Characters / MCU: Mobius M. Mobius

Main Character Index > Other Individuals and Organizations > Multiverse > Time Variance Authority (Kang | Mobius M. Mobius) | Earth-838 | The Lighthouse

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Spoilers for Loki (2021) season 1 and all works set prior to it are unmarked.

Agent Mobius M. Mobius

"Well, it’s never too late to change."

Birth Name: Don

Species: Human (Variant)

Portrayed By: Owen Wilson

Appearances: Loki | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ^note Post-credits stinger

"Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it."

An agent of the TVA who reports to Ravonna Renslayer and recruits Loki to help him track down the Loki Variant that’s been antagonizing and evading the organization.

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A-I

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the comics, Mobius butted heads with the likes of the Fantastic Four and She-Hulk, without once ever encountering Loki. Because the MCU has yet to introduce the First Family and She-Hulk debuted after the God of Mischief's show, he doesn't show any familiarity with them.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Mobius is usually depicted with either black or brown hair in the comics. In the MCU, his hair is white.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Mobius in the comics was much more of an Inspector Javert-like character, constantly trying to arrest the Fantastic Four for breaking time laws, and becoming increasingly bitter at his failure to do so. In the MCU, Mobius is much more lenient towards Loki's criminal actions (to the point of downright squeeing over them), and actually wants to recruit him into the TVA to defeat his villainous variant, having to fight Renslayer and his coworkers to get that to happen.
• The Ageless: Everyone in the TVA never ages, at least while they're there. Mobius and Ouroboros laugh about how they haven't seen each other in centuries in the same tone as not seeing someone in a few weeks. Renslayer also states she and Mobius are eons old. It is unclear whether he will indeed start ageing after he leaves the TVA to hang around on Earth and "let time pass."
• Alliterative Name: His first name is the same as his surname. It's unknown what the middle "M." stands for.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe. Mobius himself gives two different interpretations of his motives to Loki, the more idealistic and more cynical one, and refuses to tell which one is true.
  Loki: Why are you in there sticking your neck out for me?
  Mobius: I'll give you two options, and you can believe whichever one you want. A, because I see a scared little boy, shivering in the cold. And you kinda feel bad for that ice runt. Or B, I just wanna catch this guy, and I'll tell you whatever I need to tell you.
• Ambiguous Situation: It is unclear what happened to his wife. His past self, Don, only says that by 2022 she is "long gone" so he wants to sell her jet ski. Is she dead, abandoned him or got dusted after Thanos's snap?
• Amnesiac Resonance: It is revealed that Mobius the analyst has an unusual fascination with jet skis and is a Friend to All Children because before the TVA captured him and erased his memories, he was Don, the jet ski salesman who owned two personal watercrafts himself, and a caring father of two kids.
• Anti-Hero: Mobius is a kind person with a good heart, but as a member of the TVA he does not shy away from using less benign methods in his practice, from lying to placing victims in Time Cells to relive their worst memories or threatening them with being squeezed to death in a small box, which is outright torture. When Loki and Sylvie discuss him, they agree that he "isn't so bad", but "isn't so good" either.
• Anti-Nihilist: Mobius believes that existence is chaos, and everyone is out there to make sense of it and find a "glorious purpose" for themselves. He deems himself lucky to have found his.
• Ascended Fanboy: Mobius has been observing Loki for quite a while, and is excited to meet a variant of him in person. Despite knowing that Loki is not a person he should trust, Mobius still does everything he can to prevent Hunter B-15 from pruning him on the spot, believing he can be useful for the TVA later on.
• Awesome McCoolname: When Loki tells Don his name in the TVA, he has to admit that Mobius is a cool name, even when he is staunchly invoking Refusal of the Call. He later says that Mobius is his "space name".
• Badass Driver: He is able to use a pizza delivery car to drive himself and Sylvie away from the pursuing Alioth.
• Because Destiny Says So: In contrast to Loki's Screw Destiny stance, Mobius, having worked with the TVA for a while, believes fully in everyone having predetermined paths that dictate their set role in life, telling Loki in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech that his sole purpose is to kill and cause suffering so the Avengers can form and others can become their best selves. This has a subtle You Are Better Than You Think You Are message, as Loki later sees the rest of his life on the timeline and realizes he was accepted and stood by his family — making him realize this was part of Mobius' interrogation. Subverted in "The Nexus Event" when he realizes how much Ravonna lied to him, and he turns against her within the same episode.
• Befriending the Enemy: Mobius has practical reasons for recruiting Loki, a Variant Mobius is supposed to hunt down and a murderer who strives to become a God-Emperor. However, Mobius offers Loki genuine sympathy and their forming friendship is one of the key reasons for Loki's change of heart and Mobius's own change of allegiance.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is mellow and easygoing, but X-05's taunts end up breaking his resolve and pissing him off far greater then even Loki. He physically assaults him during interrogation, and after calming down, arranges a session of Cold-Blooded Torture for "Brad" before he finally spills on Sylvie's location.
