Loki Episode 6: Breakdown and Future MCU Spoiler Theories!

    Welcome back to HLS Entertainment! Today we are sadly covering the last episode of Loki season one. I have loved this show so much and will miss this. We have been covering this entire show doing week by week breakdowns, as well as a full show breakdown before the show came out. But now, we come to an end.

    For a rating or grading for this show I do not have a specific number, because rating tv shows is not something so simple because of the length and number of episodes. Instead I will tell you my ranking of this show compared to the other two Disney+ MCU shows we have gotten. WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I think I have to say, easily, that Loki tops my list. With WandaVision in second and Falcon and Winter Soldier third. This is not a negative response to the two other shows they both were incredible, I just think this show was much more well written and tight, and more fulfilling yet leaves us begging for more. While both of the previous shows set up beautifully the next movie that those characters will be in, Loki made me want more of THIS show. Loki created an entire new world within the MCU and I want to spend more time there, not just more time with the characters.

    Before we get rolling I do want to say if you have enjoyed these breakdowns please hit me up on twitter @HaroldLStokes I am a narcissist you likes hearing that. And if you hated them... let me know on twitter too I like the attention you will brighten my day. I want to let you know as of right now these weekly breakdowns WILL continue after the August 11th premier of What If...? on Disney+. If there are any other shows you would like me to do let me know! On to the breakdown!

 The show begins with Marvel Studios logo with voices from all across the mcu and in real life playing over the logos. Many times the character on screen in that moments voice was also heard. Something I will note is seemingly more often than others we had either Loki's voice himself or voices talking about him (Like Hulk saying "Puny god"). This is also true about weirdly enough, Ant-Man and characters that have to do with his movies, now is there some hidden meaning behind that? I am not sure but Jonathan Majors is supposed to show up in Ant-Man Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror.

    

    We then get this really cool trippy sequence through all of time and space until we are in a little ball that explodes out back into the universe (the Big Bang maybe?). Then we see it is actually within a black hole with a galaxy being sucked into it. Then we find out that is next to another black hole identical to itself that we warp into and hear old Loki's "glorious purpose" and Visions "what is grief but love enduring". Now, fair warning after that acid trip of a couple sentences, some of my reflections in this blog will be pretty wild, wacky and out there just like this episode. So, what if that second blackhole we warp into before coming out to see it is the timeline and it is encircling the floating rock we have seen, what if that is the Timeline the MCU is already in for Phase four. Maybe it confirms we are ALREADY in the multiverse for WandaVision, because we heard the Vision's line and we see(hear?) it came from that universe, but the other one is where we heard all the other heroes voices from previous MCU movies.

    Okay back to less "high thoughts". We finally scan over and we see Loki and Sylvie standing on the rock ready to walk up to the castle. Okay one more high thought, does that mean EACH reality/timeline has its own TVA and he who remains on a floating rock? I do not think that is the case but the end of the episode can definitely back this up if you think about it. We will discuss this slightly more at the end in the theories section.

   We see Loki and Sylvie walking up to the front door, we get a quick conversation about kicking the door in and that Sylvie has been waiting for this moment her entire life. We get a quick comment saying that her timeline was pruned before his ever even existed so she is older than him. I lied I have many more "high thoughts". So does that mean that maybe the timeline IS a single one happening at once but it keeps reincarnating itself  (that is why we saw the big bang then went into another universe), that is why He Who Remains mentions reincarnation later on?

    Before they decide to open the door it opens by it self. The pair walk inside and we are abruptly jump scared (and scaRed) by Miss Minutes. Miss Minutes explains this is the citadel at the end of time and she congratulates them. Miss Minutes says He Who Remains is impressed that they got this far. She explains that he created and controls everything. She then tempts them with everything they have ever wanted. Tempting Loki with going back in time and winning in New York against the Avengers, or letting him kill Thanos and take the Infinity Gauntlet for himself. And then tempting Sylvie with waking up tomorrow with a brand new life. Waking up with only happy memories never having dealt with all the turmoil she has been through.

