Recap / Loki Episode 10: "Heart of the TVA"

"Annihilating is easy. Razing things to the ground is easy. Trying to fix what's broken is hard. Hope is hard."

Loki, Sylvie, and Mobius bring Victor Timely to the TVA to fix the Temporal Loom before it's too late.

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Tropes:

• All for Nothing: The attempt to recruit Timely and use his aura to unlock the path to the Loom to save it and the TVA falls apart when it turns out the temporal radiation is so high that Timely is spaghettified the second he steps outside and the Loom ends up exploding.
• Apologetic Attacker: Brad says "I'm sorry" after he prunes D-90.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Dox's answer to Brad's inquiry shows that she does have some regrets about her actions.
  Brad: Don't you think you earned your life?
  Dox: No! [barely audible] No.
• Awful Truth: Miss Minutes wasn't kidding when she said her secret would make Renslayer angry. It turns out that she was once He Who Remains' top general, and he falsely promised her a place at his side before ordering her memories wiped.
• Ax-Crazy: Miss Minutes has a big smile on her face as she slowly crushes Dox and her crew to death with a cube.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The ringing phone that lured Past Loki to the elevator and that keeps ringing long after Loki prunes his past self. Loki and Sylvie are apprehensive about it, and Loki takes a long time to answer, seemingly implying that the other person on the line will be some kind of a reveal. Turns out it is just O.B. checking in on them.
  • As Miss Minutes is shutting down, she tells Victor Timely that she has something important to say. One would think that she was trying to express her heartfelt feelings towards Timely only for her to do a Dying Declaration of Hate instead.
• Being Good Sucks: Loki's speech addressed to Sylvie has shades of this, as he acknowledges the challenges of doing the right thing and staying optimistic, yet he maintains one should still do so.
  Loki: Sure. Burn it down. Easy. Annihilating is easy. Razing things to the ground is easy. Trying to fix what's broken is hard. Hope is hard.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: It's not just a coffee machine. It does coffee, hot cocoa, and soup.
• Call-Back: In the first episode of the season, O.B. was concerned that Loki might be spaghettified as a result of the method that was used to stabilize him. Victor suffers that fate thanks to the lethal temporal radiation in the Loom chamber.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the Temporal Loom exploding, seemingly killing everyone at the TVA.
• Computers Speak Binary: When Miss Minutes begins to shut down, she is momentarily covered in 1s and 0s.
• Computer Virus: At some point in the past, Mobius accidentally infected his TemPad with malware when he downloaded unauthorized games.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Loki tells Sylvie about the events of Thor in regards to his brother’s exile on Earth and change of heart from an arrogant Blood Knight to someone more heroic.
  • Victor's spaghettification looks exactly like how Scott's various copies were being disintegrated in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
  • The rebooting Miss Minutes asks if you'd like to play a game of chess, recalling her confession in the previous episode that she was initially created as a chess-playing program to help alleviate He Who Remain's boredom.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Dox and her men are all crushed to death with only a pile of horribly disfigured remains left behind.
  • At the end of the episode, Victor is graphically spaghettified when he exits the facility on to the gangway through the blast doors. The temporal radiation level is so high that it tears through him and his suit as if they were made of paper.
• Darkest Hour: At the last minute, Victor Timely dies unexpectedly, and Loki and his friends can do nothing but watch helplessly and in silence as they and the TVA are seemingly destroyed.
• Defiant to the End: General Dox, right before she and her Minutemen are crushed by the torture device, uses her last moments to all but tell Ravonna to go to hell.
  General Dox: How does it feel knowing that all of us here would rather die than follow you out that door?
• Dying Declaration of Hate: Right before she gets rebooted, Miss Minutes uses her final words to taunt Victor that "he'll never be [He Who Remains]".
• Electronic Speech Impediment: Miss Minutes glitches and stutters as O.B. purges her from the TVA's systems. Victor mistakenly believes she's intentionally mocking his own stammer.
• Elevator Failure: When Loki and Sylvie attempt to use the elevator to find Renslayer and Timely, Miss Minutes overrides the system, causing the elevator to lock Sylvie in and Loki out. Sylvie tampers with the wires to get the elevator moving and later forces the doors open to get out.
• Emerging from the Shadows: Loki emerges from a shadowy area, distracting Brad so that Sylvie can use Mind Control on him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite throwing his lot in with Ravonna and Miss Minutes, Brad can't bear to watch as Dox and the Minutemen loyal to her meet their gruesome demise.
• Everyone Has Standards: Dox and her loyalists are opposed to the new TVA, though B-15's pleas may have gotten through to her, but Dox also recognizes Renslayer's offer as the power play it is, similarly refusing to go along with her plans. Even under the threat of death, all but Brad hold firm.
• Fade to White: The episode ends with the light of the Temporal Loom's explosion engulfing the control room.
