#she really thought the TVA was gone for good and the world was now a safe place for her 😭

[anonymousewrites]

Portal to My Heart (Book 3) Chapter Thirteen

Loki x Reader

Chapter Thirteen: Into Nothingness

Summary: Loki and (Y/N) find their friends, but the world continues to unravel around them.

            (Y/N) and Loki stabilized on a quaint little street of suburban America. They looked around themselves, trying to figure out where they were, and stopped when they saw Mobius. He was at a house and pulling the trash cans in. They took a few steps closer and watched him speak to his sons, who ran around him like maniacs.

            (Y/N) smiled. The antics of the children were rather like her and Loki back when they caused (more) trouble (than they did now). It explained why Mobius was so good at dealing with them.

            “Hello,” said Loki to Mobius as they approached.

            Mobius turned around the face them. “Hi. Hey. Oh, you were the couple at the shop earlier.”

            (Y/N) and Loki both enjoyed the word “couple” in reference to them. “That’s right,” said (Y/N).

            “Yeah. You live around here, or did you follow me home?” said Mobius, only half-joking.

            “No, we just moved here recently and are learning the lay of the land,” said (Y/N). Technically we did move in time and space. It wasn’t a complete lie. “We happened to see you, so we came over.”

            “To apologize, since we couldn’t stick around back at the…shop,” said Loki. “We were in…a bit of a time crunch.”

            “Yeah, you were looking for ATVs,” said Mobius.

            “The TVA,” said Loki.

            “You know, are you still in the market?” asked Mobius, clearly not realizing Loki was saying something completely different. “ ‘Cause I have something I wanna show you. Come here.” Mobius led them to his garage and opened it to reveal two jet skis. “Now, ordinarily, I wouldn’t dream of parting with one of these beauties. But my wife is long gone, and I can’t ride two of ‘em. Plus, the boys are probably gonna need braces and math tutors and God knows what else.”

            (Y/N)’s gaze softened. Mobius seemed quite…content with his life. If she could, she’d let him have this and protect the TVA. But as it was, (Y/N) and Loki needed him. “A beautiful union of form and function,” said (Y/N), putting on a melancholic smile.

            “Oh, that’s lovely, yeah,” said Mobius, smiling. “Yeah, they really are, and it breaks my heart, but what are you gonna do?” He straightened. “Hey, you want a drink? Can I get you beers?”

            “No, no, we’re fine. Thank you,” said Loki. They still hadn’t recovered from the last time they got drunk on the job. “I’m afraid we’re not here to buy a jet ski.”

            “Oh? What are you here for?” asked Mobius.

            “Listen.” (Y/N) looked at him somberly. “We’re going to tell you something that’s hard to understand, Mobius.”

            “Mobius?” he repeated.

            “Mobius. That’s your name,” said Loki.

            “I…think you have me mixed up,” said Mobius, chuckling awkwardly.

            “No, you see, the thing is, we don’t,” said Loki.

            “Mobius is your real name, and you—you had a life in a place called the TVA, and you liked it there,” said (Y/N).

            “Is that right?” Clearly, Mobius thought they were both crazy (which (Y/N) couldn’t blame him more). He cleared his throat. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble…”

            “It’s alright. We’re friends,” said Loki.

            “I know you are. I’m a friend, too,” said Mobius while trying to look for an escape. “I just thi—Whoa!” He jumped.

            A time door opened right next to them, and Ouroboros (still AD Doug) stepped out holding a large device.

            “You built the Tempad!” said (Y/N).

            “And so quickly,” observed Loki while Mobius stared in disbelief.

            “I don’t know if I’d say that eighteen months is fast. Well, nineteen months,” said Ouroboros. “I had to take a break and move out when I lost my job and my wife left me.”

            Yikes… thought (Y/N).

            “So what now?” said Ouroboros.

            “What’s happening?” questioned Mobius, still scared.

            “I promise you this will make sense,” said Loki.

            “At least a little,” said (Y/N).

            “Not helping, darling,” said Loki, and (Y/N) just shrugged. “OB—I mean, AD, please open a door to…two or three minutes ago.”

            Ouroboros nodded and did as Loki asked. Everyone stepped through, even Mobius, and they looked out at the same house they had just left.

            “How did you…” Mobius trailed off, helplessly searching for an answer.

            “Reality isn’t what you think,” said (Y/N) unhelpfully.

            “And this is the life of the man we know,” said Loki.

            “But it is cute,” added (Y/N).

            “I don’t know who you know. I don’t understand!” said Mobius.

            “We know you from a place called—”

            “No, you don’t,” Mobius interrupted Loki.

            “—the Time Variance Authority.” Loki gazed at Mobius seriously. “You saved our lives when we first arrived. You saw something in us that we hadn’t seen in ourselves.”

            “Are you really my friends?” asked Mobius.

            “We are,” said (Y/N), voice even and honest.

            “Who’s he?” asked Mobius, gesturing to Ouroboros. “Is he my friend?”

            “Yeah,” said (Y/N).

            “Why don’t I remember that?” questioned Mobius.

            “It’s too complicated to explain it to you, but we need your help to save this place, the TVA,” said Loki. “You once told us it was the only life you’d ever known and that you liked it and your friends.”

            “I sell jet skis, man,” said Mobius.

            “Trust us,” said (Y/N).

            “What about my boys?” said Mobius.

            “We’re doing this to protect them and everyone else,” said (Y/N). “So if we work together, everything will be alright. And we’ll bring you back right from when you left so they aren’t alone at all.” She smiled. “And you can come back any time.” She gestured to the house where they could see their past selves beginning the same interaction they were still in now.

            “Yeah, but I’ll know I was gone,” said Mobius.

            “This will protect them,” said (Y/N). “All of existence is in danger. The only way you and them can have a life together is by helping us. Please. We wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t important.”

            Mobius was silent for a moment as everything sunk in. “What were you calling me?”

            “Mobius,” said Loki.

            “It’s a pretty cool name,” murmured Mobius. He turned to them. “I’ll do it. For my boys.”

l

            After (Y/N) and Loki got Mobius, they found talking to B-15 and Casey far easier. They had gotten one of the most important people in their life back, and that gave them the strength to continue.

            Unfortunately, even once Mobius, B-15, Casey, and Ouroboros were in Ouroboros’s workshop and chatting hesitantly, there was one person missing. It was the person (Y/N) and Loki were simultaneously the most anxious to find and the most scared to find.

            “Is this room safe?” said Mobius behind them as he looked around the warehouse. “I wonder, for the wormhole or the—”

            “Yeah,” said Ouroboros, walking by with his Tempad-prototype. “This whole area is totally abandoned. No one’s around for miles.”

            “So, is this everyone?” asked Mobius.

            “No,” said Loki somberly as Ouroboros put the Tempad down. “There’s one more.”

            “We can do this,” said (Y/N). “If we could convince the others, we can convince her.”

            Loki sighed. “But it’s Sylvie. You know how she can be. But she must see how grave the situation truly is…She’ll have to understand.”

            “Hey.” (Y/N) took his hand. “We’ll do this together, alright?”

Loki smiled and lifted her hand, kissing the back. “Together.”

            (Y/N) reached over and activated the Time Door. They stood and stepped towards it. They walked through decisively and emerged in the McDonald’s parking lot. In front of them, Sylvie was unlocking her truck to head home for the night.

            She paused as she heard the Time Door warble and turned around. (Y/N), Loki, and Sylvie stared at one another silently.

            “This is going to sound strange,” began Loki.

            “We know you don’t know who we are—” said (Y/N).

            “(Y/N),” said Sylvie. “Loki. Of course I know who you are.”

            (Y/N) and Loki furrowed their brows and exchanged looks. “What? You do?”

            “Why wouldn’t I?” questioned Sylvie.

            “Nobody else did. Their lives were reset,” said (Y/N).

            “Yeah, I know, I was there,” said Sylvie.

            “And you just left?” asked (Y/N).

            “Why would I stay when the TVA wasn’t going to make it? I wanted to get to back to my real life,” said Sylvie. Her eyes flicked to the side as she thought about what she had seen before she left. The bright light. Everyone’s fear. (Y/N) and Loki holding each other. Herself, alone.

            “But what about us—!” (Y/N) and Loki’s bodies distorted, and they nearly disappeared from the current branch.

            Sylvie stared in shock. She hadn’t realized that would start happening after she left or she would have stayed. (But she couldn’t. It wasn’t her place). But no matter what she thought, she wouldn’t abandon them. They were her friends, no matter how much she wouldn’t admit it.

            “Okay, get in the car,” she said. “I’m buying you some drinks.”

            “Okay,” said (Y/N), tired and not about to argue this time.

l

            (Y/N) happily drained her drink as Loki explained the entire situation to Sylvie.

            “However, Mobius’s life at the TVA was taken from him,” said Loki. “So was B-15’s, OB’s. Casey was a prisoner. They don’t remember who they are. Their lives matter. They matter.”

            “Yeah, and they’re finally back to their real lives,” said Sylvie. “That’s a good thing.”

            (Y/N) frowned and put down her glass. “But what about their freedom to choose the life they want? They deserve to have all of their memories so they can decide how they want to live. Some of them might want to stay, and they should get that choice. That’s the whole thing we fought for, isn’t it? Free will?”

            Sylvie averted her gaze without an answer.

            “Mobius always said the TVA was the only life he’d ever known, and he liked it. It gave him purpose,” said Loki.

            “It was never his choice to begin with, Loki,” said Sylvie.

            “No, but this life right now isn’t his choice either. And Mobius deserves a choice,” said (Y/N). “They all deserve one. To keep their current lives or to return to the TVA or to try something new.”

            “No, you would be ripping people from their lives, showing them something they cannot unsee,” said Sylvie. “What kind of choice is that?”

            “But they didn’t get a choice in this life, either, and we can’t give it to them without you,” said Loki.

            Sylvie just shrugged.

            (Y/N) furrowed her brow. “You don’t care?”

            Sylvie’s heart clenched at the disappointment in (Y/N)’s gaze.

            (Y/N) scoffed. “I guess you don’t. I guess this all worked out exactly the way you wanted it to, and you’re fine leaving everyone behind. I thought you wanted free will for everyone. Why are you the only one who gets to know the whole picture before deciding how to live?”

            “It’s selfish,” said Loki.

            “Of course I’m selfish!” said Sylvie. “I want a life. I want to live.” Her eyes flitted to (Y/N). I want to love. But (Y/N) had her Loki, and as much as Sylvie was glad one of them got (Y/N) and there was finally a timeline where they managed to find each other, her heart ached enormously because it wasn’t her. She was still alone. “What’s wrong with wanting something?” she said, swallowing her pain. “What do you two want?”

            “We want for the people we care about to have the lives they want,” said (Y/N), pure honesty as she stared at Sylvie.

            “We want our friends back,” said Loki. He took (Y/N)’s hand and swallowed. “We…We want everyone back. We don’t want to be alone.”

            “See? We’re all selfish,” said Sylvie, but her voice was subdued as her same desire was brought to the surface. “I know this is hard. But your friends are back where they belong. We’re all writing our own stories, now. Go write yours.” Sylvie looked between Loki and (Y/N). “Together.” She stood and walked away, leaving Loki and (Y/N) behind.

l

            (Y/N) and Loki stepped back into the warehouse silently. Everyone turned to stare at them. Ouroboros perked up, and Loki shook his head.

            “Don’t bother,” he said. “You should all go home.”

            “What? Why? What happened?” asked Mobius.

            (Y/N) and Loki didn’t answer and just sat down on a bench. It was over. They’d lost.

            “You showed up and told each of us that we’re the key to saving all of existence,” said Mobius. “And now, what? We’re not?”

            “We’re sorry,” murmured (Y/N). “Apparently, we got it wrong.” But (Y/N) still felt terrible. If everything was going to be alright, then…why did she still feel so bad? Why did her heart and her head ache? Why did everything feel wrong?”

            “You should go back to your sons,” said Loki, gazing at Mobius.

            “I know, but that’s just it. You said they were in danger,” said Mobius. “So now they’re just okay?!”

            (Y/N) winced guiltily.

            “You should all just…go back your lives. That’s where you belong,” said Loki.

            “What about the TVA?” asked Ouroboros.

            “The TVA,” murmured (Y/N). “Apparently, we’re fine without it.” But every bit of her was screaming that someone was wrong.

            “No, they aren’t.”

            (Y/N)’s head shot up to stare at Sylvie as she stepped through a Time Door. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears, and her shoulders sagged defeatedly.

            “Everything’s falling apart,” she said, swallowing a sob. “The branches are dying.” She looked at (Y/N). “You were right.”

            “What does that mean?” cried Mobius.

            “I don’t know,” said Sylvie. “I don’t know what’s happening, but there must be something we can do.”

            “We can go back,” said Loki. “We can stop the Loom from melting down. OB, we’re all here. The pens. We have all the pens! The mug, the coordinates.”

            “Ah. Okay.” Ouroboros straightened. “First, we need to read the collective temporal aura of everyone in this room on this Tempad.” He turned and reached for it. It wasn’t there. “Where did it go?”

            All eyes went to Casey since his life was one of a criminal.

            “I didn’t take it,” he said.

            “Listen, you can rob every bank on the planet when this is done,” said Loki. “We need that Tempad now.”

            “Great. But I still didn’t take it,” said Casey. And then his shoulder began dissolving, and everyone stared in horror.

            “No, no, no,” breathed (Y/N), tensing as Casey turned to spaghetti and flew off into nothingness.

            Ouroboros looked down at his hands and watched in horror as he dissolved as well. “It was a fiction problem…”

            (Y/N) jumped up beside Loki. They were losing everything, everyone. (Y/N) and Loki reached out and tried to catch the strands as B-15 and Mobius unraveled before their eyes.

            “Is this it?” cried B-15.

            “I need to see my boys!” shouted Mobius fearfully.

            “No!” they cried, but the cries and fear of their friends echoed in their mind.

            “There’s nowhere left to go,” said Sylvie, looking around herself desperately as the fabric of the world and time itself began to pull apart. She disappeared into the strands.

            “Sylvie!” cried (Y/N).

            “No. No!” shouted Loki as they tried to grab the strands of reality.

            “Loki, we can’t lose them, we can’t!” said (Y/N).

            Loki grabbed her hands. “I know, I know. We can’t-We can’t lose them!”

            “We can’t!” shouted (Y/N).

            And their bodies jerked, and they grunted as they landed on the couch of Ouroboros’s warehouse. They took a deep breath and looked around themselves. Sylvie was back again, and she stared at them sadly.

            “There’s nowhere left to go,” she murmured as the world pulled itself apart.

            (Y/N) and Loki looked at each other in shock. Their bodies jerked again, and they landed on the couch once more with everyone behind them and Sylvie stepping through the Time Door again.