    Something that throws up a red flag for me here, is the offer of keeping them together. He Who Remains seems hell bent on keeping the pair of them together. This clicked with his other offer to them later on. Why does he want them together? Is it what we saw by the lake? How their spike on the timeline went straight up unlike any branch seen before? But alas, our pair turns down these offers saying they write their own destiny now.

    We cut to Judge Ravonna Renslayer in her office downloading files and going through many more on the couch and table next to her. We see her look up and notice the rings on her table from Mobius. Maybe a mournful thought of regret for pruning her bestfriend.

    This is when Minnie shows up, yes I called Miss Minutes Minnie why has Disney not hopped on that yet. When Minnie popped up, Ravonna asks her what took her so long, implying she has been gone awhile and this safely proves she can not be everywhere at all times as she just left Loki and Sylvie in the previous scene. Miss Minutes says here are the files you need, to which Ravonna says these are not the files she asked for and Minnie says no but it is some He thought would be useful to her. Now this immediately raises a million questions. We assume it is from He Who Remains, but what if it was from a variant of Kang as the timeline is already starting to fall apart as we see in the next scene. 

    We are back to Loki and Sylvie we do a neat little walk through a tunnel mirroring the tunnel seen in Wizard of Oz as Dorothy and crew walk down before seeing the man behind the curtain. We get foreshadowing from Sylvie as she responded to Loki saying He Who Remains, "Not for much longer". We enter a room with FOUR timekeeper statues, three standing tall and dusty but one is broken and destroyed on the floor. So many questions and world building from that.

    Now we hear a noise then see a light, as elevator doors open and He Who Remains played by Jonathan Majors is revealed. This is a moment of bragging as I have said all along ,with some doubts along the way, that I thought Jonathan Majors was in this show all along, wow I felt like a genius.  I want to note hear the beautiful Kintsugi style, how the entire environment looks like it has been reforged with gold inlays. We talked about it weeks ago how I pieced together scenes showing this specific style.

    Jonathan Majors is immediately amazing, showing up dressed like Immortus in the comics. He seems to be just enthralled by the TWO of them. I just want to start the MCU rule of two variants. They say He Who Remains to which he smugly respond "she still calls me that?" Obviously knowing. He says come on lets talk in my office, and our pair of Lokis hesitantly get in the elevator with him, swords drawn. He Who Remains points out he is not what they were expecting, this seemingly young eccentric man behind the curtain. Flesh and Blood. 

    

    We of course get a ton of Isaac Newton analogies here with the apple giving life to who his character is. But, something that also I love here is a Garden of Eden analogy. More on this in a bit. Sylvie keeps egging Loki to attack him but he does not so she tries to swing and kill him herself but Kang easily dodges her disappearing and then reappearing behind them. This egging and reluctance is a beautiful set up for the entire following 30 minutes and what changed the course of the MCU forever. Sylvie attacks again and he vanishes, only to be waiting for them when the elevator doors open. He pours them tea and tells them to take a seat. Funny enough we can assume that Loki takes his tea with two sugars.

    To shorten things I am combing a few scenes. We cut to Mobius walking into Ravonna's office with a delete stick in hand. He is upset that she betrayed him and broke their friendship after so long. She tries to call for a hunter to get him but B-15 is "freeing" hunters after finding Ravonna's variant on the timeline as the FDR high school principal. Hunter B-15 is using her on the timeline as proof to the other Hunters about them all being Variants.

    Mobius  says its all a lie, the entire TVA and its dogma. Ravonna says what if it is a necessary lie to keep everything safe and in order or there would be chaos. Mobius reasons that free will is chaos, but Ravonna says only one person gets free will. The one in charge.

    Mobius tries to call her out on betraying him but she says "no YOU betrayed me". They had eons of friendship working alongside one another fighting for what they believe, but MOBIUS is the one who went against that not her. Mobius says they can not continue taking away people's free will, tries to reason with her saying maybe they could build the TVA into something better together.

    Ravonna is not breaking, and says even with the staff he is no danger to her. She quickly proves this as he charges her and she takes him down and takes the staff. She does not prune him, but takes the delete stick with her "in search of free will" as she walks through a time door. This is the last we see of her this season, and I want to say I thought Gugu Mbatha-Raw did an incredible job this season portraying the character and making her her own.