• Big Damn Heroes: In "Journey Into Mystery," Mobius shows up in a pizza delivery van just in time to help Sylvie escape from Alioth upon her arrival in the Void.
• Big Damn Hug: In "Journey Into Mystery," when parting with Mobius before facing Alioth the cloud monster, Loki refuses to shake Mobius's hand and instead gives him a long sweeping Man Hug while calling him a friend.
• Blatant Lies: After "The Nexus Event", Mobius repeatedly fails to lie convincingly, both because he is unbalanced by the The Reveal and because Loki and Ravonna got used to his tricks. Mobius unsuccessfully tries to make Ravonna believe that he took her TemPad by mistake; claims that Loki's timeslipping doesn't look that bad so as not to disappoint him and can't keep up the lie; pretends that he remembers meeting O.B. despite getting the details of their meeting wrong; says that slapping Brad in the face and insulting him was "tactical" and then confesses that he lost it; tells that he was following Loki even though Loki was in front the entire time; and claims that a detour to the concession stand for snacks is part of his investigative method. Even his past self, Don, insists that he remembers Loki so as not to lose a customer even though he's never seen Loki before.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Since he is conditioned to believe the TVA dogma, he accepts that it is necessary to "reset" individuals for deviating from the Sacred Timeline script as well as delete their entire realities in the name of peace and order. In the grand finale his past version beats himself over inability to swiftly kill a 8-year-old child in order to fulfill his mission dictated by the Time-Keepers. Once he learns that the TVA is built on a foundation of lies, he immediately switches to conventional morality.
• Brainwashed: He Who Remains erased his memories along with the rest of the TVA staff more than once and made them all believe that they should serve the benevolent Time-Keepers who created them and who determine the proper flow of time.
• Broken Pedestal: Upon discovering that the Time-Keepers who dictated "who lives and who dies" are fake and the TVA is not what it truly is, Mobius decides to help Loki and Sylvie and bring change to the system:
  Mobius: Think about it. Hey, everything you’ve been doing is wrong and all your gods are dead.
• But Now I Must Go: In the grand finale, Mobius leaves the TVA to check out his life on the timeline and then decide from there what to do next.
• Casting Gag: "The Variant" has Mobius visiting Pompeii at the exact time Mount Vesuvius erupts, something that Owen Wilson is no stranger to.
• Character Development:
  • Season 1: There is a duality to his character that he remarks upon himself. On one hand, he is a member of the TVA who believes in their dogma and predestination, and is ready to do questionable things in the name of "peace at the end of time". On the other hand, he instinctively defaults to good (can't bring himself to prune a 8-year-old boy, is nice to all Variants including Loki) and defends free will ("existence is chaos", people make sense of it themselves). When he learns the truth, he sheds his past beliefs, apologizes to Sylvie for what he's done and tells Classic Loki that it is never too late to change. His true self remains the same.
  • Season 2: Though he immediately logically agreed that the system he served was corrupt and he assisted in committing atrocities for naught, he initially can't handle the emotional repercussions of it and is afraid to face his own past. Instead, he adopts the head-in-the-sand approach, sticks to the current mission and finds joy in little things like food, drinks and some timeline sightseeing. Brad, Loki and Sylvie all call him out on it in different ways (mocking, compassionate, angry, respectively). In the grand finale, Mobius asks for his file and leaves the TVA to watch his Variant, Don play with his two kids in Cleveland. Mobius is both relieved and sad, and unsure what to do next.
• Chess Motifs: Mobius is a Guile Hero who likes to compare his work as a TVA analyst to this ancient game. In "The Nexus Event," he says that he is playing chess while Loki is playing checkers, and in "Breaking Brad" Mobius calls an interrogation of his former colleague, Brad an interesting chess match.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: In "The Variant", Loki is eccentric, talkative, and unruly, and Mobius is there to keep an eye on him and to ensure that Loki will not harm anyone or run away, and the TVA will not kill Loki. Mobius quickly gets so done with Loki's antics that he tells Ravonna he is ready to delete Loki himself.
• Compassionate Critic: In the first four episodes, Mobius is brutally and uncomfortably honest with Loki when he confronts him with his past and future mistakes. However, he remains empathetic and tries to prompt Loki to realize certain things about himself.
• Consummate Liar: One has to be a good liar to be successful in the TVA. Mobius makes Loki believe that he can meet the Time-Keepers to make him cooperate, and later that Sylvie was pruned in order to get the information from him, tells B-15 that he doesn't know anything about C-20 and is sparring in lies with Ravonna when he attempts to uncover the truth behind Sylvie's and Hunter C-20's story. Averted in season 2, where Mobius helps Loki to fool and intimidate Brad, but otherwise turns to Blatant Lies and Implausible Deniability.
• Cowardly Lion:
  • In "Ouroboros," O.B. asks Mobius to risk getting Flayed alive by temporal radiation in order to fix Loki's timeslipping. Mobius must walk to the Temporal Loom in a special suit and launch the Extractor, and if he is too late he will rapidly age, lose all of his skin and die. Mobius is visibly terrified by the prospect, tries to talk it out, then gets uncharacteristically quiet for a while. Then he does it anyway because Loki needs his help.
  • In "Heart of the TVA," when they are about to get spaghettified, Mobius looks like he is about to run in contrast to Sylvie clenching her fists as if preparing for a fight and to Loki being frozen in place. In "Science / Fiction," his alter ego, Don, also starts to run moments before he turns into strands of matter. While Mobius normally looks composed, in a life-and-death situation his default response is flight.
• Cowboy Cop: Downplayed. Word of God calls him both "this rascal that kind of broke the rules a little bit" and "a company man" in equal measure. Ravonna quips that the line "insubordinate, stubborn, unpredictable" applies to Mobius as well. Mobius's decision to recruit Loki into the TVA is met with derision from both Hunter B-15 and Renslayer, who point out just how terrible of an idea it is to have someone like him involved in the hunt for the Variant. However, Mobius is still devoted to doing his job properly, and gets visibly frustrated with Loki's antics while they work together.
• Crisis of Faith: Mobius speaks about the TVA dogma and the Time-Keepers in religious terms. In "The Variant," he is adamant that he was created by them, describes the "peace at the End of Time" that awaits him, and says to Loki that "it's real because I believe it's real." When he discovers that it is all a lie, he compares it to learning that "all your gods are dead," and Ravonna outright states that he "suffers a crisis of faith." Mobius becomes Jaded, is consumed by Skewed Priorities, and is triggered when Brad says that "none of this is real" and Mobius needs to wake up.
• Deadpan Snarker: Would he even qualify as a main character of the MCU if he wasn't this to at least some degree?
  Loki: Well, I don't like to talk.
  Mobius: But you do like to lie, which you just did. 'Cause we both know you love to talk. [mimicking a mouth with his hand] Talky, talky.
• Deuteragonist: Of season 2, where he is the second character in terms of both total screentime and word count after Loki. His deep connections within the TVA and his Crisis of Faith in its dogma allow to explore how the institution fails and transforms and what it means for its workers.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Mobius is first introduced in Loki, he is investigating a crime scene and is kind and empathetic to a boy who happens to be around to demonstrate that Mobius is a Nice Guy and a competent Lead Police Detective.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Mobius sees people through and through, a handy skill for a TVA analyst and a former jet ski salesman. When Loki first arrives at the TVA, Mobius saves him from being "reset" because Mobius sees in him what Loki doesn't see in himself. In "Breaking Brad," Mobius correctly explains Brad's motives and actions and comes up with the plan to make him talk. In "1893", Mobius is the only one who doesn't fall into the trap of equating Victor Timely with He Who Remains and immediately recognizes that the former is his own person. And in the grand finale, Mobius is bewildered by Loki's Suspiciously Prescient Planning more than his other companions.
• Existential Horror: Mobius finds his eternal purpose as a Time Cop to be fulfilling. Then he learns that there are no Time Keepers to justify the horrors the TVA committed, and that he was once a variant whose previous life and memories have been erased. He immediately sides with Loki and helps to spread the truth. At a glance, he appears to take the revelation easy and inititally expresses a desire to go back to wherever he used to be from before the TVA came along. In season 2, however, he adamantly refuses to learn anything about his past and gets stressed out when other characters point it out. In the grand finale, he confesses to B-15 that he is really scared before leaving the TVA to watch his variant's life, unsure what to do with his own.
• Face Death with Dignity: When he realizes that Ravonna knows that he's discovered the truth and won't show mercy on him, he openly defies her and tells her that if he were to choose, he would go back to the time he was taken away from and ride his jet ski. Ravonna then has him "pruned". When she later is about to prune him again, he tells her to "go ahead", but this time she decides against it.
• Family Man: His past self, Don, is revealed to be a caring single father of two boys who tries his best to provide for them. When Loki attempts to recruit Don and says that all of existence is in danger, Don says that he doesn't care. But when Loki infers that Don's boys are in danger too, Don immediately agrees to help. The last thing Don says before he gets spaghettified is that he needs to see his boys.
• First Friend: To Loki. While Loki had a brother, his relationship with Thor was more of a rivalry, and Mobius is the first person Loki can call a true friend.
• Foil: To his close friend, Ravonna. Both work for the TVA and endorse its aims, methods, and practices. However, Ravonna is an Iron Lady who is cold towards anyone but Mobius himself, praises hierarchy and order, and wants to uphold the masquerade at the TVA even if there is no real purpose behind it because it "must have been for something". Mobius shows compassion to Variants they capture, believes in free will, and when confronted with the truth, decides that the TVA needs to change.
• Forgotten First Meeting: A few centuries before the "present" of the TVA, he took a wrong turn and ended up in Ouroboros' department asking for directions. He then forgot all about him until they meet again in Loki's second season.