            “No, they aren’t,” she said again. “Everything’s falling apart. The branches are dying.” She looked at (Y/N). “You were right.”

            “What does that mean?” asked Mobius again.

            “I don’t know,” said Sylvie. “I don’t know what’s happening, but there must be something we can do.”

            “We did it,” said (Y/N), looking at Loki.

            “We did it,” he repeated.

            “What?” said Sylvie in confusion.

            “We did it,” they said.

            “Did what?” asked Sylvie.

            (Y/N) looked back at Ouroboros. “We controlled it.”

            Ouroboros’s eyes widened. “You learned to control your time-slipping.”

            “Yes,” said Loki, rising beside (Y/N). “It’s now about when, where, or even why.”

            (Y/N) smiled and looked at all her friends. “It’s about who.” She gripped Loki’s hand tightly. They had the power to save their friends. And now they wouldn’t stop trying until they’d done it. “We can rewrite the story.”

Taglist:

@alexpangender

@technikerin23

@kikster606

@neenieweenie

@h-l-vlovesvintage

@chronicallybubbly

@oscarissac2099

#portal to my heart #x reader #loki fanfic #loki marvel #marvel loki #loki odinson #loki #loki odinson x reader #loki of asgard #loki laufesyon x reader #loki laufeyson #loki x reader #loki fic #loki series #loki season 2 #loki season two #loki s2 #loki sylvie #sylvie x reader #sylvie #sylvie laufeydottir #marvel x reader #marvel cinematic universe #marvel #mcu x reader #loki mcu #mcu #mcu loki

[fandomfaeofveryfewf4cks]

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52424179/chapters/132621133

Mobius stands under that tree for a long time, just watching the house he doesn't remember living in. He's having trouble processing what happened. When they all rebooted the TVA to be about keeping He Who Remains' variants from starting a war, he had something to do to distract him. But that can only work for so long. He needed a change. He needed somewhere quiet to figure out what he really wanted. Because now that he had a choice - a choice that Loki gave everything for him to have - there was no staying behind a desk doing a job anyone else could do. So he left.

He left and quickly realized he didn't have many places to go. He can't just figure out when he got taken from his life on the timeline and go back to that life. He doesn't remember it and as he watches 'Don' with those two boys, he realizes he wouldn't fit in that life anyway. He has been through too much and seen too much to just be able to settle for an ordinary life surrounded by people who wouldn't see him as much more than a stranger in the place of who they once knew. It wouldn't be fair to anyone involved.

But then, what does he do? Sylvie had no trouble finding a place for herself in a world she'd never been in before.

Wait... Sylvie!

Sylvie had been hopping from universe to universe with no limits to what she could do and she eventually found a life for herself and a place she could call home. Maybe Mobius could do the same thing. But that still begs the question: Where should he go? Where is the place that will feel "right" for him, or even just like something he could settle for?

Well, since they don't need to worry about timelines branching any more, there isn't any harm in looking around before making a decision, right?

Now, there's just one more question to ask here: "Where should I go first?"

. . . . .

After jet-skiing for the first time that he can remember, Mobius came to the realization that the ocean spray in his face, the thrill of hopping over a wave, the speed, the taste of salt, and the freedom that jet-skiing gives him...is a little underwhelming.

Like, don't get him wrong, it's fun. There's a rush to it that is so much better than sitting behind a desk as well as a meditative quality to it that, combined with the excitement, gives him a sort of euphoria, but... it feels like there's something missing. It's as though in all those magazines full of admittedly idyllic descriptions, and stories from people who genuinely love these water crafts, there must have been some sort of fine print he forgot to read with instructions that would help make the whole thing worth it.

Oh well. Some dreams just don't turn out like you'd expect them to. That's just a part of life. He'd always imagined he and Renslayer were going to be friends for the rest of time, 'protecting the sacred time line' like the greater good they all thought it was. We saw how that turned out. Don probably thought he and his wife were going to live a normal life and die of old age or diabetes or getting eaten by a shark like normal people. Instead, his wife is gone, and he gets abducted, mind-wiped, brainwashed, and forced into working for what he thought were three space lizards determining the story of the universe. "In hindsight, that is a pretty crazy thing to believe, huh?" Mobius thinks to himself. "Maybe Loki had a better point than I thought, even back then, before he had really started to change."

That was another thing Mobius never expected. Loki has always been known for not being easy to predict. When Mobius was assigned to study his life and question him, it was a little easier not to fall for the facades Loki used to keep it that way.

Loki could be as sneaky and intimidating and threatening as he wanted, but at the end of the day, he mostly just makes things up as he goes along. He's very impulsive, even though he tries to make you think he's always 1000 steps ahead. This is the person who fell through space to presumably never see his homeland again and to land who knows where, so that he could have a dramatic death in front of his father and brother. This is also the person who very easily fell in with the Grand Master's crowd on one of the most chaotic worlds there are. He was D. B. Cooper for fuck's sake, jumping out of a plane, flirting with mortals, and stealing money he doesn't need all as part of a bet he lost to his brother.

Loki switched sides easily depending on what he could get out of it, but you could never trust him to truly be on anyone's side but his own. He also was just a bit of an arrogant dick. At least, all this was what Mobius was led to expect with what he'd read of Loki's life. And he was right. His expectations were fairly accurate on those counts.

But Mobius has a troublesome habit of believing in everyone's potential to be a good person. He didn't allow himself to form any hopes yet, but he still considered it possibly for Loki to actually care about other people. He knew Loki was charming and knew how to read people, meaning he could understand them and maybe relate to them. One of the best ways to connect with someone is to learn more about them. Most of the time, you end up finding you have a lot in common with them. Mobius thinks Loki is the one who didn't expect anyone to give him a chance like that. In fact, he probably didn't even believe he was worth it.

It's kind of funny, really. Loki spent most of his life defying everyone's expectations of him and throwing the rules of their lives into chaos, succeeding by playing off how he expected others to react to the things he did.

When those rules, that he based his own life on, fell apart, and the people he found himself surrounded by seemed to know exactly what he would do, he surprised even himself, and changed for the better. That's probably why Mobius didn't fully see it coming what he was doing at the end until it was too late. Or maybe he just didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to believe that Loki would soon be gone forever.

As Mobius stares at the salad he got for himself from a little place on the pier, he remembers the one Loki destroyed with his somewhat unnecessary display of how apocalypses are supposed to affect the way events cause branches from timelines. It was so over the top, as Loki always is, but it was also just so silly. The way he just stared into Mobius' soul, shaking the salt and pepper shakers up and down and up and down. The triumphant smile after he poured Casey's drink over it, like a little kid showing off his amazing painting skills on the walls. It makes Mobius chuckle softly to think of it. He thinks of Loki's smile and how it gradually became more and more genuine the more they just talked with each other. And they talked quite a bit for two people in the middle of saving the multiverse, about nothing and everything and things you really should rethink telling the person who's job is to keep you locked up or the person who's favorite prank is to put literal snakes in people's food or stab them after dying in front of them. Mobius almost wishes he would stab him right now, just so he can be back.

Aaaand that's the sign that he's thinking of Loki too much. Time to pick a new place to go and try and figure out what the heck he wants to do with the rest of his life. Maybe he'll go to see the Roman Empire before it fell. See what all those warriors really liked to do in their free time. He takes his time finishing his salad before getting out the tempad and setting the destination. He looks at the empty salad bowl, just plain white and round and not very interesting at all. There's huge mounted fish and stunning artwork on the walls of this restaurant. You can hear the calming waves and the group of sea lions just outside. There is no reason his attention should be so solely given to this silly salad bowl. And yet his eyes stay on it, even as they tear up. It isn't until he wipes at them that he looks away and stands up.

He leaves some money on the table and opens a time door to walk through. As he does, he feels a breeze ruffle his hair, brushing it away from his eyes. "Strange," he thinks, "all the doors and windows are closed, there shouldn't be a breeze in here." He looks around at the nearly empty restaurant getting ready to say goodbye to the morning calm and welcome the lunch crowd in an hour or two. He feels a warmth on his side and looks over to the large window where the sun has shifted its light and heat to blanket Mobius almost comfortingly. As he looks over, his eyes catch on a flash of the window, ever so faintly tinted green. There was movement of something not quite there, but unmistakably there enough to be visible. Like something between a shadow and a reflection. It was hard to make out a shape at first, but as it got bigger - no - closer, mobius saw the shape of a person with horns on their head and, if they looked closely, green and gold vines twisting around them like magic. Mobius stepped closer and was sharply met with two very familiar eyes. He took a breath.

"Loki?"

. . . . .

Part 2

https://www.tumblr.com/fandomfaeofveryfewf4cks/735068803984228352/part-1?source=share

#lokius #loki series #loki x mobius #loki fanfic #fanfiction #part 1 #post season 2 episode 6 #I'm intending for this to be a part 1 of potentially many #but that doesn't mean I'll follow through. #Also #I don't know if there's anything I'm supposed to do here that I should know about? #Like tagging specific stuff? Putting in warnings for other stuff? #Mixing the blood of a virgin with seven drops of quill ink to pour into the sacrificial goblet #and give to the writing gods in exchange for a lack of writer's block in the coming days? #I dunno. #Either way #here's the thing my brain threw at me and bullied me into writing. #Hope you like it!

[lokiondisneyplus]

'Loki' takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"  

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.  

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."  

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.  

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.  

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

Credit: Charlie Gray for EW

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.  

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Owen Wilson as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in 'Loki.'| Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."

#Tom Hiddleston #Loki #Disney+ #interview

[peterrparrkerr]

So Mindbreak, I don't have a ton for plot wise but I just love the idea of Peter constantly being with Tony. Meetings? He's sitting on his lap with a tablet working on classes because as much as Tony loves his pretty boy he also doesn't want him stupid. Someone attacking and Superior takes to the field, Spidey is right there with instant kill active and taking everything down with extreme prejudice. Bed, shower, etc, it doesn't matter. Peter is in the room and the longer they're together the less he cares about boundaries.

Tony also begins grooming him to be his queen. Kisses and cuddles as reassurance that he's there. Then lingering touches that go places they shouldn't. Aunt May would have stopped him but Tony took care of that when he broke Peter. Told him she died in the fight, just one more reason for Peter to cling even tighter to Tony. It gradually continues, Tony pushing boundaries and if Peter resists because he went too fast, Tony kindly says it's ok he'll give Peter room, and he understands if he doesn't want to be as close. This makes Peter panic and give in, though Tony is careful not to manipulate him like that too much.

One day Peter is cockwarming Tony during a meeting while finishing a project for one of his classes when someone makes a lewd comment and he just freezes. Everything had always been so gradual and even now he's fully dressed and so is Tony, so they're discreet, and it's a connection so Peter's not anxious but now he's spiraling and Tony just kills the person then and there for distressing his Queen, and Peter's just struggling so Tony sends everyone away and just smothers him in the closest to love and affection that SIM Tony can give.

Maybe one day Peter is doubting and says something to Tony. That maybe they weren't good for each other and too dependent. Tony says they should sleep on it and Peter dreams over and over of losing Tony, of losing everyone and everything. The next morning he wakes Tony, tears in his eyes, saying he didn't mean it, it was dumb, he loves him, don't leave again. And Tony promises again to never leave so long as Peter stays.

Many years later, when Peter is finally ready to step up properly, he sits next to Tony at a function or something and says this was your plan all along wasn't it? You were never the Tony I lost. And Tony's like no I wasn't, I'm superior.

And Peter just lays a kiss on his hand before settling next to him with his head held high, because the love he feels is for this Tony. And he will always mourn the Tony he lost but Peter lives for the future not in the past.

This fic! @snowstark

Listen. The idea of Peter being so dependent on this Tony after being trapped in the TVA loop gets me so emo 😭

Definitely at first I think the trauma of watching his Tony die so many times makes it hard for him to really understand that the Tony he's with now isn't his.

And obviously Tony's gonna take this slow. He doesn't want to ruin the progress, so he works at an almost glacial pace, and Peter doesn't even realize until like you said, he's being a cock warmer and someone says something and it kind of opens Peters eyes like holy shit this is deeper than I thought but Tony knows exactly what to do to quell his anxieties.

Plz I love the idea of years down the line, Peter realizes, but he's so far gone on this Tony that he just doesn't care. He loves Superior so much, and the alternative is going to a world where Tony doesn't exist. It's a no brainer that he'd stay with Superior.

#marvel #peter parker #tony stark #ironman #sim!tony #superior ironman #basil talks #asks #starker

[wolvesandpetals]

Loki x Sylvie Post-Finale Fanfiction (Angst, Rated Teen) Part 2 of 2

Part 1 is here:

She never knew it would hurt this much when the person she loves is right in front of her, but she can't reach out and touch him; when she is still her, he is still him, but everything else has changed, like an invisible lever in an old theatre changing the scenery in the background, bringing them both to the part of the play where they are hopelessly lost.

[[MORE]]

All it took was one single moment, one single decision, and everything feels irrevocably broken now. It makes her contemplate on the true nature of relationships, how fragile they are, and how easy it is to shatter them- and her.

The smoke is slowly clearing, and all that seems to be left is a man who is doing his best to keep his distance from her, physically and emotionally.

She can tell from the way he stands with his arms crossed, or his fists clenced when his hands are by his side, that he really doesn't want to hold her hand. How can something so simple as the touch of his fingers be so vital to her existence that it feels like something has been ripped out from inside her?

She wants to reach out and touch him, but she is scared that if he pulls away outright, any hope of reconciliation that she still has left will shatter into pieces.

And she really needs this hope. It's the only thing she still has left. It's the only thing that keeps her going.

---

He looks like a man with a mission.

They spent quite a long time together, running from the TVA, running towards the citadel at the end of time, hoping to achieve their goal of bringing down the one behind the curtains.

But that was her mission, and he was there for her. She was the one behind the wheels, he was the one keeping the sails afloat.

Now it's different. Now he has a defined goal, a glorious purpose.

She's seeing him in a whole new light now, and not just because he has switched to Asgardian leather and metal armors.

As far as she is concerned, she is better off doing it all alone. One woman army, nobody to get in her way, nobody to screw up her plans. Nobody to blame her if it all goes to shit.

Or so it was, until two months ago, when Mobius decided to enlist her help in fixing the multiversal madness.

She has never really worked with people before, and it's weird, to say the least. She never considered herself a team player, but she is finding herself hating the idea less and less lately.

And she swears it has nothing to do with him. Not the fact that they are working together, and seeing his face first thing in the morning brings her a sense of calm that she quite can't explain. Or the fact that their rooms are next to each other and it makes her feel secure enough to finally get some rest at nights. Or that this whole arrangement has kept them on talking terms, when they had gone their own separate ways otherwise.

Nothing to do with that at all.

