Loki Season 2 Episode 4 review: Exposed secrets cause mutual destruction

❘ Published: 2023-10-27T08:22:19

Disney+

As things seem to be dire at the TVA, Loki Season 2 Episode 4 gives fans an insight to a secret relationship and a lot of fallout.

It may be hard to believe, but Loki Season 2 is almost at its end as Disney+ just recently premiered the show’s fourth episode.

When fans last left Loki, Mobius, Sylvie, and the TVA, they met He Who Remains’ variant Victor Timely and Ravonna Renslayer was seemingly defeated by Sylvie.

And Episode 4 only ramped up the tension between everyone as the Time Loom is still on the brink of destruction and major secrets are revealed. Spoilers to follow…

All the powers of a god, but still can’t talk

While Loki Season 2 has still been a lot of fun to watch as a fan, one of the things it’s lacking is more screen time between everyone’s favorite gods.

Loki and Sylvie were the backbone of the first season as the pair had to work together to bring down the TVA and later He Who Remains, but we haven’t really gotten to see a lot of that fiery passion between the pair in Season 2.

On the one hand, it does make sense as there’s an impending multiversal war and the threat of the TVA being destroyed forever, but it would be nice to see more conversations between the two like we got in Episode 4.

An image of Tom Hiddleston in Loki on Disney Plus

Loki is still trying to get through to Sylvie and make her see that the TVA can be a force for good if they stand and fight for it, but she’s not buying what he’s selling.

Sylvie still has a lot of trauma associated with the TVA, understandably, so it’s not surprising that she wouldn’t be on board with helping them in any way, but it’s a bit frustrating to hear her talk to Loki like he wasn’t right about almost everything up to this point.

At the end of the day, Sylvie is still a Loki variant even though she’s her own person so she’s bound to be a bit stubborn and hard to reach, but maybe Loki could’ve broken down her walls a bit more if Season 2 gave them more time to talk one on one.

There’s still two episodes left in the season, so there’s plenty of time to see the pair learn to see each other’s side and come together to be the powerful duo they were meant to be, but audiences will have to wait and see if that actually happens.

A lover’s quarrel leads to a revenge quest

Undoubtably the biggest reveals fans received in Episode 4 is that the fact that He Who Remains and Renslayer were a couple at one time.

And not only were they a serious couple, Renslayer actually led He Who Remain’s army in the Kang multiverse war and helped him establish the TVA as a whole.

Now, for comic book readers, this revelation isn’t shocking as that’s one of Renslayer’s biggest plot books through several issues.

Renslayer consistently sacrificed herself for Kang many, many times, but ended up killing him at one point when she realized he would never prioritize her over his plot to defeat the Avengers.

In Episode 4, Miss Minutes reveals to Renslayer that He Who Remains sent her off to the TVA with her memory wiped so he could rule the multiverses without her.

It’s a super tough blow to watch as Renslayer was starting to get along with Timely and form a connection with him. Plus, she blew up her life at the TVA at the behest of Miss Minutes because she wanted to meet the person behind it all.

Now armed with this knowledge, Renslayer is in full revenge mode as she went back to the TVA with Miss Minutes to recruit the Minute Men imprisoned from the branch bombings earlier in the season.

The only Minute Man who joins their cause is Brad Wolfe, as he’s desperately trying to get back to his life of fame on Earth.

The rest were squished to death in a prisoner box in one of the most haunting scenes in the show. Watching Renslayer take in the carnage with an expressionless face is down right chilling and really shows how far she has gone.

It’s interesting to see Renslayer fulfill the villain role left behind by He Who Remains and it’s quite unclear if she will be the final threat the gang has to defeat.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing or an actual sheep?

The jury is still out when it comes to trusting Timely, as he’s a Kang variant whose loyalties are a bit hard to pin down at the moment.

During the episode, Sylvie points out how dangerous it could be to show Timely “behind the curtain,” aka the TVA, the Loom, and how everything functions.

But, Loki defends the decision to bring him there as it could be a way to stop him from becoming the monster He Who Remains was.

However, that suggests that Timely isn’t already going down that path, which both Loki and the audience can’t be sure of.

While Timely is currently a harmless scientist who is helping the gang with fixing the Time Loom, there’s no reason to believe that, once the mission is done, he won’t take what he’s learned and do it better as he becomes He Who Remains.

Episode 4 puts a lot of emphasis on having hope and believing the best in people, but we’ve seen how badly that can backfire, especially with Loki himself.

Time cannot be contained

As previously mentioned in an episode review, the way time is portrayed in Loki is endlessly fantasticating as it treats the concept not as a loop or a line, but a mashup of branches that connect in different places.

At the beginning of Season 2, Loki was forced to prune himself from the timeline in order to stop his time glitching.

When the audience sees it, Loki doesn’t prune himself as he was stabbed in the back while looking at Sylvie in an elevator, which also acted as his vision of her being in the TVA when it was being destroyed.

However, in a very clever twist, Episode 4 reveals the person who pruned Loki was Loki himself, but from the future.

The Loki we see in Episode 4 recognizes the elevator situation and takes himself out of the timeline in order to keep everything the way it is.

But, this bring up an interesting question: is the Loki we see in Episode 4 not the same Loki from Episode 1? He pruned himself from the timeline in that moment, but still existed at the same time.

Loki’s use of time can be a bit tricky at time, but it’s so fun because everything is connected in one way another.

We can only hope the final two episodes will further elaborate on time and how the multiverse will function as we move into Marvel’s Phase 6.

Loki Season 2 Episode 4 score: 4/5

Season 2 does need to step it up when it comes to the interactions between Loki and Sylvie as it feels like they’re being a bit sidelined by the big issue of the Time Loom imploding.

But, Episode 4 leaves fans in such a weirdly awesome place because there’s truly no telling where the show is going or how the season will end.

The episode basically ends with everything goes to hell in a hand basket as Brad pruned Renslayer, most of the Minute Men are gone, the Time Loom exploded so the branches are colliding, and Timely seeming disintegrated.

Everything that could go wrong absolutely did and it seems like it’s over, but the season has two more episodes to go.

Was the Loom exploding part of Timely’s plan to start the multiverse war? Is the TVA gone forever? Will Loki, Sylvie, Mobis, and crew wake up in another timeline or as other variants? Are the last two episodes going to set up the Kang saga for the upcoming Avengers film? Fans will have to tune in next week to find out.

Loki Season 2 Episodes 1-4 are now streaming on Disney+. You can check out our other coverage below: