he have to be a variant of someone else? can’t he just be a silly Some Guy who is a single dad and sells jet skis (tries to at least) ??

i understand it is marvel and theories are fun but it also just rubs me the absolute wrong way idk idk

* also fuck odin LMFAO i was just using family to make a point i do not actually like that man plz *

[chonkymoth]

I'm on my fucking hands and knees WHAT WAS IN THE EPISODE

article here

[iamanartichoke]

Loki season 2 things I am already obsessed with:

- Loki's eyes glowing green

- The way Loki looks at Sylvie when they see each other for the first time in the McDonald's

- The fact that McDonald's has become a character in the Loki Cinematic Universe

- "We're playing God"/"We are gods" - the theological / mythological meta that these lines have spawned in my brain is *flails*

So anyway.

[musclesandhammering]

What Actually Caused the Timeslipping?

I think it was actually a progression of things. The order of events goes:

Sylvie pushes Loki through a time door to the past TVA. The fact that regular tempads can’t even do time travel within the TVA and only He Who Remains’ tempad was able to shows just how impossible it’s supposed to be for anyone who isn’t He Who Remains. So Loki shouldn’t ever have been able to go to that specific spot in time-space, and because he did, it scrambled his personal physics in a way. Almost like the universe was looking at him and going “wait.. whaa- No no no. But..?”

He prunes himself and Mobius/OB extract him from the time stream. OB described this whole process as ‘releasing Loki from time’ so I think it essentially unanchored him from any specific timeline (this is why he didn’t go back to his nyc 2012 branch in 2x05). The extractor was supposed to, then, pull him back to the present- and it did!- but because his personal physics (for lack of a better term) were still scrambled, it didn’t actually fix the problem. In fact, it made the “problem” worse.

He’s exposed to a ton of temporal radiation when he bungees back to the loom room. It’s only for a split second, but Loki was out there with the raw time radiation, with no protective suit on, even closer to the loom than Mobius or Victor got. If he was having timey wimey instability issues before, that had to have made it worse.

[samsayswhatever]

Loki's missing centuries

If Loki had to time slip back to learn all that stuff for centuries, how many times do you think he did that? He wouldn't be able to go too far back, or he might risk messing up the future. He needs to let Ravonna give victor the TVA handbook, and then get victor to the TVA, so I'm thinking that the furthest he could go back safely is when victor showed up at the TVA.

I'm thinking there was about an hour between when Victor showed up, and when the loom exploded. Roughly.

And a year is 8,760 hours. So a century is 876,000 hours. The thing said "centuries later" so thats at least two, but I'm guessing it took longer because he couldn't just study continuously, and probably had to explain himself a lot. So let's say it was 3 centuries later. That's 2,628,000 time slips.

Two million six hundred and twenty eight thousand times that Loki had to watch Mobius and his friends die, time slip painfully to the past, then see them all again - knowing that these variants are about to die, and that all this work won't be remembered.

And he knows that in a way, nothing he does matters because everything he does or says won't be remembered. But he also knows that all these variants that are dying are real people, just like him. He knows that every time the loom explodes, a variant of everyone in the entire freakin universe dies a painful horrible death because he just isn't fast enough, because he is not the perfect all-knowing god he thought he was.

His mind after all those days, weeks, years would get tired, but his body won't. He won't have time to sleep or eat. And his body won't heal. Any punch or cut he got in that fight trying to get Victor to the TVA will still hurt like it's fresh. And he will just have to feel that everyday.

Imagine how long days can feel when things aren't going your way, or when you're in pain. Then multiply it by a hundred thousand.

How long studying for finals-week feels. Multiply it by 15 thousand.

How long high school feels. Multiply it by 75.

Imagine going to high school 75 times in a row, with no support, no breaks, no food, no sleep, and having to watch the love of your life and all your friends die a painfully horrible death 24 times a day.

Like my mind is boggled.

But during all that time, he thought that this was the best plan of action. Because at the end of it, he would get to live. He made variants of the entire universe die two million times because he wanted to to live a life with people who loved him for him.

At the end of the first episode, Loki came crashing into Mobius without any sort of temporal radiation suit. He survived being out there once, and after 300 years, and a whole f ton of time and space knowledge, I'd think he'd figure out that he could go out there and not die.

I want to know when he realized that he was powerful enough to do what he did in the end. Was it really at the end after all those years? Or did he just not do that plan because even after hundreds of years, he was still a little selfish. He would rather all those variants die over and over than give up on his own life. Just maybe. Just a thought.

I feel like a lot of people thought it was unrealistic that Loki changed so much in this show. But that last step that he took to become truly selfless seemed to be the hardest. Loving and being loved wasn't too hard. That took like days or weeks to get used to. But realizing that the solution was to give up his own life took centuries. Or at least acting on that realization. How long would you need to sacrifice yourself like that, given infinite time loops?