---

Humans are stupid, and the biggest evidence of this is how they decided that two extremely powerful Gods skilled at magic, enchantment, and defeating an evil extra dimensional cloud that swallows everything it touches, should be delegated to the role of research. "You're clever. You're good at reading people. You can put yourselves in the shoes of the bad guys, no offense", they said, but really, what they meant was, "We can't trust you out in the field much." She knows it, he knows it. She just doesn't know why he's complying.

That's how they find themselves researching every single day.

She likes to think he's not the only reason why she's studying in the library instead of in the comfort of her room, but that'd be a lie.

At first, he chooses to sit at a separate table. But she keeps going over to his to "get his opinion" on something in the file she's reading, and finally, he gives in. Their current arrangement consists of him sitting in the chair in front of her, to the left, prim and proper, while she hoists her feet up on the table.

He falls asleep on the desk one night, face smacked against a file, the tiniest bit of drool forming at the corner of his mouth. It would be a hilarious sight, if her heart wasn't feeling what she can only describe as longing.

They should probably talk about it, like mature adults, but neither of them know how to do that.

All she can do right now is gather the courage to run her fingers through his hair. The touch is hesitant at first, as if one wrong move would make him wake up and push her back to square one. Slowly, she relaxes, letting her fingers dance on his scalp.

He stirs in his sleep. "Please Sif. I'm sorry. Don't cut off my glorious locks, please."

Now this is a story she must hear when things are better.

If things are better.

---

Doctor Strange joins them very briefly, very rarely, but the tension between him and Loki is hard to miss. It's worse than the current situation with her, and that's saying something.

"You don't really like Stephen, do you?"

Something inside him seems to shift, but he masks it behind a non-chalant look immediately and just arches an eyebrow at her. "He's Stephen now, is he?"

"Well, that is his name." She shrugs. "What do you call him?"

"Strange", he spits the word out with an amount of irritation that indicates there definitely is a story there. "That is his name", he mimics.

She can't help the smirk that spreads across her lips. "What did he do to you?"

"Nothing", he lies, ignoring the horrifying flashbacks of thirty minutes of endless falling. Not a single soul must ever know a mere human got the best of him. "What can he do to me? I'm a God among those mortals. He just irks me because he is so pompous, and arrogant, and he ceaselessly uses magic to toy with others."

She pretends to think deeply. "Now where have I seen that before?"

He scoffs. "You mock me, but I am nothing like him. For one, I am not rude."

"He seems fine to me", she declares decisively.

It's the first time in months that he gives her a cheeky grin. "That's because you're rude too."

---

They are still just containing the threats to their world, instead of finding a way to fortify the barriers between worlds and stop the threats from coming.

"Shouldn't we have a plan to seal off the other worlds from ours?" She asks him one day.

"They are working on it." He tells her, and then with a look of worry, adds, "I hope."

There are debates on what to do at the Avengers tower and at the TVA. Nobody seems to agree on what the best course of action is, but everyone seems to be following the general instructions of Doctor Strange.

During one such meeting, a Minuteman makes the mistake of voicing out loud how she wondered if things would be better if they were running according to their old boss's plans.

Sylvie feels the guilt wash over her once more.

"No", Loki tells them all firmly. The determination in his voice takes her completely by surprise. "Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition’s blurred." She catches him steal a glance at her direction. "We couldn't have left a dictator in charge just because it's convenient. Listen, I'm the bad guy. I've done horrible, unspeakable things. I thought humans needed to be ruled. I wanted to rule. But even I know that it's not right to take away a person's life completely. These are innocent people. You are innocent people. You have families back home, parents, children", a pause and a softening of his features, "-love. A whole past, a whole future. That man had no right to take it away from you."

His powers of persuasion are foreign to her, and it's mesmerizing to watch. Her enchantments cannot hold a candle to how he is able to just talk people into doing what he wants, thinking what he thinks, seeing what he sees.

"He who remains had a plan. One, singular plan, from one, singular man." There is absolute conviction in his voice. "It's not the only way. We'll find another way. A better way."

She has never known what it is like to have someone see you for who you are- broken and flawed, and defend you- even your well-intentioned actions that yielded different results than what you expected and hurt them in the process. She suspects it has been the same for him, a lifetime of not having anyone have his back.

The warm feeling inside her is brand new. What is the name of this? Comfort? Relief?

Happiness?

---

This will be their first time out in the field in a long time, and she feels a little sick to the stomach.

He notices. "Are you alright?"

The concern in his voice tugs at her heartstrings. She nods. She has faced way worse, she shouldn't be so nervous about this, but she is. "I've never done this before."

"We can always just kill him and blame it on the Chitauris", he suggests with a serious face.

"I heard that", Peter yells from the other room, where he is doing whatever it is that teenagers do to prepare for battle.

She shakes her head in disbelief. "I can't believe we're babysitting."

"I've done this before", he assures her, and it surprises her to picture him being entrusted with such a serious task. "The trick is to conjure up illusions that keep them distracted enough to not cry."

She laughs. "You're thinking of infants. This one is a little older."

"I'm over a thousand years old, Sylvie. They're all infants to me."

Peter joins them, mask covering his face so that he doesn't reveal his identity. "So what do I call you? Loki and Loki? That's confusing. How about Loki and Lady Loki? Or is that offensive? I'm not suggesting women are inferior, because they're absolutely not..."

"Does he come with an off switch?" She whispers in horror as Peter rambles on.

Loki grins. With one wave of his hand and a flash of green, Peter's own webbing shoots out and seals his mouth shut.

---

Things are fine but not fine at the same time. He's right there beside her, but not there at all. They have their banters, they have their stolen glances, but they haven't had a meaningful conversation since that first day when she got back. She's been putting it off for a long time, but she knows they really do need to have the talk.

She corners him in his room one evening while he's tinkering with a temporal collar. She takes a seat in the chair next to his bed and rests her hand on the table, leaning her head against her palm, before switching position and crossing her arms and legs. Everything about her posture screams uneasiness. If he notices- he probably does- he doesn't say anything.

"You defended me that day."

He briefly looks up from the task at hand and gives her a soft smile. "Of course."

She blinks. "I don't understand." Her hands involuntary rise up to rub her temples. "If you can justify my actions to them, then how can you still be mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you", he says without missing a beat.

"Rubbish", her words come out angrier than she intended. This frustration is the result of the months of status quo they have had. She has to know now, one way or the other. "You're distant. You're guarded", she accuses. Then her voice breaks, as she feels a part of her break all over again with her next words. "You don't hold my hand. Why? Tell me."

He abandons the collar and focuses his full attention on her. Staring straight into her eyes, he answers her. "You know why."

"I wouldn't be asking if I did. Look, if it's because I chose the mission over you-"

"-Of course it's not that." He says decisively. Then a sad smile clouds his face. It's the same look he had when she accused him of conning her to gain the throne. "Do you think I'm the type of man who would want a woman to abandon her life-long ambitions just because she has met someone?"

She knows he isn't. But it still doesn't answer why he is so cross with her. "What is it then?"

He pauses for a moment, trying to decide whether he wants to bare his soul out to her once more or not. There are two ways he can go from here- choose to not let her in again and save himself from the hurt, or trust her again and open himself up to potential pain.

Who is he kidding? Pushing her away- keeping her away- doesn't hurt any less.

There were a thousand things that had to go wrong to bring two Lokis from two universes together. A connection like that, it doesn't just happen.

And it doesn't just go away. The pain is constant, it's a part of him, pounding like a second heart every second he has to stop himself from reaching out for her hand.

This has to come to an end.

He takes in a deep breath, bracing himself. "You didn't have to send me away, Sylvie. I wanted to stop you from making the same mistakes I did. But in the end, I didn't care what you chose. I just wanted us to do it together."

She never even imagined this could be the reason for his hurt. All these months spent thinking he hates her for her choices, and now it turns out he is hurt simply because she chose to do it alone? "I'm sorry." She says sincerely. "I just wanted you to be safe."

"And I just wanted to be there with you till the end." He confesses. His eyes shimmer with the emotions he has kept bottled in for so long. "You go, I go."

She doesn't know what to say to that. She has never been good at articulating her feelings. Tears stream down her cheeks at the realisation that even after everything, he is still there for her.

She didn't cry even back at Lamentis when they thought they were going to die. She doesn't let anyone see her cry when she is sad or scared. That's all she has known her whole life. She's used to it by now.

This is new. These are tears of relief. Comfort.

Happiness.

Tentatively, she crosses over to the bed and sits by his side.

It's quiet for a few minutes. But unlike the months of tension so thick she could cut it into splices with her daggers, this is comfortable silence. The kind they had before it all went wrong.

"Did you even miss me?" He whispers.

"What kind of silly question is that? Of course I did." Her shaking hands grab his, and oh how she missed this.

He intertwines their fingers. His eyes draw closed. Bliss. That's the only word for this feeling.

He opens his eyes again and studies her. She's staring back at him, teary-eyed, but with a hopeful smile. "Really? Because you have a really unique way of showing it. You didn't even come looking for me."

"I didn't know how to face you", she tells him honestly. No tricks, no enchantment, no treachery. Not with him. "I didn't know if you even wanted to see me." Her voice grows quieter, dropping to a timbre that perfectly encapsulates her deepest fear. "I thought you hated me."

"Hate you?" He is shocked that she thinks that is even possible, specially after seeing him these last few months. "Sylvie, I'm working with the Avengers. The Avengers. Do you know how much I hate them? They are my nemesis. They're self-righteous, condescending, and so completely dull. Every second with them makes me want to rip their hearts out. Why do you think I'm here with them?"

She thinks she knows. But she needs to hear it anyway.

"It's because of you." He lays it all out on the table. All cards on deck, win or lose. "You've been running away. I have been the one who has been here, trying to hold down the fort, working to fix everything. Because that is what one does when one loves-"

Shit. The word slips out before he realises it.

Their eyes go wide in unison.

"Sylvie, I-"

"-Don't you dare take it back now." She warns him. "I-" She doesn't know how to say it either. They make such a great pair, both equally daft at saying how they feel, like they are teenagers, not Gods who have lived for centuries. "I've been running because I didn't think I could bear the burden of knowing I found you and then I lost you. I don't want to lose you. Not now, not ever."

He kisses the back of her hand, before letting it go. He cups her face, gently caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. "I don't want to lose you either."

She leans in closer, until their foreheads touch. She can feel his breath on her face, warm and soft. That is exactly how she feels inside. "You won't", she promises. "You go, I go."

---

(Quote on Lesser Evil from The Witcher. Thanks for reading!!)

#fanfiction #fanfic #loki #loki disney+ #loki x sylvie #sylki #sylvie laufeydottir #sylvie x loki #pro sylki

[avengerscompound]

Small Gods: Lost Objects - 5

Lost Objects:  A Thor Fanfic

Lost Objects Masterlist | More Small Gods PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Thor x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count:  1722

Warnings: Mentions of sex, oh umm... hey there’s a little bit of talk about things in the trailers for the loki series some people who don’t know anything about the comics might not have picked up.  Should have warned on the series for that.  I wouldn’t personally call them spoilers, because ... i haven’t seen the series to spoil it, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like to know anything...

Synopsis: Thor has lost a lot in a very short period of time and he’s worried about losing himself too.  He goes to the one person who understands loss.

Chapter 5

Barnaby the fat ginger cat sat down and began grooming himself as the black one seemed to stare at you and Thor.  In what really was only a few seconds, Thor seemed to have a whole thought journey.  It started with how close the green of that cat’s eyes was to Loki’s and ended with the conclusion that the cat must be Loki.  The journey took him through a lot of stops, including Loki’s ability to shapeshift, the fact he had faked his death twice in the past, and the fact you could draw lost things to you, but once he landed on it, his eyes went wide.

The cat mimicked Thor’s expression as the man jumped to his feet.  “Loki!”  Thor shouted, sending the black cat running.  Barnaby seemed to watch him go with a look of contempt like he was above such things.  “Loki!”  Thor shouted again, chasing after him.

“Thor?”  You asked, following on, though with much less urgency than Thor.  “It won’t be Loki.”

“It has to be,” Thor said, looking around.  The cat had vanished, but two rows over there was a bang and the smell of sulfur followed by a cat yowling.  Thor charged in the direction of the sound and when he came around the corner and came to a screeching halt as he reached his brother who was lying up against a partially knocked over shelf, his legs in the air, rubbing his head as various pieces of cutlery, jewelry and stuffed animals clattered down around him.

He looked up at Thor with an expression of resignation.  “Hello, brother.”

“Loki!”  Thor roared, pulling his brother to his feet and drawing him into a tight embrace.  “I knew you must not be dead.  You are always the trickster.”

Loki did not hug back but did not resist the affection either.  Just allowing it to happen.  “What are you talking about?”  He asked, dryly.

You appeared behind both the men and looked between them blinking.  “What?  How?  How are you here?”

“That is a very good question,” Loki said, pulling back from Thor.  “As is, why I can’t seem to leave.”

“Come,” you said, gesturing to both men.  “I think this is a tea conversation.”

“Yes,” Thor said, clapping Loki on the shoulder.  He hadn’t felt so light and genuinely happy for years.  He had resigned himself to be the last of Odin’s lineage and yet here was his brother, returned to him again.  “Come.  Let us celebrate!”

Loki allowed himself to be dragged down to your kitchen, where you began to potter around.  You brewed tea and coffee and tried to find some kind of sweet to be served with it.  Eventually finding a packet of slightly stale cookies behind a teapot with a mismatched lid.

“Tell us, how did you escape Thanos?  And how is it you are here?”  Thor asked as you moved around the kitchen.

Loki picked up one of the cookies and sniffed it before taking a hesitant bite.  When he appeared to deem it satisfactory he shoved the whole thing into his mouth and grabbed a handful of others.  It was very un-Loki-like and reminded Thor more of his old friend Volstagg than his much more dignified brother.  “How do you even know of Thanos?” Loki said through a mouthful of cookies.  “Besides, I don’t know what he has to do with anything.  After I escaped from Midgard with the tesseract, I used it to travel around.  I worked out a way to move through time, which was fun…”

“Wait?  What?”  Thor asked.  “When you were on Midgard with the tesseract?  The last I saw you we were in space.  And how did you get the tesseract after Thanos destroyed it?”

“You are speaking nonsense,” Loki snarked.  “Thanos never obtained the tesseract, and he certainly didn’t break it.  The Time Variance Authority confiscated it.”

You put a sandwich down in front of Loki, and Thor wasn’t sure if you’d made it or just found it like that. It was on a large crusty roll, filled with various meats and salad, and wrapped in thin white paper.   Loki picked it up and sniffed it before taking a large bite.

“Why don’t you tell us when you last saw Thor and what has happened to you since,” you said, taking a seat at the table.

Loki rolled his eyes.  “After the battle that I brought to Midgard, you shackled me and were going to let the Midgardians lock me up.  There was some kerfuffle in Stark’s building and the tesseract fell from its case.  I took it and used it to leave.  I went to some friends who removed the restraints you put on me and I was traveling around, entertaining myself.  Then the TVA took offense and locked me up, confiscating the Tesseract.  I was just breaking out to go get it when suddenly I was here and you and this lesser god were fornicating.”

Loki spat the words lesser god the same way he used the word mortal or Midgardian. Like even the words themselves were beneath him.  Thor considered addressing it, but he was more distracted by the tale Loki had just spun.  It didn’t make sense and he was having trouble getting his head around it.  “You were taken back to Asgard and locked up.  Mother was killed when there was a prison breakout,” he said.

Loki started at Thor mid-bite and slowly lowered the sandwich to the table.  “Mother was killed?”

“You know this!”  Thor roared, slamming his hands on the table.  “You were there!  Why are you saying these things?”

“I know not of what you speak, brother,” Loki said.  “When I last saw mother she was alive and well.  Certainly, I have not returned home since I fell from the Rainbow Bridge, but if she passed…”

Thor looked at you like you might have some answers to what was happening right now.  You took a sip of your tea and seemed to think.  “The time variance authority exists outside of time, correct?  I don’t know much about them, but it is generally accepted that they are not of this universe exactly?”

“That’s what they say,” Loki said in a bored voice.

“And when you were escaping, had they realized you were gone?  Were they looking for you?”  You asked.

“Yes,” Loki said.  “Which was why I was in the form of a cat.  I was moving through the vents.”

You nodded and looked at Thor.  “This is just a hypothesis, because… this isn’t how my powers work, Thor, but-” you glanced at Loki and shook your head.  “I don’t think this is your Loki.  At least… not the one you knew more recently.  After the battle there was a divergence, this Loki got away and yours did not.  And just now - I think there is power in you worshipping me, Thor.  What I am… Loki said it himself, I’m small-time.  People don’t actually worship me, they pray and they beg the universe for the return of their missing keys or cell phones.  It’s never to me directly, and it’s never very hard.  Yet here you are, one of the Norse gods, and you were on your knees for me.”

Loki scoffed and took a long drink of his tea.  Thor ignored him.  “You think you brought him here?”

“Yes,” you said.  “I can’t be sure.  I’ve never brought a person here before.  Small pets are the limit of the living creatures with free will.  But maybe if Loki was in cat form, and maybe if they were wishing for him back, while we were… doing what we were doing… it was enough to bring him here.”

“Well, I’d like to go, if it is all the same to you,” Loki said, sounding bored.

“Brother, I haven’t seen you for a long time.  I saw the life choked from you.  Surely you can stay for a little while.  We have much to catch up on,” Thor said.

“The last time I saw you, you had planned to lock me up for eternity,” Loki said.  “What has changed?”

Thor frowned and shook his head.  This was not the Loki he had worked with to save Jane and stop the dark elves, nor the Loki who had helped him escape Sakaar and stop Ragnarok.  This was the angry Loki who had attacked a city at the behest of a titan and whose pain of finding his father had lied to him about his past for over a millennium was fresh and raw.  “You are my brother.”

“And what else?”  Loki asked.

“And I have lost everyone,” Thor said.  “Mother and father are dead.  Jane left me.  Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, Heimdall, even Stark and Rogers.  They are all gone.  Loki, Asgard is gone.”

“And that is why I find you hiding with this lesser god?”  Loki scoffed.  “Why would I want to stay in such a world anyway brother?  Where I am from, everyone is alive and well - as far as I know.”

Thor lowered his eyes.  “Why must you be so cruel?”

Loki started laughing and patted Thor’s shoulder.  “Oh brother, I’m sorry.  You are in a bad way, aren’t you?”

“It might be a moot point,” you said with a shrug.  “You’re mine now Loki.  I can return you to the ones looking for you, and perhaps you could leave with Thor because he was also looking for you, but otherwise, you are stuck with me.  That’s why you didn’t go anywhere when you tried to teleport out.  Would you like me to return you to the people of the TVA?”

“I obviously do not,” Loki deadpanned.

“Then you might as well make yourself comfortable,” you said, pouring him more tea.  “You clearly haven’t eaten properly for a long time.  Why not rest and recharge and we can work out what to do?”

“Fabulous,” Loki snarked.  “Just what I’ve always wanted - to be stuck with some hoarder deity.”

“Cheer up brother, it isn’t so bad here,” Thor said, grinning and clapping Loki on his back.  He had his brother back, even if it wasn’t quite the Loki he knew, it was still one he was familiar with.  Soon he’d have Mjolnir too.  Coming to see you had been the best decision he’d made in a long time.

// NEXT

#thor #thor odinson #thor x reader #reader insert #thor fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #small gods #lost objects

[gdcee]

Road to Nowhere

Pairing: Loki/Sigyn - mild, might have to squint to see it.

Summary: Loki and Sigyn talk while she escorts him to Kid Loki's Kingdom.

Warnings: Panic attack.

=================

"You know I'm only going to keep pestering you until I have the answer."

"I wish you luck in your endeavour," Sigyn returned coolly, stepping lightly as she began to climb the massive pile of garbage blocking their path. "Nevertheless, my lips remain sealed."

Loki huffed, a slight quirk at the corner of his lips which was not quite a smirk. He set off after her, determined to be the first to the summit of Rubbish Peak.

He had to admit he was quite intrigued by that tantalising crumb of information this Sigyn (so very like and yet not quite like his own) had dangled before him. Of course he was curious about the identity of the lucky bastard who had won her fidelity.

All he had was a preferred pronoun. That at least eliminated half of his (admittedly rather short to begin with) list of possible lucky bastards.

After he had gone through the list (which did not take long because as stated earlier, it was really quite short), he started throwing out random names to see if any of them got a reaction.

No such luck.

His attempts to tease and fluster the information out of her had been just as ineffective.

Her reaction to his puppy dog eyes routine had been...perplexing. He'd gotten one soft, achingly tender smile before a heavy melancholy had descended upon her. Like the dark shadow of a mourning veil stealing the brightness from her eyes and the colour from her cheeks.

She had not reprimanded him, but he made a note not to pull that trick again anyway. Besides the practical reasons for keeping her goodwill (survival, information, mental stimulation), the simple fact was that she was Sigyn.

He didn't want to be the cause of her unhappiness. Not anymore.

Being a harmless annoyance and pest was still perfectly acceptable though.

He stood atop the great mound of refuse, his hands and face smeared with oil and other liquids of questionable origin, grinning triumphantly down at Sigyn. He vanished the grime he'd accumulated before gallantly holding out his hand to her.

Sigyn huffed a soft little laugh, the barest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Without any hesitation, she reached out and allowed him to pull her up.

Loki glanced down to where they had started and noted that it was a long drop. Not nearly enough to kill an Asgardian or a Frost Giant, but enough to hurt.

Trust.

It made him feel as giddy as the first time he'd tasted the enchanted, heady liquid gold that was the mead brewed from honey harvested from the hives of the talking bees that resided near Iðunn's famous apple orchards.

"Ahem."

Loki realised with no small degree of embarrassment that he was still holding Sigyn's hand. He hurriedly worked a spell to remove the dirt under her fingernails and let go. Then to cover up his embarrassment, he resumed pestering.

"I don't understand why the identity of your beau necessitates such secrecy," he sighed with the lightest touch of a pleading whine, "Do you think I would object to your taste? He can't possibly be worse than Theoric."

"I think my life choices are none of your business."

"Exactly! You should forget about my opinion. Shout his name to the world and damn the naysayers and killjoys."

"I would but sadly, Alioth has a sense of hearing."

With that, she picked up a flat sheet of metal lying loose and proceeded to slide down Rubbish Peak on the improvised board. Despite being only at most a quarter Ljósálfar on her mother's side, she moved with their characteristic effortless grace.

Loki peered down, did a couple of quick mental calculations and snapped his fingers. He disappeared from the summit with a flare of green light and reappeared at the bottom no more than a second later in similar fashion.

"Good to see your teleport still works," Sigyn tossed her wind-mussed hair out of her face, "Why didn't you use it earlier to get to the top?"

"Too much debris and no decent eyeline. I didn't want to risk getting stuck under a foot of garbage." He frowned, pondering. "Still works?"

"Not a reference to you personally," she moved forward without looking behind to see if he followed, "Just something I noticed about some of the other Lokis around here."

"Power loss? Nothing to do with you and that coven of other Sigyns whose domain I and the other Lokis are forbidden from entering, I presume?"

"No, I've seen it even in Lokis on their first trepass - if something is limiting their power it's not us. In any case, we would never do anything to permanently disable a Loki's magic. There's just some things you don't do to a fellow mage, you know?"

"You just rough them up a little and kick them off the property?"

"More or less. Except for the kid and alligator."

"Do I want to know how one instance of me ended up as a semi-aquatic Midgardian reptile?"

"You can ask him yourself when we get to the Kid's Kingdom," she paused for a moment, as if she'd just remembered something, "Or maybe not, I think only the old man you knows how to talk to him."

Loki blinked.

"There's an old me?" He asked, disbelieving, "As in a wizened, wrinkled, looks like your grandmother me?"

"Eh, not quite as old as Grandma Hretha. Maybe about 4,000? 5,000?" She shrugged, "Either way, your vanity may rest easy; you look perfectly fine as an old man."

"Thank you for that milquetoast endorsement of my future self's good looks," Loki said dryly, "I was more perturbed about...something else."

Curiouser and curiouser.

How had the aged variant escaped their destined end? How had he managed to grow old before the TVA arrived to arrest him for cheating his final death?

He thought about the tape featuring all the TVA approved highlights of his life.

He thought about that other Loki, the Loki who had played out the role assigned to him and how very young (the same face as his own) and terrified (the same fear as his own) he had looked with the Mad Titan's monstrous hand around his throat.

Loki swallowed thickly and pulled at the collar of his TVA issued office shirt which suddenly seemed far too tight. The tie impeded his work and as he struggled to loosen it he could feel his terror rising up to choke him.

there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you

inevitable

you think you know pain?

Inevitable

HE WILL MAKE YOU LONG FOR SOMETHING AS SWEET AS PAIN

He felt his legs buckle and his knees hit the ground as if it were happening to someone else.

"Loki!" Sigyn's voice was close but he heard it as if a great distance separated them, "Loki, breathe."

"What do you think I'm doing?" He wheezed.

"I am going to remove the tie and unfasten your collar," Sigyn continued as if she had not even noticed his rudeness, "I will need to touch you to do this. Alright?"

Needing help for such a pitifully simple task was galling. But he didn't want Sigyn to leave him. Loki managed a shaky nod. He let her ease his trembling, sweaty hands from his shirt collar. With quick, brisk movements she pulled the tie loose and tossed it somewhere to join the rest of the garbage.

"Follow my breathing now." Her voice was clearer to him now, more present. She was kneeling next to him, so close and warm and oh, her hair did still smell like apple blossoms. He watched the regular rise and fall of her chest and tried to match it. "That's it. Very good. Nice and slow."

Her fingers were at his throat for a mercifully short time. Just long enough to pop the top button loose and push the starched fabric away from his neck.

"Stay with me. You're doing very well. Breathe with me. In. And out. In. And out."

Without really thinking he grabbed her hand and pressed her palm against the centre of his chest. Perhaps he was possessed by some irrational notion that the pressure against his breastbone could keep his thundering heart from beating right out of his chest.

She didn't try to pull away. Her hand was warm, even through the shirt fabric. She moved a little, and one of her dainty fingers slipped into the open gap of his unbuttoned collar and brushed against the dip between his clavicles. His breath caught in his throat for a moment before Sigyn's gentle prompting had him matching her rhythm once more.

"Feel better?" She asked after what seemed an eternity.

"Yes," he breathed, "Yes, much." His chest still felt a little tight but the worst of that dreadful episode was over.

"Good." She lifted her hand from his chest and patted his shoulder firmly - a gesture that he had seen Týr bestow upon struggling Einherjar recruits after they'd passed the final leg of their training. "You did very well."

He didn't feel like he'd done anything worth praising. He'd collapsed like a pack of cards. This wasn't the first time he'd experienced terror but every time before now he had been able to push past it - stamp it down through sheer force of will and that primitive, animal part of his brain that knew that danger was never far away.

Why had he folded now? Now - when he was probably the most at ease he'd been in ages (months? Years? How long had it been since New York?) and the threat of Thanos was no longer an issue-

...a terrible thought suddenly occurred to him.

"Just out of curiosity," Loki tried to sound nonchalant, "Have you ever come across a fellow by the name of Thanos here?"

"Thanos?" Sigyn's brows drew together in a frankly rather adorable expression of pure befuddlement.

Ah. Well, at least he could place whatever nexus event had led to her pruning as occurring before Ragnarok and Thanos's massacre of half the Asgardian survivors.

"Big purple fellow," he explained, "Quite ugly, enormous chin, has rather disturbing ideas about resource management."

"Uh, no, I can't say that I've ever met anyone like that here."

"You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

She quirked an eyebrow. "I can swear on my magic if that would reassure you."

Sigyn had always been very leery about oaths, especially ones bound with magic. Most mages worth their salt were.

And yet...he couldn't really explain why, but he'd always felt like her issues with them were less about best practices and more about some personal grievance.

That she would offer him such a thing...

Loki felt completely undeserving.

"No," he said hurriedly, "No, no, it's fine. I...I trust you."

Sigyn smiled. It was the first real smile he'd seen so far and it was like watching the sun come out from behind a cloud. He didn't know if it would last - if that melancholy from before would snatch away the sweetness of this moment.

So Loki ruined the moment before it could be stolen from him.

"...even though you refuse to tell me about your paramour."

Sigyn scoffed, all exasperation but it was better than seeing her sad.

"You are insufferable."

"Thank you, I do try."

She snorted and shook her head. "Alright, come on, you goose," she helped him up, and even though his legs were slightly shaky, he stood and did not fall. "Our first rest stop is about 20 feet...thereaboutish-" she waved vaguely in the direction of a mostly empty grassy knoll upon which a gaggle of the oddest creatures scurried. They resembled iridescent headless chickens with little purple spheres hovering over their severed necks.

"I still think we should have taken the car."

"Ugh," Sigyn wrinkled her nose, "Cahrs. Nasty, noisy, smelly things. I swear, Midgard really went downhill after those monstrosities were invented. "

#loki #sigyn #mcu #logyn

[chipper9906]

Maybe

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR LOKI SEASON 01 EPISODE 05: ‘JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY’ AND SEASON 01 EPISODE 04: ‘THE NEXUS EVENT’

Pairings: Loki/Sylvie

Rating: General Audiences

Word Count: 4,124 

Status: One Shot - Complete

Chapter Preview:

He had meant for it to come out more as a question, an offering. A possibility for the both of them. But what it really sounded like was a… well; a sincere, hope-filled attempt to keep hold of… this. Whatever this was, he knew he wanted it. However things went, he knew-

He wanted Sylvie in his life.