    This is where we spend a majority of the episode, sitting at this desk having a conversation. Not everything has to be a big CGI battle and I loved this. He Who Remains says it has been a long journey for Sylvie congratulating her on making it here. But to Loki he makes a comment calling him the flea on the back of a dragon. Is Sylvie the Dragon in this analogy? That Loki is kind of an innocent bystander to this entire interaction while Sylvie is this force of nature hell bent on her journey. Kind of?

    This is where they call him out saying they figured their way out of his twisted little game and found him, to which He Who Remains scoffs at saying of course they did. He LET them. Sylvie quickly stands and takes another swing at him, but he easily dodges the swing disappearing and reappearing again. This is where he reveals that he knows everything. He Who Remains pulls out files showing them transcripts of the exact conversation they are having. He says he knows exactly how they would attack him and has it all saved to the TemPad on his hand. Their attacks are futile. "I know it all and I have seen it all"

    He says he saw everything even the stuff the TVA misses. He saw exactly what they did on Lamentis-1, including that little look by the lake. So question, did he see that and then HE caused the spike so the TVA would show up? Possibly, I like that thought process because it would prove his next point. Sylvie in denial, "we broke out of your game", but He Who Remains grins at this saying nope, he paved the road for the pair of them to get there. They had nothing to do with it, they just walked down the road he set for them. So maybe he did saved them on Lamentis-1.

    He Who Remains says there is only one way this goes. Sylvie wants to go ahead and skip to the end but He Who Remains the natural storyteller knows you need to be changed by the journey before the end happens. I think at this point he knows she will probably kill him. But is he rooting for it?  He obviously starts pinning them against each other, pointing out how Loki is untrustworthy, and Sylvie could never trust anyone anyways.

    I love the visual storytelling as the divide grows between Sylvie and Loki, having He Who Remains framed between them as he drives the wedge in their friendship/relationship. He says he knows they do not agree with the TVA's methods but without him and without the TVA EVERYTHING gets burned to the ground. Time could collapse. 

    They ask him "what are you so afraid of?", to which he quietly just says "me". Rightfully confused they ask just who is he?  He answers he has been "dubbed many names by many people, a ruler a conqueror , He Who Remains, a jerk". Aside from Jonathan Majors literally playing the character this is our first confirmation that yes he is Kang the Conqueror, though the name Kang is never once used in this episode.

    We get a little history (future?) lesson. We learn that he was originally a 31st century scientist that learned of inter-timeline travel. At this same time of his discovery other variants of himself were also learning the same thing. This initially was a prosperous and peaceful time of shared knowledge and power. But the peace could only last for so long until one of them decided to conquer other worlds. We see little figurines of each variant fighting against one another (dressed as comic Kang and holding the delete sticks from the TVA). He says that first variant (himself) found Alioth, a creature created from all the tears in reality. "I harnessed the beasts power and began experimenting on it, I weaponized Alioth, and I ended, I ended  the multiversal war, once I isolated our timeline all I had to do is manage the flow of time, and prevent any further branches, hence the TVA, hence the Timekeepers and the highly efficient bureaucracy, hence ages and ages of cosmic harmony, hence, you're welcome"

    "You came to kill the devil" well according to him, it is he the 'devil' who keeps them safe. He says "if you think I am evil just wait to you meet my variants". That is the journey, we are at the end time for the final decision. He says that is the gambit, kill He Who Remains and possibly unleash infinite number of variants of him that will inevitably cause another multiversal war, or accept the 'necessary evil' of the TVA.  This is when Sylvie points out, "or you are a liar". And He Who Remains agrees "Or I am a liar".

    They are confused and mull the options, so either they kill their singular devil and unleash possibly infinite number of devils, or let him continue to prune innocent timelines. But He Who Remains says no "you two run the thing". This confuses them both as to why he would give up control, why he would give up this throne over all of time. He Who Remains points out he is significantly older than he looks, he could have been doing this for millions or billions of years. That now he is old and tired, that he needs someone young and hungry to take over. He has been spending millions of years trying to figure who can be his replacement but was shocked when he came to the conclusion that the answer came in two, that it has to be Loki and Sylvie together. This again is the beginning of the MCU's rule of two variants.