How many times would you let the world burn because you're afraid?

[kcscribbler]

While I'm not particularly thrilled with the idea that Mobius is Donald Blake...ngl, watching this apparently ordinary guy lift Thor's hammer on the timeline would be pretty epic.

[imalsorettish]

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LOKI

maybe the reason why loki and mobius didnt end up together is because loki had to resolve within himself never to return to his previous life to keep all life and yggdrasil functioning and working in perfect balance.

Not that this matured and aged version of loki would abandon his post, at this point we know he wouldnt. But mobius might try to seek him out in his grief, unfolding the work loki did as god and yggdrasil and causing a whole slew of new issues. It was too much for the pacing to get done and execute the idea well.

The point of the show wasnt the romance it was the character development and redeption that led to loki sacrificing his life to become time immemorial. It wouldnt have made sense if we had just skipped to another marvel characters story and he was just in the tree w no explanation.

they took the time to carefully map out and coordinate how he got there and why and most importantly why he has stopped running and vying for power altogether because that is NOT who we know him to be.

mobius cant be with him as he is right now because loki had to do this first.

[taraljc]

I know chances are slim, but I would so love if they went back to the idea of Loki having a new look at the end of the series based on the comics, which is just gorgeously illustrated in the art book but is lacking two important accessories: Sylvie's broken horns, and Lævateinn.

[percheduphere]

Maybe Loki will finally get his drink with a companion now?

Avengers: Asks for it, didn't get it.

LOKI S1E4: Drinks both his and Sylvie's.

LOKI S2E2: Declines. Knows Brad is gonna run away.

LOKI S2E5: Scares Don into almost whacking him with a wrench because LOOM BOOM.

His shot of bourbon at the bar spaghettifies.

[elodiah]

Is anyone else excited/intrigued/scared by all the “SAVE MOBIUS” stuff on the Miss Minutes twt/X feed??

It’s so deliciously angsty, but makes me really worried about Mobius…

[loki-who-remains]

I really loved the title of the latest episode, so without further ado let's dive into science and fiction of the TVA. This is all so interesting.

The Loom exploded, apparently annihilating a bunch of timelines that were going through it. And after that went to a fail safe mode, restored and continued to weave like before: see the spinning input ring:

The same ring was moving slow in s2e1:

and completely stuck before the meltdown in s2e4:

Its explosion reset people at the TVA to respective branched timelines. I'm not sure 'the nexus event' is even a thing anymore, but Loki appearing to every one of them could be considered a nexus event if they existed on the Sacred timeline

Quick note before I forget. Time doors and time cubes are of the same nature. I guess if you were somehow to be stuck inside a time door you'd be squished. Another interesting duality of how to use the same tech: to traverse spacetime or to torture and violently kill.

Time cubes are old and have scratchy look, just like the first timedoors OB managed to open. Modern time doors look polished. Probably the old tech was repurposed into torturing devices by Miss Minutes someone else.

AC/DC AD/OB's 'lab':

Is this room safe? For the wormhole or the quantum...? This hole area is totally abandoned. No one's around for miles

OB, area being abandoned doesn't mean it's safe for any wormholes, especially for any people near it. Not even sure about whatever quantum stuff is going on.

But the building isn't random, the room is the same, just repainted. There's even the same chequered pattern on the floor though really faded. Is the TVA on Earth in a time bubble? The Loom has to be on the same level as R&A, so the TVA founders would expand around that abandoned building.

Which would mean that the infinite city around the TVA is an illusion. Or a side effect of the TVA being in some sort of a time bubble.

The question remains of how the Loom fits in with all of it. We've seen it exist suspended in, again, a seemingly infinite space. Let's say, its very construction can attract and visualise the raw time-matter (I'm still in denial of time being a matter, no matter how much I sciencefiction it in my head). When you look closely you see that timeline threads take shape the closer they are to the input ring of the Loom. But where do the weaved output timelines go? Do they go around, surrounding the TVA in a circle? And then inevitably branch, become formless and chaotic and have to be weaved back again?

Let's imagine that the TVA sits in the centre of time which flows around it and being recycled and reordered so the timelines co-exist without damaging each other. The Loom powers the TVA, and since past, present and future exist all the time, it's a life-long power source, Timely's dream.

That would explain how HWR sits in a castle in the centre of a manufactured, isolated Sacred timeline. His tempad isn't of TVA design. Was he inspired or did he just invade the TVA and steal their concepts and ideas? (Despite being himself involved with the creation of the Loom) Repurposed time doors into time cubes. Reshaped a multiverse protecting team of people into a purely bureaucratic time police.