Well. I guess it’s over. Well, season 1 at least, because after rumblings that there would be a second season of Loki, we got confirmation in place of a mid credit scene in the finale. And what a finale it was.Loki has continued to completely throw me from episode to episode. Every time I go in expecting a zig-a-zig-ah, the bitch fucking ZAGS. And that’s exactly what the finale did. I can imagine that the Loki finale will wind up being as divisive as episode 3, because of the pace of it and the feeling that not enough happened.
Let me just go ahead and say that my whole Loki variant being the final boss theory was thrown in the fucking dustbin. This show did the one thing I didn’t think it would do, which is reveal a character we hadn’t seen or were made aware of in the show prior. The Loki season 1 finale introduced a character who isn’t Kang; a character many theorized was behind the TVA and all the timeline shenanigans. But the person behind the curtain is connected to Kang in a way that I don’t think anybody saw coming. I’m sure theorists were over the moon with the reveal, seeing that they were kinda right, but with a really cool twist.
I’ve not read nor watched anybody’s review or reaction of episode 6 as I write this. But I can already imagine that some folk are going to feel disappointed that the finale was too slow, or that there wasn’t enough action and spectacle. After the sheer spectacle that episode 5 turned out to be, a concern I had for the finale was that it wasn’t going to be able to match it in terms of scale. And smartly, the finale didn’t even try. But what it may have lacked in action and visual scale, it made up for in the ways it moved the narrative forward. The spectacle of the finale wasn’t in what we saw, but what happened. And the implications on not just season 2 of the show, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.Something that many of us had figured from the very first episode was that Loki was probably going to end up being the one show that blew things open in a way that WandaVision and The Falcon & The Winter Soldier didn’t. And boy, did it.
I adored this finale because it flew in the face of the Marvel Studios formula that I had used to theorise how this finale would pan out. I thought I had who the big villain of the show was SUSSED, just for the finale to shit on my lap.Many comic book fans had long suspected that Kang was going to be the guy behind everything, and he was. Kind of. Marvel Studios managed to deliver a twist, within a twist. And somehow managed to keep the biggest secret of the show a secret until the very end. And that is that Johnathon Majors, who Marvel had cast as Kang the Conqueror quite some time ago for the third Ant-Man movie due in 2022, turns up in this episode. He does more than just turn up. Episode 6 is pretty much his episode. It only occurred to me 20 minutes into it that Loki had barely spoken because Not Kang was doing all of the talking.
The character that we get here is a variant of Kang. Kang, who by the way, is never explicitly named. In the comics this variant we’re introduced to is known as Immortus. But in this episode he is simply referred to as He Who Remains. It turns out that whilst the TVA propaganda was indeed, propaganda which lied about The Time Keepers, it didn’t lie about the multiversal war. The multiversal war is caused by He Who Remains’ variants, with the variant who remains victorious speculated to be Kang the conqueror, who makes an ominous cameo in the final shot of the episode as a statue in the TVA in place of ThE TiMe KeEpErs.Not meeting Kang, but instead meeting a variant was genius, because it still creates a sense of mystery as to who Kang is; making his appearance in Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania still feel fresh and exciting. Even more so as a result of Loki. But introducing He Who Remains as a Kang variant is such a unique and clever spin on the character, that does the one thing that made me so convinced as to why we wouldn’t get Kang in any form in the finale. It connected the villain to Loki.
My argument against Kang turning up was that he’d have no connection to Loki. But the twist is that he does, because He Who Remains also has a glorious purpose, which is to prevent his variants causing the multiversal war and stopping the rise of Kang the Conqueror from...well, conquering. And He Who Remains, much like Loki and Sylvie, is on a path of trying to become somebody different to the person that so many people in their lives and their own variants have told them that they are. And whilst He Who Remains’ methods to prove himself right and fulfil his purpose could be considered wrong, the same could be said for Loki and Sylvie - who both did their fare share of damage in the name of doing what they felt was right for their own survival. And this is what Loki is at its core. It’s a story about survival.This parallel was such a clever way of tying He Who Remains to Loki. And it also did the other thing which was my other reasoning for why the final boss wouldn’t be Kang. It made He Who Remains a reflection of the hero by making him a sort of hero of his own story.
Loki is on a path to make things right in light of what he’s discovered about the TVA and the lack of free will it enforces, and how it’s also done him and his variants dirty. But Loki has accepted that his variants aren’t all great people, as he himself has also been a piece of shit. Then you have He Who Remains, who knows his variants are awful and went out of his way to stop them.
