Step into the Time Capsule (not approved by the TVA) with Jason and Rosie to recap Loki season 2 in celebration of Deadpool & Wolverine having a fantastic opening weekend at the box office! Stick around to hear them chat about where this takes us to next in the storyline of the on-going Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a “Like that, read this!” segment where Rosie and Jason give you their comic book reading recs to follow up with this great season of TV!
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Hello. My name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Mersday Night, and welcome to a bite sized episode of ectro Vision of the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In today's episode, we're doing it Previously on We're catching up on Loki season two as part of a series revisiting all the things we missed while we were on that far too long hiatus and what a way to stop to the loom.
After the events of season one, Loki finds himself warping uncontrollably through different eras of the TVA. TVA leadership, including the militaristic General Docs mobilized to stop the timeline for branching and threatening all reality. With the help of a longtime TVA maintenance tech ob Ako. We love you our favorite baby, Yeah Yeah, Loki and mobi Is try to find a solution to Loki's uncontrollable time slips. One thing leads to another. The TVA is nearly destroyed and moby is in Loki head into the rivers of time to find Sylvie. She's in Broxton, Oklahoma, and Man comics fans will be like, Oh, Broxton, Oklahoma. This was the home of Asgard for Yeah.
God was just floating above Broxton, Oklahoma for a while.
It was great, weird stuff. Love it.
So she's in Broxton in nineteen eighty two eating a lot of fast food, which she's loving McDonald's. She loves McDonald's. Also. Previously, Hunter X five, unhappy with his life as a nameless TVA drone, slips into the timestream himself to live life as a famous actor in nineteen seventies swinging London. Baby. Our heroes find him and they capture him. Max five then it very mean because he was enjoying himself.
Just having a good life.
Having a good life turns out to be not a great guy. But that's whatever, okay. X five reveals Sylvie's location to them, and we discover that General Dox's big brain plan is to stop the branching by bombing all of these rogue timelines and killing every living thing in all of those realities. Come on, we can't let.
That sounds bad. It's not good.
In Chicago in the year eighteen sixty eight, Ravona Renslayer and Miss Minutes give a TVA handbook to a very young Victor Time He's like nine or ten this stage, and of course Victor Timely is a version of Kang and who is also a version of He who remains. Loki and Mobius arrive thirty years later in eighteen ninety three, during the famous Cargo World's Fair.
Fantastic episode wonderful, Such a good they did, such a good.
Job with this.
Loki saves Timely from a bunch of different things that are going on, including Sylvie trying to kill him and another guy trying to enmesh him in a bad business to you and return him to the and they return him. Oh and Miss minnotes being in love with him.
Yeah, well I'm s with him.
I have to say, Look, I'm I'm gonna be a miss Millet's apologistic.
I am. Also because Timely is not a good guy. He's a good remains not a good guy.
And also she has literally been there the whole time with him, helping him build the TVA, helping him, so she is she can't help it, you know. And Timely he is a he's a he's he's always doing a little a little heel time like he'll always just be.
A bad yes, he's guy bre on that in a bit. So Yeah, Loki rescues timely from all that stuff and returns into the TVA. We then learn that he w Remains to your point about the heel turns h w R, he w Remains and Renslayer were partners, or at least mister Remains said that, Hey, we're gonna be partners in this TVA project. Yeah you're gonna go a piece of this fifty to fifty down the middle. It's yeah great.
And not only that, their little love kind of quotation they would say to each other for all time, and then the other one would say, oh, boys.
That he stole that he made all it TVA.
Like fucking you know motto while wiping Renslayer's mind and kind of wiping her out of the history.
Which, you know, if you listen to us.
Talk about the last season of Loki and stuff, you will know that that is very comics accurate, that him and Renslayer have this on again, off again love affair and they're always kind of betraying each other and saving each other.
And yeah, yes, you know what a move to like turn someone from like a fifty to fifty or sixty forty partner in something to a salaried employee and wiping their mind, so they have no idea that that happened to me. Pretty fucked up. Obi then pinpoints the issue that's going on with the temporal Loom, which the malfunctioning of the Loom is the big problem throughout the season. It's a through put issue, so they sent Timely in there to fix it, but he immediately gets spaghettified and the Loom goes critical, blows up, and everything is destroyed, and that's the end of the story. No, it's not, because Loki the time slipped right before the explosion. He then travels through all these branches of time to find his TVA friends who are living their regular, pre memory wipe lives, and he gathers them all together to get his team together, except for Sylvie, who remembers everything doesn't want to go back, and then gets Loki to admit that actually he's getting all his friends together because he is terrified of being alone. He just can't be alone. He needs he can't be alone. He can't be alone with his own thoughts and his own emotions. He needs to get people and gather them around him to just keep him preoccupied thinking about anything but his own affairs his own loans.
