#mobius is a fascist

[therese-lokidottir]

Was completely unaware she was hurting people

Knew full well he was hurting people

All Carol needs is to see the people to know it's wrong. She needed to be lied to and have the truth about the refugees hidden from her because otherwise she would have never been apart of the Kree empire even if she believed she was a Kree. For Carol what's most important is for others to know not only that she never meant to harm but she is sorry for what harm she did cause. She's sorry, no one needs to prompt her to say it.

Mobius can't stop hiding behind the same excuses. He thought he was the good guy. Confronted with the clearly messed up things which good guys don't do he just says he thought ends justify the means but he never denied what he did was wrong. For Mobius what's most important is that Sylvie know he thought he was right and that she also did bad things. He has to be cornered into an apology.

[unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff]

No arguments about Wong and Frigga being great, but the other two... yikes.

OK, I don’t hate Yelena by any means, but she is not the innocent flower a ton of people think she is. That lady slaughtered an entire prison of her own accord and laughed about it in front of Natasha.

[emotinalsupportturtle]

Loki season 2 episode 3

Loki babygirl YOU of all people can't critique art

not after this monstrosity

this whole play was..... something else

[disaster-bay-leaf]

i was foolish enough to make fun of my bestie’s obsession with older men and the universe decided to punish me by showing me pictures of long-haired mobius edits on pinterest. i am a changed person

[galaxythreads]

the fact that we

didn't kill all the TVA agents because they were trying to do what they thought was right with the wrong information

give the TVA a choice on whether or not they want to stay now.

Did not make Loki the new Kang

Had Loki build Yggdrasil

Loki's moral compass was the thing that stopped him from just giving up because he refuses to let people die

Loki is not taking control of the timelines, he's simply purging them of evil Kangs, and therefore keeping them safe

Loki got his silly little horns back!!

Loki got a throne, but it's one where he keeps people safe

are actively working to make the TVA not fascist, weird, creepy, and murderous

Mobius has the crappiest house in the world but he just wanted that because it's his

Sylvie gets to find a home because she's not running for her life anymore

NO SHIPS!!

are good things about the finale. I didn't love it, but this was all very good and satisfying.

[unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff]

Ooh ooh ooh, I suddenly remembered a scene I neglected to mention because it was so bafflingly horrible I think my mind blocked it out.

OK, so Loki, about halfway through the episode, after being told by He Who Remains that no matter what he does the Temporal Loom will wipe out everything but the Sacred Timeline, decides he needs to talk to someone he cares about. (There's no on-the-nose dialogue where he says this, but I think it's meant to be the implication given he seems rattled.)

Now you might be thinking "gee, Loki wants to talk to someone he cares about and has the power to go to any point in his personal time-stream? Well, obviously this is a perfect opportunity for him to go back to before he got yanked from his timeline and get advice from Frigga, or Thor if he gets desperate." And that would be the logical and in-character choice. But this series makes anti-sense, so instead.....

He goes back to the very first episode of this series, to the scene in the Time Theater where Mobius was engaging in the most extreme case of revisionist history the MCU has ever done (I don't count the post-Phase 4 discourse around Wanda, because as of yet the narrative itself hasn't tried to rewrite who she truly is). While he is there (then?), he is able to get Mobius to tell him a story about his life as a Nazi. I'll do my best to sum it up.

Basically, Mobius used to be a Hunter going out and capturing variants, and one day he and Renslayer were on a mission together to find a variant that would become a dictator. The problem is, the deviation happened when the variant was 8 years old, so Mobius hesitated to wipe him from existence, but Renslayer did not, and in the matter of seconds that he hesitated, the timeline branched a lot further. Mobius considers that his greatest failure. (And while it's never said, I'm guessing this was the reason he got demoted to desk duty; because he was only 99.99% heartless unlike everyone else at the TVA.)

I don't have the words for how fucking tasteless this is. But... SOMEHOW this absolute horror story is treated as what was necessary for Loki to have his big epiphany for what he has to do, as after this he has the talk with Sylvie I mentioned briefly above, and this cascades into the clown-show of a climax.

