Ouroboros is such a lovable nerd in the vein of Waymond Wang who is excited to have Mobius see him after 400 years. His original self as A.D. Doug is also excitable over seeing Loki, as Loki reminds him of a fictional character in his sci-fi book. According to his actor, he portrayed Ourboros as an adult version of his previous role of Data.
Casey in "Breaking Brad" also show signs of dorkiness when he starts fanboying over Ouroboros for being the writer of the TVA manual, even asking for an autograph.
Though he's shown to have a darker side to him, Victor Timely falls into this category somewhat in Season 2, eagerly showing his inventions to Ravonna Renslayer when meeting up with her, and giving grandiose scientific speeches to hide his stutter and show his prowess in public. Later on, he's genuinely awestruck at the futuristic world of the TVA, specifically becoming fixated on an automatic hot cocoa machine with adorable curiosity, and even geeking out at meeting Ouroboros face-to-face.
The Nexus Event in Episode 4 can cause some this trope to happen. Mobius believes it was due to Loki falling for Sylvie, and he calls it the ultimate display of narcissism. While Loki doesn't entirely disagree with the narcissism accusations later in the episode, others see his feelings for Sylvie not as narcissism but as an admittedly literal example of a metaphor for selflessness and constructive realization of self-worth, particularly since Loki is already established as having a severe Inferiority Superiority Complex (and thus, overcoming it is the real source of time variance since it also results in him overcoming his supposedly preordained villainous nature). And of course, there's the possibility that there's elements of both in the whole thing. However, the finale provides another alternative to this as it was revealed that He Who Remains led Loki and Sylvie down the road to met him. Could He Who Remains try to make sure that Loki and Sylvie get saved by the TVA by declaring a Nexus Event on them before they died as them dying would otherwise interfere with his plans? This seems likely when you considered the fact that it was previously stated that apocalypses can't cause Nexus Events to happen.
When Ravonna is making small talk with Mobius, she asks him if he could go anywhere in time, where would he go? Is it just a simple conversation between friends, or has Ravonna caught on to the fact that Mobius is growing uneasy, and is actually pulling a Secret Test of Character to see if he's beginning to remember things about his past life? Alternatively, was it down to her own growing questions about their reality after witnessing C-20's breakdown, which included C-20 outing their true nature as Variants, since we see she's as unaware about the true nature of the TVA/Time Keepers as everyone else.
Is Mobius really a Nice Guy and Token Good Teammate or is he a Faux Affably Evil hypocrite? Some viewers are quick to point out how despite his supposed kindness, Mobius had no objections to and never once questioned the TVA's actions until after he learned how it affected him personally. He even saw his job as his glorious purpose until he learned he was a Variant, making his turn against the TVA seem ultimately selfish. Likewise, some saw his his manipulation and outright torture of Loki as needlessly cruel as opposed to just the cold practicality he presents it as.
He Who Remains not being a pre-variant of Kang, but rather He wasThe Kang, adding a different layer to his attitude and approach, not being based solely on fears of A Darker Me, but an atonement for what he personally did.
Is it what Miss Minutes said to Victor Timely before she is reset really what she wanted to say, or did she change her mind as she realized her Pun her time was up. It wouldn’t make sense for her to sound urgent if she just wanted to taunt Timely. What adds to this question is the question of whether she even knew what He Who Remains’ backup plan was because she developed a crush on Timely and also wanted to takeover with Ravonna, which would not progress He Who Remains’ plans. Perhaps He Who Remains saw Miss Minutes’ betrayal coming.
One of the biggest criticisms of the show's first season is that Loki was shown to be nowhere as powerful as he was in previous installments. While the show gives him more powers (including energy blasts and later on, the ability to enchant people), he's less physically capable, being overpowered by the TVA and the guards in Lamentisnote potentially because he's still been affected by their dampening fields, which even Infinity Stones weren't immune to, but this implication is up to the viewer. Criticisms were also directed at his making rookie mistakes, such as getting drunk and causing a scene while he and Sylvie were supposed to be incognito, resulting in a fight and causing the tempad to get destroyed.
The TVA can count as well, as their elite futuristic troops capable of bending time and space seem surprisingly vulnerable to fire, physical force, among other things. However, as it's made clear throughout the series, while the tech is advanced enough to bend space and time, the TVA personnel are merely Variants of regular people from across time, and most of them have little-to-no actual knowledge of how the things they do work.
Sylvie has quickly become one of the most controversial characters in the MCU as the first season went on. Some fans see her as a sympathetic and endearing character due to her horrid life on the run from the TVA in addition to being a formidable force in battle, while others loathe her for taking away a lot of focus from Loki himself on his own show, and for being a static character with barely any development. Sylvie's choice in the finale is viewed either as a justified action taken to destroy a restrictive system, or as Revenge Before Reason against a lesser evil that only made things worse. Her romance with Loki in the show has led to a Ship-to-Ship Combat with fans of the Loki/Mobius pairing, with both sides promoting extreme interpretations of Sylvie's character (either good or bad) to prove that their pairing is more "moral".
Viewer reactions to the eccentric behavior of He Who Remains when he finally appeared on screen fall largely into two camps: Those who were transfixed the entire time, and those who couldn't wait for it to be over.
Loki being revealed to have been D.B. Cooper doesn't feature at all in the story after it's seen in a flashback in the first episode, despite the scene being prominently featured in the first trailer.
Pun gleefully intended and very much Played for Laughs. Why is there an Alligator Loki? Why not? No explanation is given, no rhyme or reason for his being there, and no origin story behind the enigma. Both in and out of universe, as commented on by the characters and series creators, the only reason why he's there is because he is, and he's never seen or mentioned again after the one episode he appears in. Unlike most examples of this trope, this one has been wholly, lovingly embraced by everyone: the characters, the show creators, critics and the fans.
For some viewers, The Reveal of the series' Big Bad in the final episode of season one came off this way due to his lack of emotional connective tissue to the rest of the series or its protagonists, making it feel more like it was setting up future MCU works than building on the existing story. They felt that it would have been more fitting to tie everything together instead by revealing that it was another variant of Loki that was behind the TVA.
The way that Loki is handled in the show has left fans divided. Detractors disliked how the show constantly treats him as the resident Butt-Monkey, the constant emphasis on his woobie-ishness that seems to pander to those who give him the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, and the fact that much of his agency in the show gets overshadowed by Sylvie. Defenders on the other hand point out that these moments are a meta-deconstruction of Loki's character that helps himdevelop into a more heroic figure much like his Sacred Timeline Counterpart. A third camp didn't mind the intention behind this but disliked how rushed it was in execution.
The TVA. Great worldbuilding that opens up new possibilities for the MCU, or convoluted worldbuilding that renders the Infinity Saga redundant?
Loki and Sylvie having romantic feelings for each other. There is a large number of viewers who feel Squicked out because they are technically the same person. Another camp also despises the romance, not only for its Squick factor but also because it comes at the detriment of Loki's own agency in the story since most of his actions revolve around Sylvie. Defenders who argue that it feels in character for a Narcissist like Loki to fall in love with himself even if it's a Loki from another universe, something that Mobius himself points out. There are also those who disagree with the latter argument, pointing out Loki and Sylvie have so little in common regarding personality or even backstory that it hardly counts as narcissism and only exemplifies how little the showrunners understand how narcissism works. Overall, there is no common consensus.
Catharsis Factor: After Season 2 showed how depraved Miss Minutes really was, her "death" at the hands of O.B. rebooting the TVA's system was met with satisfied glee. And then, right after that, Renslayer finally gets a Laser-Guided Karma pruning at the hands (well, stick) of Sylvie by proxy of a mind-controlled Brad/Hunter X-05. The result is that two of the series' most vile characters and Karma Houdinis get a pair of swift butt-kickings back-to-back.
Character Rerailment: With fans disappointed that MCU Loki never got to showcase the full extent of his magic in season 1 and instead having to heavily depend on weapons (such as his knives or the Chitauri scepter), Classic Loki shows everyone in-universe and out just how powerful the character's sorcery can be had he been given the opportunity to properly wield it.
Some viewers claimed that Marvel prerelease interviews supposedly promised that Loki would have both a male and female onscreen love interest, and therefore engaged in Bait-and-Switch Lesbians when said onscreen same-gender romances failed to materialize. However, official sources never actually said such a thing, and the source of that rumor is an MCU fansite infamous for being highly unreliable with its supposed leaks. However, a scene featuring Loki undergoing a montage in which he had lots of bisexual sex including with aliens before finding himself in the Asgardian throne room as a showcase of the power of the TVA wasconsidered early in development, but never made it to the final product.
Detractors of the show commonly state the existence of the TVA retroactively removes all agency from every prior MCU work and that choices don’t matter. Except it’s made clear both in and out of the show the multiverse always existed, the TVA was only pruning timelines that would've led to Kang the Conqueror rising to power.
Crack Ship: Some fans immediately started it with Miss Minutes and Mr. DNA, due to both being southern-accented cartoon characters who explain nonsense science for both the characters and the audience. Writer Michael Waldron even admitted that Miss Minutes was inspired by Mr. DNA during the writing process for this show.
Critical Dissonance: While Season 2 still had positive reviews by critics, it wasn't as well-received by them as Season 1. Fans, on the other hand, thought otherwise and saw it as even better than Season 1.
Loki seeing another variant getting disintegrated for mouthing off and not having a ticket to be in line? Horrific, and showing that the TVA are not to be trifled with. Loki frantically searching in his prison jumpsuit for his own ticket and urgently holding it up when he finds it, all while Miss Minutes is cheerfully saying 'Don't forget to let us know how we're doin!'? Priceless.
The entire trip to Pompeii. When you remember what happened to the real Pompeii, an event that would've been horrific otherwise is made hilarious by Loki freeing some goats from a cage, telling everyone in the town that they're about to die (in fluent Latin, no less), and just plain taking the piss out of Mobius the entire time. The icing on the cake is Loki striking a pose similar to that of Tony back in the first Iron Manas the volcano is erupting behind him!
Alligator Loki biting off President Loki's hand. Horrific considering how we see the severed hand front and center? Probably. The fact that he Screams Like a Little Girl in response and chaos ensues immediately afterward after he outright insulted Alligator Loki in the first place? Bloody Hilarious!
Why did Alligator Loki get pruned by the TVA? Because he ate the wrong neighbor's cat- which takes things further by implying that there was a correct cat! Which might even be the one we see in episode 1.
Victor Timely turned into spaghetti? Horrifying. Victor Timely continuously turned into spaghetti as Loki headdesks on having to repeat this over and over again in a montage set to "A Fifth of Beethoven"?!Hilarious.
Die for Our Ship: Quite a few Lokius (Loki/Mobius) fans began calling for Sylvie's blood after the events of the Season 1 finale in which she shared a kiss with Loki, then sent him away so that she could kill He Who Remains against Loki's wishes.
Miss Minutes has two small scenes between the first two episodes, and is thus a very minor character. She is also quite popular with fans, due to her Dissonant Serenity in explaining the TVA's existence and objectives in her own animated sequence, while also being a Mascot with Attitude. The fact that she's voiced by Tara Strong herself is just icing on the cake. Then the season one finale reveals she's The Dragon to the true founder of the TVA and can be surprisingly sinister for an adorable cartoon clock.
Alligator Loki features in only one of the six episodes of season 1, and he is extremely popular due to being an especially amusing instance of an Alternate Self that comes in the form of a cute animal. He's also a dangerous opponent who doesn't take kindly to insults, and bites off the hand of President Loki when he deridingly points him out in the room. In fact, Alligator Loki became so popular that Marvel created a comic inspired by him.
Classic Loki features in a stinger and one episode before his death. He is thought of fondly for being played by Richard E. Grant, for his Narm Charm costume and his glorious Heroic Sacrifice, to the point that fans were praising the casting and Grant's dedication to playing the role, wishing that he lasted longer.
Casey the TVA secretary only appears in two episodes as minor comic relief, yet he enamored a lot of viewers due to his rather nonchalant behavior to what's going on around him. He gets a bigger role in Season 2, when it's revealed he uses his knowhow of the TVA manual.
Due to his absence for a chunk of the prologue in Avengers: Infinity War, and the show's time-travel-heavy premise, fans came up with a variant of a He's Just Hiding theory: that Variant L1130 somehow ends up having a Heroic Sacrifice swapping places with his Sacred Timeline counterpart or otherwise uses magic to fake his death at the hands of Thanos, which ultimately puts Thor on a path to help defeat the Mad Titan for good. Interestingly, Loki takes interest upon hearing that Classic Loki managed to fake his death during that very scenario.
From the first two trailers alone, many fans were convinced that the mysterious redheaded individual sitting on a rock is Black Widow, due to their silhouette looking eerily similar to Natasha's. The fact that the figure was prominently seen in a dark purple and orange area that coincidentally matches up with the color scheme of Vormir adds fuel to the fire.
Episode 4 confirms that the individual is not Natasha - the "redheaded" woman actually has brown-blonde hair, she is a Loki variant named Sylvie, and she and Loki are stranded on a completely different planet named Lamentis-1.
Quite a few people have speculated that this series will somehow tie into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness alongside its sister show WandaVision, often in a way that has Loki ending up in the MCU's prime timeline after the events of this series. An image floating around on the internet of Loki, Wanda, and Strange fighting alongside each other from the comics further increased the popularity of this theory. Lending even more credence is the fact that Michael Waldron, the head writer of Loki, is also a credited screenwriter of the film, as well as the fact that the show proper reveals that a timeline break is called a "Nexus", the same name used for the antidepressant drug in one of WandaVision's in-universe commercials.
The producers were oddly insistent on not revealing the character names of certain big name actors like Richard E. Grant and Sophia Di Martino, leading plenty of fans to suspect they're playing alternate versions of Loki himself. As of Episode 2, Sophia Di Martino is confirmed to be playing Sylvie, the Loki variant that Loki and Mobius are up against, while Grant - as per Episode 4's Stinger - is revealed to be an older version of Loki, complete with a comics-accurate costume.
Related to the above item about the Doctor Strange sequel, some fans noted that Waldron is close friends with Jeff Loveness, who worked with him on Rick and Morty and is the credited screenwriter of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, leading to some speculation that it will link up with Loki in some way, especially since that film's Big Bad is famous time-traveling Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror. Waldron eventually alluded to the idea on Vanity Fair's Still Watching podcast but didn't outright confirm a connection between the two.
While Loki is wandering the TVA in an attempt to escape in the first episode, one of the TVA's Hunters can be seen escorting a woman through their establishment in the background. Many fans noted that she looks eerily similar to Peggy Carter, causing many Agent Carter fans to jump at the idea of Peggy being detained by the TVA due to Steve Roger's shenanigans.
With Kang the Conqueror confirmed to appear in Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, many fans suspect he'll show up in this show first, probably as one of the time keepers, due to his love interest Ravonna Renslayer being a major character. With the revelation that the Time-Keepers were merely fakes in Episode 4, it could be safe to assume that he might also make an appearance here, too.
Lo and behold, he (or at least, a Variant of his Immortus incarnation) finally makes his debut in the season one finale, portrayed by Jonathan Majors, no less.
Episode 2 reveals that the rogue Loki the TVA is hunting is Lady Loki—or, it is at least assumed to be Lady Loki. However, fans quickly discovered that while in the English credits, she is simply named "the Variant", in the other language credits, she is named "Sylvie", or Sylvie Lushton, the second Enchantress who was given her powers by Loki. Fans speculate this means that either the two characters were composited, or the variant isn't Loki at all.
It only appears in a single frame, but one of the incident reports that Loki flips past before he gets shushed blames an unauthorized timeline alteration on Sylvie Laufeydottirnote "Daughter of Laufey" in the Norse naming convention. Given that the male Loki is sometimes known as Laufeyson, this may indeed be a case of Composite Character.
After the past several franchise entries and cast announcements went a bit out of their way to build up the Young Avengers, many fans suspect that Kid Loki will somehow be coming out of this show. Sure enough, he finally makes an appearance in The Stinger during "The Nexus Event".
A lot of fans speculated that the second half of Episode 3 after Sylvie falls asleep was All Just a Dream and that she was caught in a reversal of her enchantment spells, due to several things that seemingly didn't add up, such as Loki wielding much more powerful magic than he's ever displayed before, including the ability to reverse the fall of a building. This turned out to not be the case, and everything that took place that episode was indeed real.
Among several countless theories, one of the well known theories is that following the premise of Loki and the emergence of The Void, several fans theorized that most of the Spider-Man villains are actually variants, and it's the reason why Jamie Foxx and Alfred Molina are in the MCU Spider-Man.
Many fans believed that Wanda Maximoff caused The Threshhold to happen in the finale since Wanda is described as a Nexus Being (a.k.a. a person who could change the future since they have control over probabilities) in the comics. Additionally, some people synced up the finales for both this show and Wanda's show to notice that around the 27:55 mark, He Who Remains states that they crossed the Threshhold while Wanda becomes the Scarlet Witch, and around the 28:14 mark, He Who Remains drops something to his desk while Agatha drops to the ground. This also provides more context to Agatha's line of "You have no idea what you've done" as well as explaining the entire Nexus commercial in WandaVision. However, the director of Loki explicitly confirmed that this is a mere coincidence.
Relating to this, many fans believed that Wanda's kids from the WandaVision finale's Stinger are just them from an Alternate Universe.
Sylvie has two different IDs in the series - L0852 in the TVA files Loki looks through in episode 2, and L1190 in the script He Who Remains shows in the finale. This lead some fans to believe that there were several Sylvies, and there is a cycle repeating over and over again similar to the one in The Matrix, with He Who Remains being similar to the Architect, and Loki and Sylvie being similar to Neo and Trinity.
The Multiversal War. On paper, it has the potential to be an epic on the scale of Secret Wars (2015). On screen, we only got a two seconds mention in Miss Minutes' video and a verbal description from He Who Remains.
Some fans wondered if Steve's decision to stay in the past might've caused the Time Variance Authority to come for him, and if they did, what kind of adventures does the Future Steve run into during his quest to return the Infinity Stones?
It seems everyone has the potential of becoming a time-variant, so how would the individual Avengers react to becoming one at literally any random point in their lives? How would they face the existential dilemma that all of their choices are predetermined?
Episode 2 reveals that the TVA has arrested other Lokis before. Three of them are shown but who knows how many they were and what they did.
Episode 3 reveals that many of the employees of the TVA were once variants themselves; mindwiped, repurposed and given new personalities. Who were they before they 'joined' the TVA?
Episode 5: "Journey Into Mystery" is just absolutely rife with these, thanks to the multitude of Easter Eggs that can be found within The Void, due to the fact that everything that is pruned ends up going there. Questions like how, what, or why did these people or objects come to be? What was the Nexus event that caused them to be pruned by the TVA?
Following the premiere of Episode 4 and 5, several fans begin to wonder if The Void is filled with all the Spider-Man villains who are variants in this timeline, and if they are in The Void, did they manage to return to the original timeline after Sylvie kills He Who Remains?
Another instance is that given how the 2014 Gamora is now in 2023, will she be considered as a variant too?
The first season ends with the Multiverse coming back in full force, opening literally infinite possibilities in the MCU. Additionally, the last we see of Sylvie, she is at the end of time with a TemPad that can take her anywhere and anywhen in the multiverse.
With Episode 1 revealing that Loki was D.B. Cooper and "Science/Fiction" reveals Casey was Frank Lee Morris, one of three inmates who escaped Alcatraz, how many variants are actually Historical Domain Characters who disappeared and were never found? Are their variants based on the Roanoke colonists? Amelia Earhart? The missing Roman Legion?
Season 2 reveals right away that the apparently "alternate" TVA where Loki ended up at the end of season 1 was in fact the same TVA in the past, which He Who Remains led openly. What caused him to wipe everyone's memories, retreat to the shadows, and create the Time-Keepers as figureheads?
After the finale, what will Mobius and Sylvie choose to do, now that they're free to live their own lives as they see fit?
Fans quickly started to call Alligator Loki "Croki", or "Lokigator".
Though official press calls him "God Loki", after Loki masters time manipulation and establishes himself as the new overseer of the Multiverse, fans started calling him "God of Stories" and "Avenger Prime". The former especially, since narrative and stories are a recurring motif in the series.
Franchise Original Sin: One of the main criticisms of the show is how Loki isn't as competent as he was in his previous appearances. However, this was something that has been in line with Loki's character in the MCU, who has been noted by comic readers to be one of the more notable cases of Adaptational Wimp in the MCU, being nowhere near as strong a mage nor anywhere near as competent a villain as his counterpart was. The Avengers and Thor: Ragnarok in particular treat him like a Butt-Monkey where the heroes often pull the wool over his eyes. But aside from comic readers, fans have been more forgiving of those examples because of how they work in a narrative sense. In The Avengers, Loki is an outright villain we're supposed to root against which makes it all the more cathartic when he gets his comeuppance. In Ragnarok, it's meant to show how much Thor had grown as a character while Loki remained stagnant, which becomes the catalyst for Loki's complete Heel–Face Turn. But because Loki is the protagonist here, his portrayal is more noticeable and easier to call out on, especially when he's fighting mooks rather than superheroes. It is even more ironic because the show gives Loki powers that he had never displayed prior, such as the ability to fire hand blasts or telekinetically lifting up a falling building.
Friendly Fandoms: There is a significant overlap between fans who like Loki and Sylvie (Sylki) as a couple and fans who ship Kylo Ren and Rey (Reylo) from Star Wars. It helps that in both cases a male Tall, Dark, and Handsome villain who makes a Heel–Face Turn starts off as an enemy of a headstrong Action Girl. In both cases the two characters are linked metaphysically, with Loki and Sylvie being Variants of the same being, and Kylo Ren and Rey being linked by and able to communicate through the Force. The scene of Loki and Sylvie fighting the guards of the Time-Keepers as Back-to-Back Badasses drew a lot of comparison to the similar scene of Kylo Ren and Rey fighting Snoke's guards in The Last Jedi. Both couples eventually share a kiss. And since Reylo's culmination in the sequal trilogy is considered disapponting and unsatisfying, many of its fans stated that "Sylki is what Reylo should have been." Sylki fandom also drew the sympathy of some Reylo fans due to Sylki shippers becoming the target of heavy harassment and anti-Shipping Goggles from ship rivals since the ship first got legs, which some Reylo fans expressed as relatable.
The TVA shares its acronym with the real-life Tennessee Valley Authority. The real life TVA is tasked in part with controlling the flow of the Tennessee River (not unlike the flow of time here), has its own dedicated police force, and was often criticized as one of the biggest expansions of the US bureaucracy. After the series premiere, the organization made several jokes about Loki on Twitter, such as this one.
Loki as D.B. Cooper becomes a lot funnier if you're familiar with the real life case. The real Cooper was described by all involved as being oddly friendly and charming, which Loki had no reason to be unless he found the idea of a nice hijacker with a bomb funny. Additionally the heist relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of aircraft, implying the Asgardian Loki went out of his way to research how a plane works purely for the sake of a prank.
The episode where Loki confirms that he's bisexual is drenched in the colors of the bi flag (blue, pink and purple).
Loki cutting off Sif's hair as a prank is also straight from the Norse myths.
Classic Loki creating an illusion of Asgard is accompanied by a piece of music taking obvious inspiration from "Ride of the Valkyries", from an opera based on Norse myths.
The ship that gets sucked into the Void in episode 5 is the USS Eldridge, the subject of the Philadelphia Experiment where, according to Urban Legends and conspiracy theories, it was supposedly made invisible, with wilder theories claiming that the government was studying time travel (a subject explored in the film The Philadelphia Experiment)In realityThe Eldridge was nowhere near Philadelphia at the time the purported experiment took place. She was eventually transferred to the Hellenic Navy and served until 1992 before being decommissioned and sold as scrap in 1999. Apparently, in one branch of the timeline, it worked, and the TVA noticed and pruned the entire ship.
