Loki Spoiler Recap: The Nexus Event
The Last Jedi fans, how are we feeling today?
Loki closed out the second act of the season with an episode that completely upended every expected avenue for the show to take. Instead, both the characters and the audience are now barrelling headfirst into completely unknown and unexpected territory.
I would say that this episode subverted my expectations but certain people on the internet get twitchy when they hear that phrase.
The episode opens with Ravonna on her way to see the Timekeepers, reliving the memory of a very specific case. Namely the day she, in her Minuteman days, arrested a Loki Variant for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. The Variant in question is Sylvie, who looks to be about 9 or 10 years old.
Sylvie is brought to the TVA, and processed in much the same way Loki was in the pilot, but it’s significantly less funny when it’s a terrified child whose reality has been reset so she can’t return to it. Sylvie steals a Tempad right as she’s about to be tried for her crimes and disappears somewhere in the timeline.
It doesn’t take long for present-day Sylvie to disclose all this to Loki, adding that she could never stay anywhere for long because her mere presence was a nexus event. After all, what does she have to lose? They’re still stuck on Lamentis and on the verge of dying anyway. The TVA is looking for them, but knowing that they’re hiding in some apocalypse somewhere, there’s little hope of them creating any kind of Nexus event.
That is, until Sylvie touches Loki’s arm in a kind, one might even say affectionate, way. That right there is enough to create a branch in the timeline and send the TVA after them.
This is as good a time as any to say that while I was wary of the Loki/Sylvie ship last week, after this episode I am absolutely on board. I was mildly concerned their more father/daughter relationship from the comics was what the show might go for, which now does not appear to be the case at all. As for the exact moments that sold me on this dynamic, I will get into those below.
The two God of Mischief are hauled back to the TVA and split up immediately. Loki is taken back to Mobius’ office, and the TVA official is less than pleased with what he perceives as a betrayal by someone he considered a friend. Before Loki is pushed into a Time Cell - which is different from a Time Door, because this time the light is red and not yellow - Mobius lets him get one last jab in. Loki gives Mobius half the truth and tells him the TVA is lying to him.
Naturally this doesn’t work.
It does, however, plant enough suspicion that Mobius decides to look into things a little further, specifically the matter of Hunter C-20. When he initially asked Ravonna if he could speak to C-20 about her experience, she brushes him off by telling him she died after her mind deteriorated beyond saving. While Loki is locked in the Time Cell, he asks Ravonna if he can talk to Sylvie instead, and she flat-out refuses, citing a need to protect him.
Meanwhile Loki is trapped in a loop of a specific moment in his past, back on Asgard. He is repeatedly visited by Lady Sif, whose hair he appears to have hacked off as a joke. She punches him a couple of times, tells him he’ll always be alone, then walks off, rinse and repeat. Even when he admits that he’s afraid of being alone, and that’s why he seeks attention, though Sif doesn’t hit him that time, she does bitterly tell him that he will always be alone.
That part about loneliness seems to really stick with him when Mobius comes to take him back to his office. He tries to get information out of Loki, who takes credit for the partnership with Sylvie, and for pulling the strings all along. Unlike Loki’s of the past, he isn’t trying to claim credit or bolster his own standing. Instead this reads like a man who cares, and who is trying to throw himself in the way to protect someone else.
Did my heart melt a little? Yes.
Mobius then uses the most ruthless tactic we’ve seen from him so far: He tells Loki that Sylvie was pruned.
He feigns indifference, even delight, but Mobius isn’t buying it for a second. And I know I say this a lot, but it’s a testament to Tom Hiddleston’s performance how quickly I was turned around on the idea of his feelings for Sylvie. Half a second of tears pooling in his eyes and I was sold.
Mobius presses Loki on his feelings, telling him that falling in love with a version of himself is narcissistic and nothing short of pure chaos, and that was what enabled the TVA to find them. It is worth noting, however, that the nexus event only started when they touched hands. The Last Jedi’s influence is strong, and it only gets stronger from here.