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Way back.
Loki goes back to the TVA and again they try to fix the loom sending timely in to be keeps getting spaghettified.
It happens again and again and again and again and again.
Yeah, I just run faster. That's the big idea for a little while.
I have to say, I feel like I would like to know if this was like a reshoots situation, because it feels.
Like a punishment to the actor who.
Play Place Place. You're interesting because at the end of episode four, I think was a big like when you get spaghettified the first time, you kind of go okay, well Kang's not going to be that main villain anymore. They kind of fix the problem and then they're like, well what if we just killed him like twenty times and it just keeps getting spaghettified. Very cathartic to watch, but I love that. I love the episode. I love that episode where they're just doing the fixes over and over again and trying all the different things.
It's a really they have a lot of fun.
Playing with time and emotion of time in this season. I love this season, I think, and I think this stuff really showcases how good the EMCU can be when you don't really follow a three x structure and you kind of go outside of what we understand films to be.
I agree, there's a weirdness to Loki season two that I really really love. Okay, so it never nothing ever works the you know, Vicker's getting speak edified. The Loom keeps exploding, but eventually Loki figures out that by concentrating on a person in this case, ob caking time slip at will. So Loki, using this ability to now loop time, loops the Loom mission, trying various fixes, researching advanced science and physics, all of which takes like centuries literally time just loop again and again. None of it works. He's getting frustrated, so finally he slips back to the Citadel at the end of time at the end of you Will Remember at the end of Loki season one, to stop Sylvie from killing Victor Hwr remains. He who remains aka Kang hw Remains pauses time and they have a conversation and he reveals the true nature of the Loom. Actually, the Loom is a failsafe that automatically prunes rogue timelines to keep everything in balance, and this prevents the multiversal war that will allow Kang the Conqueror to emerge. But it can be saved. HWR says if Loki stops Sylvie from killing him, which he can do by killing her, which Loki, of course he's never gonna do that. That's never gonna come and what are you talking about. Instead, Loki goes back to the Loom mission instead of sending Timely in to get spaghettified for the billion millions up teams. Who knows how many time he goes in himself, struggles through the forces arrayed against him, goes to the center of the timeline, grabs the strands of time, rearranges it into a form much like the eaedricill, the tree that forms the shape of all reality from Asgardian myth, committing himself to sitting at the center of time, keeping everything in balance basically forever, like he can't ever leave this, and that is the wonderful end of our story. The TV goes back to work tracking various hw R remains varians across the timelines. Mobius is like, I've had enough I quit, I'm going back to live a regular life, and Ravona Renslayer wakes up at the feet of Ali Off the Devourer. Wow.
Wow.
Also, I will say, we see Victor timely not getting not getting the TVA book, which says that we could be seeing a very different timeline because Ms Minutes and Ravona navigave him that book, and obviously as well, I've been a big proponent of this for a long time.
So as Jason. They set up here.
With you know, Ravona at the end being in kind of the mouth of Alley Off and being near that space that Ravona could become Kang, which is what happens in the comics we've seen it. They're definitely saying that up. Yeah, I mean I loved this season. Like for me, I know this controversial take, shocking coming from me, but I actually preferred it to Loki Season one.
I thought Local Season.
One was great, but this had this hard sci fi adventure. I thought they balanced the kind of the bright brilliance of a character like Obi and with like this really bittersweet ending.
I mean you get that.
You learn like Loki just wants to be with friends, he wants his own Avengers he wants the people he loves around him, and the end of the show is he has to be alone forever for all eternity to save people.
That's like heartbreaking, It is quite heartbreaking. And I will say a thing that we love to talk about is how the various strands of the MC you could be setting up secret wars which we know is coming. And I think this Loki at the center of time sets it up pretty well.
Yeah, I mean he could be doing some little shenanigans. He could hear a little voice for you know, you wanna remember he's the god of mischief.
He's not always some good stuff.
He's gonna he's gonna. Like that's the other thing, like do we get where does he play his mischief? And when? Will like it can't be Loki if there isn't some keel turns, some small he'll turn coming at some point and you have to feel that Lixen. I love Loki. I think he's great. As he mentions himself over the course of this season, Hey, remember when I sent an alien force to invade New York. Remember when that happened, and like lots of people got killed and I was a really bad guy at that time, When will that kind of thing emerge? I think Loki by himself for all this time is a recipe for not good stuff to happen at a certain point.
I also think that the classic Loki kind of thing is if he gets bored, he causes mischief and he's in the center of the timeline, he's incredibly bored. You know, if he had that, maybe you know, doctor Doom was causing, he'd be like, well, what.
If he came over? If we had him in our timeline.
