Loki Season 2: Who is Renslayer?

❘ Published: 2023-10-06T01:15:00

Ravonna Renslayer in Loki and the Marvel Comics

Disney+/Marvel

Loki has returned with the first episode of Season 2, but some Marvel fans may need their memories jogged – so, who is Renslayer?

Asgard’s anti-hero is back, and mischief has definitely been managed – so much so, the fabric of countless timelines is at stake.

In the finale of the first season, He Who Remains warned Sylvie that killing him would unleash unspeakable chaos – but she did it anyway, causing havoc for the TVA and trapping Loki in an agonizing state of time-flipping.

As the TVA comes to terms with what’s happened and Loki tries to figure out what’s happened, we hear a name repeated a few times: Renslayer – here’s what you need to know.

Who is Ravonna Renslayer in Loki Season 2?

Renslayer is a Time Variance Authority judge and hunter played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

She’s first seen at the beginning of Loki, when he’s initially apprehended by the TVA for his “nexus event”, aka when he steals the tesseract after the Avengers travel back in time in Endgame. She orders him to be reset, but Mobius intervenes, believing he could be useful.

Renslayer is a revered member of the TVA, so much so that she’s able to request an audience with the Time Keepers themselves – but her existence starts to crumble when she discovers that she, along with everyone else, is just a variant. More specifically, she’s a variant of Rebecca Tourminet abducted by He Who Remains.

Yet, she doesn’t feel betrayed by this knowledge, only those who rebel against the TVA. She has been totally consumed by its ways, despite it all being a bit of a fugazi. “The TVA is a lie,” Mobius tells her, but she responds: “Someone created the Time-Keepers. They created this whole place. They gave us all purpose. I have to believe they had a reason… only one person gets free will: the one in charge.”

In the comics, she’s the the daughter of King Carelius in Other-Earth’s 40th century who attracts the eye of Kang – he fancies her so much she brings the Avengers forward in time to battle them, just to show off her skills. She eventually falls for him, but it gets really complicated – you can find out more here.

We don’t know exactly where she’s gone, but one would be safe to assume it’s meet Kang or a variant of him. Perhaps it’s another version of He Who Remains, or maybe she’s found one of the Conquerors. But with Miss Minutes curiously missing in the first episode, next week’s installment is bound to give us some answers – or more questions.

Loki Season 2 Episode 1 is streaming on Disney Plus now, which you can sign up for here. You can check out our other coverage below: