Loki – Season #2

Every so often, a TV series does something that is so off the wall that it is hard to discuss it without spoilers. Even if that wasn’t the case, it would be hard to discuss Season #2 of Loki without referencing the events at the end of Season #1. So please assume that this review will be somewhat spoilerific.

As those of you who have seen Season #1 will recall, it ended with Sylvie killing He Who Remains. Sylvie is a version of The Enchantress, but also an alternate world version of Loki. He Who Remains is one of many incarnations of Kang the Conqueror. The plot mostly revolves around the Time Variance Authority, which has been set up by Kang to control the multiverse, primarily so that other versions of himself can’t challenge him for control. Oh, and the TVA is run by Ravonna Renslayer, whom comics fans will recognize as Kang’s sometime girlfriend.

At the beginning of Season #2, Loki is back at the TVA where the number of time streams is multiplying rapidly thanks to the death of Kang. Loyalists at the TVA want to ‘prune’ (destroy) the branching timelines to preserve the one Sacred Timeline that they were put in place to preserve. Loki and his friends (primarily Mobius and B-15 from Season #1) want to allow the other timelines to continue to exist, because pruning them would mean the deaths of billions of people.

We now get introduced to some of the technology underpinning the TVA, and in particular to OB (short for Oroburos), the tech wizard who keeps everything running. This character is brilliantly played by Ke Huy Quan. It is worth watching the series just for him. We also learn about the Temporal Loom, a device for controlling the timelines. This is currently overloading due to the proliferation of timelines. If Loki and OB cannot fix it, the TVA, and possibly the entire universe, will be destroyed.

Got that? Good. It is a short, 6-episode season, and it packs a lot in. The season finale has a lot of work to do in order to produce a workable conclusion. To its credit, it does.

Amongst main things that happen along the way, we get a recommendation for the Velvet Underground, specifically for their final album, Loaded.

I’m not going to go into details, but what really made me happy about the denouement is that it leans heavily into Loki’s background in Norse mythology. Those of you who are familiar with such things will see the resemblance between Kang’s Scared Time line and the Threads of Fate spun by the Norns. Loki, of course, is the God of Chaos. If there is one thing he (and Sylvie) must fight against, it is the idea that destiny is pre-ordained.

We should also remember that Oroburos is another name for Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, who is one of Loki’s children .

Obviously this incarnation of Kang must be defeated by Loki. But Kang, being Kang, has many incarnations across the multiverse, so you can be sure that he will be back to trouble our heroes again soon. Pleasantly it seems that Ravonna will be involved too. And, judging from the sneak peek at the end, we will soon be meeting the incarnation of Kang known as the Pharaoh Rama-Tut.