Overlaps with Bilingual Bonus. The Romans had no concept of a volcano and no word for it, so instead of just saying "volcano" as the English subtitles suggest Loki explains to his unwilling listeners in Latin that the mountain has been accumulating fire for a while and is now going to spill it on them.
There are several active volcanos in Greece and Italy. Classical culture did obviously have the concept of volcanoes; they simply did not use that particular word. In fact the Greek historian Strabo speculated that mount Vesuvius might have had at one time "craters of fire" decades before it's eruption
The chalk board in the room of He Who Remains hosts the Dyson-Schwinger equation for the Green's function used to find the correlations between two points in a quantum field. The solution is usually found by plugging in a suitable guess for the Green's function, then plugging that solution as the new Green's function, and reiterating until the solution falls within the desired margin of error. An exact answer would provide a stable loop.
The line in the opening credits of the finale, "we think of time as a one way motion from the past through the present and on into the future" is taken from the philosopher Alan Watts' lecture on the nature of time and causality. According to Michael Waldron, in the show time is non-linear and everything is happening at once, which ties in nicely with the lecture.
Loki and Mobius find Sylvie in Roxxcart on March 15, 2050. 15 March is the day when Julius Caesar was killed, and through Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar and its Arc Words "beware the Ides of March" it became famously associated with betrayal. In Roxxcart, one of the TVA minutemen remarks that Mobius's favourite Loki has betrayed him, and Hunter C-20 confesses that she betrayed the Time-Keepers by giving their location away.
In episode 2, one of Loki's Variants is shown at the Tour de France. Twelve days later, there was a massive bike crash at the actual Tour de France caused by a single spectator with a sign.
In episode 1, Loki is told by Mobius that he exists so that others can be their best versions, to be a villain for others to jump over and better themselves, and one of the major parts of Loki as a character is that he can never change enough to change this. Episode 5 reveals that Loki does his best to change, but is always pruned by TVA for it, thus making that major and so tragic part of his character one that has been forced on him.
He Who Remains warned Loki and Sylvie of the dangers of a multiversal war and of his variants, and then we get a small taste of it in What If…? (2021) and Spider-Man: No Way Home. In the former we see several alternate timelines, some good while others are depressing, until Infinity Ultron appears proving that it is possible for there to be a threat to the whole multiverse. The latter shows several villains from alternate universes being brought to the MCU due to a spell gone wrong, and not only are they dangerous on their own they are also a threat to the entire universe. Taking a look at all the deaths caused by these alternate universe characters can actually make someone support He Who Remains' plan for the Sacred Timeline.
During the events of "Journey into Mystery", a gigantic version of the Yellowjacket helmet Darren Cross wore can be seen in the Void, with a gigantic hole in the side of it. Fast-forward to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and we see Darren transformed into M.O.D.O.K, which was partially caused by his Yellowjacket suit malfunctioning and enlarging his head. Even worse is that he's forced to work for Kang the Conqueror, one of He Who Remains' variants.
When stuck in his memory loop, Loki is repeatedly hit verbally and physically by Lady Sif, with one of her most prominent lines being "You are alone, and always will be." Then comes the end of Season Two, where Loki chooses to sit on the throne at the End of Time, nurturing all the timelines by himself.
Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the variants of Loki shown in the TVA's briefing of the Norse God and his dangerousness shown in second episode has a version of Loki that remains in his Frost Giant form 24/7. What If...? shows us that exact variant (or at least one who also looks like a Frost Giant) appearing in the seventh episode... who is one of the goofiest and most fun-loving variant of Loki we've seen yet.
Ho Yay: Although the showrunner stated that Loki and Mobius' bond was not intended to be romantic in nature, some fans have interpreted Mobius' affection and interest towards Loki as romantic anyway, especially considering that Loki is bisexual and how willing Mobius is to stick it out through difficult situations for him. Owen Wilson himself referred to the relationship between Mobius and Loki as a "courtship", and one of the tracks on the official soundtrack album is called "Lokius".
Due to the rogue Loki variant being concealed for the first episode, most fans immediately guessed that it was going to be a version of Lady Loki, which the second episode confirms.
When he was announced for the show, people immediately believed that Richard E. Grant would play another version of Loki. They were right.
Many fans expected Kid Loki to appear in some form due to most Phase 4 projects seeming to point towards the Young Avengers (Kate in Hawkeye, Cassie and Kang in Quantumania, the twins in WandaVision, Eli Bradley in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and even the Ms. Marvel and Ironheart series despite them never officially being members in the comics). Sure enough, he appears as a variant in Episodes 4 and 5.
Some fans correctly speculated that the President Loki shown in the first trailer would not actually be the L1130 Loki leading the show. The character only appears in the fifth episode as one of many Loki variants that the L1130 Loki meets in the Void, and is the only variant seen in the show that is also played by Tom Hiddleston.
The creator of the TVA turns out to be a version of Nathaniel Richards, who in some timelines goes on to become Kang the Conqueror. Many had speculated this to be the case beforehand due to the show's time-traveling premise and characters like Ravonna Renslayer and Alioth being a part of the Kang mythos.
After fans had speculated over a line in Thor: The Dark World that implied Loki was attracted to Sif, Natalie Holt mentioned in an interview that the context for Sif's anger at Loki cutting her hair involved them having slept together shortly beforehand.
In the Season 2 premiere, Loki, stuck in the future, needs to prune himself to avoid being lost in time (It Makes Sense in Context) but lacks the means to do so, only for someone to prune him from behind just as he meets up with Sylvie again, which saves his life. The most common fandom guess for who does it (as the attacker is mostly obscured from view) is Loki's own future self from this point in the timeline, since he would know why his past self is there and that pruning him would complete a Stable Time Loop, and the fourth episode confirms this to be true.
Jerkass Woobie: Sylvie. While she is another dubious variant of Loki hell-bent on revenge, her backstory is really horrifying and tragic, as she was arrested/kidnapped by the TVA as a little girl (while innocently playing with her toys on Asgard), not even understanding why. Then shortly after, she watched a man get tortured and pruned before her eyes (while begging the TVA to let him go), and has never been able to find her way back home.