I realize now why I left this out of my initial summary; because it's so fucking awful it required its own separate essay.

I know you said you weren't watching Loki Season 2 (and trust me, you're better off not doing it), but I DID watch it, and I need to get my thoughts straight and describe how it ended, and I can think of no better way than by telling you.

So... how to put this down concisely in a way that won't make me look insane?

OK, I think I got it.

Loki has somehow gained the ability to transfer his consciousness to any point in his time-stream. What happens to the past version of him when he takes control? Don't know. But ignore that, the story purpose of this is so he can Doctor Strange himself and continually repeat the process of trying to modify the TVA's Temporal Loom before it overloads and destroys all of reality. [In case you don't know, the Temporal Loom apparently "takes raw time and weaves it into the Sacred Timeline", but now that the multiverse is free it can't account for so many new branches, so they want to expand it's output.]

Now you might be thinking "well, the multiverse is infinite, so how can anything quantify it?" And you'd be right, because when Loki finally manages to expand the loom, it still overloads because there is just too many branches. Why did it take him thousands of years to realize it was fruitless? Because this show's Loki is a fucking idiot.

Anyway, at first Loki thinks the solution is to stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains so the timelines aren't freed (I think the writers forgot that the timelines started branching before HWR died), so by going back along his time-stream he is able to talk with HWR, who tells him... get this... that the Temporal Loom has a fail-safe where if it overloads, it blows up to destroy everything except for the Sacred Timeline, and then it's rebuilt. So that puts Loki back to where he was at the end of Season 1 both narratively and literally; either protect one timeline and only one timeline by wiping out quintillions of lives, or let everything burn completely.

Right now you're probably thinking "killing quintillions of people to save a few trillion doesn't feel like a good tradeoff" and you'd be right. Loki thinks so too, because he tells Sylvie that he doesn't think it's worth keeping one timeline alive at the cost of all the others. So what does he do?

... to be honest, I don't fully grasp it, so stay with me here.

He does back to the moment before the Temporal Loom was destroyed, and somehow uses his powers to rip it apart himself and contain the explosion so it doesn't incinerate anything.... I think, because after that there are millions of little strands that I guess are supposed to represent timelines. And then.... I still can't believe what I saw... Loki reaches out and starts grabbing as many strands/timelines as he can, and weaves them into what I think is supposed to be the Tree of Yggdrasil, and at the end of the sequence he sits down on a throne at the center of the "tree".

How does any of this work physically? How can Loki do any of this? Fuck you, that's how!

What does any of it mean? I haven't the faintest clue. The best I can figure, the Tree of Yggdrasil is quite literally a physical representation of the multiverse and Loki is holding it together by sheer force of will, so he did in fact get out of HWR's puzzle box.

The cynic in me initially thought the opposite was true, and the tree represented just the Sacred Timeline, so we were back to square one and free will doesn't exist. And in my defense, there isn't any dialogue denying that. In the final scene we're back at the TVA, which seems to just be looking out for Kang variants now (Mobius briefly mentions the term "616", implying they are cataloguing timelines now I guess), but... as we've talked about many times, trying to turn a Nazi organization into something better, with ALL of the same people (minus Renslayer) to boot, will inevitably crash and burn. AND ALSO, the Tree is still a finite thing, so how is it accounting for literal infinite timelines? I dunno, it just is.

Written out I'm realizing how wildly incoherent this seems, but I swear I'm being as concise as I can. This show is just a nonsensical disaster.

Okay, that was the wildest ride I've been in a while. I don't know how to thank you because I genuinely loved that 👌

So... Loki can grab timelines now? 😂😂 See, this is what I meant with my review of The Marvels, the powers range in these new phases is all over the place. We have so many characters who are widely OP for no freaking reason, it is not explained, they just have that ability out of nowhere and the writers don't care about what that might mean in upcoming movies and series. Just like Wanda in MoM: if you give her such overarching powers, when we see her throwing a punch here and there it seems comical. Ridiculous, even.

