Recap / Loki Episode 1 "Glorious Purpose"

"Glorious purpose..."

After stealing the Space Stone in Avengers: Endgame, Loki finds himself captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), the Time Police responsible for overseeing the "Sacred Timeline" and erasing any diverging timelines. Just as Judge Renslayer sentences Loki to be "reset," Agent Mobius M. Mobius intervenes and takes him to an interrogation room, where he shows Loki glimpses of his past and the future he never experienced. With his "glorious purpose" as a king shattered, Loki reaches his lowest point. However, Mobius reveals the true reason for saving him: he seeks Loki's help in capturing a rogue Loki variant who has been luring TVA Hunters into traps and stealing their reset charges.

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Tropes:

• The '70s:
  • For whatever reason, the dominant aesthetic of the TVA is based on styles from the 1970s, from its decor to its tech.
  • This show also reveals that Loki was the one behind the D.B Cooper incident in 1971, having taken the alias and pulled off the heist after losing an unspecified bet with Thor.
• Aliens Speaking English: Deconstructed. Turns out there are limits to how broadly this applies: while Loki may be able to speak English just fine, he evidently doesn't know a word of Mongolian. Presumably even Asgardians^*  by adoption don't have time to learn every language on every known world.
• All Crimes Are Equal: A Spoiled Brat trust fund kid is treated exactly the same as the murdering, attempted-world-conquering Loki by the TVA for the crime of being a time variant. It not only establishes just how powerful this organization is that two beings of such disparate power can be treated as equal in their eyes, it also shows how ruthlessly they enforce their laws to preserve the 'Sacred Timeline'.
• Ambiguously Human: The TVA's staff certainly look human with no alien characteristics to them, but their civilization is beyond the universe's timeline, they have access to science and power that nullifies magic and renders Infinity Stones useless (to the point where they use them as paperweights). One of their Minutemen is capable of fighting Loki hand to hand (who, as a Jotunn, is stronger than non-enhanced humans) and one of their desk jockeys doesn't know what a fish is, having spent his whole life behind a desk.
• Anachronism Stew: The TVA is an extradimensional organization, and as such has technology like lasers and time-rewind gadgets mixed with a wood-panelled aesthetic evocative of the 1950s and 70s.
• Anachronistic Clue:
  • The French boy in 1549 has a pack of Kablooie bubble gum.
  • The Minutemen in 1858 Oklahoma find a shovel-like object that has a Time Signature of the early third millennium.
• And Then What?: Mobius asks Loki what he intends to do when he becomes King. Loki's answers seem to indicate that he never really thought that hard about it. Mobius has to press on what Loki wants to be king of. Then, once he becomes "King Loki of X", what next? Loki's response is some vague thing about making things "easy" for his hypothetical subjects by telling them what to do.
• Animal Reaction Shot: When Loki drops through the ceiling into the room where he is supposed to sign the stack of paper with everything he ever said, a cat^note or a flerken lying on the floor looks up to him and moves back in surprise.
• Anti-Magic: It is expressly said that magic is rendered useless while in the TVA itself, meaning that Loki can't turn invisible or do any of his other tricks while in their custody.
• Ankle Drag: At the end of the episode, the ominous Loki Variant drags Hunter U-92 out of frame by his ankle before he can reset the timeline.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Mobius asks Loki several probing questions, among others what his plan is once he is king and whether he actually enjoys hurting and killing people.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: The writers seemed to have confused oil with gasoline. Unrefined oil has a pretty high flash point and would need quite a bit of time exposed to a flame before even igniting. It also wouldn't travel anywhere near the speed shown.
• Artistic License – History: Loki's D.B. Cooper stunt as shown in the TVA's Time Theater is shown to have occurred on a clear day. In Real Life, while Cooper did board the plane in the afternoon, much of the actual hijacking took place in the middle of a dark and stormy night. Loki also speaks with his natural English accent during the event, whereas the real Cooper spoke in a Midwestern American accent.
• Ascended Fanboy: Mobius admires Loki and is happy at the prospect of mentoring him. He seems particularly fond of the D.B. Cooper event.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: Miss Minutes' intro video plays out in a 4:3 fullscreen ratio, another throwback to WandaVision's earlier episodes. Meanwhile, in the scene of the D.B. Cooper event, after Loki tells himself that Thor and Heimdall had better be ready, the screen gradually changes to 1.85:1, so as to make more of the sky visible in the moment that Loki jumped off the plane.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Martin, the Spoiled Brat, gets pruned for mouthing off to a guard and not following the rules. Thus the show establishes that the TVA is not to be trifled with by demonstrating on someone the viewer doesn't need to feel sorry for... but a young man whose worst visible offense is spoiled and entitled behaviour getting the same treatment as the murdering, warmongering Loki also illustrates the alien morality and power of the TVA.
• At the Crossroads: Loki uses this metaphor when he explains to Mobius that, as King, he would free people from the burden of making choices:
  Loki: For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Loki is dressed in an impeccable and pressed dark suit when he takes on the persona of D.B. Cooper.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The episode reveals that Loki was the infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, having done this after losing a bet with Thor. After jumping out of the plane, he was picked up by the Bifrost, explaining Cooper's mysterious disappearance.
• Being Evil Sucks: Mobius repeatedly asks Loki if he enjoyed hurting and terrifying people during his attack on Earth. Loki initially refuses to give an answer but later, after being humbled, admits to Mobius that it isn't the case.
