Loki Season 2 Episode 5 review: Even gods deserve second chances

❘ Published: 2023-11-03T04:18:56

Disney+

As Loki Season 2 premieres its penultimate episode, Loki discovers a new power and reignites his hero’s quest.

It may be hard to believe, but we’re almost at the end of Loki Season 2 as it premiered its fifth episode out of six recently.

The last time we saw Loki and his team, everything had gone wrong as the Temporal Loom, the machine keeping the multiverse branches in order, melted down in a fiery blast that left audiences wondering where the cast would end up.

Now that the Episode 5 has dropped, we’ve gained more insight into Loki’s new power, took some trips through the multiverses, and set up what should be an epic season finale.

A hero walks alone

As the episode begins, we see that Loki is the last remaining person within the soon to be destroyed TVA because, as we saw in both Episode 1 and 4, Loki pruned himself out of time itself, so he’s the last of the team standing.

While the Loom is breaking down and reality is falling apart, Loki quickly scrambles to figure out his next move but, before he can be turned into dust, he time slips away into different universes.

Loki Season 2 has definitely been more of a group project than a solo performance up until this point and, while its brought some memorable characters into the fold, it’s nice to see Loki handle this crisis on his own.

In our last review, we touched on the fact that the season wasn’t focusing enough on Loki and Sylvie as a unit, but the same can be said of their treatment as of Loki as a stand alone character.

This is his TV show, after all, and it has felt like he’s been a bit of a background character at times, so it was a smart decision to put him back in the driver’s seat to figure out how to get back to the TVA and his friends.

The TVA crew is everything and everywhere all at once

Throughout Season 1, we were able to see little glimpses of the TVA members’ lives in other realities when Sylvie revealed that they were all pruned from different places in time and space so they could work at the TVA.

Episode 5 takes the concept of the characters’ having other lives and really runs with it as we’re able to see different versions of the crew throughout time.

Casey is a criminal who escaped from Alcatraz Prison in 1962, B-15 is a kind pediatrician in 2012, O.B. is a failed but passionate science fiction writer in 1994, and Mobis is a single father of two who sells jet skis in 2022.

Other than O.B., everyone else’s multiversal lives seem to play off different traits or passions of theirs, which is incredibly clever.

B-15 is a leader-type figure who’s always willing to lend a helping hand, Casey is a problem solver (using that trait to have him escape prison is hilarious), and Mobis talked at lengths about jet skis in Season 1, but giving him a family was a very nice touch as he gave him something else to fight for.

The only person who wasn’t reset into another timeline was Sylvi, who Loki finds back in the 1970s working at McDonald’s.

As Marvel is heading deeper into what they call their Multiverse Saga, it would be wise for them to continue showing characters we know in different realities because it allows us to see another side to their personalities.

None of these multiverse versions of the TVA crew felt out of place because they all the same person deep down, but it’s cool to see the traits and personalities we know in love put into different situations.

Loki conquers his glitch to gain a new power

Back in Episode 1, Loki dealt with a phenomenon known as time slipping, which ripped him from one place in time and space to another on a whim.

Because the Temporal Loom melted down and all the branches have collided, it seems like his time slipping was re-triggered as he was only able to find his friends because he was being pulled from place to place.

However, when he finally links up with O.B. and explains what’s going on, O.B. explains that he needs to stop thinking about science (the how and what) and focus on fiction (the why).

O.B. tells Loki he needs to channel the reason why he’s on this mission and use it to control his time slipping so he can go back in time and stop the Loom from melting down.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t happen right away as Loki’s reason for wanting to save the TVA isn’t enough to gain control of the glitch.

But, towards the end of the episode when their realities melts apart and all of his friends are taken from him, Loki figures out how to use his time slipping to go back in time to the moment he needs to.

It’s a pretty emotional scene as we can see Loki lose all hope as he loses his friends and world in one swoop, but a great character moment as he realizes that the how, what, and why aren’t the solution to his problem: it’s the who.

Watching Loki basically use the power of friendship to slip back to the moment before the Loom melts down is fantasticating because this is not a direction one could’ve foreseen for a character who played a huge villain role in the MCU for almost a decade.

It shows how far Loki has come as a character as he’s no longer the anti hero from The Avengers, but a full on hero in his own right.

The Time Spaghetti is way scarier than The Snap

When Avengers: Infinity War first premiered in 2018, audiences witnessed one of the most haunting moments in the MCU as billions of beloved characters were snapped to dust by Thanos.

At the time, that was one of the most horrific situations in the universe because, outside of straight up killing someone head on, watching people turn to dust was both tragic and unnerving.

It seemed like Marvel would never outdo The Snap’s last impression on fans, but Loki’s Time Spaghetti is giving it a run for their money.

See, now that the branches (or multiverse universes) are dying, everything is turning into what we’re calling Time Spaghetti.

Every person, place, and thing within the branches we see in Episode 5 slowly turns into noddle like objects because they’re being wiped from existence thanks to the Loom being destroyed.

Watching the TVA crew and their friends turn into Time Spaghetti is so chilling because it happens fast than The Snap’s dusting and it looked like they’re literally being shredded from the universe.

While not everyone will agree with this, the Time Spaghetti very much outsold The Snap’s dusting in just brutality alone.

Loki Season 2 Episode 5 score: 5 / 5 stars

While we’re left on the cliffhanger of Loki slipping back to the TVA just before the Loom melts down, there’s still quite a few unanswered questions going into the season finale.

Will Renslayer and Miss Minutes return? Will Victor Timely have a bigger impact on the finale’s events? How will they stop the Temporal Loom from being destroyed? Will Sylvie ever stop being incredibly selfish with her actions? Will the finale act as a bridge to the Avengers film?

It’s both awesome and frustrating not to know where Marvel is going with their Multiverse Saga because it leaves the audience wanting to come back so they can see how the story ends.

While Marvel’s Infinity Saga wasn’t predictable by any means, fans still speculated and were proven correct when it came to the finale’s events.

However, we’re left a bit in the dark as to how Loki Season 2 will end and how it will effect the Multiverse Saga going forward, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Loki Season 2’s finale has the potential to put the MCU back on track with its multiverse story in a way no one will see coming. But fans will have to tune in next week to see if they can really pull it off.

Loki Season 2 Episodes 1-5 are now streaming on Disney+. You can check out our other coverage below: