'Loki' Creates a Captivating Time Paradox in Season 2
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
LOKI SEASON 2 has started off a bit slow. We're still tying up loose ends from the Season 1 cliffhanger, when Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and set off chaos in the Sacred Timeline. Now Mobius (Owen Wilson), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Sylvie and others are teaming up to try and protect the new branches off of the Sacred Timeline, which potentially hold the lives of the variants who became TVA agents. It's a lot to keep in your head.
In Episode 4, we see that arc finally reach a climax, as Victor Timely (a variant of He Who Remains) joins the team to help them save TVA and the various branches in the timeline. Meanwhile, Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) and Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are working against Loki and the others to try to reinstate control over the TVA, getting rid of anyone who gets in their way.
In the midst of the ongoing chaos, Loki and Sylvie are running around the TVA, working to protect Victor Timely from Ravonna, keep Miss Minutes from interfering with their mission, and wondering what will happen once all these various timelines are actually established and safe. While Sylvie and Loki are running around however, a potentially confusing moment happens.
Sylvie is stuck in an elevator and Loki is... creeping up on himself with a pruner. In an instant, we see Loki prune himself. If you weren't paying attention, it may confuse you why that happened. We're here to remind you of the importance of this strange moment.
Why did Loki prune himself in Loki Season 2 Episode 4?
If you recall Episode 1, we saw Loki jumping ("time-slipping," as Ke Huy Quan's Ouroboros calls it) between the past, present, and future after Sylvie shoved him through a time door. Mobius met up with Ouroboros, the TVA's main engineer, and deduced that Loki was caught between two times.
To keep Loki stable in the present, Ouroboros revealed he had to have himself killed while not in the present. Loki blipped to the future, and in Episode 1, we saw him briefly distracted then pruned by an unseen person.
In Episode 4, we finally find out who did it: Loki himself. Current Loki was now in the "future" Episode 1 Loki was trying to escape. Current Loki ran into this past version of himself and made sure to prune himself to close out the strange loop/situation from the Season 2 premiere. If he hadn't pruned himself, there'd be two Lokis running around, and past Loki would have never had stabilized himself enough to both continue working with Mobius in Episode 2 and 3, and eventually get to the moment where he, in that present moment, was. If he didn't prune himself, theoretically, his reality in that moment could have entirely crumbled.
Loki pruned himself to ensure he could stay in the present timeline. Keeping his past self alive would create a paradox where he would cease to exist.
You Might Also Like