• Best of All Possible Worlds: All the talk of the "Sacred Timeline" that the TVA is meant to enforce implies that the current timeline is the best version of it, viewing any deviation as a mistake that needs to be eradicated.
• Big Bad Slippage: Mobius remarks that this has happened to Loki while he shows him a projection of the events of The Avengers:
  Loki: I'm a god.
  Mobius: Of what, again? Mischief, right? Yeah, I don't see anything very mischievous about this.
• Bilingual Backfire: When Mobius talks to a French boy in 1549, he slightly insults Hunter U-92 for frightening him. Hunter U-92 reminds Mobius in French that he actually speaks all languages of that timeline as well.
• Black Cloak: The fugitive Loki Variant wears a dark cloak with a large hood. It's spooky, especially at night and in the field with a lantern.
• Blatant Lies: When a Minuteman asks Martin to show him his ticket, Martin claims that he hasn't gotten one, even though he loudly refused to draw one just a minute ago in the same room. It's when he calls the Minuteman a "bucket head" that he gets vaporised for his troubles.
• Blind Jump: Loki's escape from Stark Tower with the Tesseract at the beginning is a bit hasty, as he probably wasn't planning for his portal to open into the Gobi desert, and certainly not that high off the ground.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The TVA's purpose is to eliminate all deviations from "The Sacred Timeline". They make no attempt to alter anything that's "supposed to happen", no matter how horrific, as long as it remains within the prescribed boundaries. Anything that causes a deviation from that timeline (even something as simple as being late to work) is grounds to abduct and eliminate whoever causes the variation.
• Boxed Crook: Mobius recruits Loki to hunt another Loki.
• Break the Haughty: This episode utterly shatters Loki's pride and ego. Finding out how the Infinity Stones are powerless within the TVA and seeing his future death is what finally causes Loki to drop his narcissistic facade (mostly).
• Broad Strokes: Mobius talks about Coulson like he really was permanently killed by Loki, but stops short of explicitly saying that. And since Coulson eventually did die for real in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.^note and his death from stemming the wound Loki inflicted upon him burning up the Kree blood used to heal it, you're free to still consider it canon or not as you prefer.
• Brought Down to Badass: As with the Infinity Stones, Loki's powers are nullified, and even his strength is no better than a normal person's... but he is still cunning, crafty, scheming Loki, and he is still dangerous. Despite being powerless, he steals the Time Twister controls from Mobius, leads everyone on a chase, and uses the Time Twister to get revenge on Hunter B-15. It only stops when he chooses to stop.
• Brought Down to Normal: Within the TVA, the Infinity Stones — cosmic concentrations of unbelievable power — are little more than shimmery rocks brought in from different timelines. Some of the office workers use them as paperweights.
• Brutal Honesty: Mobius confronts Loki with some harsh truths, such as the fear and suffering that he caused other people, and that he is partially culpable for his mother's death in the main timeline.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The TVA's detachment from reality creates this sentiment; when Loki discovers that they have confiscated many different versions of the supposedly all-powerful Infinity Stones and are keeping them in desk drawers, Casey mentions that they've got a lot of those, and that some of the other office workers keep them as paperweights.
• Call-Back: This is not the first time Loki has been told that losing is in his nature, and in less than 24 hours to boot!
• Call-Forward: Just like his brother in Thor: Ragnarok, Loki is horrified by the sight of a fellow prisoner being brutally killed in front of him— although he conducts himself with marginally more dignity than Thor did.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: As far as we know, the TVA is the most powerful organization in existence, controlling space-time to prevent multiverses from sprouting. They are also so powerful that Infinity Stones are mere paperweights in their dimension/realm, and they have apparently confiscated many such artifacts from other variants.
• Chiaroscuro: The room where Mobius shows Loki his past and future has very bright but narrow ceiling lights. This produces a pronounced contrast between light and dark as Loki walks around the room, adding the dramatic effect.
• Chronoscope: Mobius uses a device that projects an image of Loki's past and future, or more precisely the future that he would have had if he hadn't escaped using the Space Stone.
• Compassionate Critic: 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.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Through the wonders of Mobius's audiovisual scanner, we get to see not just the events from The Avengers along with the intertwining time heist from Avengers: Endgame that led to Loki's current predicament, but Loki even gets to take a peek at his own future, discovering his mother's death in Thor: The Dark World, his finally earning gratitude from Odin and Thor along with the former's death in Thor: Ragnarok, and finally his own death at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In a scene in Miss Minutes's introduction video, you can see one of Titan's star-shaped spaceships in the background. The designs of the Time Keepers in the same video also make them look like they came out of a classic Marvel cartoon.
  • The Skrull Variant that's also being processed in the TVA previously appeared in Captain Marvel, notable since he's wearing the same Adidas trekking suit.
  • The shovel-like device that the Minutemen find in Oklahoma is manufactured by A.I.M.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The TVA's charge as Time Police is to delete any deviations from their "Sacred Timeline" and the people that instigated them. Thusly, they refer to the process of erasing these timeline branches as "pruning".
• Darkness Equals Death: At the end of the episode, a TVA unit enters a very dark location. In a minute, they are burned alive by the rogue Loki Variant.
• Deadly Euphemism: The TVA batons are capable of vaporizing people and objects in a process they call "pruning".