Loki at last fully comes clean with Mobius, telling him that everyone at the TVA is a Variant kidnapped from the Sacred Timeline. Though Mobius dismisses him again, he is starting to have more and more doubts, and he’s not the only one. Hunter B-15 struggles throughout the episode, seemingly on edge and uneasy. She finally pulls Sylvie through a Time Door and back to Roxxcart to lay her concerns to rest - when Sylvie invaded her mind, B-15 saw something both familiar and unfamiliar and wants to know more. Sylvie lets her relive a memory from her life before, and just like that, she and Loki find themselves with a new ally.
Meanwhile, Mobius manages to steal Ravonna’s Tempad and gets confirmation of what he was beginning to suspect. C-20 didn’t deteriorate. She was in fact perfectly lucid, and well aware that she was stolen from her life in the Sacred Timeline. He also sees that she is definitely deceased, and it’s clear Ravonna had something to do with it. He lets Loki out of the Time Cell long enough to tell him he believes him before the two of them are caught by Ravonna. She has Mobius pruned (!) and takes Loki and Sylvie off to see the Timekeepers.
This was where the episode took on a distinctly Star Wars flavour, and the influences of The Last Jedi became very apparent.
Faced with imminent demise, Loki and Sylvie brace themselves for the end at the hands of the three almost-comical looking Timekeepers, when Hunter B-15 arrives and disengages their prisoner collars. After that the scene that unfolds is what I can only describe at the Last Jedi Throne Room scene with Marvel flavouring. We have back-to-back stances, weapons being thrown back and forth between our antagonists-turned-allies, and the apparent antagonist is dead by the end of the fight.
Expectations? Subverted.
People can critique The Last Jedi all they like for being too different, and for not feeling like “Star Wars” (whatever that means), but as time goes on it becomes clear that that film was a Nexus event in and of itself. We see books within the Star Wars universe - and beyond, possibly - pull from the lessons of that film with increasing frequency. And now, with this Loki Throne Room fight, we see a scene heavily inspired by the film in exactly the right kind of way, with the same surprises and heart-stopping action and character growth we got in the earlier scene. This kind of influence is what happens when your film sets out to tell a new story, instead of trying to retell and recreate something everyone has already seen.
When the fight is over, there is even that quiet moment between the last two fighters standing - the would-be couple with a connection neither can explain. But as the blue-filtered lighting should have foretold, the ending to this scene was less Last Jedi and more The Rise of Skywalker. As our dark-haired bad boy is just turning a corner, realizing what he actually wants out of life and his future, and is even on the verge of kissing the woman he loves, he disappears into nothingness.
That’s right, Loki got pruned.
Fortunately this week came with a post-credits stinger, and no, it wasn’t Sylvie standing on some frozen cliff on Jotunheim all by herself, completely unaffected by literally everything that’s just happened. Instead, it features Loki waking up somewhere strange, surrounded by what my notes described as “three bargain-bin Lokis” (I haven’t read the comics). So our bad-boy-turned-good is down, but not out. #LokiLives
Lingering Thoughts
Owen Wilson is left-handed? Lefties unite!
Young Sylvie is played by Cailey Fleming, who made her onscreen debut playing Young Rey in The Force Awakens. A fun fact (and a fun parallel too)
When Sylvie lobbed off the head of the central Timekeeper, my notes literally read “she Snoke’d him”
One of the Lokis seen at the end is played by the delightful Richard E. Grant, and I cannot help but hope this is where the Rise of Skywalker parallels end. If I have to sit through one more redemption-via-death I do not apologize for the person I will become.
My last question is this: Loki is waking up in a dimension full of pruned Variants. Is this where every pruned being goes? Or does the cosmic...pruning authority (?) sort each group of Variants into their own “bin”?
Also, if the Timekeepers were just puppet androids, who is really pulling the strings?
Loki airs Wednesdays on Disney+. Check back here every week for our spoiler recap at noon Eastern.