His heart was racing in his chest, pounding almost as hard as it does in the midst of battle. In the unlikely event he’s a free man after all of this over, he’ll have to go and find his brother - if he’ll even talk to him, that is - and apologize for the harsh insult he used; for berating his older brother over his affection for that Earth woman.

He understood now.

Link To Fic

OR

Click Below To Keep Reading

Author Note: 

Oh Boy, here I go again, getting sucked into yet another ship. Basically, this is a dive into Loki's thoughts during the blanket scene in Episode 5 "Journey Into Mystery" because man, I sure do love getting into a character's head and breaking down their thought process.

P.S. No joke, I think I re-watched the blanket scene like... over 40 times I counted, roughly. Wanted to make sure I got every detail right lmao.

Oh wow, would you look at that - yet ANOTHER fic based on the blanket scene? I'm sure this hasn't been done by many different people ever since Episode 5 aired! Nah, I'm sure this is purely original stuff.

(Listen, this scene and - consequently - this fic got stuck in my head and I just had to write it down and... well here we are.

* * *

This was, as he had said, new for him.

It was… strange, to say the least. Not just because the woman who was sat next to him was, technically, on some sort of level, himself. And yet… not. Sylvie was her own person, that was for sure. And the only Loki, from who he’s met, who refuses to be called Loki. She had chosen her own name, and was currently choosing – or carving, was more accurate – her own path. A way out of the never-ending, self-sabotaging, “only use is for improving others” apparent destiny they’ve all found themselves in.

She had lived an entirely different life from him - and the use of the word ‘different’ here is strongly applied. It makes him a little uneasy when he dwells on it for too long if he’s being honest with himself. Yes, there may some similarities between them, as to be expected, but Sylvie had lived her own set of experiences different to his. Differences that had shaped her, made her see the world… universe… timeline? All of that, in a different way to him. Learning of the things she had gone through, what she’s trying to accomplish… it made his “glorious purpose” of ruling over “Mid-guard” seem like a spoiled boy's desperate attempt to feel important.

Everything with Sylvie and the TVA had shut down that ideal very quickly. Or, at least, has changed his view of his “Glorious Purpose”. The one change that he hadn’t seen coming, that Sylvie herself had told him; the very first words she had actually said to him:

“This isn’t about you.”

No, it wasn’t about him. Not just him, anyway. It was… it was all of him. Every version of himself out there, and every other variant of... Of everyone to have ever existed. Those, just like him, who are punished for stepping out of their pre-written timeline. Those that, when they try to change themselves, to be the person who those that loved him did everything in their power to guide them to be, were snatched away by the TVA and sent here to this pit of unwanted, broken things; left with nothing but unforgiving and dirty survival, only to lead to their inevitable death. 

And it’s cold.

“Mobius isn’t so bad.”

Sylvie breaks the comfortable lull of silence they had found themselves in. They were, technically, supposed to be ironing out the details of this plan to enchant a creature much, much larger than them, whose only desire is to eat everything that enters the world they’re currently in. Which is why, perhaps, they had taken the moment to just… breathe. A moment of rest, side by side. Whilst it was true that his plan of killing the gargantuan cloud thing was near suicidal, it would be fair to say that Sylvie’s plan was equally as dangerous. Then again, what did he expect? Seemed that every type of Loki out there isn’t the best at creating plans…

“Or so good,” Loki counters. It seemed almost cruel to say, but… it was also true, wasn’t it? Sure, Mobius had done the things he’d done because he thought they were the right things to do – but that didn’t take away from the fact that he’d done them. How many variants, not only of him, but of so many other poor souls had been doomed to this place because of his work? Still, it wasn’t like Mobius had the full picture with everything. Mobius had been lied to just as much as he had. “I think that’s why we get along.”

A small smile pulls at Sylvie’s lips. She takes a deep breath in, staring out to the horizon where Alioth awaits prowling his territory. “He cares about you.”

That catches him off guard. He supposed that she and Mobius must have had some type of conversation in however long they’d spent driving to reach them. Apparently, the topic of conversation must have steered towards him at some point. And somehow, through that, Sylvie had deduced that Mobius… cared about him?

There’s a soft, knowing smile on Sylvie’s face as she catches sight of his reaction. It was probably the closest similarity they shared: friendships… didn’t quite seem to happen for them. 

But there’s something else there in Sylvie’s expression as she looks to him. Almost a twinge of… of sadness. It sends an aching sort of pain through his chest as he sees it, coming to a sudden realization in his head. He knew that, deep down, the reason for his own loneliness was all due to himself. He knows now that there were plenty in his life that loved him, that always treated him like family even when, genetically, he wasn’t. But he had been blinded by jealousy and hatred, hatred that they had kept the secret of his true nature quiet for so long. It was because of this; this stubbornness and this selfish, false ideal that he deserves more, that he had made himself alone. 

But Sylvie…? She had been well and truly alone. From such a young age, an age where his mother had barely begun teaching him the basics of magic, she had been snatched away from her life. Everything she ever knew and loved had been wiped away, the timeline dumped here just like everything else the TVA – or whoever the hell is actually in charge of the damn universe and its multiple timelines – decided was too much of a threat. Ever since then, from that very same day she had managed to escape their clutches, she had been running alone. All those years, fighting to survive, completely alone, existing in one apocalypse after the other. Even if she did try and interact with the people in those timelines, what would be the point? They were doomed to die, anyway… 

Her words echo in his head for a moment, her sad smile seemingly etched into his memory. A part of him, that strangely soft side he didn’t know existed that had been growing stronger and stronger these past few days, burst with the need to do something, to remove the pain she was feeling. For just a split second, he nearly gives into it. He nearly says the words that were forcing their way to the forefront of his brain. 

‘I care about you.’

But the words stay safely locked away in his head. Sylvie looks away from him, and the moment passes. He didn’t know if she had been expecting for him to say anything, and he certainly didn’t know what it is she might have thought he would say. His mind clambers for something, for anything to try and bring the moment back.

A strong gust of cool wind blows over them, sending chills across his pale skin - despite the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing. He knew that, if he really wanted to warm himself up, he could shift into his true form. Except, he didn’t see it as his true form. He has been an Asgardian as long as he can remember, and for all intents and purpose, this is who he’s meant to be. He is the son of Odin, son of Frigga, brother to Thor, an Asgardian, and he’s proud of that. 

And that’s when the idea pops into his head.

“It’s cold,” Loki states the obvious to Sylvie with a shiver of his upper body, glancing over to try and catch her reaction out of the corner of his eye. For a moment, he wonders if Sylvie has the same views on their true heritage as he does, considering that, in her timeline, she was told she was adopted much earlier than he was. 

She doesn’t mention anything about it, though. Instead, she simply agrees with his statement with a hum of “Mmm-Hmm,” but it’s exactly the kind of answer he’s looking for.

From the outside, it looks like an easy twirl of his fingers and a burst of lime-green light, but in reality, it’s years and years of practice, both by himself and… and with his mother. The weight of the blanket - though light - is comforting as it wraps around his shoulders; silky smooth to the touch and of a darker green than the light of his their magic. 

The burst of color gets Sylvie’s attention, looking over to Loki again to see the new blanket he had materialized out of seemingly thin air - which… he did. 

“I could conjure one for you, if you like?” Loki offers.

Sylvie smiles for just a split second, enough for Loki to believe that she might just say yes. But then her nose scrunches as she comes back to herself, and the belief is gone. “Tell you what, you could conjure me a new outfit,” Sylvie says off-handedly, pulling at the tight collar of her outfit. “You have no idea how uncomfortable something like this is.”

It’s a deflection. He knows that all too well, because… because it’s something he’d do. Not that he can blame her in the slightest. As he had said, just before he was pruned through the heart and sent here - this was entirely new for him. Sure, he had had his fair share of flings back home. Rare occasions when he would give in to temptations, let himself experience a slice of normality. But it was never real. He did not doubt that those that fell into his bed did not do so because they felt a connection, or saw a future. And neither did he. He was a prince, a God, and for most, saying you were able to seduce a prince was an achievement. And for him? Well, it was an easy means to an end, he supposed. 

But this? This felt real. It was strange, it was something he had never experience before, and quite frankly, it scared the ever-living God’s out of him. So sure, he knew how to flirt… somewhat. But with this, with Sylvie? Everything was different, and he had no clue whatsoever what he should do.

“So…” Sylvie breaks him out of his thoughts. “Mobius, and his theory about…”

Oh. Well, he certainly hadn’t been expecting for the conversation to go there. Really, he had thought she might try and pretend to have never heard what Mobius had said. 

“Right, right. About our Nexus event-,”

“Total rubbish, right?”

He’d be lying if he said that didn’t sting a little bit. “Absolutely,” ‘Liar’, a voice in his head hisses. “Of course, I mean-,”

“I don’t mean that it wasn’t a nice moment,” Sylvie hurries to say, and it lessens that sting just a little bit. 

“No, it was great! It was really nice.”

“It just… sounds like another TVA lie.”

Which... Yes, when he thinks about it, could you easily have been a lie. Not that he thinks that Mobius would lie to them about this, no, but that someone else within the TVA had fed Mobius the lie. For what reason, he's not entirely sure. To throw them off the scent perhaps? Keep them from figuring out what can really cause a Nexus Event so powerful that it could conceivably take the TVA down. 

Or, perhaps they just enjoyed lying. More than him even - and that's saying something. 

"A hundred percent. I mean totally, yeah."

And oh, what was this? Loki tries to meet her eye, expecting her to nod her head vehemently in agreement to his statement. But... She won't look at him. She gives a somewhat strained-looking smile, more like a grimace than anything, and if he looks hard enough - by which he means projects his own feelings onto Sylvie and hopes she feels the same - he could almost imagine there was a flicker of disappointment there, too. 

"I don't know how to do this," Sylvie says, an admission he didn't expect. She looks about as awkward as he feels, eyes fixated on her fingers as she plays with them. 

"I don't even know what we're doing," Loki returns, and dear oh dear did he genuinely mean that. One moment he thinks he should take that step, say something, anything. And then the very next moment it becomes the wrong time, the wrong thing to say, and he's back to square one. 

It was frustrating, to say the least.

"I don't have friends," Sylvie carries on, and it's another dagger through the heart. Yet another thing that was so similar, yet so, so different. He had been given so many opportunities for companionship, for friends, but he repeatedly threw them all away. But Sylvie? She wasn't even given the chance. She truly had-

"I don't have..." Sylvie trails off, a long gap where she struggles to find the right word to use. Her eyes had locked onto his, and he knew that nothing less than Alioth appearing right above their heads would get him to tear his eyes away.

"... Anyone." 

"Well, there are more important things, right?" Loki desperately grasps for something to wipe away the blank, dejected look that was etched onto her features. 

"Right? Yeah, like bringing down the TVA." 

For once, one of his plans was going well. "Saving the universe, even."

"Well, there's no need to be dramatic - but yeah, kind of!" 

Then there it was again - a particularly strong breeze pushing up to the little hill they were sat on. Sylvie gives a little shiver as it washes over them, a barely noticeable shuffle in an attempt to get warm, and Loki jumps at the opportunity. 

It only takes one small adjustment, a brief push of magic, and then the blanket is growing, wrapping itself around Sylvie's shoulders in a motion so smooth, you'd think he'd done something like this hundreds of times before. Loki smiles gently to her when she notices the change, and his smile only grows more as Sylvie pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders, shuffling closer to him by just the smallest of movements. Yet another plan he could now say was a success. 

"It's not very snuggly."

Or, maybe not. "Okay," Loki manages to get out through a surprised laugh, but he does get some sort of gratification in seeing her smile at his response. 

"Is it a tablecloth?" 

"No, it's a blanket," Loki finds himself strangely defending his materialized choice of cloth. 

There’s a pause, the quickest of glances up to him. He sees a brief flash of pink as she pokes out the tip of her tongue between her lips, wetting them as she struggles to get out her next words. “Thank you.”

Loki gets a strange feeling she doesn’t get to say that all too often. Whether that be because she chooses not to, or because she’s never had the opportunity to. When was the last time someone did something nice for her…?

“My pleasure.”

Sure, this was all new, and all types of scary. But, as he sat here, shoulder to shoulder with Sylvie, looking out to the dreary yet oddly beautiful landscape scattered with remnants from pruned timelines, he can't help but feel that this moment right here? It was… nice. Despite the TVA, despite Alioth, despite the fear of imminent death he’s had to live through nearly every moment since the Tesseract flung him into that desert in Mongolia, he had managed to find himself some semblance of peace. 

And it was because of the person next to him.

“How do I know that, in the final moments, you won't betray me?”

Now, this was a conversation he had been expecting. How can he not? It seemed that nearly every single person he’s ever come across, who he hasn’t immediately tried to murder, wonders the exact same thing. The ‘inevitable’ betrayal every Loki seems incapable not to carry out. 

And he couldn’t blame them, just as he can’t blame Sylvie for wondering the same thing. Really, he had thought the whole reason she had wanted this moment to talk to him was to have this very conversation. It was… it was something he had thought about himself, ever since being dragged in by the TVA. It was Mobius that had shown him his consistent deceitful nature - quite literally, by showing him film of every moment in his life where his flair for dramatics and affiliation for backstabbing was apparently used for ‘the bettering of others’. 

It had become deeply ingrained into his nature. It became what he was known for, what his family knew him for. He supposed it gave him some sense of… satisfaction, perhaps? A false sense of security, that he always has the upper hand when need be. It was almost like a trial, opportunities to prove to himself that, when the time comes, he can do what it takes to claim what he, false-fully, felt he was owed. He was certain that the only path to being a rightful ruler was one filled with betrayal. 

And now, after only a few days with Mobius - and an even shorter amount of days with Sylvie, his previous ambition he’s been working towards for so long suddenly wasn’t as important. Things had changed. 

He had changed. 

And that was part of the reason the TVA wanted him dead. 

“Listen, Sylvie, I…” Loki starts, but then stops. He sighs deeply, wanting to find the best way to get this across to her. He needed her to understand. “I betrayed everyone who ever loved me. I betrayed my father, my brother… my home.”

He at least had her full attention now. No more awkward glances at one another, unable to maintain more than a few seconds of eye contact. This was important, and they both knew it. “I know what I did. And I know why I did it. And that’s not who I am anymore. Okay?”

There’s nothing on her face that he can read, nothing that says whether she believes him or not. She had been expecting him to say this, he supposed. “I won't let you down,” Loki says, and he says it like a promise - one he fully intends to keep. 