• Freedom from Choice: After he learns that he is a variant, the bright lure of freedom diminishes his life's joy. He tells Loki that he is better off not knowing anything about his former life and would like to thank the guy who kidnapped him and brought him to the TVA, and gets very conflicted when both Brad and Sylvie openly question it.
• A Friend in Need: In "Ouroboros," Mobius is quick to comfort panicking Loki and insists that Loki should get help with his timeslipping condition. Then O.B. reveals that the only way to fix it is for Mobius to brave temporal radiation while walking along the gangway to the Time Loom, risking painful death from getting his skin peeled away. Mobius is utterly terrified, but does it anyway to help his friend.
• Friendship Moment: Mobius gets two with Loki:
  • "The Nexus Event:" When Mobius finds out the truth about the TVA, he goes to Loki in the Time Cell, says that Loki was right all along and that he wants to help Loki save Sylvie. Loki then admits for the first time that Mobius is his friend, and Mobius takes back everything he told Loki about his supposedly predetermined life and gives him a word of encouragement. The two share a warm smile before exiting the Time Cell together.
  • "Journey Into Mystery:" Mobius offers Loki his hand to shake before leaving through a Time Door. Loki considers it but decides to hug Mobius instead, saying "Thank you, my friend."
• Friend to All Children: His Establishing Character Moment in "Glorious Purpose" is him being kind to a young boy in 1549 France and drawing a stick figure on his device for him to play with as he answers Mobius' questions. On the other hand, said kid is shortly afterward deleted from the timeline from the reset bomb Mobius and the other TVA agents set off, but Mobius at least has him stand outside the room when it goes off, so he won't see it coming. "Science/Fiction" reveals that he was a single dad in his previous life, explaining this, and the grand finale reveals that Mobius was once a hunter who couldn't make himself prune a 8-year-old boy.
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing: In "The Variant", Loki is the gleeful Manchild with too much energy, and Mobius is the jaded grump who is absolutely done with Loki.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: In "Breaking Brad," Mobius is "the good cop" who appears to keep Loki "the bad cop" from harming Brad in any way. When Loki locks himself together with Brad inside his cell and threatens to squeeze him to death with a force field, Brad panics and gives in. Then Mobius goes in, revealing the whole thing to be an act that Mobius devised.
• Guile Hero: His knowledge of people is his ultimate power, he enjoys Battles Of Wits and compares his job to the game of Chess. In the first two episodes, Mobius makes Loki cooperate by both fueling his desire to prove himself "the superior Loki" and using the potential audience with the Time-Keepers as a lure. In "The Nexus Event," Mobius lies that Sylvie is dead to make Loki talk. He then devises plans both to reveal Ravonna's origins to the rest of the TVA ("For All Time. Always") and to make Brad answer their questions ("Breaking Brad").
  Mobius: It's always the game within the game with you guys, which I respect.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Mobius has grey hair and is reasonable, unfazed, and mature, while Loki has black hair and is unpredictable, talky, and childish.
• Heel–Face Turn: In "The Nexus Event," Mobius abandons his past beliefs and turns on the "old" TVA after learning that he is actually a variant whose memories have been suppressed.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: By season 2, Mobius and Loki are close friends who constantly bicker Like an Old Married Couple, but ultimately have each other's backs and provide emotional support to each other. In "Ouroboros," Mobius comforts panicking Loki and risks his skin to cure Loki's timeslipping condition. In "Breaking Brad," Loki allows Mobius to vent out after Brad's Hannibal Lecture while they taste some pies. In the grand finale, Loki replaces the Loom to become the God of Time so that Mobius and all the rest could have free will.
• Hidden Depths: Mobius reveals to Loki that his one wish is to get to drive around on a jet ski. He brings this up again in "The Nexus Event" after learning that he's a Variant and in "Ouroboros" when X-05 asks him about a jet ski magazine on his desk. It is later revealed that Mobius used to be a jet ski salesman who owned two personal watercrafts himself before the TVA kidnapped him from his timeline, so this are his true memories of his past life showing up through the TVA's brainwashing.
• Hopeless with Tech: In "Breaking Brad," Mobius tries to help Loki inspect Brad's modified TemPad, but fails to find the correct page in the TVA handbook or even to notice that he turned it upside down. Unlike Casey who knows it by heart, Mobius says the book is gibberish to him. In "1893," Mobius offers to "hack into the system" of the Loom while having zero idea how to do it.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: In season 2, he is reluctant to learn anything about his past on the timeline, and both Hunter X-05 and Sylvie call him out on that. He confesses to Loki that he can handle it being something bad, but if he is missing out on something good, that would make him too conflicted, so he prefers ignorance.
• Internal Reformist: Downplayed. In the season 1 finale, he tells Ravonna that they should let everyone know that the TVA workers are variants and the Time-Keepers are fake, and "build this into something better together." Mobius and B-15 then show others Ravonna's variant. However, in "Ouroboros," he is afraid people are not going to take The Reveal well, and it is B-15 who puts out an order to stop pruning branches and does all the talking. He then gets too mired in personal issues and after helping Loki, leaves the organization for good.

