Best of «Loki», Episode 4: The Nexus Event

First off: this discussion of the series includes spoilers! So watch the fourth episode of «Loki» before you read on.

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Loki is on the run, together with Loki. And smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse. The inhabitants of Lamentis-1, a habitable moon, are about to have an entire planet fall on their heads – namely, Lamentis. Welcome to this episode of «Loki and Loki in the Middle».

Loki’s plan was to escape from the moon on the ark organised for the wealthy. I mean our Loki, by the way. The other Loki prefers to be called Sylvie, even if she’s not actually Enchantress, as actress Sofia Di Martino herself confirmed.

In any event, the plan goes wrong in an ingenious flight scene that lasts a whole three minutes and five seconds with no visible cuts. Loki and Sylvie are doomed – as is Lamentis-1.

What now?

Renslayer and Loki

Before we find out, a flashback: we’re on Asgard. It’s very much not destroyed. Loki, a girl, is playing. Suddenly, she’s grabbed by Minutemen because of some time crime and is taken to the TVA. They’ve decided the girl has no right to exist. Her entire world is reset. From now on, Sylvie is alone.

And who’s revealed to be the leader of said Minutemen? None other than Ravonna Renslayer.

Little Loki, a bit timid but not stupid, grabs a TemPad and escapes from Renslayer just before she’s put on trial. Loki – who only later starts calling herself Sylvie – has been on the run ever since.

Years have passed. Renslayer walks through the golden door – the one that leads to the Time-Keepers. In the previous episode, Sylvie was trying to get in there, to no avail. The door is too well guarded. And Renslayer seems to be the only one at the TVA to ever actually meet with the Time-Keepers, who dictate the Sacred Timeline.

Let’s recap: Sylvie attempted to blow up the Sacred Timeline with a bunch of stolen reset charges. But thanks to the Time-Keepers and their TVA, the Multiverse is averted – for the time being. A close call. It would have wrought the danger of a new, infinitely destructive Multiverse war.

What we don’t yet know is why Sylvie wanted to blow up the Sacred Timeline in the first place. Chaos? Mischief? Revenge?

But these Time-Keepers... something about them gives me the heebie-jeebies.

What’s real?

There’s a reason. If we believe Renslayer, the Time-Keepers are the only thing standing between order and the all-destroying chaos of the Multiverse. In the previous episode, we found out the TVA agents and Minutemen were not, in fact, created by the Time-Keepers. Instead, they’re just ordinary people – variants – stripped of their memories and instated as guardians of the Sacred Timeline.

Not nice.

Mobius wants to talk to C-20, the agent that was kidnapped by Sylvie in Episode 2. He wants to get to the bottom of what C-20 meant when she said, «It’s real.» C-20 kept stammering this when she was found by the TVA in the Haven Hills of 2050.

Renslayer claims C-20 has died. Just like that. What?

«I don’t get it. She seemed okay. She seemed fine,» says a visibly concerned Mobius.

«At first, yes. But by the time she got in here, she could barely speak. The decline was steeper after that,» Renslayer responds, asking Mobius to keep this to himself. I trust her less and less...

If you ask me, Renslayer wants to keep us from finding out what’s really «real». And she’ll do so by any means necessary. But why? In my opinion, she’s toying with a higher power. One the Time-Keepers want to overthrow. I explained this theory back in my analysis of Episode 2: The Variant. In short: I think Kang the Conqueror has his fingers in the pie.

Kang who? In the comics, he’s born as Nathaniel Richards, possibly a descendant of Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards. And, just like his ancestors, he’s smart, eventually becoming a scholar. Until one day, he discovers Fantastic Four villain Victor Von Doom’s time travel technology.

Nathaniel uses it to acquire power and knowledge. Then, in a distant future, he finds an Earth that has been destroyed by wars. Nathaniel conquers this world and henceforth calls himself Kang the Conqueror.

The Earth is not enough for Kang. As Kang, he extends his rule to almost the entire universe. Then to alternate realities. And then alternate multiverses. In one of these multiverses, he meets Princess Ravonna Renslayer, daughter of King Carelius, and falls in love with her.

What if the MCU Renslayer – director of the TVA instead of princess – also carries on with Kang in the MCU? Or maybe she’s actually a variant of Princess Renslayer? After all, we would expect him to have some interest in a multiverse he could conquer. A multiverse whose existence the Time-Keepers currently don’t allow.

Alright, I’m getting ahead of myself. Moving on...

The Nexus event of all Nexus events

Loki and Sylvie are on Lamentis-1, ready to face death. Sylvie reminisces about how she hid at the ends of a thousand worlds, coming to terms with the fact she’s now about to die in one of them.

She has lost. Yet again. She wonders aloud if that’s what makes a Loki a Loki. Loki disagrees: «We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don’t die. We survive.» He reminds Sylvie that she, too, survived when she escaped from the TVA as a child – and nearly took it down.

«You’re amazing!» Loki tells her, for the first time in his life feeling genuine admiration for someone other than himself. Technically speaking, at least.

A look. A touch; Sylvie’s hand on Loki’s arm. Bam! A new Nexus event. Apparently, this one’s bigger than any Nexus event Mobius has witnessed. On a monitor, we see the new timeline shooting toward the red line.

The Minutemen show up, rescuing Loki and Sylvie.

And so they survive.

Sif, Kree, Titans and vampires

Back at the TVA, Loki is put in prison – a bad-memory prison. Lady Sif, whom we know from «Thor», smashes his face in before tearing into any family planning he may have had in mind. Here’s the kicker: the memory is a time loop. Tee-hee. It’s childish, I know. But funny. I like.

