Loki - The Nexus Event

 As I saw mentioned on the AV Club's take, the end of Loki's second episode felt a lot bigger than it seems it really was in the grand scheme of things. This, however, feels like the real dramatic shift in the series, which is good because we've only got two episodes left.

Let's go into spoiler territory.

Last week, in an episode that served primarily to introduce Sylvie - the female Loki variant - as a real character, she dropped the following bomb: that the TVA employees were not created by the Time Keepers, but are actually Variants themselves who have been press-ganged into service using some convenient memory-wiping. Sylvie's enchantment powers can reach into those buried memories, which begins to expose the big lie.

This week, however, we learn that there's more to it.

We begin with Loki and Sylvie watching as what can only be described as a tsunami of exploding planet comes to kill them when they're whisked back to the TVA - some kind of extreme nexus event giving their presence away (ironically, wouldn't rescuing them be the very thing allowing this to have any effect on the timeline?)

Mobius feels betrayed by Loki and sticks him in a memory loop in which Lady Sif kicks his ass for cutting her hair while she's asleep. But when Loki conveys what Sylvie told him, doubt begins to grow in Mobius' mind. He steals Renslayer's PDA-like device and manages to discover that the story checks out, and the TVA enforcer whom Sylvie enchanted had, in fact, confirmed that she had memories of a pre-TVA life. And Renslayer has been covering it up.

Believing he is one step ahead, Mobius gets Loki out of the memory loop, but they're caught by Renslayer, who has Mobius "pruned" and takes Loki and Sylvie to the Time Keepers, ostensibly to have them erased there.

That's when things get really weird. The Time Keepers are classic weird alien dudes with odd voices, but when C-20 (who had also undergone some enchantment at Roxxcart, and seems to remember a little of her former life) shows up and undoes Loki and Sylvie's restraints, a brawl breaks out. In the end, only Loki and Sylvie are left standing, but when Sylvie decapitates one of the Time Keepers, they discover that they're actually just a trio of mindless androids.

They have little time to reflect on this, and Loki seems about to confess that, as Mobius accused him, he might be falling for his own alternate-timeline self, Renslayer pops up and prunes him.

Sylvie disarms Renslayer, who seems ready to die/be erased, but Sylvie wants answers first.

And then, we get a post-credits scene. Loki wakes up, asking if he's in Hel (the captions very appropriately spell it with only one L. I wonder if Hela is actually there?) But no, he's neither in Hel nor is he dead. And he now has a trio of allies who... seem to all be other Loki variants (one of whom is played by Richard E. Grant!)

So... we're in for some bananas stuff coming in the last two episodes. There are a ton of questions.

First off, Renslayer claims not to remember what Sylvie had done to warrant her arrest. Was it not just being born the wrong gender? (I feel like there's got to be some kind of trans read on this that I am not qualified to give, and Disney has been pretty reluctant to get explicit with its queer characters, which forces those who want to see that kind of representation to headcanon them into the narrative. There's a whole other post to be made about Anthony Mackie's comments on viewers reading Sam and Bucky's relationship as a gay one.)

Then, there's the question of just who built the TVA and why? Why is Renslayer seemingly the only person who knows what's going on. Is she also a variant? Also, what are we to make of the fact that she was the one who nabbed Sylvie originally?

Also, where is Loki now? Where do "pruned" people go?

There are a lot of questions to answer here, though I'll say that I'm still a bit relieved that this show seems to be a bit more focused than the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That show did not have enough time to explore all of its elements, but despite how outlandish Loki's premise is, the number of characters and plot threads to keep track of have been mercifully few.

Where this all ends up is anyone's guess. Loki's "death by pruning" is quickly reversed thanks to the post-credits scene, though given the nature of the show, it might have been able to get away with a Rick & Morty-like reset (well, kind of. Even if this isn't technically "our" Loki, who died in Infinity War, it's his relationships with Mobius and Sylvie that we're invested in. Could the show have swapped to Sylive as protagonist?)

Anyway, I'll confess that the romantic angle took me a bit by surprise, as I didn't really read that as the development of the previous episode. Mobius might be more insightful than I, or maybe it's a bit of a cheat.

Anyway, I'm really excited for whatever the hell happens next.