J-Y

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: This is not his first choice, but Mobius does not shy away from using torture techniques:
  • "The Nexus Event": He places Loki in a Time Cell to make him talk. The victim is forced to relive their bad memories over and over again, which in Loki's case means being beaten and humiliated by a memory of Sif.
  • "Breaking Brad": Together with Loki, he threatens Brad with being crushed to death with a force field to make him cooperate.
• Jaded Professional: In the beginning, Mobius is enjoying his job. In "The Variant", Mobius tells Loki that he is lucky that the TVA gave him his "own glorious purpose," and is very excited when he asks for Ravonna's approval to go to Roxxcart to capture the Variant. In "The Nexus Event," he discovers that the Time-Keepers are fake and there is no mission to justify all the henious deeds the TVA committed. In season 2, Mobius is disillusioned with his job and tags along Loki, both tempted by "real life", its food, drinks and balloon parks, and scared of his past and all the might-have-beens. Once Loki is gone, he says he is tired, leaves the TVA and goes on a Journey to Find Oneself.
• Journey to Find Oneself: In the end of Loki, Mobius leaves the TVA to watch his variant, Don live the life that was once stolen from Mobius. He tells B-15 that he needs to find out what the TVA have been protecting. She promises to him that should he return, a seat in the War Room is his. On Earth, Mobius tells Sylvie that he is going to stick around for a while and "let time pass".
• Jurisdiction Friction: As an analyst Mobius initially has a beef with B-15, a senior hunter from another division. Her job is to physically detain variants and his is to understand them. Mobius uses his connections to hijack Loki's trial and interrogates him to B-15's displeasure, she orders to prune Loki on sight despite Mobius's objections when Loki escapes from the Time Theater. Before going to Roxxcart, B-15 snatches and hides Loki's daggers Mobius was about to return to him. Inside the superstore, B-15 and Mobius argue over who takes Loki with them. B-15 wins because it is her field operation and tells Mobius to go "litigate with Renslayer" if he disagrees.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: When Mobius learns that all TVA workers including himself are variants, and Ravonna got rid of C-20 to hide the truth from others, she orders to prune him as well before he can tell anyone. Subverted when after getting pruned Mobius manages to escape becoming Alioth's lunch and returns to the TVA.
• Lame Comeback: Mobius can play the heavy keys when he interrogates others, but when his own sense of self is threatened, he turns to "No, You" replies and weak insults. In "The Nexus Event," he calls Loki "an asshole and a bad friend," and in "Breaking Brad," he slaps Brad and calls him "a silly little man."
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Like all TVA workers, Mobius can't recall his past identity, how he was mind wiped or what came before that, but retains all of his skills and doesn't suffer from inability to accumulate new memories.
  Mobius: I have no memory of having my memory wiped.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: When Mobius tells Brad a "Knock Knock" Joke about showbusiness, he can't help but laugh at it himself.
• Lead Police Detective: Mobius is a high-ranking agent of the TVA who specializes in particularly dangerous Variants and reports to Judge Renslayer.
• Like an Old Married Couple: In season 2, Loki and Mobius are close friends who would passionately bicker over inconsequential stuff — is it worse to be Flayed Alive or deleted from existence, are Cracker Jacks tasty enough and does a crude figurine in a helmet look more like Loki or like Mobius?
• Living Lie Detector: When it comes to his friendship with Loki, he plays the same role as Verity Willis in the comics — he is the sole person that Loki can't lie to because Mobius has studied Loki's life for too long and knows him through and through.
• Lost Food Grievance: He's quite annoyed when Loki ruins his salad in order to demonstrate his theory about apocalyptic events with a crude visual element.
• Making the Choice for You: In the grand finale, Mobius reveals that when he was unable to kill a 8-year-old variant to prevent 5000 deaths in the future, the Sacred Timeline started to branch and the TVA agents started to die, Ravonna spared him the trouble and pruned the boy herself. In her Motive Rant in "1893," she says that she's been repeatedly doing his dirty work and "making the hard decisions [he] never had the nerve to make," which explains how he managed to stay a Nice Guy despite the demands of his profession.
• Manipulative Bastard: He can play Loki like a fiddle. He does things like mention that it might be possible for Loki to meet the Time-Keepers to give Loki a lure, and can later tell Loki is lying about the Variant's plans because he claims it's imperative that he speak to the Time-Keepers immediately. Loki scoffs at the idea that Mobius could manipulate him, only for Mobius to casually reveal Loki's true plan, leaving the God of Mischief taken aback.
• A Million Is a Statistic: In "Heart of the TVA," Sylvie accuses Mobius of getting too detached as an analyst to the point where "timelines are just lines on a monitor" to him and it doesn't matter if some die out because he refuses to have any personal stakes in the matter. Mobius doesn't refute the accusation and silently lets her walk away.