• Death Glare: The way Loki looks at Mobius when he is brought to the Time Theater.
  Mobius: If looks could kill.
• Deliberately Bad Example: Mobius concludes that this is the reason for Loki's treacherous nature.
  Mobius: You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was and that's how it will be. Everything so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.
• Discovering Your Own Dead Body: In a similar manner to 2014 Thanos discovering his future death, Loki finds out about his agonizing death at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. He is deeply horrified and saddened by this revelation.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Mobius' interrogation of Loki and the latter's attempt to set himself free are essentially framed as a fictional character rebelling against his character's writers and directors after they tell him his entire existence boils down to just boosting the plots of other stories.
• Dramatic Irony: Loki assumes that the Avengers went back in time because he had claimed victory and was now ruling Earth in the future. The TVA, and the viewer, already know that the Avengers were actually trying to undo what Thanos had done, and Loki himself was already dead by that point. He does eventually realize how the timeline actually went upon reviewing his future in the Time Theatre.
• Eldritch Location: It's unclear where or even when the TVA is situated, but the location itself can strip various entities of their powers, including the Infinity Stones, and its staff were apparently all created, not recruited, to serve the TVA and the Time Keepers.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The first real crack in Loki's persona comes when Mobius shows him the circumstances of Frigga's death from Thor: The Dark World. Loki is so distressed to learn his mother's fate, and the role he would have played in it, that he drops his usual elaborate threats and just says that he'll kill Mobius.
• The Evils of Free Will: Loki still has (or claims to have) this opinion of others:
  Loki: For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.
  Mobius: Good. Yeah. You said "nearly every living thing," so I'm guessing you don't fall into that category?
• Existential Horror: Loki comes to realize that he's never had a "glorious purpose", and that his whole life is premeditated by the TVA who are so powerful that the Infinity Stones are insignificant objects to them. When confronted with this fact, Loki, the biggest rogue of the MCU, is reduced to Mirthless Laughter.
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • Loki's dramatic Title Drop falls flat because the Mongolians he's talking to don't understand English.
  • During his trial, Loki declares himself guilty "...of this!", and gestures dramatically. The guards just start snickering about his attempt to use magic (the TVA being able to easily nullify it).
  • He stands up to deliver a dramatic speech only for Mobius to think that Loki is trying to attack him and put Loki back on his chair with the Time Twister. Mobius realizes his mistake and offers Loki to try again, to which Loki quietly replies that it won't be meaningful the second time around.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • Being classed as a Variant and subsequently "reset" isn't based on doing anything wrong per se, just doing anything that varies from "The Sacred Timeline". Horrible crimes are fine, as long as they're supposed to happen, but being late for work, if that's not in the plan, gets you removed.
  • Martin, the mouthy prisoner being processed with Loki, refuses to take a ticket, so the guard at the desk simply vaporizes him.
• First-Episode Twist: Loki is recruited to stop another version of himself antagonizing the TVA.
• Fish out of Water: Not only has Loki been dragged out of his dimension and stripped of his powers, he's also introduced to a whole new level of reality and power, having to work with an agency that exists outside of time and space as he knows it.
• Flat "What": Loki's response when he sees a drawer full of depowered Infinity Stones.
• Foil: Loki and Martin, the trust fund kid at the beginning of the episode, are both entitled Royal Brats who overestimate their own importance and abilities, to the point that they are about to suffer the same fate of disintegration due to mouthing off too much. The only difference separating them is that Loki got lucky, in that Mobius wanted to recruit him and thus saved Loki from execution.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Hunter B-15 and the Minutemen arrest Loki in Mongolia, she casually picks up the Tesseract without any of the awe or caution that others have shown when handling an Infinity Stone. When they arrive at the TVA, B-15 simply leaves it on Casey's desk and tells him to log it as evidence without a second thought, completely ignoring Loki's warnings. Later, when Loki retrieves the cube, he sees a drawer full of duplicates of at least four of the Infinity Stones, and is told that within the TVA the stones are not only powerless, but so commonplace that they are used as paperweights.
  • In 1549 Aix-en-Provence, Agent U-92 notes that the victims have died of stab wounds, just like all the previous ones. Daggers are Loki's preferred type of weapon. The boy Mobius talks to about the incident also points to a stained-glass portrait of a horned devil when asked who did it, hinting at Loki's horned helmet.
  • In Miss Minutes's briefing, she mentions that the renewed existence of multiverses would result in "madness", hinting at Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Loki's paper file includes "Sex: Fluid", which is true in the comics but hadn't been acknowledged in the cinematic universe until now.
  • A Skrull is being processed at the TVA's front desk when B-15 drags in Loki.
  • Among the Infinity Stones in Casey's drawer are several other valuable artifacts, including a Honus Wagner card, one of the rarest sports trading cards in the world.
  • When Mobius helps Loki off the floor, you can briefly see him steal the Time Twister control device from Mobius' jacket and place it in his own pocket.
• Friend to All Children: Mobius shows kindness to the scared French boy in 1549 by letting him play with his TemPad, drawing a stick figure on the screen that comes to life when the boy taps on it.
• Fun T-Shirt: Alluded to by Mobius, when Loki states that he can only trust himself.
  Loki: Trust is for children, and dogs. There is only one person you can trust.
  Mobius: Yourself? I like it. Slap it on a T-shirt.
• Future Me Scares Me:
  • Loki is seemingly happy with his own future, getting the recognition he wanted from Odin after so long and reconciling with Thor... until he sees his murder at the hands of Thanos and is incredibly shocked by his brutal death.
  • The thing that gets Loki to stop blowing the TVA off with snarky dismissals is Mobius showing him his inadvertent role in Frigga's death.
• Gag Echo: Loki calls himself a "mischievous scamp" when Mobius points out Loki's tendency to get away with the awful things he's doing. Later, Mobius briefly leaves the room to talk to Hunter B-15 and discovers that Loki has fled in the meantime. Upon realizing that Loki has sneakily snatched the Time Twister control from his suit pocket, Mobius mutters "Mischievous scamp."
• Gentleman Thief: While hijacking the plane as D.B. Cooper, Loki always remains polite and affable to the flight attendant.
• Grail in the Garbage: The TVA has numerous copies of the Infinity Stones, which they treat as worthless trinkets because they are powerless within the TVA.
• Great Offscreen War: The TVA was created in the wake of a multi-universal war that nearly wiped out existence. The Time Keepers, through the TVA, enforce a single, Sacred Timeline.
• Gutted Like a Fish: Loki threatens Casey with this if he doesn't give him back the Tesseract. However, the threat falls flat because Casey doesn't know what a fish actually is.
• Handshake Refusal: When Mobius introduces himself to Loki in the elevator and extends his hand, Loki just looks at it until Mobius withdraws his hand again.
• Harmless Villain: Mobius thinks that Loki isn't really a threat:
  Mobius: I specialize in the pursuit of dangerous Variants.
  Loki: Like myself?
  Mobius: Mmm... No, particularly dangerous Variants. You're just a little pussycat.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Loki has a breakdown when he realizes that the Infinity Stones have been reduced to mere paperweights within the domain of the TVA.
  • Seeing his prime self's timeline and death breaks Loki, making him more receptive to Mobius's offer.
• Hit Stop: Hunter B-15 smacks Loki in the face with her baton, which causes Loki's movements to slow down to 1/16th of normal while his perception of time and pain remains steady.
• Homage: The animation style of Miss Minutes is visibly evocative (most obviously in its 2D cel-shaded design) of the animation used by Walt Disney Animation Studios during The '40s.
• Hope Spot: The status of Thor: Ragnarok as this in the main timeline Loki's character arc is hammered in by having Loki, watching his life, jump from him reconciling with Thor to being killed by Thanos. When he sees the Mad Titan emerge on the screen, Loki's smile withers away.
• Humiliating Wager: Loki posing as D.B. Cooper, which he defends to Mobius as "I was young and I lost a bet to Thor."
• Humiliation Conga: This episode puts Loki through the wringer. He gets dropped in the Gobi desert by a Blind Jump, captured by the TVA, stripped nude, and sees his entire life that could have been reduced to an ignoble death.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Despite his claims of wanting to rule the Nine Realms, Loki breaks into Tears of Joy after seeing his future in Thor: Ragnarok where both his father Odin and brother Thor acknowledge him and tell him that they love him.
• I'll Kill You!: Loki says this to a lot of people in the TVA, and none of them take him seriously. He is much more passionate about it when Mobius shows him his mother's future death. He also accuses Mobius of lying about it.
• Immediate Sequel: Temporally speaking, this episode takes place immediately after Loki escaped the Avengers in 2012, and he still has the bruises and scars from that battle. In a way, this makes the show also run concurrently with the events of Avengers: Endgame in the first few minutes, until Loki is apprehended by the TVA.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: At the end of the episode, Loki admits to himself that he uses violence and fear to cover up his own insecurities:
  Loki: [...] it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak [gestures at himself] to inspire fear.
  Mobius: A desperate play for control. You do know yourself.
• Instant Costume Change: After being hit by The Nudifier, Loki is dropped into the next room. In the second between him roughly hitting the floor and picking himself back up, he's suddenly been stuck in a TVA prisoner jumpsuit.
• Internal Reveal: Loki does a quick skim of his prime self's timeline, learning of the deaths of Frigga and Odin, his reconciliation with Thor, and his own eventual death at the hands of Thanos.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: Played for Laughs. When Loki quips that the TVA is a nightmare, Mobius responds that nightmares are another department and he'll gladly help Loki burn that one down.
• In the Hood: The Loki variant that has been causing destruction across the timeline wears a black cloak with a low-hanging hood. We never see that Loki variant's face.
• Ironic Echo:
  • During Mobius' presentation, Loki dismisses the TVA as "An illusion. A cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate attempt at control." Later in the episode, after being thoroughly broken, he repeats the first two phrases in reference to himself and why he hurts people. Mobius supplies the "desperate play for control" part, showing that he understands what Loki means.
  • When Hunter B-15 enters the Time Theatre to find Loki in full Laughing Mad mode and asks him "What's so funny?", Loki brokenly repeats his "glorious purpose" Badass Boast from the start of the episode, having just seen that his supposed "glorious purpose" was just to suffer an unceremonious, meaningless death.
• Irony:
  • Loki proclaims that most people are too weak and stupid to deserve freedom, while he alone is powerful enough to command his own fate, only to discover that his whole life has been mapped out by the TVA, an organization that is far more powerful than he could have possibly imagined.