• Fingerwag: When B-15 tries to use her TemPad after finding Dox and her team murdered, Miss Minutes appears on the screen, wagging her finger while saying "Access denied."
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Mobius mentions that the Time Loom is putting out far more radiation than when we went out in his venture and expresses doubt that Victor will make it all the way across the lamp. Sure enough, Victor immediately dies when he steps outside.
• A God Am I: Done in a more literal, somber fashion, rather than a boast, by Loki.
  Sylvie: Sounds like whatever we do, we're playing God.
  Loki: We are gods.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The camera focuses on Brad's pained expression as his former comrades are crushed to death. We also only see B-15's horrified reaction when she discovers their remains in the jail cell, her TemPad screen positioned to block the viscera. We do get to hear the sounds of dripping blood after the deed is done, however...
• Have You Tried Rebooting?: O.B. is able to clear Miss Minutes from the system by rebooting it.
• Hope Spot: Just as Victor is about to use the Throughput Multiplier to repair the Temporal Loom now that the villains have been defeated, he disappears the moment he steps outside. The last thing Loki and the others have to save the TVA is gone.
• Inappropriate Hunger: Sylvie lashes out at Mobius when he offers to get some key lime pies while they wait for O.B., Victor and Casey to make final preparations for fixing the Loom. She believes that Mobius appears too nonchalant given what's at stake.
• It Makes Sense in Context: After Sylvie watches Loki prune himself, Loki promises her that it will make sense later.
• Join or Die: Ravonna offers everyone from Dox's crew to either follow her in exchange for a life on the timeline or be squeezed to death. Brad is the only one who chooses to help her.
• Karmic Death: On the orders of He Who Remains many years ago, Miss Minutes wiped the memories of almost all the TVA's workers to carry out his will. During the events of this episode, she's shut down for good by Ouroboros, the one person she overlooked.
• Kubrick Stare: Miss Minutes delivers a one eyed glare at Timely while grimly telling him "You'll never be him." as the system reboot shuts her down.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After all the times Ravonna has ordered countless variants pruned, did so with her own hands to Loki in the fourth episode of the last season, and just murdered Dox and all her supporters, she herself gets pruned in the fourth episode of this season by someone she thinks is an ally (Brad, who's been enchanted by Sylvie).
• Match Cut: The episode features a sound match cut from hearing the blood of Dox and her loyalist dripping on the floor to Victor pouring hot cocoa into a cup.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Brad's eyes momentarily glow eerily green when Sylvie enchants him.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Victor is amazed by the hot cocoa machine, given it's an invention from far into his future.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: After spending much of the show frightened and confused at what's going on, Victor finally demonstrates some bravery by preparing to go outside the facility to help stabilize the loom and save everyone...only to instantly be disintegrated the second he steps outside.
• Noodle Incident: When the files on Mobius' TemPad start corrupting, O.B. asks him if he downloaded an unauthorized game to the device again.
  Mobius: No, I'm not going to make that mistake twice.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Ravonna forces Victor to cooperate by threatening that otherwise X-05 will find "a very thorough and incredibly painful" way to kill him.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • Loki reaches the same moment he jumped to in the first episode of the season, where the TVA is in chaos, Sylvie is there, and he was pruned from behind by someone unknown. It turns out he pruned himself.
  • In the same episode, Loki heard part of a conversation between Renslayer and He Who Remains. Miss Minutes shows Renslayer a recording of that event, revealing that she was his general prior to him mind-wiping the TVA.
• Power Nullifier: It's reminded that there are dampeners in the TVA that are responsible for nullifying magic. When O.B. reboots the system, it shuts off the dampeners, allowing Sylvie to enchant Brad and use him to prune Renslayer.
  O.B.: I could take her offline if I reboot the system. But we'll lose the entire safety system. The security protocols will go down. Like the dampeners that prevent people from using magic at the TVA. We would have to turn that off too.
  Loki/Sylvie: [Beat] TURN IT OFF!
  O.B./Mobius: [wince away from phone]
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sylvie gives one to Mobius after he suggests that he, Loki and Sylvie get some pie, seemingly making light of their dire situation. Loki defends him later, insisting that Mobius, like all of them, is just trying to do what he can after his world has been turned upside-down.
• The Reveal:
  • Renslayer was once He Who Remains' top general before he ordered Miss Minutes to have her memory (and the memories of all the variants who fought for him) wiped.
  • What Loki believed to be a Bad Future in episode 1 was really less than a week later.
    • The one who pruned Loki in the Bad Future to save him was his future self.
    • The one on the other end of the mystery phone call back in Episode 1's Bad Future was O.B. trying to reach Loki and Sylvie.
  • O.B. and Victor inspired each other’s work, meaning the entire TVA is basically a massive bootstrap paradox.