• Mistaken for Servant: Victor Timely is under the impression that Mobius is Loki's butler.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: His middle name is unknown other than its initial, which is another "M". Thematically-speaking, the odds are pretty good that it actually stands for "Mobius".
• Mysterious Past: He's a Variant, but as of the end of the first season of Loki, it's unknown who he was before the TVA picked him up and erased his memory. "Science/Fiction" reveals that he was a single father working as a jet ski/ATV salesman in 2022.
• Mythology Gag: The number plate of the car that Mobius picked up in the Void is "GRN•W1D", which is a reference to Mark Gruenwald, the Marvel artist that Mobius was based on.
• Nice Guy: While he can be brutally honest, Mobius is a polite and compassionate man who wants to do good and bring out the best in everyone, especially Loki. It takes some time, but he eventually does, and with more than just one Loki at that. At the very end of the first season finale, when a scared and battered Loki shows up whom Mobius can't remember, his first instinct is to gently ask him who he is and try to calm him down.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Like his comic book counterpart, his appearance is based on the Marvel writer/editor Mark Gruenwald, who was known as the company's "continuity cop" and helped to establish their rules of time travel and the Multiverse.
• Non-Action Guy: While he used to be a hunter before becoming an analyst, he is not skilled in combat. He keeps Loki at bay with the TVA's technology. When he tries to prune Renslayer in "For All Time. Always.", she handily knocks him on his ass.
• Noodle Incident: When the files on Mobius's TemPad start corrupting, O.B. asks him if he downloaded unauthorized games to the device again.
• No, You: Mobius's default reaction when he deals with a personal attack. He replies this way in "The Variant", when Ravonna calls him "insubordinate, stubborn, unpredictable," in "The Nexus Event," when Loki says that Mobius betrayed him and should grow up, and twice in "Breaking Brad" — when Brad calls him a "nowhere man" and when Loki says Brad got under Mobius's skin.
• Obsessed with Food:
  • In season 1, Mobius doesn't take kindly to messing with his salad. In season 2, Mobius would indulge in eating pleasures amidst any crisis at hand. A rogue agent won't give up any information? A perfect opportunity to get some key lime pie! Loki talks to Sylvie? Great, there is a break for him and X-05 to enjoy apple pies and milk shakes. A hunt for Ravonna and Miss Minutes is underway? A detour to get some popcorn is an absolute necessity! Sylvie calls him out on it in "Heart of the TVA", when he offers to get more pies just as the Loom is about to explode.
  • His past alter ego, Don, also has this trait. When a potential customer leaves the shop, Don discusses donuts with a co-worker. One of the last lines in the grand finale is Don saying "dinner, come on, let's find some common ground."
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After getting pruned, he managed to escape Alioth and somehow get a car. According to Kid Loki, those usually belong to cannibalistic marauders or cannibalistic pirates. He later brags to Ravonna that "one man’s Void is another man’s piece of cake."
• Old Cop, Young Cop: In "The Variant," Mobius is a silver-haired, mature and experienced Lead Police Detective who needs the help of Loki, a hired expert and an eccentric newbie whom he calls a "scared little boy," to conduct a Cop Killer Manhunt. In both "Breaking Brad" and "1893," they are Hunting The Rogues together, and Mobius is giving Loki tips on how to do Perp Sweating and traditional legwork in the field. By the end, Loki has become the more emotionally stable of the two and in terms of analytical skills caught up with Mobius if not surpassed him.
• Omniglot: As shown in the first episode, as a member of the TVA he can speak all languages that exist on any timeline.
• Only Friend: In the beginning of Loki, Mobius is the only friend of Ravonna Renslayer. She is cold and manipulative but even Ravonna has a soft spot for him. Their friendship breaks by episode 4.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • "Breaking Brad:" In a Moment of Weakness, Mobius, who's normally calm and levelheaded even during desperate times, becomes furious when Brad starts questioning about his life before the TVA, slugging him in the face and screaming at him in response. Loki is shocked at what he's seen and spends the next few scenes helping him through it.
  • Grand finale: The usually diplomatic and mild-mannered Mobius eventually loses his patience when Loki keeps behaving weirdly and orders O.B. and Casey around, suddenly knowing more than them. So he asks Loki straight out "what the shit" he is doing.
• Order Versus Chaos: Mobius is in the middle of the spectrum. He praises "free will" and says that existence is chaos, but tells Ravonna in the season 1 finale that they should remake the TVA into something better rather than destroy it, so he is rooting for the order as well. In season 2, he helps to reform the TVA before leaving it for good.
• Pals with Jesus: Mobius is an ordinary guy who strikes up unlikely friendship with Loki, a Physical God and the Norse deity of Mischief. In "1893", he notes that it blows his mind that Loki is "one of them" and he keeps forgetting it. In the end, Loki becomes the God in a more literal sense, residing in a realm beyond time, holding the multiverse together and watching over Mobius and all the rest.
• Parrot Exposition: In season 2 Mobius gains the habit of repeating the lines of Loki and O.B. for clarity, and generally slides into The Watson role.