“You sure?” Sylvie asks, and he nods his head straight away in response. “ ‘Cause if we make it, and the TVA is gone, there might be a timeline for you to rule.” Sylvie continues with a challenging - yet slightly teasing- narrowing of her eyes. 

“Ah,” Loki says wistfully, looking out to the horizon as if dreaming of such an event. “And then I’d finally be happy.”

Except, he wouldn’t. He only has to look at his older self to know that. The only one of himself that had beaten the one event that’s supposed to define their lives. He had tricked the mad titan himself, found himself a little corner of the universe to live out his life in peace. No more people he has to challenge, no more opportunities for betrayal - by him, or to him. 

And he looked… miserable. 

Now, though? Right here and now, he wasn’t miserable. He certainly wasn’t relaxed, that was for sure, but far from miserable. He had ended his little exclamation with a rare smile that wasn’t a smirk - or forced- and miraculously, Sylvie returned one just as wide as his; wide enough even for him to see the little laughter lines crinkling at the corner of her eyes.

“What about you?” Loki asks. “What will you do when this is all over?”

Sylvie takes a moment to think, tucking an unruly strand of hair away from her face. “I don’t know.”

He couldn’t even begin to try and put himself in her shoes. Sylvie had spent… hundreds, perhaps even a thousand years of her life just running. Surviving. Doing whatever it takes to make sure she wasn’t wiped off the board by some mystery figure, or group, that had deemed her too dangerous to the timeline. And for what? Some kind of sick desire to have control over every single living thing in every type of Universe to ever exist?

Which… which sounded an awful lot like himself, now he thought about it. Maybe whoever was in charge of the TVA was another variant of himself…

“I don’t know either,” Loki said, and that added to the tally of growing truths he was admitting to people - perhaps the most in his life. 

At some point, this all had to be over. Whether… whether it ends in his death once again, another defeat by a power-hungry being, or with their victory. No more TVA. No more pruning of variants. No more control. Sure, Sylvie had made that joke about him ruling a separate timeline, but… what would he do once this was all over, assuming her survives it? What did he want to do?

What does he want? 

‘Look at your eyes! You like her!’

‘What?’

‘You like her! Does she like you?’

‘Was she pruned-’

‘No wonder you have no clue what caused the Nexus Event on Lamentis; both of you are swooning over each other!’

‘Tell me the truth-’

‘It’s the apocalypse! Two Variants of the same being, especially you, forming this sick, twisted romantic relationship - that’s pure chaos! That could break reality, it’s breaking my reality right now! What an incredible, seismic narcissist - you fell for yourself!’

‘Her name was Sylvie’.

Mobius had truly tricked him there. At least now he knew how cruel it was to be on the other side of such a bluff, he supposed. He had always prided himself on his acting abilities, his innate way of lying to others. Yet, apparently, when it came to Sylvie… he puts his full emotions on display. He had become too overcome with emotions at the mere thought of Mobius telling the truth, that Sylvie was well and truly gone, and he had snapped. He was…

Yes… That was the word. 

He was heartbroken. 

‘You conniving, craven, pathetic worm. I hope you know you deserve to be alone and you always will be.’

‘Do you really think you deserve to be alone?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well then you better figure it out quick, because the Nexus Event the two of you caused, whatever that connection is, can bring this whole place down.’

Maybe, just maybe… Mobius was onto something there. Maybe Sif, even in that small, once insignificant memory buried in his mind, was wrong. 

Maybe he didn’t deserve to be alone.

Maybe he didn’t have to be. 

“Maybe…” The words get caught in his throat, spoken softer than he intended to. He involuntary finds himself leaning closer to Sylvie, to the warmth radiating from her, trapped within the blanket wrapped around them. “Maybe we could figure it out... together.”

He had meant for it to come out more as a question, an offering. A possibility for the both of them. But what it really sounded like was a… well; a sincere, hope-filled attempt to keep hold of… this. Whatever this was, he knew he wanted it. However things went, he knew-

He wanted Sylvie in his life. 

His heart was racing in his chest, pounding almost as hard as it does in the midst of battle. In the unlikely event he’s a free man after all of this over, he’ll have to go and find his brother - if he’ll even talk to him, that is - and apologize for the harsh insult he used; for berating his older brother over his affection for that Earth woman. 

He understood now. 

He almost misses the slightest of reactions as Sylvie looks up to him - and what he knows is an earnest, vulnerable glaze in his eyes. It’s the smallest of things, almost impossible to see, but there’s a slight pull to the corner of her lips as she looks to him. Almost as if she was fighting back a smile at his proposition. 

“Maybe,” She whispers back to him, just as quiet and tender as his own words. It’s not a yes, not in the way his frantically racing heart was hoping to hear, but it was a start. It was Sylvie’s own returning of a proposition, her own olive branch. The possibility he had given that she was extending right back to him. 

Maybe. 

Maybe.

Maybe.

Yes… Maybe they’d survive this. Maybe he and Sylvie would bring down the tyrant who oversees ‘the sacred timeline’. Maybe he’ll find Mobius again, alive and well, having turned the entirety of the TVA’s workforce against the organization they devoted their lives to, and burn it to the ground. 

Maybe Sylvie will let him stay by her side. 

Maybe, he’ll carve that new path in his life - with Sylvie’s intertwined with his.

Maybe he’ll find that new Glorious Purpose.

Maybe he won’t be alone. 

Maybe he’ll be happy. 

Maybe…

You know what? He was starting to like that word. 

#sylki #pro sylki #sylki fanfic #sylki fanfiction #loki/sylvie

[birdbrain90]

Sylki Week 2 - Prompt #2 - Song Lyrics

Author's note: OOPS IT'S A SONG FIC I'M SORRY. This is absolute trash that I've produced, but this song literally defines how we left these two idiots at the finale for me. It's the angst anthem, and I'm so mad about it. I need them to have their happy ending together so badly it's painful. ANYWAY ENJOY. Commiserate with me maybe! Happy Sylki week day 2!

I'm going under and this time I fear there's no one to save me

This all or nothing really got a way of driving me crazy

I need somebody to heal

Somebody to know

Somebody to have

Somebody to hold

It's easy to say

But it's never the same

I guess I kinda liked the way you numbed all the pain

Sylvie collapsed to the cold citadel floor. Looking up at the body of He Who Remains, her head spun, and she suppressed the urge to retch for the time being. This was the goal she’d had for her entire life. So why didn’t it feel good? She expected everything to click back into place. The life she’d lost, everything that had been stolen from her had been avenged. Why did it hurt? Why did she feel so sick that she wondered if she could even stand up? She’d killed people before, she had to, why was this one making her stomach rebel against her?

Now the day bleeds

Into nightfall

And you're not here

To get me through it all

I let my guard down

And then you pulled the rug

I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

I hit her like a ton of bricks… She was all alone. Again. Wasn’t she used to that? Tears sprang up to her eyes at the thought. There was no comforting hand on her shoulder celebrating along with her. There were no beautiful blue eyes reaching down into the depths of her soul and soothing all of the aches and pains that plagued her psyche since she was a girl. That voice, that damnable velvety voice was nowhere to be found. No cheeky quips, no words of affirmation, and now, more recently, no sweet words of love reserved only for her. She clenched her hands into fists, wishing instead they were still gripping his muscled shoulders. She’d ruined everything, hadn’t she? The only good thing that had happened to her in far too long was now flung gods only knew how far away from her. She hugged herself tightly, her nails gripping into her arms as she began to cry. “Loki….” She whined

I'm going under and this time I fear there's no one to turn to

This all or nothing way of loving got me sleeping without you

Now, I need somebody to know

Somebody to heal

Somebody to have

Just to know how it feels

It's easy to say but it's never the same

I guess I kinda liked the way you helped me escape

Loki sat in the time theater they’d thrown him in. He figured they didn’t really know what to do with him, as he wasn’t hostile but he surely sounded perfectly insane. He sat curled into a corner, weeping bitterly into his arms. He’d cried before, plenty of times. It was one of the things he hated most about himself. Kings didn’t weep like this, children did. Yet, try as he might to conceal it through acts of bluster, acts of violence, the God of Mischief was ruled by a capricious heart that wanted little else than to love and be loved. Sylvie had been the first person to completely captivate him. Locked in her gaze, the other ills of his world dissolved away to dust in the wind, and now she was gone and it was all his fault. He gripped his chest, surely scratching his skin as his nails raked across his skin, but his lungs were beginning to burn. It did little to stop his eyes from pouring raw sorrow down onto his arms.

Now the day bleeds

Into nightfall

And you're not here

To get me through it all

I let my guard down

And then you pulled the rug

I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

Why hadn’t he been there for her? He made her a promise, and as was typical of his track record, he couldn’t keep it. Was rational thought and preserving the status quo really worth feeling this way? He held his breath for a moment, feeling a wave of nauseousness hit him all at once. In that breath, he thought she might be universes away from him by now. Or worse, he had no concept of how time passed in the TVA. She could be thousands of years older by now, her life having ended naturally, and all alone. His cries started up again, and normally he would have sold a piece of his soul for a handkerchief. However, half of it was already torn away in a citadel at the end of time itself.

I let my guard down

And then you pulled the rug

I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

He had to find her again.

She had to see him again.

He wanted to tell her how sorry he was.

She wanted to tell him how sorry she was.

He wanted to hold her tight and never let go.

She wanted his strong arms to envelop her for the rest of her days

He didn’t want a throne, but he wanted to be her king.

She had no idea what she was doing, but she wanted to be his and his alone.

For all time.

Always.

@sylkiweek

#sylvie x loki #love is a dagger #lovedaggers #lovie #sylki week #sylki week 2021 #Youtube

[plainlo-inthemorning]

A Loki TVA / Lokane fic that snatched a tempad. Rating T.

Previously: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 (of 6)

Shine a Light, part 4

This time around, he feels but the faintest glimmer of surprise as he steps out of the doorway and onto a busy sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan.

A few people stop dead in their tracks when the door materializes out of thin air, but the throng of commuters headed to and from Central Station is so dense, Loki’s appearance goes mainly unnoticed.

Dull resignation washes over him.

The tempad is officially broken. Its coordinates locked onto this little planet where, in his own timeline, he has known nothing but defeat.

Without bothering to look for a newsstand, he reasons there’s a strong probability it’s the year 2014. It would seem the damn gadget is slowly counting backwards, while refusing to take him anywhere else in the universe.

Above his head, a billboard flashing on the side of a high-rise building confirms his suspicions.

Incredibly though, the tempad still not out of “juice”. The battery life seems to be making a mockery of his failed attempts to direct the itinerary.

Taking a step out of the moving sea of people, Loki sees little in way of construction sites along the street.

On his timeline, this would have been two years after his attack on the city with Thanos’ army, but if that ‘highlight’ of Loki’s less than acclaimed villainous career took place in this reality as well, the mortals have effectively tidied up after him.

He tries not think of the countless faces frozen in terror that had looked up at him.

Of the lives lost because of his crazed ambition to prove himself - and to destroy something of Thor’s.

Almost if Loki had been transformed back into the chronically jealous five-year-old child who once stole his golden, annoyingly joyful, perfect brother’s favorite model toy - a grey wolf made of clay - and deliberately let it roll down the steps of the throne when their father (his NON-father) had been away.

The toy had broken into pieces and Thor had been inconsolable. Gripped by immediate remorse despite his initial intent, Loki had tried to fix it with his budging magic powers. Only for the wolf to melt to a sticky puddle on the stone floor.

Thor had wailed so loudly, a passing servant had thought him seriously injured and called for their mother, and Loki had been made to apologize, his usually pale cheeks burning scarlet. Then he had been grounded for the remains of the day.

The humiliation had stung, and so had the regret that his magic had failed him.

Not for the first time, the anger had turned, unwarranted (Loki knew then too), towards his brother.

From then on, it had just gotten slowly worse and worse and more malicious right up until that horrible moment of rage no more than a few days ago (a week?), when Loki had driven one of his daggers into Thor’s side on top of the Stark tower.

And twisted it.

The mix of bottomless sadness and shock in his brother’s blue eyes had cut through Loki’s heart with such force he might as well have sunk the blade of his other weapon into his own chest.

But instead of abandoning his pathetic scramble for power and hold Thor, instead of attempting to heal the wound with his magic that has become so formidable in adulthood, Loki had let the poison drown the remains of his sanity.

Of course, shortly afterward, the green monstrosity had effortlessly and repeatedly smashed him into the concrete floor of Stark’s living-quarters until Loki had thought he heard every bone in his supposedly immortal (right!) body break and his skull crack open.

To the outside, it had surely been a suitably entertaining show of retribution, but as he had lain there in the crater of rubble, unable to utter a moan, it was as if all the anger had been knocked out of him.

The link to Thanos’ ungodly servant had been severed and Loki had felt more like himself than he had in a long, long time.

When Thor, looking grimmer than ever, had dragged him to his feet in front of the ragtag band of ‘heroes’ and cuffed him, Loki had found himself strangely elated, on the verge of giddy.

His legs had been so shaky from the beating that Thor had had to hold him by the arm so he wouldn’t fall, and Loki had felt the heat of his brother’s huge hand penetrate the many layers of his own armour.

For a few delirious seconds, Loki had wanted nothing more than to lean against his brother’s strong frame and just close his eyes.

Instead, he had started cracking jokes until Thor had slapped the muzzle on him, as if he were some dog (that gesture had embarrassed him more than anything that had gone before). Unable to keep up his sarcastic commentary as they rode the elevator down, Loki had fleetingly wondered if he was suffering from a psychosis or actual brain damage.

Now, standing on the street so close to where it happened, the memory oozes fresh guilt.

But he redeemed himself.

In his mind, Loki goes through the TVA reel once more to remind himself of the images of his brother later in life, smiling at him.

Right before the end came.

If he is to spend the rest of eternity on Midgard - or at least until the multiverse crumbles - he will try to find solace in the good his future self managed to accomplish.

For Thor and, in another, brighter reality, for her.

The riddle of her part in his life now remains unsolved, but as hard as Loki tries to release the ghost wrapped in his arms, it merely squeezes itself closer to his chest.

He could try to find her here, on this timeline.

She will be with Thor, that much is certain, but since the reel of Loki’s fate had shown him only his own path, he knows not whether Thor and Jane shared a life on Midgard, or somewhere else, up until the brothers reunited (for lack of a better word) on Asgard.

What would Loki even say to her?

That, while at the bureau that controls all space and time, he saw her face on a roll of film of his supposed life, and now he aches for her more than anything? That on an alternate timeline a few hours ago, she kissed him?

Thor would not approve of that exchange.

Also, with Loki’s luck, Thor might be a frog in this reality.

He could still try to use the tempad to transport him to Svartalfheim and his own life’s story, seeing as he is now only year from where he feels so strongly he must go.