Anyway, if I understand correctly then the timelines are still controlled, just by Loki this time instead of HWR? And the TVA still exists? So how is that a good thing? God, what happened to Marvel that they went from "Hydra, Shield, it all goes" to "Let's keep the TVA alive, they can do some good". Did they show the agents actually learning that all the shit the TVA taught them was wrong? Otherwise they will cause the same problems all over again. The problem wasn't HWR, the problem was that those agents believed in what they were doing. If they don't have a change of heart, they will repeat it all over again.

And character-wise, did Loki learn anything about himself? Or was it all talk about timelines and him taking over? Ugh, I'm so glad I didn't watch it...

[gloriousburden]

This is SO late, but I just have to say my piece on the Loki Series and Mobius (both derogatory).

The only good part of the series was when Loki landed in the Gobi Desert and flicked away his gag, after that, all the gentrification, oocness, and other stupidity began for me. The way he would never say 85% of those lines, and how he was made to be so “quirky” via humiliation after the Battle of New York?

Mobius is so fucking far up his own delusions, like he basically watches other realities and people through screens, he only socially interacts with other TVA staff, is friends with one of the main fascists in charge, etc. 

His fucking “I’m a nice guy” act makes me want to fucking punch him all the more harder.

In some ways, I have more respect for that TVA officer in Roxxcart being like “they’re all going to die” and Loki for say that also in Pompeii, than Möbius’s meandering holier-than-thou bullshit of basically softening the blow with “good taste” by distracting a little girl with candy as he blows up her timeline.

People hate on Brad for his treatment towards Loki, but love on Mobius for that v similar treatment. Talking down to him, condescending him as not a threat, calling him privileged and harmless and basically saying that he knows Loki better than he knows himself.

I will be forever be disgusted and spiteful that Mobius never got treated as nearly much contempt as Brad and Renslayer, nor did he have something horrible happen to him because of Loki.

Like he just EMBODIES the naive, starry-eyed fool that arrogantly thinks he’s an expert on someone but will never get out alive once meeting that someone.

It was far more interesting to me to see Loki in captivity in “Avengers” and “Dark World”  (both had flaws for me) acting like Hannibal in “Silence of the Lambs” than the bullshit I saw in the Loki Series. And “Dark World” also let him have some more vulnerability without completely demolishing his dignity and character.

I got up to the episode after they met He Who Remains, and I don’t think I’m going to finish this mess. 

So sorry for seeing this months later. Thank you for the ask! Honestly… The second I pressed play the first episode of the series when it came out in 2021, I just knew that… this is going to be really bad. When he first walked into the tva, I was bewildered at how out of character he was. This is Avengers 2012 Loki we’re talking about! He would not say that shit. Instead of his usual dry, sarcastic, old englishy-esque way of talking and humor, it was, as you perfectly put it, very… “Quirky.” He wasn’t even that “quirky” in Ragnarok!

Exactly! The “I’m a nice guy” thing about Mobius has always irritated me so badly. I’ve really never liked him, and was surprised to see such a positive reaction. The negative reaction to Sylvie, I expected of course, But… they’re both bad! Wish people would understand that.

Yeah.. the double standards with Brad/everyone else, and Mobius are so annoying. Why is it okay for Mobius to continuously belittle Loki, throw him into a time loop where he is repeatedly physically assaulted, mock the death of his mother, and all the other bullshit he put Loki through just because you want them to be together romantically? And… this isn’t even some toxic relationship “turned better” situation. They don’t even acknowledge the shit Mobius has done to Loki!

People don’t even talk about the other bad things Mobius has done. It’s a series about people being mislead and morals being questioned, yet… so called fans don’t get into any of it at all. Just ship discourse, and fanon. If I liked the series… I think I’d get into the themes of chaos versus order, the people of the tva being mislead and lied to, etc… But they don’t even do it in the series as everything is a second thought, and doesn’t match up. The writers don’t care, and neither does the fandom.

Agreed! Series fans always say that the belittling of Loki, and the underutilization/erasure of his past characterization is just him… “healing” and being “vulnerable”…. Loki has been vulnerable before after the events of Avengers 2012 (Tdw), and he still was him! It wasn’t an immediate switch in his behavior, and didn’t erase everything that made him, him!

