That’s a wrap! The first season of Loki finished its sixth and final episode today with an information heavy finale that both answered plenty of questions but also left us dazed with plenty more. Before we dive into all the new lore, please keep in mind our Loki Season 1 Episode 6 recap includes spoilers for other Marvel shows and related Marvel films.
A quick recap of the penultimate episode reminds us of a Loki that started this show having recently been defeated in the Battle of New York during The Avengers. We’re also shown a bit about Judge Ravonna and her motives, Sylvie and Loki’s time in Lamentis and The Void, and their enchanting of Alioth to reveal the mastermind’s location.
Across Time and Space
How does one even describe this? The episode opens with voices from throughout the MCU chattering over each other as we zip past stars and galaxies that explode and implode in all directions. After more space mumbo jumbo we finally arrive at the cosmic castle seen within Alioth. Loki and Sylvie walk up the rocky terrain and reach the front doors that ultimately open on their own. Loki seems somewhat calm and collected while Sylvie is on edge. “Well, if you think it’s a bad idea, I prefer you to speak your mind,” says Sylvie. Ha! Keep that in mind for later.
The doors slam shut after the Loki duo enters the dark room. With swords drawn the two walk towards the next room when BAM, Miss Minutes appears. She goes on about a “he” who is impressed with their journey and offers them a deal, one where both Loki and Sylvie return to their timelines. Loki will have won the Battle of New York and killed Thanos while Sylvie would return with only happy memories behind her. And they’d be together. Sylvie calls it fiction and Miss Minutes bounces. Onward!
Now farther into the castle, Loki and Sylvie enter a room of statues. One is missing with debris all over the floor. An elevator door nearby opens to reveal a man in a fancy purple robe. He invites them in and up to his office. As Miss Minutes named him, He Who Remains has been found.
Back at the TVA
Judge Ravonna Renslayer sifts through files in her office when Miss Minutes returns. She asks the devious hologram about the files on the creation of the TVA that she requested last episode but instead gets handed files for something else. Miss Minutes mentions that “he” would rather have her see these files and leaves before Ravonna can ask any more questions. That orange fiend!
A bit later Mobius arrives and confronts Ravonna in her chambers. She apologizes for pruning him and explains she couldn’t let him get in the way of the TVA’s mission. Mobius reminds her that it’s all fake but she insists this entire organization could not be for nothing. Ravonna calls for backup but is quickly stopped when Mobius tells her he knows her secret. Fremont, Ohio in 2018. Minutemen are chasing Hunter B-15 through Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. B-15 lures them into a specific office where Ravonna Renslayer appears but oops, she’s actually a high school principal. Cats out of the bag!
Back with Mobius and Ravonna, the two argue about the TVA being a lie and whether or not it’s a lie that should stay in place to keep order. Mobius stands for free will but Ravonna shoots that down by saying only the one in charge gets free will. Sad, but in this world, currently true. Now they’re talking about their friendship. Mobius tells Ravonna that she betrayed him and this gets her to snap! According to her, Mobius betrayed her despite their lifelong friendship, all for two Lokis he’s only known for a short time.
Ravonna opens up a time door and declines Mobius’ offer to start something new at the TVA. Mobius goes into attack mode and lunges his pruning stick at her. He is very quickly disabled and Ravonna gets a second chance to prune Mobious. She stands down, tells him she’s setting off to search for free will, and walks through the door. Is Ravonna looking to be that one person in charge?
Buckle Down for Exposition
Sylvie and Loki enter the elevator with He Who Remains and carefully aim their swords and daggers at him. This nonchalant fellow gives little thought to the danger around him and his carelessness for his own safety is vindicated when Sylive tries to slice him in two and he simply teleports elsewhere. Not bothered by the murder attempt, the man enters his office at the top of the tower and invites them to sit down in front of his desk. And he made tea!
A few more attempts to kill the man by the ever persistent Sylvie gets him to reveal he knows everything. Literally everything! What happened, what’s currently happening, what will happen. He knows all about the TVA and its wrongdoings, the adventure on Lamentis, the terror of The Void. He even shows them a transcript showing their exact lines as they are about to happen. Who is he? He says he’s been called many names, including conqueror, and that he’s responsible for everything. He paved the path, everyone else just walked down it.
You’re going to want to sit down for this behemoth of an info drop. Here’s the quick version. A variant of He Who Remains lived on Earth in the 31st century, long before the TVA existed. This variant discovered the existence of parallel universes and similar variants from these other worlds discovered the same. Contact was made. First they shared ideas and technology and things were relatively at peace. Some variants were not so kind. Before long, the multiversal war broke out. Each variant stepped up to defend their universe from being taken over or wiped out.
That first variant also discovered a creature created by the tears in reality, a beast that can devour space and time. Aloith. Our variant, the one sitting at the desk, used its power to stop the multiversal war. He isolated his timeline and simply managed it by checking and stopping any branches. Enter the TVA along with its highly efficient bureaucracy and the Time-Keepers as its figurehead.
Now onto the issue at hand. He Who Remains offers Loki and Sylvie two options. They can kill him to free the timeline. This will also restart the multiversal war and unleash a limitless amount of variants, specifically variants of He Who Remains that will not be quite as nice as this one is. The other option is for Loki and Sylvie to take over the entire operation and continue his work. This man has lived a million lifetimes! He’s ready to move on.
Loki is listening, Sylvie is not as convinced. She claims he treated people’s lives like it’s a game. He says it’s not personal, it’s practical. Sylvie fights back but this strikes a nerve with He Who Remains who calls them all villains. Which hey, he’s not wrong. In that moment a rumbling can be heard and the bewildered time controlling man says they just crossed the threshold, the point in the timeline in which he has not seen past. He is vulnerable.
Loki and Sylvie
After some back and forth about lies and picking one of the two options, He Who Remains takes his time door activating gizmo off his hands and leaves it on the table. Sylvie jumps up and goes for the kill. Loki stops her! They fight back and forth as Loki tries to convince her to consider what the time god said for more than one second. Loki makes a powerful case about this being too important to get wrong but he fails to reach her.
“You can’t trust, and I can’t be trusted,” says Loki. There’s your tagline for the entire show!
They continue fighting and Loki and Sylvie use their green magic to hop around the room. Sylvie goes for the final strike but Loki appears for a final attempt and pleads with her to stop. His emotional attempt to reach her works and they smooch, all before she sends him through a time door using the hand machine left on the table. Sylvie kills He Who Remains and the isolated timeline surrounding the castle begins to crack and shatter. A crying Sylvie sits before her victim as she tries to make sense of everything that will soon unfold.
A devastated Loki sits dumbfounded somewhere in the TVA. He suddenly jumps up with a renewed sense of purpose and storms through the TVA. As he walks through the Archives, he finally finds Mobius and Hunter B-15. There he frantically recounts the events of this episode and makes clear they made a grand mistake. A confused Mobius and B-15 ask for his name and division. Loki, now realizing he is either in a different timeline or an altered timeline, looks to the spot where the giant Time-Keepers statue towered over the room and instead finds a statue of Kang the Conqueror, or so we think.
Wild! Loki is trapped in some weird version of the TVA. The original Mobius and Hunter B-15 are either altered or back in their original timeline. Sylvie is still up in that cosmic castle, perhaps she will step up and fill that void she was so worried Loki would scoop up? There’s also Judge Ravonna who got some kind of information from He Who Remains and is on a mission to do… something. There’s also Miss Minutes who I think we can all agree is super shady and has a lot more involvement than we currently see. Also, what happened to Casey?
As it was made clear in the five-second post-credits scene, Loki will return for a second season. When? We don’t know, but you can look forward to additional detailed recaps when that time comes. For all time. Always.