    He says none of the pruning was personal just a necessary evil to stop the multiversal war.  Sylvie says it was personal to her. And we get He Who Remains first big reaction, "GROW UP SYLVIE". He calls her a hypocrite, a murderer, we literally met Sylvie on this show and she was burning and killing TVA Hunters that she knew were variants. "We are all villains here", put it on my gravestone none of us are innocent.  He says all three of them have done horrendous deeds selfishly, but this is a chance to do them for a good reason.

    This is where He Who Remains shudders, looking stunned but excited. We hear crackling in the distance as the camera pans to and from him. He picks up a pen and drops it on the table. He laughs and admits to them he lied, he does not know EVERYTHING. He just knew everything up until this very moment. He does not know what their decision will be. He seems very pleased by this as he becomes more and more giddy with nervous excitement.

    Loki asks if he is just going to sit there and let them decide his fate and the fate of everything. He Who Remains has to think for a moment because this is his first not perfectly planned moment as he finally answers yes gleefully. Paraphrasing but he essentially say "either yall take over or you kill me and I end up back here eventually anyways with reincarnation". So, like I mentioned earlier, is time some sort of flat circle that keeps reincarnating itself over and over, that is why Sylvie was born and pruned way before Loki was even born.

    He Who Remains says this is no lie, no manipulation, but I want to bring back up the Garden of Eden analogy. This can easily be painted as he is the serpent with the apple tempting Adam and Eve in the out of time Garden. He continuously eats the apple at first which is what clicked in my head this line of thinking. Maybe he WANTS her to kill him. The serpent tempts Eve with true free will for the timeline, meanwhile Adam tries to stop her knowing the evil that will be set loose.

    He Who Remains removes his special TemPad, lays it on the table with the visual looking like he is still wearing it, still in control of this situation as it plays out exactly how he wants. Sylvie immediately jumps into action trying to kill him. But Loki believes him, believes that his variants will be so much worse than what is happening now. This is a devil on the shoulder moment as He Who Remains simply says "better hurry the timeline is already branching"

    Unfortunately Sylvie just thinks Loki wants a throne. This deeply hurts Loki as we have seen him grow immensely over the course of this show. He says they are risking unleashing something so much worse should they not at least stop and talk about it. But Sylvie can not trust, and Loki can not be trusted. Is the pair of them bound to eventually take over the TVA ruling it as justly as they can, or were the pair of them chosen because He Who Remains knows their infighting in this situation is what will start the cycle all over again, as he himself is bound to this eventual loop. This is very interesting idea as we just dealt with Ragnarok in the MCU and that is the concept of rebirth for Norse Mythology.

    This sadly turns into a fight between our two Lokis. During the fight He Who Remains is just watching gleefully, seemingly excited by watching new events that he has never seen before unfold right before him. We get a quick but fun and painful fight sequence between Sylvie and Loki as he tries to stop her from killing He Who Remains. But as we saw across this entire show Sylvie is the better fighter and gets the upper hand throwing Loki across the room as she storms for her killing blow on He Who Remains. But in the final slow motion moment Loki appears right before her almost getting himself killed.

    

    Loki tries to reason with Sylvie saying he has been where she is and that he has felt what she feels. This deep dark rage of needing to get revenge, to hold onto a grudge, is how Loki had been living his entire life in Thor's shadow. And now that he has been changed by his journey he knows holding onto those resentments and those grudges is not useful or helpful, it only hurts yourself. He says "all I know is I don't want to hurt you, I don't want a throne". This made me think maybe he is now ready to rule actually.

    Sylvie seems touched by his words and they kiss, she slowly turns him around and says she is not him though and uses the TemPad to throw him out. Loki lands back in a time theater in the TVA unable to ever get back to her and He Who Remains at the citadel at the end of time.

    Sylvie gets straight to business. Slings He Who Remains desk out of the way, and asks if he is going to beg for his life. But He Who Remains does not, simply says that he could but we know at this moment he is ready to die and is still seemingly excited by this entire event unfolding. She plunges the blade through his chest and He Who Remains final words are, "See you soon".

