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usedtobeljsFor my own pleasure I'm going to explore the Loki Season 2 finale. My non-spoilery response: fucking beautifully done, perfectly forecasted, stunning, heartbreaking.
Spoilers ahead!
The Season/Series 2 finale of Loki aired last night, and it flattened me. The episode, which begins in the vein of workplace comedy that has permeated the series, ends by Loki making a hero's choice and remaking the world -- and the Time Variance Authority -- in a better way through magic and myth, while exiling himself to work and solitude. (He finds a new way to script and inhabit the role He Who Remains had played.)
It's not a "happy ending" for Loki the character, although he finally recognizes a way to truly fulfill his 'glorious purpose.' The first episode of Season/Series One is titled "Glorious Purpose," but that Loki, fresh from his Avengers-era attack on New York, sees ruling, kingship, and a throne as his birthright; it's selfish, entitled, and harmful. This last episode of Season/Series Two is also called "Glorious Purpose," but Loki lets go of "who", the people and friendships that he's come to treasure, in order to save them. He becomes truly the God of Stories, using his magic to destroy the Temporal Loom that is destined to fail and to create instead a new, nature-enhanced way to handle the many timelines and stories through recreating Yggdrasil, the World-Tree. Here, I suppose, it's the Universe-Tree. Like a king he sits on the throne at the heart of the Universe-Tree, managing all the stories and timelines, the branches. (The metaphor was ALWAYS there.) But he is powerfully and eternally alone. It's a damned tragic sacrifice for him as an individual, but the only way to break the ouroboros of He Who Remains' brutal system.
(Three foreshadowing moments: in the episode "1893" Loki looks at representations of Odin, Thor, and Baldir, at which point Mobius reminds him that he's "one of them," a god. In "The Heart of the TVA," Loki and Sylvie have a difficult conversation about their responsibilities, which he concludes by saying quietly, "We are gods." And at the end of "Science/Fiction," he is able to push away the dissolution of a timeline in order to timeslip and "rewrite the story." All of this leads to the final godly sacrifice.)
As seen on tumblr: "That, people, is what we call a redemption arc."
His sacrifice saves the many timelines and remakes the TVA into the better system he's been arguing for since the end of Season/Series One. In a brief few scenes which begin with the titlecard "After," we see that the TVA is less regimented, more people-centered, with the workplace posters less creepy and more natural. The new TVA will be the right place for B-15/Verity, no longer a Hunter but a caring Leader, and O.B./A.D, who has friends and purpose and is no longer isolated down in the Pasadena lab or the TVA basement. (Loki has taken on that isolation for him.) Casey/Frank is the helpful, valued colleague, not the thief or the drone. For them, their purpose and their comfort are clear.
But what of the other two major characters, Mobius and Sylvie? (Loki goes to his heroic sacrifice looking at those two through the glass barrier he's placed between them, and Hiddleston makes so clear how much it's hurting Loki. They are his loved ones, however you define it.)
Mobius, so happy in the TVA in Season/Series One, has been shown who he was outside the TVA: a father. (He tells Loki early in Season/Series Two that he doesn't want to know his other life, because what if it was good?) That fatherhood is central to him, and the knowledge of what one version of him has and he lacks is painful. The last time we see him, he is watching that other version play with his, or their, children, and he tells Sylvie he's just going to watch for a while and feel "time pass." Will he go back to the TVA? Possibly -- it's where his job and his other friends are -- but he too has lost certainty and comfort.
And what of Sylvie?
It is clear that Loki loves Sylvie and that she loves him as much as her trauma allows her. But that trauma, unhealed, has led her to inflexibility and absolutism: the TVA must be destroyed, period. Nothing about the disaster she has created moves her from her point that He Who Remains needed killing and the TVA needed to be burned down. Even though she is there in most of the crises in Season/Series Two, she will not do anything to change her precipitating action, and even when she returns to Loki and the others in Episode 5, it is because she has no place left to go.
What Loki's sacrifice does is truly free her. She can build the life she's always wanted, without having to fear or look over her shoulder or replay her trauma over and over. She says to Mobius in the "After" scene that it feels strange to be without Loki's presence, and I think she will miss him. But what greater love than to liberate the beloved from the worst of her pain....
And the show ends (there is no Season/Series Three planned, nor could there be) with Loki on the throne, in the heart of the green Universe-tree, a king alone.
Tears, my friends. Tears.
Great writing from Michael Waldron, Eric Martin, and the series writers; great direction; and all the praise in the world for Tom Hiddleston. It's a beautifully told story, even though a sad one. (But then, "sad tales are best for winter.")