The psychology of Loki’s character from Thor 1, to the dark world was so interesting, and even well done at times. I know a lot of people on this side of tumblr don’t love Tom that much after the series, but I truly do think he understood Loki very well, and portrayed him beautifully back in the day. There was so much care put into his characterization. He stood out from the snarky, quirky superheroes of the mcu.

I miss when it was understood that Loki’s character should reflect the origins in Norse myth. That he is not evil, nor good. Not that he’s strictly good, and not at all evil just because he’s suffered! He’s the god of mischief, chaotic in his nature. Not the god of anti hero with a shitty redemption arc!

Ugh, people are so blind to everything that happened with Mobius, because they’re too focused on shipping him with Loki. Some have the nerve to complain about the mischaracterization, while not realizing that their ship is mischaracterization as well! You can’t cherry pick.

Thank you for the ask!

[iamnmbr3]

I’ve been blissfully unaware of whatever the heck is going on in the Loki series, but I’m starting to see something about him making a big sacrifice for his so-called “friends” and basically becoming an Atlas of sorts? Without looking things up that will make me want to bleach my mind to have to sift through and make sense of, I’m curious what on earth the context of this is, because no matter what it is it sounds… pretty bad.

yup. you got it right. loki - or rather Larry since Loki has yet to make a single appearance in the show and has instead been replaced by an ooc fascistic clown - ends up sacrificing himself to an eternity of loneliness and suffering for the sake of the organization that murdered his entire family when it erased his timeline and the people like Mobius who subjected him to 2 seasons of torture, brainwashing and degredation.

and this is presented positively.

[therese-lokidottir]

Other ship I dislike beside sylki and it's lokius.

Honestly I very understand why they shop Loki and mobius (beside they want gay couple). It's interaction , even hollow and all shit loki reply what mobius said, different with Sylvie , loki just quite. Also o think it's because Owen Wilson self Dan his chemistry with Tom are look more real than with shopia.

But no, the ship not more healthy than ylki because well mobius is not nice and kind to loki either, his nice is pretty much like he give candy as bait and he have knife behind his back. And his 'kindness ' is loom hollow and fake.

I really feel annoyed that many fans said mobius is loki Jimmy cricket. Did, he is worse than loki. Or the compared mobius with aziraple. I may not really know aziraple but I know definitely aziraple is nice, respect and kind to demon Crowley. Something mobius never did and never will do.

Oh , I see a fanart that frigga thank to mobius. Okey, whoever drawing that they forgetting that mobius lie to loki and balme to loki that loki kill frigga, his mother and lead loki to breakdown.

Mobius is like Sylvie and rest of Asgard family bad and toxic peoples that claimed they care and kind to loki but never showing it to loki.

I am very disappointed that narrative keep saying he is loki's friend and nice to him. Are they blind or stupid ?

So the thing is about the Sylvie Loki ship is there is so little of a relationship at all I can't really call it abusive. Mobius and Loki is incredibly abusive. Like Mobius is constantly belittled and insulting Loki and any compliments is undermine with condescension. Mobius is using Loki and will and does half way through the series condemn Loki to pain and death when he doesn't do what he's want.

The idea Mobius is any kind moral center or influence of good is so wrong. Mobius wanted Loki to join the TVA, the people who as the show itself state are people who annihilate universe is and orphan little girls. The very first scene is Mobius unhesitantly condemning a child to non-existence. It doesn't matter if Mobius thinks he working for the greater good because his actions are horrible and that's what he wanted Loki to do.

At no point does Mobius encourage Loki to save a cat from a tree, save someone from burning building or just be more thoughtful to others. No he wanted help capturing Sylvie so the TVA could go on unhindered and keep being a Fascist knight templar cult. All the good Loki displays, the sympathy for the people on lamentis and the kindness to Sylvie that is just the good Loki always was. Mobius just tears Loki down and then is awarded a gold star because he reluctantly says "Well, actually you can be good Loki." what a joke

Can we get frostiron back to being the popular Loki mlm ship. Because I may have some issues with Tony but at least he didn't torture Loki, be complicit in daily genocide and institutionalized assault

[brsb4hls]

I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS! Capitalism once again ruined the story.