    When you get everything you ever wanted, was it worth it? That is what Sylvie forever will have to deal with the fallout of. She finally got to punish and kill the man responsible for the turmoil of her life, but is satisfying her need for revenge worth what comes next?

    No Idea if it was done purposefully but as she slowly sat down on the ground I could not help but think of Thanos at the end of Avengers Infinity War, after completing her life long mission now she rests.

    The camera pans past the limp corpse of He Who Remains and out the window to reveal to us the entire timeline crumbling and splintering and branching in every direction. There is no turning back now, free will is free, and the multiverse is open. For all time, Always.

    We cut back to Loki in the time theater by himself, alone and heartbroken. This is a gut wrenching moment of solace for Loki, back alone after thinking he found someone to be with. Loki thought he broke out of his own loop. We see this loop literally in his time cell when he is forced to relive over and over Lady Sif telling him he is alone and always will be, that he deserves it. Previous movies when we have seen Loki this would have been the moment he hides himself away from the world but now he collects himself to go and try to fix this. THIS is our character growth for Loki, when the multiverse hits the fan of course he could have retreated into himself but instead he decides to rise and fight. Because that is what heroes do.

    He wipes the tears from his eyes and goes to find Mobius. We see Mobius with Hunter B-15 talking about the "63 branches in this unit alone" speaking on the chaos that is happening around them. They specifically say "does HE want us to just let them all branch", which is our first hint that things have already changed. "Well at this point how could we even stop it?" but Loki cries out "we can't! It's done". 

    We get a moment of Loki ranting about how someones that are dangerous is on the way they must regroup and get ready to fight and stop them. But he is cut short with "take it easy, you're and analyst right? who are you?" This is a stab to the heart from Mobius who seems to have no idea who he is. And then we see that it is too late. The giant statues of the Timekeepers have been replaced with a single giant KANG statue. Loki was ready to fight the war to save the TVA, but it has already been lost and Kang is in charge.

    I took my time writing and releasing this for two reasons. Firstly, because spoilers, I knew this is just an absolute gamechanger in the MCU and I did not want to be responsible for anyone seeing this or any tweet of mine referring to what happened and having the show spoiled for them. And secondly because it is such a huge gamechanger I wanted time to reflect on the show and to get to watch the Assembled episode about it, which I just watched before starting this final section. By the way the "Assembled" episodes are a behind the scenes episode they release on Disney+. They are incredible shows that show the process they went through in making the show and they have done one for all three MCU shows. and The Mandalorian as well. I highly HIGHLY recommend you check them all out. One final thought I had after watching it was not something they said but it occurred to me how much Sylvie and Loki's relationship is mirrored with Mobius and Ravonna's. Their wants and needs are different obviously but that friendship that is broken by them ultimately wanting different things and the semi romantic nature to them just has so many similarities it had to be purposeful. 

THEORIES

    

    Here we are now to one of my favorite parts of these breakdowns, theorizing what comes next or what could have been a hidden detail that has huge implications. I want to start here with the picture above, this mysterious ship we see in the universal opening crawl we got. The semi obvious jump to conclusion by comic nerds everywhere is that this mysterious ship could be the Fantastic Four's ship. We know they are eventually joining the MCU but we do not know when. BUT my personal theory is this ship is actually going to be a ship in the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. This could be either our heroes ship in that movie OR Kang's ship that he uses to traverse the timelines. Or of course it can always be nothing, but it seems to be a weird thing to show up close without meaning.

    I believe in everything since Spider-Man Far From Home we have already been viewing the MCU in a multiversal world and timeline. Loki is just showing us how we got there. Examples being of course is JK Simmons appearing back into the Spider-Man film world as J Jonah Jameson once again. This is also backed up by, in the opening trippy sequence, we hear Vision's grief line being played only once we go into the second blackhole. This can be interpreted to say it already happened in the multiverse and we the audience are playing catchup to this. Timelines are colliding everywhere so we have "bleeding" happening from other timelines with other characters coming over from other film universes. THIS is how we can get anything to happen. Want Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine? This opens that door, for him to be in the MCU. SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN NO WAY HOME. This is how we can get Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield to join the MCU's Tom Holland Peter Parker potentially in his third film coming out in December 2021.