Meanwhile, Mobius wants to interrogate Sylvie. He’s not allowed to. Renslayer forbids it. Something’s sketchy here, I’m telling you. What I find funny is what Mobius says shortly afterwards:

«You know, we brought in Kree, Titans, vampires. Why is it the two orphan demigods are such a pain in the ass?»

Kree. Titans. Vampires. We’ve seen the first two in the MCU before. Ronan, the villain from «Guardians of the Galaxy», is a Kree. As is Yon-Rogg, played by Jude Law, in «Captain Marvel». The Kree are technologically advanced beings who strive for intergalactic superiority.

Celestials – cosmic beings such as the planet Ego from «Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2» – used Kree DNA to create the Eternals and Deviants. Eternals are godlike beings that are supposed to watch over other creations of the Celestials.

Human beings, for example.

Deviants, on the other hand, are failed, unwanted and outwardly hideous mutations of the Eternals. So it stands to reason they’ve been enemies since the beginning of time. We’ve actually met one Eternal with Deviant Syndrome: Thanos, the Mad Titan.

There, Titans.

Now we’re just missing vampires... Mephisto! I’m kidding, of course. Mephisto isn’t a vampire. There haven’t been any in the MCU yet. But there could be soon. Namely, if the upcoming «Morbius» movie counts as MCU canon.

So, who is this Dr. Michael Morbius? He’s a brilliant but terminally ill scientist who, after a course of an experimental treatment, becomes a superhuman with superpowers. One caveat: he now has a deadly thirst for blood. He’s what’s considered a «living vampire». It’s quite possible that Agent Mobius – not to be confused with Dr. Morbius – just hinted at the vampire soon making his way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the Sony Marvel Universe.

But the vampire clue could also hint at something completely different. Something that wouldn’t require a Sony-Disney crossover:

Blade.

We already know of the upcoming Blade movie. Mahershala Ali will play the lead role of Eric Cross, whose mother was bitten by a vampire when she was pregnant with him. This caused Eric to mutate into a Dhampir – a half-vampire, half-human. Simply put, he has all the strengths of a vampire but none of the weaknesses. That’s why they’re also referred to as Daywalkers. Cool.

Meanwhile, the interrogation between Loki and Mobius continues.

The truth

Loki reveals to Mobius that he himself is actually a variant. That he had a life before the TVA. A past. Perhaps the 1990s. That’s not Loki’s assertion; it’s mine.

Exhibit A: Mobius drinks Josta energy drinks all the time. Those actually existed in real life. Josta was an energy drink manufactured and sold by Pepsi between 1995 and 1999.

Exhibit B: Mobius and his inexplicable affection for Jet Skis, which he himself states were created in the early 1990s. A «beautiful union of form and function», as he so poetically puts it.

And then there’s Hunter B-15, who was briefly under Sylvie’s influence in Episode 2. It’s possible she experienced something similar to C-20. Namely, memories of a past life long forgotten.

She starts having serious doubts.

And she’s not alone. So does Mobius. He steals Renslayer’s TemPad, while B-15 frees Sylvie. She gets Sylvie to show her her past in the Haven Hills apocalypse to keep the TVA from finding out.

«I looked happy,» says B-15. Tears roll down her face in the rain.

Mobius finds out the truth, too, through a recording of C-20’s interrogation stored on Renslyer’s TemPad. His attempt to free our Loki in order to overthrow the TVA fails. Renslayer gets to him first. Mobius is pruned. Erased from the space-time continuum.

He will never ride a Jet Ski.

The Time-Keepers

The events that follow move fast. Renslayer leads Loki and a still-captive Sylvie to the Time-Keepers. They certainly don’t earn themselves any sympathy points when they order the two variants to be pruned. But then B-15 shows up. A fight ensues. The Minutemen are subdued – including Renslayer, for a moment. Sylvie gets in a nice sword throw, beheading one of the three Time-Keepers. The other two...

jeering.

The Time-Keeper’s lifeless head rolls to Sylvie’s feet. But it’s not the head of a living being. It’s the head of an android. The other two Time-Keepers shut down in the background.

What the–?!

Before Sylvie and Loki can make sense of it, Loki is... pruned! By none other than Renslayer. Oh sh*t. And cut. The end. We don’t find out who – or what – the Time-Keepers are. Not yet, anyway. But what’s clear is Renslayer doesn’t act half as surprised as she should. Is she in on the Time-Keeper conspiracy? Who’s really dictating the Sacred Timeline?

Could TVA Renslayer even be the MCU version of Kang?

Post-credits scene

Lokis don’t die. Remember? Sure, they may lose. But they survive. Always. As does our Loki, who in the post-credits scene runs into an insane little bunch of Lokis.

There’s a dignified, black Loki holding Thor’s hammer. There’s also a young Loki – possibly ‘Kid Loki’ from the comics, a reincarnation of Loki after one of his many deaths. Then there’s ‘Alligator Loki’ – no idea where he’s from. Maybe it’s a reference to ‘Frog Thor’. Yep, Thor was a frog for a while in the comics. Or it could be a reference to the Egyptian god Sobek. No clue.

And then there’s ‘Old Loki’. In the comics, he’s a pretty nasty Loki who manipulates many events from the past. He’s actually quite a cool character. No idea if «Loki» is planning something along these lines.

We shall see.

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What did you think of this episode? Let me know in the comments! The next episode discussion will follow on Wednesday, 7 July.