Like, it made zero sense for them to just go back to their job and be nvm about it.

And then you have people mass-hating on Sylvie for actually calling Mobius out on it.

i feel like the possibility of mobius and b-15 BURNING IT DOWN!!!! died completely the moment someone realised that the one obviously marketable thing about the loki series was the tva :|

[latent-thoughts]

It's funny how people accused Loki of being a fascist/genocidal maniac/evil autocrat back in 2012, even though there were clear indications of him being under the influence of the mind stone + Thanos' torture and indoctrination + going through a phase of severe mental breakdown (in Thor 1).

And now people are embracing the fact that (not)Loki* is becoming a loyal dog of the TVA--a fascist, genocidal organisation which kills whole universes in one go without so much as blinking, puts people in gas chambers to alter their minds, tortures people into submission (which Mobius actually did to (not)Loki), only because one person (Kang) decided that one timeline was sacred and the rest expendable.

I can't imagine the mental gymnastics being utilised here.

* I'm using (not)Loki because whatever this character is, he's certainly not the Loki of 2011-2013.

[youlackconviction]

The second season of the Loki show was just as terrible as the first season. (Spoilers ahead)

Loki says he attacked New York because he was angry and having a bad day. Which is so wrong and insulting to his character. Maybe he was joking, but instead of that, couldn't they just address the fact that he was under the influence of the mind-stone? Or the fact that he was tortured by Thanos? They don't even talk about his Jotun heritage. I hated it so much.

Also, it is never explained how Loki gets the time-slipping powers. Apparently, Sylvie kicking him through the door at the end of time in previous season gives him that power here. But that's just a fan-theory. It's never explained in show how he got those new powers. And Sylvie or Ravonna don't get those powers despite going from end of time to other places too. It's a plot-hole ridden mess. (Also instead of giving Loki completely ooc powers, couldn't they just focus more on his powers which were already shown in the movies? Or powers which he has in the comics?)

And okay, I am glad that Loki is saving everyone. He has always been heroic, so it's not a surprise that he sacrificed his freedom to spend an eternity in loneliness just to protect the timelines. But what I do have a problem with is, that his primary motivation for saving the timelines comes from wanting to protect TVA. He only cares about his 'friends' over there. He comes across as a fascist in the show and that's disgusting and ooc. I would have preferred if his motivation was to save everyone in the prime timeline, especially Thor. But that's not the case here.

Also, why does he need preachings from Sylvie and Mobius about what he should be doing? He should have come to his own conclusion about wanting to protect the timelines and freewill. Why did he need to talk with Mobius and Sylvie to realise that? It's as if he literally did not care about freewill and only changed his mind when Sylvie talked him out of it.

And he needed centuries of time to understand how time worked and how the machine made by O.B. worked. Loki is a genius in the comics. He shouldn't need so much time to understand something. The show keeps trying to make him dumb.

His friendship with B-15 was non-existent since they almost never talked. They needed more interactions. Ravonna and Miss Minutes were written so terribly, and their plotline was just ignored in the end. And don't even get me started on that Brad guy. What was even the point of his character?? And Loki torturing him (despite having gone through torture himself) was horrible and ooc to watch.

Also, TVA people kill thousands of timelines and an uncountable number of people. Yet they get redemption. But poor Loki gets villainized.

Sorry for the rant. I hate that show so much. The only good thing they did was toning down the Sylki romance, then again there wasn't any romance there to begin with lol, since she always just hated him. And Loki's friendship with Mobius was downright disgusting. I hated all of it.

i've not managed to bring myself to watch that shitshow yet. i still plan to but not with any hope of enjoyment.

thought others might appreciate your summary - thank you for providing it! you are doing valuable work, probably saving others from the torture.