• Sadist: While watching Dox and her crew be slowly crushed by the cube, Miss Minutes is excitedly smiling, in contrast to Renslayer's stoicism and Brad's horror.
• Shout-Out:
  • The show opens with a shot flying through a temporal vortex.
  • O.B. demonstrates his elaborate plan using a physical model he built earlier. He even paraphrases Doc Brown when he asks the others to forgive the roughness of the model. At least O.B got one coat of paint on his model, unlike Doc.
  • Miss Minutes locks everyone out with a repeating, Dennis Nedry-esque "Access denied" message.
  • The protocol used by He Who Remains to erase the memories of the whole TVA is number 42.
  • The sequence of Miss Minutes losing her cognitive functions as she is shut down and eventually regressing to a simple timer program before blinking out is reminiscent of HAL being disconnected.
• Slasher Smile: While watching Dox and her men be slowly, painfully killed, Miss Minutes has a disturbingly bright, delighted smile on her face.
• Speak in Unison: Loki and Sylvie, when O.B. tells them that rebooting the system would also deactivate the dampeners that prevent the use of magic at the TVA.
  Loki/Sylvie: Turn it off!
• Stable Time Loop:
  • When O.B. introduces himself, Victor recognizes him as the author of the TVA handbook and is in awe. O.B. then cites Victor as an inspiration and source of many ideas while writing the guidebook before realizing he's actually speaking to Victor. Mobius compares the two men inspiring each other to a snake eating its own tail.
  • Loki prunes his past self, sending him back to Mobius waiting in the Temporal Loom in episode 1 and thus completing the loop.
  • Loki only brought Sylvie to the TVA because he saw her in the elevator, but she was only in the elevator because he brought her to the TVA.
• Stealth Pun: O.B. compares Victor and himself inspiring each other to write the TVA handbook to a snake eating its own tail, AKA an Ouroboros.
• Stutter Stop: Then Victor decides that it is "time to be brave" and he is the one to go outside and fix the Loom, his stutter suddenly disappears.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Just when it looks like Victor is about to repair the Loom with the villains out of the picture, the moment he ventures outside the blast doors, he's spaghettified, leaving everyone else and the TVA to seemingly die with no other way out.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: The soundtrack stops abruptly as the episode ends with the Loom exploding.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Victor offers to go out and repair the Loom. He suits up, prepares himself to run, and gets all of three steps before he's gruesomely spaghettified in seconds.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: The last shot of the episode shows Loki having this reaction over the Temporal Loom exploding as he waits for his seemingly inevitable death.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: When Victor is impressed upon seeing the TVA in person:
  Victor: So, I built all of this? Or I did? Or I will, and I did?
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: O.B. goes over the full plan on how they will patch the Temporal Loom and save the TVA with a complete model set. The plan completely falls apart by the end of the episode.
• Villainous Breakdown: Miss Minutes' cheery demeanor almost immediately gives way to panic once she realizes that O.B. has rebooted the TVA's security systems in order to get her out of the way.
• The Walls Are Closing In: Ravonna kills Dox and the other Hunters by crushing them inside a slowly contracting timedoor box.
• Wham Episode: Aside from Miss Minutes and Ravonna's respective defeats, just about everything goes wrong by the end of the episode. Dox and her Minutemen are slaughtered by Renslayer, while Victor Timely is horrifically spaghettified by temporal radiation. With no one to stabilize the Temporal Loom, it explodes, engulfing the rest of the cast in the blast. What became of everyone is left ambiguous until the next episode.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sylvie calls out Mobius for thinking about eating pie in the middle of everything. Moreover, she accuses him of avoiding uncovering his past life as a variant to distance himself from facing the reality of what it means when a branch dies.
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: Both Mobius and Loki agree that it would be a good idea for one of them to go out and fix the Temporal Loom. However, whoever goes out will be subject to a great deal of temporal radiation, so they argue about which one of them should go out. Eventually, Loki agrees to do it but Victor Timely stops him and decides to go out in his stead and fix the Temporal Loom, only for him to be spaghettified by the temporal radiation, which was higher than expected, in only a few seconds.
• Wrongfully Attributed: Brad is about to do this before Dox cuts him off, as he is unsure who he is about to quote:
  Brad: I believe it was Galileo, or Winston Churchill, or–
• You Are Too Late: By the time the team has everything it needs to modify the Temporal Loom and avert a catastrophic meltdown, the radiation within the containment chamber has become so extreme that Victor is instantly spaghettified upon entry. The Loom violently implodes only moments later, implying that even had Victor survived, there wouldn't have been enough time to apply the modifications anyway.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Just before Renslayer kills her and her loyalists, General Dox calls X-5 "Bradley" to appeal to him. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

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