The final promo before the show's release featured a Freeze-Frame Bonus confirming that Loki's physical sex is fluid (which makes perfect sense for a shapeshifter) and implies that, like his comic counterpart, he might also identify as genderfluid, causing his legions of fans to go nuts over him canonically being the franchise’s first major queer character to get confirmed onscreen.
Similarly, Episode 3 reveals that Loki is bisexual, much to the delight of fans all around, especially LGBTQ+ ones. Both examples, however, led to some disappointment from the community when the first season ended with neither revelation having a noticeable influence on the character's portrayal and storyline, with him spending the season in a straight-passing romance; this led some to treat Loki as yet another of Disney's longlineof "first gaycharacters".
Sylvie, who is designated for pruning implicitly because she's the only known Loki Variant who presents female, and reacts rather strongly against being called "Loki", particularly resonates with a number of trans women.
Episode 3 ends with Loki and Sylvie stranded on a planet about to be destroyed. Even if it weren't the halfway point of the series, it would be a very undignified way to send out a beloved character. The same applies to his unexpected pruning at the end of Episode 4: The Stinger of the same episode confirms he wasn't killed, only sent someplace else.
Episode 1 of season 2 has Loki and Mobius try to fix Loki's involuntary jumping around the timeline; if they fail, Mobius will undergo Rapid Aging (and also being Flayed Alivein the middle of it) while Loki will experience spaghettification. Needless to say, the chances that the show would kill off two main characters, one of whom is the title character, in the first episode of season 2 are slim at best.
Magnificent Bastard: He Who Remains, a variant of Kang the Conqueror, is the mastermind behind the Time Variance Authority (TVA), created to prevent multiversal wars between timelines and preserve a single Sacred Timeline. Filling the TVA with mind-wiped time variants that fought with him in the multiversal war against the various Kangs, these agents would be sent into alternate timelines, resetting events back to the Sacred Timeline while arresting, judging, and executing the variants causing the divergences. He Who Remains tracks the actions of Loki Odinson Variant L1130 and Sylvie Laufeydottir before having his assistant, Miss Minutes, confront the duo with the the proposal to live in their ideal world. Upon being confronted, He Who Remains gives the two the option of either taking over the TVA to ensure the stability of the timeline or killing him and allowing his own variants to wage war across timelines, which would invariably lead to one of them running the TVA all over again. Granting Loki the ability to timeslip before his death, He Who Remains posthumously forces him into one final choice: either allow his Temporal Loom that holds the timelines to explode and destroy the TVA and the branching timelines or kill Sylvie before she can kill He Who Remains, either choice giving him full control of the Sacred Timeline once again.
Casey has become one to the fanbase when it's revealed he has dozens of Infinity Stones stashed in his drawer, while Thanos only ever had 6. A Freeze-Frame Bonus in the season 1 finale shows that Casey has become a Hunter in Kang the Conqueror's TVA, meaning he could be on his way to being this.
Kang himself has become this despite not even having made a proper appearance yet. With his chilling introduction via statue, him being The Dreaded to He Who Remains (who won the Multiversal War and has controlled the Sacred Timeline with an iron fist for eons where everyone, Thanos included, is a cog in a machine), his comics counterpart being nothing to sneeze at either, and him being confirmed to be the Big Bad for the Multiverse Saga, memes and serious discussions are abound about how pants-shittingly dangerous he'll be.
Moral Event Horizon: If He Who Remains and the rest of Kang's variants didn't cross it already by perpetrating and waging a multiversal war for dominance between themselves out of sheer narcissism and pride, the newly-introduced General Dox takes a flying leap past the MEH in the early second season by orchestrating the mass reset-bombing of a huge number of branching timelines in "Breaking Brad" in an attempt to kill or capture Sylvie, meaning that countless individuals and their variants in all of those universes are now dead — a level of mass slaughter that dwarfs even Thanos' Snap of half of a single universe from Infinity War.
Narm Charm: Classic Loki's outfit. Does it look absolutely ridiculous and cheap? Absolutely. But it is also a love-letter to the 60s era of comics when Loki had donned this outfit, not to mention the cheapness makes it endearing in a So Bad, It's Good way. And it does not detract Classic Loki's Heroic Sacrifice in any way.
Some fans had this reaction to Loki being romantically in love with Sylvie and sharing a kiss with her in the Season 1 finale, since the Screw Yourself aspect makes some see it as akin to incest. Though Word of God has tried to clarify how this worked in a way that implied they weren't ever the same Loki, alternate universe versions of one-another is still, to some, comparable to dating a long-lost twin.
In Season 2, Miss Minutes reveals that she has a crush on He Who Remains because he later gave her wants and desires, and she wanted to do more than just play chess with him. It's already disturbing to see what amounts to a sentient cartoon clock express romantic interest towards a live-action human, but it veers into unhealthy creepiness when she tries to transfer her love for him to his variant Victor Timely, who is understandably quite freaked out by her advances.
Older Than They Think: Loki being both sex-fluid and bisexual goes all the way back to the original Norse myths, where among other things he's the mother of Odin's horse, Sleipnir.
One-Scene Wonder: More like One-Episode Wonder, but Jonathan Majors acted his ass off as He Who Remains, drawing a compelling tale of who he is and what he's capable of in a relatively short appearance.
One True Threesome: Some fans not wanting to deal with the shipping war of Loki with either Mobius or Sylvie, or Take a Third Option, simply decide to put the three of them together.
Paranoia Fuel: The timeline has been predetermined by a trio of beings that enforce their will absolutely through the TVA. At any moment, without even understanding why, a person can suddenly find themselves being arrested by the TVA for the crime of deviating from a path they never knew they were supposed to be on. And as Episode 4 shows, you can be a merechild (as Sylvie can attest) and the TVA can and will take you in for even the most minor offense against the Sacred Timeline, even subjecting them to a Kangaroo Court as they would an adult.
Portmanteau Couple Name: "Sylki" for Sylvie/Loki, "Lokius" for Loki/Mobius, and "Sylkius" for Sylvie/Loki/Mobius together.