[nerdby]

I'm not really looking forward to Deadpool & Wolverine coming out this summer. I mean, I am but I'm not

Because whenever a halfway decent Marvel film comes out the fandom gets invaded by insecure, eugenicist, posers who never bothered watching phases 1-3 or read a comic book before in their life and they just shit all over everyone who has read the comics and is aware of their political nature.

I mean, maybe things will be different now because a lot of people seem to have finally gotten the fucking hint thanks to X-Men 97, but I really fucking doubt it. Cause it's Deadpool so people are just gonna assume that it's because it's edgy satire -- YES THAT IS WHAT SATIRE LOOKS LIKE -- that it won't be overtly political. And they might be right and that's even fucking worse cause they are then I get to spend the whole fucking summer listening to incels going

"REEEEEE!!!! THIS IS WHAT ALL COMIC BOOK MOVIES SHOULD BE LIKE!!!! REEEEEEEE!!!! GO WOKE GO BROKE!!!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!"

And that......I cannot.......Like I do NOT enjoy arguing with people, but like I did not spend 30 fucking years educating myself about fucking comic books, video games, scifi, and blah-blah-fucking-blah to just get edged out of the fucking fandom by a punch of fucking pricks who are pissed off that they can't get their dicks wet. Like, seriously, FUCK YOU DUDES!!!!

And I am just praying that Loki or Mobius doesn't show up in this movie because they do -- I can't even be excited about it.

Because I'll have to deal with the absolutely fucking insane, eugenicist Hiddlestoners that invade the Loki fandom any time Tom Hiddleston appears on screen in a Marvel project for five fucking seconds!!!!

Thank you, by the way, for ruining one of my favorite actors for me😘

Like you fuckers have sucked the fun out of being a Marvel fan for EVERYONE who is a real Marvel fan. Accuse me of fucking gatekeeping all you goddamn want to, but a real Marvel fan doesn't spout off shit like

"Well, the comics shouldn't influence the movies."

Because they're fascist assholes who are addicted to shallow escapist media because they don't want to be called out on their fuck ups. Because they feel guilty and refuse to admit WHY that is, and the idea of setting foot in a therapist's office is mortifying to them. Which is fucking disgusting, by the way. Needing therapy is not some sort of fucking moral failing -- being mentally ill is NOT some sort of moral failing.

I've said it before and I will say it again.

It's not the movies that are the problem. It's the fucking fandom.

So you know what -- yeah, I'm gatekeeping. I'm gatekeeping fascists and incels. Stan Lee, Joe Simon, and Jack Kirby would be ashamed to have some of you people as fans. They wouldn't claim you and I don't either.

Welcome to Incelgate, bitches.

[blindtaleteller]

EDIT: tags, again.

Loki hates Thor, he will never return to Thor even when he gets a chance. He's gonna stay with Mobius

Mobius daily affirmations

[taraljc]

Even more Loki meta. The most Loki meta of Loki meta. Part 2

The Loom is a metaphor for the broken system. The quest to try and fix the broken system is what gave each of the characters the opportunity to evolve. To answer the important questions. At their core, who are they? Who are they becoming? What do they want? What are they willing to sacrifice?

B15 showed the TVA that they had to change. Even the hardline General Dox in the end accepted that. Instead of the TVA erupting into factions and violence, they told everyone the truth: they were variants. They had their lives erased. They had been stolen, repurposed, lied to, and they had been mindlessly giving up their own free will. Absolved of any wrongdoing, because the Timekeepers dictated the proper flow of time. Someone above their pay grade had taken the burden of all those the hard choices onto their own shoulders. The Timekeepers made it easy for them. People like easy. So, they put their heads down and woke up every day doing their small parts enforcing a broken system, committing genocide over and over again in order to have the promise of a paradise that was only ever an illusion.

They had to individually and as a group recognise that every being on every timeline deserved a chance. That they were exactly like them. That they all mattered. They had to decide who they were now, and who they wanted to become. They had to take up the burden they had so long ago given away, and learn how to make their own choices. Especially the difficult ones. That from now on, no-one was paving their way, giving them a set path to follow. That choice didn’t always breed shame and uncertainty and regret.