  • Loki's proclamation of being "burdened with glorious purpose" also falls on its ass when he discovers that his purpose in the original timeline was to partially cause his mother's death and later die himself, and his greatest yet totally unintentional accomplishment was inspiring his enemies to be better versions of themselves.
• It's What I Do: Loki, when Mobius points out the patterns in Loki's life:
  Mobius: You're really good at doing awful things, and then just getting away.
  Loki: [bitterly] What can I say? I'm a mischievous scamp.
• Karma Houdini: Mobius calls out Loki on always getting away with things and avoiding punishment, such as the D.B. Cooper stunt. However, Loki doesn't count as this in the "present", such as it is, because of being arrested by the TVA and being roped into helping them hunt a Variant.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • After his trial, Loki promises Mobius that he'll burn the TVA to the ground.
  • At the end of the episode, the rogue Loki Variant lures a TVA unit into a location covered with oil and burns them alive.
• Kill on Sight: When Loki escapes from the Time Theater, B-15 orders the Minutemen to prune him on sight, to which Mobius immediately objects.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Mobius is delighted to meet the person he has been studying for a long time. He even admits to Loki that he is a fan of him.
• Laughing Mad: When Loki is shown his future actions, including the deaths of his mother, father, and himself, he devolves into tearful laughter.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Loki, Mobius basically outlines how Loki's role is the Marvel Cinematic Universe was as an antagonist, and his role in the greater Infinity Saga was to incite Character Development in his foes (most notably the Avengers) to help prepare them for the real fight with Thanos.
• Loser Deity: Mobius has noticed this pattern in Loki's life; for being the "God of Mischief", most of what he does is amounts to losing (or being bossed around). Not a lot of mischief being done.
  Mobius: It's funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature.
• Lured into a Trap: The Variant Loki being hunted by Mobius deliberately creates anachronisms in the timeline so TVA agents will be sent to clean them up, then ambushes the agents and steals their reset devices.
• Magical Gesture: Loki strikes the pose that he uses when he uses his magic. It ends up looking rather silly since magic doesn't work in the TVA.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Even as the TVA's scientific superiority sets in, Loki is still unconvinced of the three Time Keepers that allegedly founded and lead the TVA.
• Man on Fire: At the end of the episode, a rogue Loki Variant sets several TVA Minutemen on fire.
• Medium Blending: Miss Minutes is a CGI-animated character, but in her orientation video, which is presented in 2D animation, she is cel-shaded to look like she was 2D.
• Milking the Giant Cow: When Loki stands up to make a dramatic speech that disparages the TVA, he is gesticulating this way to make a point.
• Mirthless Laughter:
  • A few times during his procedure and his interrogation with Mobius, Loki starts chuckling joylessly when he gets uncomfortable:
    • During his trial:
      Judge Renslayer: What [the Avengers] did was supposed to happen. You escaping was not.
      Loki: [chuckles] Right. Uh… "Not supposed to happen"? According to whom?
    • When Mobius confirms to Loki what he learned about the Time Keepers:
      Loki: You were created by the Time-Keepers.
      Mobius: Yep.
      Loki: To protect the Sacred Timeline.
      Mobius: Correct.
      Loki: [laughs]
      Mobius: Is that funny?
      Loki: The idea that your little club decides the fate of trillions of people across all of existence at the behest of three space lizards, yes, it's funny. It's absurd.
    • When Mobius subtly points out Loki's Psychological Projection:
      Loki: For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.
      Mobius: Good. Yeah. You said "nearly every living thing," so I'm guessing you don't fall into that category?
      Loki: [chuckles] The Time-Keepers have built quite the circus, and I see the clowns are playing their parts to perfection.
  • After seeing his own death at the hands of Thanos, Loki breaks out in tearful laughter.
• Morton's Fork: If you're a Variant who is dragged to the TVA, then you have two options: refuse to give your ticket to the guards (or for that matter not take a ticket at all), at which point you're "pruned" on the spot, or comply and get sent to trial... where you'll be found guilty of ruining the timeline and be "reset" anyway. Bottom line: if you're a Variant, you're screwed. Loki only survives because Mobius offers to cut him a deal.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • When Loki first encounters the TVA Hunters, he tries to barge through them, already in a bad mood after his loss to the Avengers and not thinking much of these seemingly normal humans now threatening him with arrest. He is taken down with a single hit of a slow-time baton and arrested.
  • The TVA, including Mobius, grossly underestimates how dangerous Loki can get once he gets his bearings and starts using his brain rather than brawn. Loki only aborts his rampage because he realizes just how powerful the TVA really is, and does not want to be Bullying the Dragon.
  • The TVA is a victim of this when it comes to the Variant that Mobius is chasing. They send their teams out to deal with what they see as low threat Variants, and their teams end up slaughtered.
• Musical Nod: When Mobius and Loki are in an elevator, Franz Schubert's "String Quartet No. 13 in A minor" is playing, which was also played in The Avengers during the scene where Loki attacks a gala in Stuttgart.
• My God, What Have I Done?: More a case of "My God, What Am I Going to Do", when Loki sees that his own actions would contribute to his mother's death.
• Myopic Conqueror: Mobius asks Loki what his plan is once he has conquered Earth. Loki just answers that his next step would be to conquer Asgard and the Nine Realms.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the structures in the TVA has "T-282" written on it. The Mighty Thor #282 featured Immortus, an incarnation of Kang the Conqueror.