We haven't really had a good villain yet, or it might seem that way, but Loki knows that we need Doom here to stop someone greater, like the Makup or something like that. You know, there's I think there's a lot of potential. So that leads to my big question. And I think you kind of already answered it because and I with you. But how much this is the question that the fans are asking, This is the question people are our discote asking. How much does this matter? Is Loki Season two gonna shape what happens in the MCU next, Like, do you feel like I feel like it's one of those key shows that will.
I feel like they've given themselves, whether it's by reshoots or however they've done it, they've given themselves a variety of ways to go forward. And the key thing is they are always to go forward without Kang. Yeah, they've already created a timeline in which Young Victor timely does not become Kang, does not get any kind of advanced knowledge. It becomes just a very smart kid, but not a interdimensional multiversal supervillain potentially so. And they've given themselves a way to move forward with as you mentioned Ren Slayer as that kind of Kang figure, and also as with Loki as a potential return to like a chaos bringer at this center of creation, they could do all of that stuff, and Loki, they've given him a way to go off the board but always be there. So I think that this will set up and I think this will influence a lot of the MC stuff going forward, And honestly, it has to be. They have to move forward in that way without Cama.
I agree.
We'll be right back after a quick brick and we're back. Any favorite moments from season two?
Obi was my big favorite.
Moby was I also have to say, even though it was obviously like to an extent a bit of a cynical cash grab, as we saw with the tie ins. I actually thought the esthetic production design of the McDonald's set and Sylvie's kind of like Oklahoma aes vibe.
The vibes are just.
Really good there, and I really liked I really like this kind of like maternal sisterly relationship she had with like the sixteen year old manager of the McDonald's. I thought they did a good job building out the personal lives of everyone, obviously getting to see Mobias go back and have the He's like, I've got kids, man, Like I can't just leave my kids, and Loki's like, no, this is made up, Like this is not your real life. Your real life's in the TVA. But for Mobias, that was his real life, you know. I felt like they balanced the emotional, grounded nature of kind of human storytelling with the really bombastic sci fi in a way that for me really worked.
So those were definitely my highlights.
What about you. I want to shout out Natalie hol who was the composer on Loki season one and two and also Obi Wan Kenobi and various other film and TV projects, because I thought the music I was so Loki was next level good. It was like amazingly good in fact, like the song that the musical piece that carries you out as you're seeing kind of ye you know, you're seeing Mobius return to his regular life, and you're seeing Victor young, Victor not getting the TVA handbook. You're seeing all those things. That piece of music in particular was just gorgeous, like just incredible works.
Give her an Emmy. It was so good.
Fan every episode we like to close the show with a verty of fast moving segments. Today it's like that read this where we recommend comics to read if you like the show or movie we're talking about. This week, it is comics to read if you like Loki season two. I will begin by shouting out one of my all time favorite comics that I am very lucky enough to have because there was a time when no one.
Cared about this stuff.
I think, if you like this and you want to kind of get an inkling of that Loki who is both antagonist and friend and brother but mostly cares most about annoying Thor, which is what we all love him for, I would say read Frog Thor by Walt Simon, said.
One of our.
Legendary four three sixty four to three sixty six. It's the nineteen eighty six story and it's basically like leans into the weirdness like this season did. It is Loki has this prank filled plan to best his brother and turns him into a frog while heading off to takeover Asgard. But it goes awry, leaving frog Thor in a kind of dangerous animal world that he has to go through and introducing an impostor in the place of the true air to Asgard, and it becomes this kind of wild pet avengers adjacent animal fantasy, kind of like animals of farthing Wood. But then you also get you know, buff six foot four frog Thor, which I love, and there's just lots of fun with kind of Kirby esque as guardian intrigue and red wool animal fantasy that comes together in like a very silly and fun finale that feels very true to the the vibes of this season.
I will go with why not Thor three seventy two, the first appearance of the time variance authority and right in line with Rosie's pick again with the uh, you know, the incredible Walt Simonson as writer Salba this time hand legends non stop legends on this particular issue, and uh, folks, you're gonna get your intro into the time variance authority and the visual of like endless desks upon desks upon desks upon desks. Uh. And it's super super fun to see where the idea for this entire thing starts.
Yeah, and it's very I always forget how this issue is very like Judge Dread, like that called like justice Peace, Justice Mills like and I mean, like Jack the Ripper is in this issue. Like it's so because Beary Bill Sith Warriors three, like this is a thor Sma goes board.
In fact, the cover by Seal of this issue features a TVA Hunter, who I mean is very clearly a nod to Judge Dread.
Yeah, I mean it's so two thousand and ad. I love it.
Yeah, that's such a great issue. Those are some great places to start. And as always, you know, head to the Discord if you want to know more about which comics to read, because we're always in there and the Discord crew always has a great recommendation.
Thanks for listening, Thanks for listening, Bye see you next time. X Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Kisumsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Tale. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord. Kenny Goodman and Heidi are discord moderator