But finding the proper timeline is like shooting an arrow into the endless vastness of space and hoping it’ll hit the right comet.

He realizes that now.

An arrow.

Somehow, somewhere, on two timelines no less, variants of him had …

Loki’s head jerks up.

The tower.

It’s a desperate idea at best, but from the (very) little Loki knows of his character, Stark’s superior technical skills go hand in hand with an endlessly hungry, inquisitive mind. And pride.

Much like Loki, Stark is a man who needs to be the smartest man in the room. And like Loki, he probably is, most of time (in fact… no. Don’t go there).

Maybe Stark will listen.

Perhaps he can even help make sense of the tempad if Loki can somehow win his trust and appeal to his curiosity and (he winces a little) heroism.

Was it not Loki’s actions who had helped Stark “realize his best potential”, as his TVA file put it?

He spots the imposing structure further up the street, noticing the huge “A” at the top (is that new?), and sets off towards it at a brisk pace, darting in and out of the crowds on the packed sidewalk.

Here goes nothing.

As he reaches the large glass doors he briefly experiences a dizzying deja-vu, when suddenly a man’s voice calls out to him.

A frighteningly familiar, agitated voice.

… With a particular brand of anger bubbling underneath, that Loki had hoped he’d never have to witness up close ever again.

//

“What the hell are you doing here??”

His dark, curly hair has a few more streaks of silver. The checkered shirt is slightly crumbled, the glasses a bit askew. He clutches an armful of papers to his chest.

And he’s wearing a furious expression although, thank the Norns, a mortal complexion.

For now.

“Didn’t Tony explicitly tell you not to come here?! Are you that intent on causing everyone to lose their shit again?!”

Worry is all over Doctor Banner’s screwed up face.

“Seriously, Loki, is this funny to you? Clint is actually in the building right now and, in case Tony didn’t already inform you, he’s made it very clear that he’s quitting the team if you were to stroll through the front door!”

The Avenger has started shaking, his eyes wild (too wild).

This is heading in the wrong direction fast.

Mustering all the calm in the world despite his racing pulse and the nauseating sounds of bones breaking echoing in his head, Loki puts on his most courteous and, he dearly hopes, un-cocky charming smile.

“Bruce, please relax. I assure you, I’m not here to cause trouble. Not for you or anyone else.”

“Right, you just happened to be in town and wanted to stop by for coffee? Loki, this …”

Loki gently interrupts him.

“I merely came here to have a conversation with S- … Tony. Perhaps you could let him know I’m here? I promise you, I will not set foot inside. In fact - “

Loki adopts the form of one of the security guards he can see pacing inside the foyer.

“… I’m not even here.”

Bruce jumps a little and clutches his papers even tighter.

“Oh god, I hate when you do that, man. If you think showing off that trick makes anyone any less nervous around you…”

“Doctor Banner - Bruce. I have something …”

Loki searches for the words, quickly trying to decide on how much to reveal to the man-beast who’s now looking at him with urgent expectancy.

He sighs and bets it all.

“Okay. Bruce, what I’m going to say will sound mad.”

The man scoffs.

“Coming from you, I’d expect nothing less.”

Bruce shakes his head and looks to the sky in exasperation.

“Please - please - don’t tell me you’ve gone and changed your mind about the whole not conquering Earth business. Really, Loki, none of us understand how transforming you into ‘an asset’ became Tony’s pet project over this past year, or why Fury went along with it. But I’m sure both are going to be pretty damn disappointed if their new alien BFF decides to embrace his inner psycho again.”

Loki almost chuckles. It’s all too ridiculous.

“I won’t … embrace my inner ‘psycho’, I swear.”

“Then what?”

The God of Mischief draws in a deep breath, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. Or rather, the security guard’s nose.

Then he surrenders to the absurdity of the situation.

“Bruce, I kindly beg of you, is Tony here? Or … (is there hope?) Thor?”

Bruce still looks at him with deep disdain, but his immediate anger seems to have subsided.

“No, Tony’s out of town. Took Pepper somewhere on holiday. They’re not to be disturbed for at least a week. Her words. And Thor … I should think you of all people know perfectly well why he’s not likely to hang around at the time being. Jeez, you guys and your endless family soap opera … I can’t even.”

Naturally, the universe again blankly refuses to extend any hands to Loki and his doomed quest. Sadly, once again, he is not surprised.

Wait - what?

“What do you mean, ‘soap opera’?”

Bruce looks like he’s about to throw his hands over his head and all the papers with them.

“Oh, come on! What is this?! You want approval? Confirmation of your little victory? Doesn’t the very lovely embodiment of that currently walk around in your apartment or wherever it is you live now? Loki, I’m done here. You have to leave. Bye.”

To hell with Stark – Loki wants to grab Bruce by his shirt collar and shake the little man till he explains what in all of Yggdrasil he’s talking about.

But he cannot afford to tempt the beast. Quite literally.

“Then … can you and I go somewhere to talk? Bruce, you’re a man of science. This is science … related.”

Loki feigns a smile.

Bruce sizes him up. No doubt considering whether to let the other guy continue the conversation.

Then his shoulders drop.

“Okay. Okay. For a creepy megalomaniac, you somehow tend to end up with some very cool people defending your case. Just know that those people are absolutely the only reason, you and I are still talking. Ugh, I’m too nice … “

Bruce casts a glance over his shoulder into the foyer, appearing to consider their options, when a man exits the glass doors – and shuffles up to them.

“Bruce! How nice to see you. You look well.”

The old man (those eyes …) grins warmly and pats Bruce on the back, then looks from him to Loki and back again.

“Everything alright out here? Is there a security issue?”

Bruce composes himself and smiles back.

“Hi, Lee, good to see you too. All fine. Earl here was just updating me on, eh, the new security procedures.”

He shoots Loki a stern look.

“Ah, yes”, Loki nods seriously. “Doctor Banner had some trouble operating the intricate open and close mechanism of the doors. The elevator doors, especially.”

He can’t help himself. It’s somehow both immensely tragic and life-affirming.

“Oh?” The old man raises an eyebrow (he looks … but he’s not quite …something is off).

“Will I have to get a new security card? I rarely come in these days, but in case …”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary, Lee. Because, because … like you say, you’re hardly ever here, so …”

Still smiling awkwardly, Bruce waves a dismissive hand, almost dropping the stack of papers (the man’s a terrible liar, Loki thinks).

“Speaking of”, Banner continues, “you must be enjoying retirement up there, huh, Lee? Must be nice to live by the sea. Good … air quality?”

Loki sighs inwardly.

The dog sniffing at his ankles looks up at him.

He stares down at the round, fluffy thing as if seeing it for the first time.

Which he is and he isn’t.

The old man is saying something to Bruce about the countryside, when he notices the dog wagging its tail at Loki’s feet.

“Oh, he likes you. You’re lucky, he normally doesn’t care for strangers. No, you don’t, do you Fenris”, the man coos.

Under coats of thick white fur, the animal looks eagerly from owner to Loki.

“Okay, well, I’ll be off,” the old man says, finally. “Come see me sometime, Bruce. My neighbor actually just put his house on the market, in case you’re looking for a weekend retreat…”

He nods at Bruce, then at Loki who barely notices. The dog whines unhappily at being dragged away.

It’s the same timeline.

Of course, it is. The tempad has locked itself on a sequence.

But why the different locations …?

“Yes, thank you, Lee. Take care now. Earl, shall we?” Bruce signals to Loki to follow him round the side of the building.

“We can continue our discussion about the security issue in the garage”.

//

“So, let’s hear it. Tell me what you came to say, so I can tell you why it’s a catastrophically bad idea.”

Bruce sits himself across the small table from Loki and dumps the stack of papers in front of him. The top sheet is covered in coffee mug rings.

They are in an anonymous, windowless office somewhere below the vast tower parking lot and numerous in-house repair shops.

The place is a gigantic maze and Loki has just shut himself in a tiny room with the very monster that turned him into ragdoll. The deep slash on his forehead has only just healed.

He does not fear many beings in the universe, but the mild-mannered doctor’s alter ego makes the hit list with the worst of them.

Ignoring the way the hairs on the back of his neck stand up (why did this seem like a good idea?), Loki drops his disguise and takes a seat on the cheap plastic chair. Not much of that flashy Stark glamour down here.

“Okay.” Loki takes out the tempad and puts it in the middle of the table.

He is not quite sure where to start, so he decides to begin with the purely technical aspect.

Bruce might appreciate being given a few ‘scientific’ details before any mentions of giant smoke monsters and alligators.

In fact, the fewer magical creatures and castles in the sky, the better.

“This is called a tempad. It’s a device that makes it possible to travel anywhere in time. You type in your destination, and a doorway opens. I did not make it myself. It was, er, given to me by a large and very powerful organization … in space.”

Bruce is leaning forward to get a better look at the tempad but makes no attempt to reach for it.

As he’s says nothing, Loki continues.

“This is where it gets, uh, weird, but try to believe me when I tell you, I’m not the Loki you know. I’m from another, similar timeline and -“

“Stop.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just stop, Loki.”

Bruce is leaning back on his chair again. He looks tired.

“I don’t know if you’re supremely bored of domestic bliss already, or just being your supremely annoying self, but I won’t engage. You’re not Loki but a time-traveler from space? Yeah, it’s -“

“No, Bruce, I am Loki. Trust me, I know this seems -“

“Trust? You wanna talk about trust again?” Bruce takes out his phone.

“Okay, we can do that.”

He taps a few buttons, then holds the phone to his ear.

“What are you doing?” Loki’s voice has a sharper edge to it than he intended.

The Avenger stares him down.

“Oh, I’m just calling someone. This guy I have in my contacts under God of Lies”.

Please, no …

Briefly, Loki considers whether another variant of him – the one he encountered at the house by the ocean, most likely – would actually be of more help.

Or if he, the variant, would try to kill him.

It was one thing reasoning with and trying not to get killed by Loki variants who at least understood the concept of variants, but how would he have reacted upon being confronted with a twin before the TVA?

No, not a twin … Because this variant has her.

None of the variants in the Void – the grown-up, human ones – had mentioned versions of her.

Either this variant has successfully taken out every Minute Man ever sent by the TVA to arrest him (in which case, Loki concedes, he may be the superior Loki), or this whole timeline has only just blossomed at the opening of the multiverse.

Why else would he, who apparently also gave his phone number to Bruce Banner, get to live a life so vastly different from the typical arc of a misguided Jotun prince?

Loki feels light-headed.

On one hand, he wants to know everything there is to know about his double, on the other, he fears what and who he might find.

You don’t belong here. Find your own timeline. No more Lokis.

Focus. Explain.

He raises his one hand in a placating gesture.

“Give me a little time to try and explain this, Bruce, and then, then … You can call whoever. Call everyone! But please just -“

“Oh, what do you know,” Bruce puts his phone down, “there’s no answer. What a surprise.”

He crosses his arms.

Loki inhales and tries again, speaking as evenly and as calmly as he can while his frustration mounts:

“There is no way of telling you all or any of this without it sounding utterly ludicrous, so you’ll have to hear me out. Five minutes uninterrupted from now, okay? Yes, we’re talking time travel, but compared to what’s really at stake, even time travel is a pretty basic technicality. Also, I promise you, in a few years’ time from now, the concept of time travel won’t seem all that laughable to you and Stark in particular. Provided this reality exists in a few years’ time seeing as -“

Bruce sighs dramatically.

“Yes, okay, so”, Loki continues, “Two years ago, I attacked New York, right?”

“If you’re about to roll out some outlandish excuse – another one! – I don’t care to hear it.”

The other man is narrowing his eyes as a fresh look of undistilled loathing creeps into his features.

So it did happen on this timeline as well.

“No, it’s not that. Or, I mean, let’s save that. When you captured me, in my timeline, I escaped from the lobby with the Infinity stone. I know it seems impossible from your end of events but - “

“Impossible?”

Bruce gives him a strange look Loki can’t quite interpret.

“Yes, S… Tony dropped the briefcase with the Infinity stone, and I picked it up and -“

Bruce pushes his chair back. The plastic scrapes loudly against the stone tiles of the floor.

“Loki, I can’t. I thought I had the patience to at least indulge you but turns out I don’t. I can’t tell if you’re losing your mind, but either way, you’ll have to take it – this, whatever it is – up with Tony instead when he gets back. Maybe bring that sweet lab partner of yours along if you’re going to talk time travel. With her field of expertise, I’m sure - “

“WILL YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!”

Without thinking, Loki slams both his hands into the table. Papers go flying and Bruce staggers backwards.

Horror dawns as Loki realizes his error, but it’s already too late.

Bruce doubles over in spasms and a deep, much too deep, growling sound escapes his lips. He grips his head with his shaking hands as if trying to contain the explosion within, and Loki feels his own brain go numb with panic as one of those hands triples in size and a sickly green hue rapidly spreads.

There is no way out.

Bruce is blocking the door and soon his bulk will be taking up the entire room. He falls to his knees, arms thrashing wildly and his shirt ripping across his back. The table sails over Loki’s head, one of the chairs lodges itself in the soundproofed ceiling, causing the panels of fluorescent light to flicker madly.

Are there no security cameras?!

There are screams, but they no longer sound human.

Loki has nowhere to hide.

He has to gather his magic around him, but terror is completely scattering his focus, cold sweat breaking out all over his body.

It is a matter of seconds before the transformation will be complete and the monster attempts to tear him limb from limb. With no heroes to stop it.

Cold.

He has only consciously reached for it once before, but now the thought barely registers before ice rushes through him as if by instinct. Bruce is not the only one with an abomination lurking under the surface.

He doesn’t have the casket of his birth father, but he has strength.

There is no time to consider if it’s enough or nothing at all. No time for crippling self-loathing or shame.

In front of him, the Hulk lifts its crazed, bloodshot eyes to meet his.

The green creature cannot stand upright in the office, and the first fist goes through the ceiling with the force of a wrecking ball. The next lashes out at Loki, who dodges it just as his own skin turns a deep, brilliant blue.

Little black ridges and markings rise on his arms and face and though his sight doesn’t falter, he feels the instant his eyes go from green to bright red. The fabric of his clothes chafes his new skin and waves of adrenaline surge through his body. Multiple foreign senses come alive and drown his fear.

But he has not a breath to spare to get used to his true form before the Hulk shoves him against the wall so hard, the bricks shift against his side as if they were made of a child’s building blocks.

The impact makes him gasp for air, yet the pain … the pain he can manage.

He just has to last long enough get out of here. And the cold is crystalizing his focus to let the magic flow easily, powerfully through his hands.

His blue hands.

If he had used this when …

Loki pushes himself off the wall (out of it) and almost collides with the Hulk (there’s no space left to maneuver in) who, instead of smashing its way out, seems hell-bent on squashing the only living thing in its line of sight first.