Spoilers ahead!
The Season/Series 2 finale of Loki aired last night, and it flattened me. The episode, which begins in the vein of workplace comedy that has permeated the series, ends by Loki making a hero's choice and remaking the world -- and the Time Variance Authority -- in a better way through magic and myth, while exiling himself to work and solitude. (He finds a new way to script and inhabit the role He Who Remains had played.)
It's not a "happy ending" for Loki the character, although he finally recognizes a way to truly fulfill his 'glorious purpose.' The first episode of Season/Series One is titled "Glorious Purpose," but that Loki, fresh from his Avengers-era attack on New York, sees ruling, kingship, and a throne as his birthright; it's selfish, entitled, and harmful. This last episode of Season/Series Two is also called "Glorious Purpose," but Loki lets go of "who", the people and friendships that he's come to treasure, in order to save them. He becomes truly the God of Stories, using his magic to destroy the Temporal Loom that is destined to fail and to create instead a new, nature-enhanced way to handle the many timelines and stories through recreating Yggdrasil, the World-Tree. Here, I suppose, it's the Universe-Tree. Like a king he sits on the throne at the heart of the Universe-Tree, managing all the stories and timelines, the branches. (The metaphor was ALWAYS there.) But he is powerfully and eternally alone. It's a damned tragic sacrifice for him as an individual, but the only way to break the ouroboros of He Who Remains' brutal system.
(Three foreshadowing moments: in the episode "1893" Loki looks at representations of Odin, Thor, and Baldir, at which point Mobius reminds him that he's "one of them," a god. In "The Heart of the TVA," Loki and Sylvie have a difficult conversation about their responsibilities, which he concludes by saying quietly, "We are gods." And at the end of "Science/Fiction," he is able to push away the dissolution of a timeline in order to timeslip and "rewrite the story." All of this leads to the final godly sacrifice.)
As seen on tumblr: "That, people, is what we call a redemption arc."
His sacrifice saves the many timelines and remakes the TVA into the better system he's been arguing for since the end of Season/Series One. In a brief few scenes which begin with the titlecard "After," we see that the TVA is less regimented, more people-centered, with the workplace posters less creepy and more natural. The new TVA will be the right place for B-15/Verity, no longer a Hunter but a caring Leader, and O.B./A.D, who has friends and purpose and is no longer isolated down in the Pasadena lab or the TVA basement. (Loki has taken on that isolation for him.) Casey/Frank is the helpful, valued colleague, not the thief or the drone. For them, their purpose and their comfort are clear.
But what of the other two major characters, Mobius and Sylvie? (Loki goes to his heroic sacrifice looking at those two through the glass barrier he's placed between them, and Hiddleston makes so clear how much it's hurting Loki. They are his loved ones, however you define it.)
Mobius, so happy in the TVA in Season/Series One, has been shown who he was outside the TVA: a father. (He tells Loki early in Season/Series Two that he doesn't want to know his other life, because what if it was good?) That fatherhood is central to him, and the knowledge of what one version of him has and he lacks is painful. The last time we see him, he is watching that other version play with his, or their, children, and he tells Sylvie he's just going to watch for a while and feel "time pass." Will he go back to the TVA? Possibly -- it's where his job and his other friends are -- but he too has lost certainty and comfort.
And what of Sylvie?
It is clear that Loki loves Sylvie and that she loves him as much as her trauma allows her. But that trauma, unhealed, has led her to inflexibility and absolutism: the TVA must be destroyed, period. Nothing about the disaster she has created moves her from her point that He Who Remains needed killing and the TVA needed to be burned down. Even though she is there in most of the crises in Season/Series Two, she will not do anything to change her precipitating action, and even when she returns to Loki and the others in Episode 5, it is because she has no place left to go.
What Loki's sacrifice does is truly free her. She can build the life she's always wanted, without having to fear or look over her shoulder or replay her trauma over and over. She says to Mobius in the "After" scene that it feels strange to be without Loki's presence, and I think she will miss him. But what greater love than to liberate the beloved from the worst of her pain....
And the show ends (there is no Season/Series Three planned, nor could there be) with Loki on the throne, in the heart of the green Universe-tree, a king alone.
Tears, my friends. Tears.
Great writing from Michael Waldron, Eric Martin, and the series writers; great direction; and all the praise in the world for Tom Hiddleston. It's a beautifully told story, even though a sad one. (But then, "sad tales are best for winter.")