  • The end of the tape of Loki's life has "ETH-616" written on it. Earth-616 is the main universe of the comics.
  • According to director Kate Herron, the scene of Loki landing in the Gobi desert is a deliberate reference to a similar scene of Tony Stark landing in the sand in the first Iron Man film.
  • When Mobius asks a boy in 1549 France who killed the Minuteman, he points to a stain-glass window of the devil that resembles Mephisto. It's also a literal Mythology Gag, in that it's an allusion to how during the Christianization of Scandinavia, Christian missionaries frequently equated the Norse Loki with the Christian Devil, painting the former as a Satanic Archetype.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: When Judge Renslayer repeatedly asks Loki how he pleads, Loki eventually responds with "Guilty, of this!", cue dramatic music as he tries to use his magic... just for nothing to happen since magic powers don't work in the TVA.
• Never My Fault:
  • Loki insists that he was only able to escape because the Avengers meddled with time first. While he's entirely right, the judge explains that the Avengers were meant to travel through time while his escape is an aberration.
  • Before getting vaporized, the trust fund kid claims he has no ticket to present because the TVA clerk refused to give him one. The only reason he doesn't have a ticket is because he was offered one and mocked the clerk for it.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The show's marketing frequently used Loki's line "Brother, Heimdall. You better be ready." as a Badass Boast, implying that Loki was threatening them. In the context of this episode, the line was actually spoken by Loki in 1971 asking to be picked up by the Bifrost, since he is still on good terms with Thor and Heimdall at this point.
• Noodle Incident: Loki lost an unknown bet to Thor, which somehow led to him hijacking a plane under the alias of Dan "D.B." Cooper.
• The Nose Knows: Loki is able to tell that the Avengers came back in time to steal the Tesseract because he could smell the cologne on two Tony Starks.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The episode cuts away from showing what exactly happens when a reset charge is set off, leaving it to your imagination what they actually do to "reset" an entire reality.
• The Nudifier: A machine in the processing room attempts to take Loki's outfit off. When he protests, it uses a laser to vaporize the garment entirely.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Loki's reaction to seeing another Variant vaporized by a TVA agent for not having a ticket. He starts hastily searching his pockets to make sure that he's still carrying his own.
  • Loki also has an understated one of these when he sees Thanos in the future timeline, come to enact his revenge on the god of mischief.
• Omniscient Morality License: The Time Keepers and the TVA believe in a "Sacred Timeline", and that any deviations from it, from an interstellar uprising to being late for work, must be pruned and reset from existence to prevent multiversal conflict. Loki of all people points out that they're basically playing God with the lives of trillions.
• Once More, with Clarity: Inverted at the start, with the Time Heist being shown from Loki's perspective. Then subverted when he reveals that he'd worked out what was happening pretty quickly.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: The TVA are fond of the orange and brown aesthetics of The '70s. In the scenes where Loki carries the Tesseract around, the tiny faintly glowing blue cube really stands out against all those half-lit orange walls and floors.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Loki thinks that he can use his strength and magic to wriggle his way out of this new situation, but finds out the hard way that the TVA operates in an area where his abilities don't work, something that's never happened before.
  • The TVA, despite its advanced technology, seems unable to stop the dangerous Variant that is killing its teams, who is familiar enough with their methods to both lure in their teams and erase all evidence of their presence other than the obvious murders. Mobius takes the extraordinary step of recruiting Loki to get a different perspective on the case.
• Place Beyond Time: The TVA exists outside of normal time and reality, so Infinity Stones don't work there, and the TVA can mess around with a person's recent timeline.
• Playing Games at Work: The worker who asks Loki to sign the stack of paper with everything he's ever said is playing Solitaire on his display.
• Portal to the Past: The TVA's portals can open anywhere in space and time. We see one opened up in the 16th century, and at the end of the episode, another opens in the 19th century.
• Power Nullifier: The TVA headquarters functions as such, much to Loki's chagrin.
• Previously on…: The episode opens with a truncated version of the botched theft of the Space Stone in Avengers: Endgame, showing how this alternate timeline Loki escaped the Avengers.
• Priceless Paperweight: Casey tells Loki that some TVA agents use the numerous (nullified) Infinity Stones in the TVA's possession as paperweights.
• Propaganda Machine: Throughout the TVA, there are numerous Soviet-style propaganda posters espousing the glory of the Time Keepers, reminding TVA workers of the importance of pruning branches from the Sacred Timeline, and reminding everyone that their every move is being observed.
• Psychological Projection:
  • Loki dismisses the Time Theatre as an act by the weak meant to inspire fear, and through that fear enforce control. After skimming his timeline, he admits to Mobius that he hurts people for the same reason.
  • Even though he doesn't outright admit to it, the way that Loki talks about the free will of others strongly implies that this is actually how he feels about himself. Mobius picks up on this, as evident in his question back to Loki:
    Loki: [with a shaky voice] For nearly every living thing, choice breeds shame and uncertainty and regret. There's a fork in every road, yet the wrong path always taken.
    Mobius: Good. Yeah. You said "nearly every living thing," so I'm guessing you don't fall into that category?
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The Minuteman in the waiting room, when Loki initially refuses to take a ticket:
  Minuteman: Take. A. Ticket.
• Quizzical Tilt: Loki tilts his head when he uses the Time Twister on Hunter B-15 and makes her completely disappear from the room. He is still figuring out how it works, and he comes to enjoy it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mobius gives Loki a brutally honest assessment of who he is as a person,
  Mobius: You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain, and suffering, and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.