Preemptive Shipping: The moment Mobius was announced as a character, fans immediately began shipping him with Loki before the show even started airing due to leaks indicating that Loki would be confirmed as bisexual, and thus many hoped or expected that Mobius would serve as a love interest to Loki. One of the first fics between them was written soon after the first trailer of the show dropped.
Loki's actions in The Avengers (2012) seemed much more like your bog-standard tyrannical overlord than a goal for the self-proclaimed "God of Chaos and Mischief". This is explicitly called out and discussed by Mobius in the very first episode, and fits nicely into his character development and arc.
Many fans were upset with the MCU's track record of LGBTQ representation, often amounting to little more than teases between heterosexual characters that aren’t followed up on, or are minor characters who appear in one scene and never show up again. This show has Loki be explicitly identified by the TVA as "fluid" in regards to sex, which not only aligns with his comic book and mythological origins, but also officially makes Loki the MCU’s first queer protagonist to be confirmed on-screen. He's explicitly confirmed as bisexual in Episode 3, with him admitting to having had flings with both men and women, which director Kate Herron confirmed was one of her major goals with the show, although he's not given the opportunity to engage in same-gender relationships onscreen. Also some have pointed out that him being gender fluid isn't truly acknowledged, as while Sylvie's insistence on not being called Loki does have similarities with a trans person identifying by a new name she is implied to have simply been born a girl in her timeline as opposed to using magic to become female, and when asking the other Lokis if they've ever met a female version of themselves before they respond with disbelief.
For a while after The Avengers (2012), Marvel included a bit in Loki's bio on their website that he was being influenced by the Mind Stone during the film and thus wasn't fully responsible for easily the worst actions he's done in the franchise. Many fans decried this as an obvious case of Pandering to the Base of fans who'd been giving him the Draco in Leather Pants treatment and felt it undermined the emotional weight of his eventual redemption by suggesting he wasn’t all bad to begin with. In this show, the whole thing is nowhere to be found, with everyone acknowledging he was acting of his own will.
The final scene of Season 1 has Mobius and Hunter B-15 no longer recognize Loki, which upset some people as it implied all their Character Development and relationship with Loki was lost simply to shake up the status quo. The Season 2 premiere later shows that the reason Mobius and B-15 don't remember Loki is because he's actually in the TVA's past, and so have no established relationship with him. Furthermore, Loki is quick to reunite with the present-day version of both characters to ensure that there's no Reset Button being pushed.
The first season received some minor criticism for not utilizing its time traveling aspects to the fullest, with the main characters only visiting a couple of time periods (most of which took place in the future) before being dumped into the Void for the rest of the story. Season 2 has Loki and Mobius visiting many more time periods to do some detective work together, going to places such as Chicago in The Gay '90s, London in The '70s, and the American Midwest in The '80s. Furthermore, Loki's time slipping causes him to visit various other points in time, allowing him to explore many other settings.
The romance between Loki and Sylvie in Season 1 wasn't well-received, with many fans feeling like they were Strangled by the Red String, on top of being uncomfortable that two people who are essentially the same person are in love with one another. In Season 2, Sylvie is shown to have moved on from Loki, with their relationship being far less affectionate and the two constantly quarreling on their respective objectives.
The entirety of Loki and Sylvie's confrontation with He Who Remains, due to the wild recontextualizing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that it provides and an excellent first performance from Jonathan Majors, in the finale of season 1.
Loki making the ultimate Heroic Sacrifice by stepping up to destroy and replace the Loom with himself and his newfound time powers, creating a World Tree out of the timeline branches and allowing them to grow infinitely while sequestering himself, completely alone and apart from his friends, as the new He Who Remains in the finale of season 2.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: Between Loki/Mobius and Loki/Sylvie fans. Fans of the former accuse the latter of being Brother–Sister Incest due to being alternate-universe timeline copies, and homophobic due to happening so soon after the reveal that both characters are bisexual, thus coming off as But Not Too Bi. Fans of the latter argue that treating a fantastical (and implausible) case of Screw Yourself to real-life sibling incest is false equivalence, that acting like Loki stopped being queer just because he's attracted to a woman is bisexual erasure, that Lokius fans' accusations towards the show of queerbaiting is dishonest due to prerelease Word of God overtly shutting the possibility down beforehand and that the rest merely came from Shipping Goggles.
The Time Keepers themselves are revealed to be little more than mindless androids.
Both Loki and Mobius are pruned by the end of the episode. Seems like they're about to be Killed Off for Real until…
It turns out that Loki survived in The Stinger afterward, met by various other variants of Loki, so it can be assumed that both Mobius and C-20 are also still alive in some form, too.
Rather than explore all the new branching timelines that came into being with He Who Remains' death at the end of the first season, two episodes into the second season, in "Breaking Brad", most if not all of those timelines are bombed and pruned en-masse in favour of the Sacred Timeline by the newly-introduced General Dox in an effort to kill or flush out and capture Sylvie.
The end of "Heart Of the TVA" probably tops all of them. Victor makes the brave choice to fix the Loom and the music flares triumphantly as he suits up. Now this is where the audience would expect the good guys to fix the Loom, right? Wrong, the moment Victor steps out, he's spaghettified and the Loom collapses while Loki and co. look on in helpless horror and despair.
Special Effect Failure: Some viewers believe that the climax of Lamentis, while a pretty good The Oner, was too obviously shot against a greenscreen throughout the whole sequence. However, as revealed in the official BTS video ("Assembled: The Making of Loki") apart from the sky the entire set was practical and 360 degrees photographable, and they even used practical effects for falling debris and explosions. The unusual lighting is a result of them painting walls with a special paint that glows in the dark and shooting the entire thing at night.
Stuck in Their Shadow: While Loki is the main character of, well, Loki, many consider Sylvie, for better or worse, to be the main star of the first season. This is due to Sylvie having a more personal stake in the story while Loki himself is reduced to a Satellite Character for Sylvie at the season's halfway mark.
Squick: While Loki getting his clothes vaporized was very much Played for Laughs with his visible embarrassment, the same thing happening to Sylvie when she was a little girl being arrested by the TVA, while obviously not shown on screen, is extremely horrifying and creepy to think about.