The TVA isn't full of mindless fascist drones. The TVA aren't time cops. The TVA can be the equivalent of social services, first responders, and support for the entire multiverse. The massive bureaucratic machine that was originally built to limit reality can be repurposed to support the growth of new worlds because unlike the loom, the TVA was made up of people. And people can and do change.

Sylvie believes she had freed the multiverse. She used HWR’s TemPad to monitor the timelines for his variants, and only stepped in when Victor Timely was weaponised and became a threat. She learned that killing Timely was not her only solution. That killing was not the only solution. She learned to recognise the toxic anger and hatred inside her was slowly poisoning her and she needed to let it and Renslayer and her obsession go in order to move forward. She learned she was able to let people in, form connections, find a home and put down roots. The price she paid was losing the first friends she had ever made. Severing the first real connection in her life. And she deemed that an acceptable loss. Loki was collateral damage.

Mobius is struggling to deal with losing the most significant relationship in his long life, and the one person who truly knew him because she had been his partner for as long as he could remember. The big picture had always been a lie. Most of all, he was struggling to accept he did not truly know himself. He was afraid to find out who he had been, because what if he didn’t like what he found? Or worse, what if he regretted his choice, and spent the rest of eternity mourning the life he’d never had?

In the end, it wasn’t Loki who got through to him. It was Sylvie taught him that he had to see who he had been, in order to figure out who he was becoming. To find a new purpose. And she helps Loki do the same. She forces him to stop running, look past the short-term goals of surviving minute to minute, and instead identify what he really wants.

And over the course of the series, he grows and evolves to the point where he is ready to accept that the system needs to be replaced with something better—but they need to find a way to do that without sacrificing the people of the TVA or the people of the multiverse. He confronts his fears: that he will not know who he is and where he truly belongs without the people who inspired him to become the best version of himself: Mobius, Sylvie, B15, Ouroboros, Casey, even Victor Timely.

HWR insists that to all Loki has to do is kill one person to save everyone else. But the price of that choice is continuing to exterminate entire realities every time the timeline branches. Acceptable losses. Collateral damage.

But Loki refuses to believe it’s a binary choice; all or nothing. He believes there must be another way, a third option. That becomes his new purpose.

And he tries. He tries so hard. He spends eons trying to find a loophole, and escape plan. He has always been good at escaping. Surviving terrible, painful losses. So, he keeps at it, desperately seeking an answer that will allow him to keep what he has found, without sacrifice. At first, it’s just trying to save this handful of people he loves. It expands to the whole of the TVA. And then, as all of existence is shredded right in front of his eyes, and he witnesses the collapse of reality as he knows it, he realises the stakes are so much higher. That there is so much more at stake.

He learns from Mobius that most purpose is more burden than glory. And that the scar tissue from a lifetime of the pain and loss are what allows you to live with the burden.

He learns from Sylvie, and all his own painful losses, that sometimes it’s okay to destroy something if there’s a hope that you can replace that thing with something better.

So, Loki asks himself the important questions: Who is he? Who is he becoming? What does he want?  What is he willing to sacrifice? And he realises the only answer. He realises where he belongs. He finds his glorious purpose when he sees the big picture. Growth and change are only possible once they are able to remove the filter that was set up to refine all of reality into one single strand. There can be no free will until the loom is destroyed.

So Loki is brave. He crosses the threshold and forces his way, one foot in front of the other, down that long walkway easily the length of his father’s throne room. He uses his power to destroy the loom that is killing the branches, and opens the door to the Citadel at the End of Time. He grasps the dying branches one by one and enchants them just as Sylvie taught him. He uses all that power not to destroy, but to heal them. To pour his power and his life into them, so that they cannot just survive but grow.

He steps off the broken bridge and begins to climb the steps to what is left of HWR’s seat of power. Even as the citadel crumbles around him, he climbs and as he climbs, all the gold gilds the broken chair, creating an echo of his father’s throne, Hliðskjálf. The highest perch in all of creation, with the widest view. As he ascends to his throne and takes his place upon it as God-King of the universe, the last vestiges of the citadel and HWR’s system falls to dust and blows away. And the multiverse is born.