• Perspective Reversal: In the beginning, Mobius is forcing Loki to critically examine his role and purpose, his past and his morality, and to reinvent himself. In "The Nexus Event," Loki is the one who says that Mobius is lying to himself, and forces Mobius to re-examine his role and purpose. Then in "Breaking Brad," Loki questions Mobius's unwillingness to face his past, and in the grand finale - his morality.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Mobius calls Ravonna a "close personal friend", she calls him an "ally to the end." They worked together as hunters. When Mobius couldn't prune a kid and Ravonna did it for him, she was promoted and he became her favourite subordinate. She says that she hung her neck out for him, cleaned up his messes and made hard decisions for him for "eons". They often share drinks in her office, and while she mostly keeps him in the dark, she allows him more than expected of her, for instance, to recruit Loki. When Mobius sides with Loki over her and she orders to prune Mobius, both feel betrayed and their friendship ends.
• Positive Friend Influence: Mobius's willingness to help Loki is one of the key reasons Loki becomes a better person.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He is subjected to three of them in season 2, and does not counter any of them, but indirectly punishes two of the three accusers:
  • In "Breaking Brad," X-05 gives him a Hannibal Lecture about Mobius not living his "real" life and being a nowhere man. Mobius then arranges for a torture session for X-05 and leaves the execution to Loki.
  • In "1893," in her Motive Rant Ravonna states that he has no moral high ground and came out squeaky clean only because she was sparing him the trouble for eons, making difficult choices for him and covering up his missteps. Mobius then leaves her at Sylvie's mercy.
  • In "Heart of the TVA," Sylvie asks him What the Hell, Hero? when he nonchalantly offers to get some pies amidst the crisis, noting that by refusing to uncover his own past and to have any personal connection to the timelines, Mobius has lost sense of what is at stake. In the grand finale, Mobius decides to remedy that and is on good terms with Sylvie.
• The Redeemer: Ravonna says that Mobius has a soft spot for "broken things." He is a kind and compassionate person who gives Loki a second chance at life and prods him into making a Heel–Face Turn. Mobius then inspires Classic Loki to make his Heroic Sacrifice by telling him that it is never too late to change, and easily forgives Hunter D-90 for pruning him. He also tries to convince Ravonna thrice that she has lost her way and should help them, and that is after she had him pruned. He eventually concludes that she is Beyond Redemption.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: In the early episodes, Loki, the energetic Cloudcuckoolander, is the Red Oni, and Mobius, the jaded mentor, is the Blue one. Loki is agitated, eccentric, and childish, while Mobius is calm, reasonable, and mature. As the series goes on, Loki grows more mature and sombre, and Mobius gets unbalanced by the revelation that as a variant he once had a different life, until the roles get reversed and it is Loki who has to deal with Mobius's fits of anger and detours for popcorn.
• Repetitive Name: Mobius's first and last names are the same. His middle initial is unknown but you get three guesses of what it likely might be, and the first two don't count.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In "Heart of the TVA", Mobius suggests that Loki should be the one to go out and fix the Temporal Loom, mostly because he was freaked out when he had to venture outside and do it himself in the Season 2 premiere and has no intention of repeating the experience. As it turns out, Loki really is the one best suited to not just fix the Loom, but to keep the Multiverse as a whole from dying thanks to his godly abilitiess, with Loki realizing this in the Season 2 finale.
• Sadistic Choice: As revealed in the grand finale, Mobius was once forced to choose between pruning a 8-year-old boy who was just swimming with his brother and letting 5000 people die because of that boy later. Mobius couldn't bring himself to kill the child for The Needs of the Many as was expected of a TVA hunter, and his hesitation caused a few other fellow hunters to die and Ravonna Renslayer to step in and do the job for him. Mobius recognizes that the choice was sadistic and neither option would make him feel good, but still beats himself over not fulfilling his purpose according to the TVA dogma.
  Mobius: No, there's no comfort. You just choose your burden.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Mobius sometimes chooses not to follow the TVA rules because his superior, Ravonna is his close personal friend who will cover it all up. In both season 1 finale and "1893," she says that she's been looking out for Mobius and cleaning up his messes for eons. Thus, in the first episode she allows Mobius to recruit Variant L1130, and in the next one to take said variant to the field on a mission. B-15 is not happy about it.
• Selective Obliviousness: Despite his perceptiveness, Mobius has a blind spot for his old friend, Ravonna. He did learn her traits and habits. In season 1, he knows how to get her approval with both insistence and flattery. And in "1893," he correctly describes her as not "accident-prone", or mentions her love of drinks. But he refuses to believe that she has nefarious motives. He is too late to find out that she's been lying to him, and in the season 1 finale assumes that something happened to her, to which Ravonna replies that she's always been like this. In season 2, Mobius doesn't understand that she seeks control over the TVA and Loki has to lay it bare in "Heart of the TVA".