Stock Footage Failure: Despite this version of Loki being a variant from right after the events of The Avengers (2012), you can see the nine year age difference for Tom Hiddleston when Loki looks at footage of his actions during that film.
Strangled by the Red String: Loki in episode 4 developing feelings for Sylvie after they've only known each other for less than a day. They do not acknowledge them or share a kiss until the season 1 finale, though.
She Really Can Act: Tara Strong is already known for her voice acting, but the Season 2 episode "1893" has her portray Miss Minutes going full Yandere for Victor Timely while keeping her Southern accent mixed with a Tomboyish Voice that makes you feel the stalker-ish vibes the holographic clock AI is giving.
Too Cool to Live: Classic Loki, who shows himself to be the most powerful Loki variant thus far, sacrifices himself to enable Loki and Sylvie to enchant Alioth and get to the real power behind the TVA.
Loki as the star of his own Disney+-series would count as unexpected, as the series was first announced in November 2018 - shortly after the theatrical release of Avengers: Infinity War, where Loki was Killed Off for Real by Thanos. Then, Avengers: Endgame came out and revealed that Loki won't be Back from the Dead, but the series would center around an Alternate Self from a branched timeline.
While she is confirmed to return in Thor: Love and Thunder, one can't help but to be surprised at seeing Lady Sif make a return here in Episode 4.
Remember how Richard E. Grant was mentioned to be in the cast list prior to release? He just so happens to play an older version of Loki, as per The Stinger of Episode 4. In addition, he's even shown wearing Loki's 60s costume!
Frog Thor aka "Throg" manages to make an appearance trapped in a jar in episode 5.
Meanwhile the infamous memetic Thanos Copter can also be spotted among the rubbish.
Alioth is actually from the comics, but is very, very obscure with only a small handful of appearances.
How do you top all of the above? Episode 6 has the answer — Kang the Conqueror!
According to set photos for Season 2, Zaniac and Phone Ranger, two characters even dedicated comic fans would say "...Who?" if brought up in a conversation will be alluded to, albeit as movie characters.
Episode 3 of Season 2 features a statue of Balder the Brave and confirms that he existed at some point in the main MCU timeline, after the character was long believed to be Adapted Out.
With her short hair bun and stocky build, one wouldn't be at fault for thinking Hunter B-15 is a man at first glance, at least until she begins speaking.
Many also thought the young French child in the church was a girl due to his long hair and outfit that vaguely resembles a feminine skirt.
The rest of the series is not to be outdone. Lamentis-1 looks beautiful. The TVA backgrounds expand the space in a believable way. Perhaps most spectacular are the openings of both "For All Time. Always." and "Heart of the TVA," in which the camera zooms out of one universe and into another through colorful tubes of warped space that would make Doctor Strange jump up from its seat and yell "bravo," revealing the asteroid containing the Citadel at the End of Time, first being balanced perfectly by the finely threaded lights of the Sacred Timeline, then having those same lights chaotically and beautifuly branch out and bump into each other and overwhelm the space, turning the whole dimension substantially more purple and blue. In the latter episode we also have tiny holagram He Who Remains and tiny holagram Ravonna chatting in a tiny hologram CATEOT while regular-sized real Ravonna watches from the background.
Then "Glorious Purpose (II)" came out and literally blew everything else out of the water with a slow, serene zoom-out on the newly stabilized multiverse, manifested as a truly beautiful web of light and cloud taking the shape of Yggdrasil.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Lamentis portrays wealthy citizens receiving preferential treatment at the expense of the poor majority, during what is supposed to be a planetary evacuation, while Loki and Sylvie try to find a way off of the planet before it gets completely destroyed. Given 2021's economic and political climate, it's easy to take the point.
In selfsame episode, Sylvie calls the TVA "the omniscient fascists [Loki] works for," echoing what the entire audience was thinking from the beginning. She ain't wrong.
In "Heart of the TVA," Sylvie and Loki have an angry heart-to-heart in the pie room in which she rips into him for trying to save the institution that literally stole her life from her, insisting it's rotten and to be burned and discarded. Loki counters that it's easy to destroy, to burn, but it's hard to fake something broken and make it better. Earlier, he tells her she can't just give everyone free will and just walk away. He argues that their responsibility is to protect all the innocent variants and timelines as well as the old Sacred Timeline. When she shoots back that no matter what, they have to play god, he takes the responsibility of keeping everyone safe and (relatively) happy by stating simply, "we are gods." The camera angle makes it clear that his statement is an acceptance of responsibility, not a Badass Boast as his former self would have said it.
Although Loki as a character came close to wearing out his welcome with some fans through overexposure, even people who aren't enthused about the character came around on the show upon seeing its classic-comic-book-bizarre premise and offbeat sense of humor in its first two trailers. And then the series was released and acclaimed by critics and fans.
After the conclusion of the Infinity Saga, some fans believed that MCU has nothing new to offer to them. The dawn of the multiverse and the reveal of Kang the Conqueror as the next MCU's Greater-Scope Villain in episode 6 reignited the interest in the MCU franchise as a whole.
A good number of MCU fans were not pleased with the lack of cameos in WandaVision despite opportunities and allusions (to whit, Monica's engineer friend being a generic Air Force officer, and "Fake Pietro" not actually being a Pietro from another universe, and instead being a resident of Westview who Agatha was mind-controlling into pretending to be Pietro.) Many, many fans were pleased when the elevator doors opened in Episode 6 to reveal Jonathan Majors as He-Who-Remains, a variant of the next 'big villain' for the MCU, Kang the Conqueror.
The Woobie: Sylvie, big time. After she escaped from the TVA, she had to spend her entire childhood on the run from them. She figured out how to stay hidden by jumping between Nexus events, nearly all of which were disastrous apocalypses she had to watch unfold. Shortly before Loki was arrested; she started her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the TVA, killing thousands of minutemen before she ended up on Lamentis with Loki. And in season 2, when she finally found a home to settle in on a branched timeline of 1982 Broxton, Oklahoma, she finds out by the fifth episode of that season that it's doomed to die and be spaghettified.
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