    A fun note here is the timing between the timeline breaking open could be the EXACT moment when Wanda hears the voices of her children at the end of WandaVision.

    

    Every single branch of the timelines brings new opportunities for the MCU. One question that popped in my head thinking about the closing of the show is, does that mean EACH reality/timeline has its own TVA and He Who Remains on a floating rock?  I do NOT think that is the case but is a fun thought experiment. I still hold that I believe the TVA is probably in the Quantum realm and we will see that later on, that it is out of time itself. Alone and singular in its purpose. Which makes it so much more perilous to see that Kang has already conquered the TVA. 

    

    Loki is the first Disney+ MCU show to get a second season confirmed. WandaVision's "sequel" will be in Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness (coming March 2022) and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's will be in Captain America 4 but we have no publicly known release date for that. But with Loki we will be getting an actual season two. So what does that entail?

    Loki season two will obviously be dealing with the fallout of what happened in the first season with Kang now in charge and ruling the TVA but with no release date told to us we do not know when it will happen in the MCU timeline. Is it going to not come out until after Ant-Man 3 set to release February 2023 where we know Jonathan Majors and Kang appears again. Or will it come out sooner than that? There have long been rumors about the show getting a second season, including rumors that it has already been filmed. 

    One thing that I will say quickly, no it is not coming in 2021. The MCU release schedule for Disney+ shows in 2021 is too jam packed and it would not fit. We have the first animated MCU project "What if...?" premiering next on August 11th that will run weekly through October 13th, assumingly with an Assembled episode the following so through 10/20. Then we still have eight episodes of Hawkeye and six episodes of Ms. Marvel still to premier on Disney+. So 14 more weeks taken, as well as 2 more Assembled episodes for those shows so 16 total. Hint here, there are not 16 weeks left in the year after What If...? finished so it will roll into next year. No room for Loki season 2.

    So not 2021, what about 2022? I think I know when this show might come. We know that either Hawkeye or Ms. Marvel will roll into 2022 until about mid February. On the schedule for 2022 we have three confirmed MCU Disney+ shows so far. Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and Secret Invasion. No confirmation but I believe Moon Knight has already wrapped and we know She-Hulk is still filming so it is a safe GUESS that MK will be first probably coming in March after Doctor Strange 2 (comes out 3/25). Moon Knight premiering the week after DS2 having six episodes (so 7 weeks counting assembled) would land us perfectly a week before Thor Love and Thunder's movie premier on May 6th. Black Panther Wakanda Forever premiers on July 8th and the third and final movie of the year is The Marvels premiering November 11th. That gives us two gaps. She-Hulk is ten episodes long so the first gap between Thor 4 and Black Panther 2 is too short, but it fits wonderfully between BP2 and The Marvels. Which could allow Secret Invasion to come out in the time following The Marvels as we know Nick Fury and Talos are to appear in SI and they obviously have strong ties to The Marvels with both character already appearing in Captain Marvel. Fits perfectly. SO, either we are going to have a gap between Thor 4 and BP2 of close to two months, or that is where Loki season 2 will fall. Middle of May 2022 leading into July 2022, similar to its season one release.

    Or it will just be in 2023 but then we have to do the mental gymnastics of where it goes there. Very quickly just to go over this possibility, we only know for a fact of two movies having a release date in 2023. Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania on February 17th and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 on May 5th. We ASSUME the announced Fantastic Four film will conclude Phase four that fall/winter probably in November. We know there will be three Disney+ shows at least, including IronHeart, Armor Wars and an untitled series set in Wakanda. This year is still wide open but the safe bet would be the possibility of Loki season 2 coming AFTER AM3 in February leading up to GotG 3 in May. But we really do not know.

    

Thank you all for reading I have adored doing these breakdowns, if you enjoy them please share on social media with your friends I love watching the clicks tick up, and I love hearing feedback from readers. Please follow me on Twitter @HaroldLStokes and I hope you have a blessed day!

For All Time, Always