• Red Shirt: The TVA squad that gets burned alive at the end of the episode to show the rogue Loki Variant in action.
• Reset Button: When dealing with Variants, the TVA agents place small bomb-like devices that wipe the deviating timelines from existence. The rogue Loki variant is stealing them for some purpose.
• Restraining Bolt: Loki and other Variants get a collar placed on them, not to strip them of their powers (just being in the TVA apparently already does that), but to give the TVA agents the ability to reset their actions should the Variants try to rebel.
• The Reveal: Loki is being psychoanalyzed by Mobius because the agent wants to recruit him to hunt down another Variant... of Loki.
• Rewatch Bonus: When Mobius helps Loki up off the floor, Loki's left hand moves very close to the agent, indicating the moment that he stole the remote for his collar.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: While at his trial, Loki speculates that the Avengers went back in time in order to subvert his rule over Earth, assuming that he emerges victorious after the events of The Avengers. He's entirely correct that they've gone back in time to change their timeline, but it's primarily to undo Thanos's work rather than anything that's really related to Loki (since he's, y'know, dead).
• Rock Beats Laser: The Hunter squad at the end of the episode is taken down with a rather simple and low-tech ambush of igniting the oil-soaked grassland that they're in, with the Hunters despite their advanced technology having no counter to this. It's implied that in the previous attack, a squad of hunters were killed with just a knife.
• Royal Brat: Martin refuses to cooperate and threatens the TVA because his father is on the board of Goldman Sachs. It gets him vaporized when he fails to follow the rules.
• Scenery Censor: When the TVA robot removes Loki's clothes, Loki's groin region is covered by the robot's arm.
• Secret Message Wink: When Loki poses as D.B. Cooper, the flight attendant asks him if he wants anything else. He simply responds, "I suppose we'll find out, won't we?" and slips her a note with a sly wink, alluding to his secret knowledge that he's hiding a bomb.
• Shameful Strip: Having captured Loki, the TVA employ The Nudifier robot to remove all his clothes, save for the prisoner collar that they've put on him. Loki is not happy about it, but before he has time to react, the floor under his feet collapses and he falls down into another room. Fortunately for him, a TVA prisoner jumpsuit appears on him when he stands back up.
• Shoulders-Up Nudity: As part of their routine, the TVA vaporizes Loki's clothes, leaving him completely naked, but only seen from the waist up. In previous appearances, as a side character, Loki has barely shown any skin, but as the main character in his series, he delivers the Manservice that the franchise is famous for.
• Shout-Out:
  • Loki is called "that criminal with the blue box" by Casey, a description that is often used for another time traveler with a less than stellar reputation with their own Time Police. The show in question also featured Gugu Mbatha Raw as Martha Jones' sister Tish.
  • Miss Minutes has the exact same accent as Mr. DNA, another cartoon character used to give scientific exposition.
  • Stan Lee is included on one of the posters in the TVA courtroom.
  • Casey has a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card in his drawer.
  • The worker who asks Loki to sign the stack of paper with everything he's ever said is playing Solitaire on his display.
  • Loki repeatedly being dropped through a trap door is a reference to Wallace & Gromit.
  • "Give me the Tesseract, or I'll gut you like a fish, Casey!"
• Show Within a Show: The video hosted by Miss Minutes is done entirely in retro-style 2D animation, similar to the title sequence of the second episode of WandaVision.
• Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: The TVA believes in a predetermined "Sacred Timeline" and considers all divergences from it as forbidden. Loki, however, believes in his own free will, and that he has full agency over his own actions.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Mobius jokes that his job is this:
  Loki: I'm gonna burn this place to the ground.
  Mobius: I'll show you where my desk is, you can start there.
• Staring Contest: Loki has a brief one with the Minuteman who guards the ticket dispenser.
• Status Quo Is God: In-Universe. The TVA's job is to ensure that everything follows the strict timeline of events that the Time Keepers have put in place. This is the Sacred Timeline. Any deviations from this path are not tolerated and are swiftly taken care of by means of resetting the timeline.
• Stealth Insult: Note the lack of "super" in Mobius's second line.
  Mobius: Big metaphore, I like it, makes you sound super smart.
  Loki: I am smart.
  Mobius: I know.
• The Stinger: No visuals, but an audible one right at the very end of the end credits. Miss Minutes thanks those visiting the TVA and asks them to not forget to share their feedback on the service. Doubles as a sort of Brick Joke, as Miss Minutes says the same line just before the opening title logo as well.
• Tantrum Throwing: When Mobius taunts Loki with the fact that Loki's actions resulted in his mother's death, Loki angrily throws a chair into the screen with the recording.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: After taking a number, Loki loudly protests that there's been a mistake and he shouldn't be there. At that moment, the TV boots up and Miss Minutes repeats his exact sentence back to the room as part of her explanation as to why he does in fact belong there.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Loki manages to disengage the Time Collar placed on him by Hunter B-15, then attach it to her neck, furiously shifting her through her recent timeline before getting bored and sending her away. Granted, he was having a moment at the time.
• Tearful Smile: When Loki gets into the Time Theater alone and re-watches his mother die, he starts crying. Then he sees the scenes of Odin and Thor reconciling with him, and Thor offering him a hug, and smiles through tears.