Because Loki did it. He acquired everything he wanted, and he did it himself. Not because it was supposed to happen. But because rewrote the story. He dictated how his story begins. It was always his story.  He chose to write his own destiny, of his own free will. And at the centre of Yggdrasil, he is no longer afraid of being alone, because he is the beating heart of the entire multiverse. He is not alone, and he never will be because he is connected through the branches of the world tree to everyone he cares about.  

Loki becomes who he was always meant to be: The God of Stories.

[oopsgracie]

my thoughts on loki season two so far…

i’m really struggling with this season of loki because i want to love it but why so many filler episodes? i feel like this did nothing to develop plot or relationships or even loki as a character. true, i do like the whole OB as a science teacher come wannabe bestseller and his role in helping loki control time slipping, and i enjoyed seeing their original timelines but i feel like this could have been done differently, perhaps not in less time, but in a way that made it feel like loki genuinely connects with these people. i don’t remember him having a conversation with b-15 about anything other than the T.V.A, similar situation when it comes to casey although they’ve had more screen time together. if his life’s new glorious purpose is wanting to reunite his friends and restore order, then put some effort into making their bonds with loki and each other more authentic?

can we also talk about why sylvie and loki weren’t reset, i know this might be answered next episode, i just hope it doesn’t become a plot hole.

we’re so often reminded that he’s a god, but it seems to be that everybody else has forgotten he’s the god of mischief, chaos, that this man invaded the whole of new york less than a month ago. with some good character development, or even a plot in which he questions his choices and desires and finds this motivation within himself later, maybe i could believe that he truly wants to restore what he has always sought to remove, but i feel like the loki i saw in this episode is no different to the loki i met at the end of season one, or even s2ep1, when his biggest concern was sylvie’s wellbeing, except that he’s done a one eighty in what he believes and has become this blindly led hero figure.

also loki and sylvie in general, i know it’s unpopular (coming from somebody that really loved their relationship) but also integral to the first season. you can’t erase a relationship that has already driven the plot of six episodes and dare i say most of loki’s character development? except apparently you can, because that seems to be what the writers have chosen to do. push any kind of tension you like, have him hate her for what she did, have him try to do everything without her and fail, but at least give them some screen time? what happened to her being his glorious purpose? what happened to finding a place on the timeline together? what happened? i love mobius and OB, but they don’t replace the dynamic of two loki variants trying to navigate the ideas of a multiverse, order against chaos and what it means to be loved. that’s what made season one so compelling and now it’s been replaced with a vapid quest to fix up a rusty old loom. i don’t know if people who disliked their relationship were listened to and that was the catalyst for such a change, and i get that it’s not for everyone, but if that’s the decision they came to at least break it off in a way that works with the storyline rather than immediately end it with no explanation. no character has mentioned how they’re feeling after everything’s gone down and with such clear moments in which these conversations could have been had, they just didn’t. the pie room— with both sylvie and mobius, the bar scene, the ferris wheel. i feel like i’ve heard sylvie say the same few lines over and over again, that she hates the T.V.A, hates HWR, wants to be free from the time fascists and make her own choices and then she leaves. even after loki speaks of thor, they talk but they don’t say anything that’s hasn’t already been understood. it goes nowhere and feels unsatisfying, like we’re going round in circles which ironically, but i suspect unintentionally, seems quite fitting with the story.

this season has its moments, i just wanted something of substance.

that’s not to say i don’t enjoy watching it, any loki content is content i’ll find joy in and i truly love the concept of this season, exploring time loops and the ouroboros, how terrifying kang is made out to be, sylvie realising she needs the T.V.A, science and time-travel to hunt down a rogue miss minutes and renslayer (who doesn’t love loki in a suit?), but i think that what matters (loki, his development and his relationships) has been executed poorly, sacrificed to advance the MCU rather than the series, which seems a shame when they had already been so well established coming into the second season, or maybe my expectations were just too high. i almost hope they don’t push any intense friendship/love interest moments in the final episode when it’s all been so neglected.

absolutely no hate to those who feel differently i just needed somewhere to point out all my frustrations :)