A theme of each of the Marvel shows thus far has been the lines blurring between good and bad. It’s understandable why some would see Wanda as a hero, but I also understand why somebody would see her as a villain. She did some foul shit in WandaVision and hurt a lot of people just so she could live the life she wanted. John Walker in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier made bad decisions and killed somebody because he was so drunk on power and having the mantle of Captain America. And now we have Loki, who is on a path to redemption after having somebody who truly saw him and believed in him, trying to make things right - only to lose that person. And then when Loki finds the true love of his life, he’s forced to have to fight her, stopping her doing the one thing that means the most to her, knowing that if she goes through with it, it could doom everyone. And of course, Loki fails in that. So now Sylvie, who was on a path to becoming a hero, has burnt that bridge. Loki is still on that path. And then there’s He Who Remains who truly was protecting everybody, but going about it in the most distrustful of ways, so whilst he sees himself as the hero, is he truly?It’s refreshing that after 3 phases of straight-shooting no question about it heroes, that we’re going into a phase where everything is so fucking grey. And with Black Widow also touching on a similar theme of ‘What makes a hero?’ and people being products of consequence and not necessarily being raised with all of the virtuous makings of a hero like Captain America - it’s clear that this is going to be a big thing for phase 4, and that stories are going to get dark in places, and alliances are going to be tossed around like socks in a dryer.
One thing that Marvel did here, which is kinda similar to what they did with WandaVision, is to bank on the hardcore fans knowing who the villain would turn out to be, and therefore having to blindsight with something else that fans never saw coming. With WandaVision, fans had called that Kathryn Hahn was playing Agatha Harkness as soon as the news dropped that she was part of the show. But the twist was that Wanda was a witch all along, and not a product of Hydra, and that the entire show was the origin story of the Scarlet Witch. Something that fans couldn’t have dug into comic book lore for because it’s a complete deviation from them.In Loki, the twist isn’t just that the man behind the masterplan is a Kang variant, but that the TVA propaganda wasn’t all a complete lie, and that Wanda had nothing to do with bussin’ open the multiverse. Sylvie did. Marvel Studios are always 2 steps ahead. Kevin Feige is the real villain.
The finale also does an interesting thing with Sylvie, in that it didn’t give her and Loki a happily ever after, but it also didn’t kill either of them in the way I was expecting, and the episode led us to believe it would. It’s also going to be interesting to see what they do with Loki and Sylvie now. Will they be able to face each other the same way after disagreeing so monumentally on something which was so much bigger than the both of them. I think Loki and Sylvie’s relationship will hang in the balance of what happens as a result of the multiverse branching, and what they either lose or gain as a result.
It's also going to be interesting to see where season 2 goes with the characters of Loki and Sylvie and what journey they will be on. The Loki we see at the end of this episode is in varied states that we've never seen the character before. He's upset at losing who he felt was his first true love and he's visibly scared of the incoming threat of He Who Remains' variants. As for Sylvie, she seemed somewhat remorseful of killing He Who Remains, at the realisation that both he and Loki were right, and that she may have made a huge mistake that she'll need Loki's help to fix. But will she be able to face him again after clearly not trusting him the same way he trusted her? And then there's Mobius and Hunter B15. What will their arcs be now that they have no recollection of Loki or Sylvie? Having been the only 2 characters in the TVA who gave them a shake to help uncover the truth.
A constant theme of this show was it not going in the direction I thought it would, and the finale is no exception. First off, I didn’t expect it to end on such a clear cliffhanger that lead to so many questions. Loki returns to the TVA, but everybody appears to have been mind wiped...again, because Mobius nor Hunter B12 knows who he is. And the statue of Kang in the foyer in place of the time keepers insinuate that either the multiverse branches have already created changes - or that Kang or a variant of, has already hopped through time and made changes in the TVA. Another thing that’s also clear with Loki is that the season split isn’t typical as per usual shows. It feels like one story that has an intermission. So I’m keen to know what the release date for season 2 will be and if we’ll see it in a year, as per The Mandalorian.
One big question which looms is just how much of an affect that what happened in this finale in regards to the multiverse will affect future films, such as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. It would make sense that Doctor Strange would be connected, because it’s being written by the head writer of Loki. But something that Marvel Studios has done a great job with is actually not connecting everything in the obvious way that we figured they would be (i.e WandaVision not being the multiversal link we assumed it would be in light of the announcement that Wanda would be a main character in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness). But also, Black Widow featured a moment which linked it directly to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. So Marvel Studios are clearly weaving a thread from shows to the movies. With this in mind one has to wonder how the multiverse will play out now that it’s been branched to all hell, and if what is happening in these movies will affect the story told in season 2 of Loki.Kevin Feige has all this shit figured out, so it’ll all go swimmingly. But it also opens up a ridiculous amount of possibilities in terms of where the hell season 2 can go. Season 1 of Loki has taught me to not have any kind of preconceived notion of anything that could or be about to happen, and I’m okay with that given how fun this ride was.
Roll on season 2.
📒 My episode notes
- Where did Gugu Renslayer go?
- Somebody needs to teach Mobius how to fight
- I want more Winmu Mosaku in season 2
- Johnathon Majors was great in this. The charisma!? *Fans face*
- So, Sylvie managed to learn Loki’s blast magic, JUST like that!?
- Miss Minutes is a bitch.
- Tony Stark is rolling in his grave, like…’Y’all done fucked up AGAIN!?’