• Silver Fox: He is an attractive man with silver hair who looks visibly old and would sometimes call himself "old Mobius" or "old analyst".
• Skewed Priorities: After The Reveal that he is a variant and the Time-Keepers are fake, Mobius gets increasingly tempted by simple joys of "real life" while they try to save the TVA from utter destruction. He is Obsessed with Food (key lime pies, apple pies, popcorn, you name it) and drinks and would go sightseeing instead of taking on the mission because "it could be fun". When Sylvie calls him out on it in "The Heart of the TVA," he silently listens to her while bathed in harsh light and then walks away. In his next scene, he is with O.B., Victor and Casey, carrying a cup of hot cocoa and quipping about the drink as the Loom continues to overload.
• The Smart Guy: Loki says that he admires Mobius's intelligence. While he is Hopeless with Tech, he is a competent Lead Police Detective. In season 1, he reads Loki like a book, preys on Loki's vulnerabilities to make him cooperate and can't be fooled by the God of Mischief, refines Loki's theory about the Variant's hiding place, and in the finale comes up with the idea to show other TVA staff Ravonna's variant. In season 2, he is quick to understand that Brad found Sylvie but did not turn her in, comes up with the plan to make him talk, realizes that Brad set them up and later offers to bring Victor Timely to the TVA and use his aura to gain access to the system.
• Struggling Single Father: This was his life before the TVA picked him up. He was a jet ski salesman trying to juggle working six days a week and taking care of two pre-teen sons alone. He tells Loki that his wife is "long gone", although whether that means she disappeared after Thanos's Snap, passed away or left him is not revealed.
• Surprisingly Normal Backstory: It turns out that Mobius was once an ordinary guy named Don who lived in suburbia as a single father of two sons and worked as a jet ski salesman.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In season 1, unlike Ravonna, he offers genuine sympathy to Loki who at this point is an unrepentant murderer with megalomaniac tendencies, because Mobius believes Loki could be more. In season 2, he tries to convince Ravonna herself that she's lost her way, to no avail.
• Time Abyss: Ravonna claims she and Mobius have had "eons of friendship". Considering they operate outside of the normal confines of time, that may not be an exaggeration.
• Time Police: He is an agent of the Time Variance Authority and his job is to protect the proper flow of time, which they call the "Sacred Timeline".
• Token Good Teammate: In season 1, he is the "Good Cop" to basically every other "Bad Cop" TVA member he works with, including Judge Renslayer and B-15. He alone isn't trigger-happy with the "pruning" baton, shows compassion for bystanders, and is willing to give Variant Loki a chance to be more than a variant destined for resetting.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Like most of his colleagues, he does not realize that he is a Variant himself. He finds that fact out in "The Nexus Event".
• Tritagonist: Of season 1, where he is the third character in terms of total screentime and the second one in terms of total word count. His story is the most important next to Loki and Sylvie's, however, he takes a back seat in the last two episodes of this season.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: In "Journey into Mystery", Mobius says to Sylvie that he genuinely thought the TVA were the good guys, and they've been doing terrible things because they believed the ends justify the means. In "The Variant," he describes those to Loki as "just order" and "peace at the end of time".
• Vague Age: He isn't sure how long he's been working at the TVA, due to how time flows differently there than elsewhere. It also makes his age significantly harder to tell.
• Verbal Tic: Well, I mean, Mobius's speech is really full of filler words, you know, to the point where the subtitles don't even list them, right? Listen, yeah, it's okay. Come on. And you gonna love his colloquial contractions 'cause why'd you wanna utter entire words when you can shorten 'em?
• The Watson: In "Ouroboros," half of his lines are questions that allow Loki to explain to the audience the events of season 1 and then O.B. to provide exposition. Mobius assists both of them by occasionally parroting their lines word for word. While around Loki or O.B., Mobius keeps sliding back into this role in later episodes as well. Thus, early in both "Breaking Brad" and "1893", Mobius explains to Loki (and the audience) why they are in London and Chicago, respectively, as Loki already knows.
• We Used to Be Friends: Mobius and Ravonna Renslayer used to be "friends across time, allies to the end." Then Mobius learns that the TVA workers are variants, and Ravonna knew it all along, killed C-20 to cover it up and lied to him. She orders to prune him to uphold the masquerade for a bit longer, but he survives and obviously feels betrayed. So does she, because she believes Mobius is ungrateful for all the times when she helped him break the TVA rules or did his dirty work. While she refuses to prune him again in the season 1 finale, and he unsuccessfully offers her to join them in "1893," by "The Heart of the TVA," they are enemies to each other.

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"I mean, you think the TVA is gonna miss a tired, washed-up old analyst with a heart of gold?"

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