• Tele-Frag: The Time Twister only loops those wearing it. It doesn't loop anything else, such as the chair Loki threw, resulting in him ending up on the floor when he is looped back to where the chair once stood.
• That Liar Lies:
  • When Loki says that he doesn't like talking, Mobius retorts (while mimicking a mouth with his hand), "But you do like to lie, which you just did. 'Cause we both know you love to talk. Talky, talky."
  • Loki calls Mobius a liar when he shows him his mother's death and demands to know where she really is.
• Threat Backfire:
  • Loki tries to intimidate Mobius and the various TVA personnel numerous times, but it never goes anywhere because he's utterly powerless in their presence. In particular is one of the employees named Casey, whom Loki threatens to gut like a fish, only for him to ask what a fish is rather than be actually scared for his life, because he wants to know what he's being threatened with.
  • Mobius takes Loki's threat of burning the TVA to the ground and runs with it, specifying what and where he can burn and otherwise showing no emotion towards him.
    Mobius: [The TVA] is unfortunately real, and so is all the paperwork. Good tinder for your fire, though.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: The TVA has a collar called a Time Twister that is able to rewind a person's actions, but not their memories or other objects that they've manipulated. Mobius and Hunter B-15 use it to put Loki under control, and Loki uses it to troll Hunter B-15 when he manages to get his collar on her.
• Title Drop:
  • Loki, to the inhabitants of the Gobi Desert.
    Loki: I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with a glorious purpose.
  • After seeing his own death at the hands of Thanos, Loki repeats "glorious purpose" to himself, this time with sad irony.
• Title In: At each new location, the name and the year is shown on the screen.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The TVA agent that operates a device resembling a metal detector asks Loki whether he can confirm to his knowledge that he isn't a robot but an organic creature:
  Loki: What? To my knowledge? Do a lot of people not know if they're robots? [...] [concerned] What if I was a robot and didn't know it?
• Tough Love: Mobius is undeniably harsh about Loki's past and the consequences of his behavior, but he also shows him how he can become a better person, getting Loki to take a sincere look at himself.
• Tron Lines: The shovel-like object from the early third millennium left in 1858 Oklahoma looks just like a regular shovel, except that it has orange lights and a dial-like interface adorning its shaft.
• TV Head Robot: The robot that undresses Loki has a screen as a head with changing facial expressions.
• Uniqueness Decay: Exaggerated. The TVA has so many (nullified) Infinity Stones confiscated from Variants that they are stuffed into a junk drawer, and the clerks think so little of them as to use some of them as paperweights.
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: Loki faces a huge robot that protrudes from a wall and reminds one of a bathysphere with four mechanical arms. It frowns at Loki for resisting being undressed, then aims a laser at him that vaporizes his clothing, to which the robot smiles.
• The Unreveal: The evil Loki Variant's face isn't seen at the end, despite the audience already being told that it's him, making clear that some further twist is coming.
• Wait Here: Mobius tells Loki to not go anywhere when he briefly leaves the Time Theatre to talk to Hunter B-15. Unsurprisingly, the room is empty when Mobius comes back.
• Wham Line:
  Mobius: [to Loki] The Variant we're hunting is... you.
  [Beat]
  Loki: I beg your pardon?
• Wham Shot: Loki finds a drawer full of duplicate Infinity Stones that the TVA clerks use as paperweights, and is suddenly hit with some serious existential horror at just how powerful the organization really is.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mobius calls Loki out on how, for all he claims that he's the God of Mischief who is helping people by freeing them from freedom, his actions on Earth were a far cry from mischievous hijinks, and he clearly enjoyed hurting and killing people. By the end of the episode, Loki admits that he doesn't like doing such things, but he still did them to cover up his own weakness rather than in service to any noble cause.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Loki himself gets hit with this, as he's manhandled by the TVA agent B-15 when he still has his powers. It just takes one hit to subdue him. This demonstrates the kind of threats that the TVA handle all the time. Mobius might not be kidding when he says someone like Loki is comparatively a "little pussycat".
  • The Infinity Stones are given this treatment, as the random clerks at the TVA treat these all-powerful, reality-warping artifacts as mere paperweights, and have handfuls of them sitting in drawers after confiscating them from other variants who have used them. This is justified because the Stones have full power over and within all of reality, but the TVA lies outside of that.
  • The Minutemen themselves are subjected to this at the end of the episode, with an entire team getting slaughtered by the Variant Loki to show how much of a threat the Variant is.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: After Loki escapes from the Time Theatre, he tracks down Casey, the clerk that confiscated the Tesseract, and demands that he give it back or face a painful death. When Casey shows him the Tesseract in his desk drawer, Loki sees that Casey has nearly a dozen Infinity Stones in there, as well as several ancient artifacts, including a Honus Wagner trading card (one of the rarest, if not the rarest baseball trading card out there). When Loki asks about the Stones, Casey responds that the Infinity Stones are so often confiscated from prisoners that the staff has taken to using them as paperweights.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Loki eventually accepts that he can't go back to his timeline at this point. Even if his branch timeline still existed, knowing what he knows about his Sacred Timeline-intended fate means that his very presence would disrupt time even further.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: The Spoiled Brat son of a Goldman Sachs board member attempts this with a TVA Minuteman. It does not end well for him.
• Your Magic's No Good Here: Neither Loki's magic nor the Infinity Stones work in the TVA.

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