Loki swiftly crouches down on one knee, puts his palms together and, faster than the blink of a brilliant crimson eye, conjures a rotating orb of ice and chaos energy that explodes in a blinding flash of white light as he hurls it square into the monster’s chest.

The Hulk falls back, breaking through the wall to the parking lot on the other side and crashing into a row of cars, while a sheath of ice spreads from its chest and up its neck. The being that is not Bruce howls and claws at its skin, but the smooth ice thickens and as it reaches the head of the beast, it slides right into its eye sockets – and momentarily blinds it.

It will probably only last seconds but it’s all Loki needs while the Hulk shakes its head furiously.

He makes to flee when he spots the tempad on the cracked floor.

He can’t leave it.

As Loki dives for the gadget, the Hulk simultaneously knocks itself in the face with both fists, splintering the ice into a rain of tiny spikes. With a roar to match the sound of a spaceship engine taking off, the creature lunges.

Loki’s fingers close around the tempad.

He feels a buzz.

The door appears in front of him.

He doesn’t stop to think before throwing himself through it.

The Hulk punches into empty air.

Part 5

#loki #loki series #tva loki #lokane fanfic #lokane ff #lokane #loki x jane #marvel #loki ff #loki fanfic #shine a light #plainlo inthemorning #loki laufeyson

[thesaltofcarthage]

Loki takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

from Entertainment Weekly

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

By Chancellor Agard May 20, 2021 

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"  

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.  

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."  

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.  

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.  

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.  

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."

Additional reporting by Jessica Derschowitz

#loki #loki series #tom hiddleston #entertainment weekly

[9worldstales]

MCU Loki Ep 1 “Glorious Purpose” intensive analysis

So, I’ve seen the first “Loki” episode and, of course, I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it.

Beware about spoilers!

We start in New York 2012 and that part is merely “Avengers: Endgame” albeit they changed a bit the visual so there’s more focus on Loki. We’ve close up of Loki when he is ‘Captain America’, when he says by to the Hulk in the lift and so on.

It’s a good choice because he’s basically the only character the visual seems to focus on (the only other character who gets a close up is the Hulk yelling ‘No stairs!’), subtly telling us the story is about him.

On a sidenote though, in “Avengers: Endgame” you might see Loki walked vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we also have Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray, which he confirms. In “Loki” we don’t see these scenes but keep them in mind, they’ll be relevant later on.

Anyway as everyone knows Loki picks up the Tesseract and disappear.

We get the Marvel opening but without the usual ‘heroic’ music, this time it’s more ominous? Or maybe it’s just me. “Marvel studios” also gets written in green and gold on a black background.

It’s not the first time Marvel changed how it presented, in the first episode of “WandaVision” for example it was in black and white instead than in the usual red and silver but it’s still a nice touch.

So we resume… with the visual showing us an insect walking through the desert. Then the camera shows us the full view of the desert, informing us it’s the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Rather high in the sky a space portal opens for a moment and the next we know is that Loki is lying flat on his back on the ground among clouds of sand which, I guess, were raised due to him falling into the desert. Loki is without the chains holding his wrists (did the power of the Tesseract destroy them? The fall?) and easily pulls away the muzzle Thor put on him and from his confused expression as he sits up and see people coming close to him, I get the feeling he didn’t exactly plan to fall there and in such a way.

So I guess maybe this is his first attempt at using the Tesseract and he didn’t quite gave it a direction on WHERE he wanted it to take him? Because really falling from the sky flat on the ground in the middle of the Gobi desert among people who didn’t even talk his language doesn’t seem the sort of thing one would plan.

Anyway, despite being in an unfamiliar situation Loki finds a rock to stand over and introduces himself:

“I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

Which yes, it’s how he introduced himself to Fury in “The Avengers”.

The people there have no idea of what he’s saying and asks him who he is in their own language (Mongolian). It’s unclear if Loki gets what they’re saying.

In the comics all Asgardians, can speak every language thanks to the ‘Allspeak’ or ‘All-Tongue’, in which what they say is understood by every species in their own native language.

In “Thor” earlier script though there was this dialogue:

Darcy: So, how can you speak our language? Volstagg: Your language? Ha! Silly girl, you're speaking ours.

In an interview Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) discussed that bit.

Part of this seems to be set in a world where you guys fit in perfectly and the rest is very much on Earth. Ray: Yes, but on Earth we started it all, you see. This is just one of the realms. This is where all the legends come from. All the ruins have gone into myths and Norse mythology. It’s all us, love. It was all us before that. They’ve forgot their place, really. They think, “Oh, you speak our language?” and it’s actually, “No, you’re speaking ours.” Joshua: We invented it. [Ray Stevenson (Volstagg) and Joshua Dallas (Fandral) On Set Interview THOR]

The implication seemed to be that there was no Allspeak, they just spoke the same language because Asgardians invented it and Midgardians learnt it.

We also have this bit from “Avengers: Infinity War”:

Rocket: You speak Groot? Thor: Yes, they taught it on Asgard. It was an elective.

This implies it’s not that Thor was magically granted the ability to understand Groot, he had to study his language.

So well, I would say that no, so far Asgardians didn’t have Allspeak in the MCU, hence, unless Loki studied Mongolian or his magic powers granted him Allspeak, he can’t get what whose people are saying to him. So really, I don’t think he wanted to end up in Mongolia, he should have thought he wanted the Tesseract to just bring him somewhere very far from New York City. That is unless it’ll turn out someone managed to interfere and have him fall there for some purpose.

But, back to Loki.

As I said he doesn’t really get to talk with those people because a door opens up out of nowhere and near to the Tesseract which is lying forgotten in the sand and people in an armoured suit and carrying weapons start to appear.

Loki is kind of confused but he recovers fast.

Putting up a tone of confidence he orders the guy not to touch the Tesseract, thinking they aim at getting it. Another door opens up out of nowhere and we get another person in armour. To save time I’ll say the woman is supposed to be Hunter B-15. I wonder if she’ll get a name beyond this or not.

The situation of the people at the TVA isn’t exactly great but I’m running ahead.

Now, I think Loki preferred to deal with the Mongolian people because although he can understand what Hunter B-15 says, it clearly makes no sense for him.

Honestly I’m not going to blame him.

“Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branch is growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.”

This isn’t the kind of sentence that makes sense in a conversation, if you aren’t familiar with the TVA.

Hunter B-15 doesn’t care what she says doesn’t make sense to him and wouldn’t make sense to any other normal person. She calls him ‘Variant’ and talks as if everyone should know and respect the Time Variance Authority as an authority to defer and obey to.

I love Loki’s reply here:

“It's been a very long day, and I think I've had my fill of idiots in armored suits telling me what to do, so, if you don't mind, this is actually your last chance. Now get out of my way.”

He had a very bad day, he’s probably still bruised and sore due to his ‘meeting’ with the Hulk and his fall from the sky, he might very well be exhausted and he’s clearly confused but he acts as if he’s in control and won’t let himself be intimidated. I love him.

As he moves close Hunter B-15 hits him and informs him although he’s moving at 1/16th speed he’s feeling all the pain in real time.

Now… from when “Loki” trailers had started going around there had been a debate if the TVA is the good guys or the bad guys.

I’ll jump a bit ahead and tell you they clearly believe they’re the good guys.

But just from this bit you can start to question the idea they’re good guys.

They aren’t just acting as Vigilantes but they’re claiming an authority that no one on planet Earth gave them and demanding submission, not hesitating to beat people when they do not complain.

I know, some of you are thinking that Loki is a bad guy so serves him right but that’s not really the point because they aren’t even beating him for what he did to New York but for a crime he didn’t know he was committing, acting with an authority no one on Earth gave them. They just took it. And they would have taken it if the one picking up the Tesseract and ending up in Mongolia were to be a random person that out of bad luck had picked up the Tesseract and had ended activating it by accident.

This is not about Loki, this is how the TVA operates and it’s scary.

I don’t know if “Loki” will want to dig into police brutality and I honestly don’t dare to hope in it but it would be an interesting turn.

Hunter B-15 seems to be enjoying her work. I won’t call her evil yet, it’s clear she thinks she has the authority to do so, that the TVA enabled her to think she’s doing a good thing but she doesn’t seem to have… hesitation in doing so. One can still do his duty and not enjoy beating up people and causing them pain, yet the dialogue gives me the impression she’s very cool with beating up resisting Variants who has no idea they’re Variant and causing them pain.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe she’ll prove she’s actually a gentle soul but, for now, she doesn’t look as such. We’ll see.

Anyway she straps a collar around Loki’s neck and then, finally, she let him fall at normal speed before two of the men with her grabs him and carry him away while she picks up the Tesseract and orders to ‘reset the timeline’, which, at first I thought would mean they use that sort of mechanism to send back the time, erasing Loki’s appearance from the timeline. I’m not sure now. It might as well erase everything there. Loki turns to see what this mechanism does and from the look on his face it doesn’t seem anything good.

I hope not but well, in a way, sending everything back of some minutes erases lives that could have possibly be lived differently so yeah, in a way they erased lives. It’s the dilemma of changing time after all.

Whatever, Loki is dragged through the door that opens out of nowhere and appears at the TVA. The door disappears behind him and he has no idea where he is.

Now I guess it’s a good point to point out how people had been wondering which kind of Loki this one was, if he was based on the Loki on “Thor”, the one in “The Avengers”, the one in “Thor: The Dark World” or the one in “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In itself he can’t really be based on neither of them.

Loki’s characterization in “Thor” is split in two, there’s Loki prior to discovering the truth, and there’s Loki after discovering the truth, mad in shock and grief until he realizes his father would never accept him and let go of Gungnir.

This Loki can’t obviously be the Loki pre-truth but he can’t even be the one post it, as in that one the pain was still too new and raw and mixed with the desperation of denial and the attempt at ‘fixing things’.

So, can he be “The Avengers” Loki?

Marvel’s site confirmed that during “The Avengers” unknown to Loki, he was influenced by the sceptre as well. Very likely he wasn’t influenced in Clint Barton or Erik Selvig style, as the site says:

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.”

Basically the sceptre on Loki works in a manner similar to how it worked on the Avengers when they started arguing in the Helicarrier. It warped his perception to the point he might have seen them as his most hated enemies, making difficult for him to see Thor was extending his hand to him or that the people were actually just scared but it didn’t make him a mindless, loyal servant. A different type of control on him but one that’s no less dangerous. Anyway I’ve talked at length about it while replying to a post so I’ll just link it here.

Loki is now very far from the sceptre so the mind stone shouldn’t be able to influence him any longer. As a result he’s probably more in control of his emotions.

So… “Thor: The Dark World” Loki?

Close enough but not quite, as that Loki had to go through Odin telling him some pretty awful things and spending a year forgotten by Odin and Thor in a jail.

Even more clearly he can’t be “Thor: Ragnarok” Loki as that one lived a huge chunk of things he hadn’t lived yet… never mentioning Waititi wanted “Thor: Ragnarok” to be his own thing, not a continuation of “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World”…

“I was lucky enough they didn’t force me to acknowledge things- there were certain things in the film, like the play, which makes fun of the scene in The Dark World where Loki dies, but there’s a point to that play, sort of to recap what happened, but also to tell the audience, “This is not what you think it’s going to be, this film is not going to be a continuation of that. It’s its own thing, and what you think you expect from this film ends at this play.”” [Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi]

… while Loki is an alternate continuation of “The Avengers” so it has to be more “The Avengers” compliant than “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In short this Loki is his own Loki… or a Loki we hadn’t seen yet because we weren’t really shown much of Loki post sceptre influence, pre one year of solitary confinement.

Back to the story two things are interesting to point out.

One is that there’s a Variant Skrull as well in the TVA.

The other is that once there the Tesseract lost part of its shiny light as if it powered down.

Last but not least, instead than a futuristic look the TVA has the look of midcentury modern aesthetic as if, instead than going in the future ore remaining in the present, we’ve gone back in time.

Anyway, as another prisoner is dragged into the room, Loki tries to escape and discovers that Hunter B-15 can rewind his time so he’s back where he started. She then gives the Tesseract to a man at a desk, telling him to log it as evidence.

The guy, I’ll spoiler you and tell you his name is Casey, has no idea what it is and it’s Loki who has to explain him it’s the Tesseract and one should be very careful with it. Casey merely find it sounding dumb.

This is our first clue that to the TVA the Tesseract doesn’t matter at all. We’ve finished Phase 3 with the infinity stones raised at the level of immensely powerful artifact but, for the TVA, they’re nothing.

This is the first blow that the “Loki” series gives to the MCU as we previously knew it.

On a sidenote it’s nice Loki explained what it was to the unsuspecting desk man. If this weren’t the TVA he might have ended in the Gobi desert as well just by handling it carelessly.

Hunter B-15 drags Loki to a door and Loki tries to threaten her only to be showed inside that door.

Have you noticed how no one read Loki his own rights so far? That’s because he has none and the story is about to make it even more clear.

In the room there’s a robot of some sort (which I find slightly creepy despite its smile) which would like for Loki to undress. At Loki’s refusal accompanied with a comment that “This is fine Asgardian leather” the robot, without any warning, merely disintegrates his clothes.

Some assumed it was played for laugh but the music doesn’t suggest it, and Loki is clearly upset as he stutters when he speaks again. In real life, when you’re arrested, in many states your belonging are confiscated but they will be returned to you once you’re released or they’re returned to your family.

The TVA destroys them.

A trap door opens below Loki and he finds himself in another room, dressed up in TVA uniforms for Variants.

There’s something I think I need to mention which is I love how the show is characterizing TVA desk people.

The guy we’ve met before had his own character which we could guess despite the few lines and moments in which he appeared.

This new guy is also characterized.

He has a kitten in the room, which moves away slightly as Loki appears, probably scared and a mug with the image of a kitten. It’s tiny details but they made him a person instead of merely something that’s there.

He pushes in front of Loki a huge stack of papers telling him to sign to verify this is everything Loki said. Loki’s two following comments get printed and he’s demanded to sign them as well.

It’s another aspect of the TVA that’s actually unpleasant.

The amount of paper is huge and it would take a lot to read it all in order to check it but… the truth is the request is impossible. People isn’t made so that they can remember everything they’ve said, exactly as they’ve said it and it gets even more troublesome if there isn’t the other half of the conversation but just what we said.

So it’s not even a point to discuss if Loki really said just that stack of paper and nothing more or that stack of paper is too small, or if maybe there’s more paper he’ll have to sign or if that stack of paper only cover his time as a Variant and not the time in which he followed the Sacred Timeline.

The request doesn’t just make the TVA look like a bureaucratic place but shows it demands impossible tasks from its victims.

Oh, another interesting thing I noticed is that the camera is at a slightly lower point when it is on the TVA guy, so, despite the guy being seated, it gives him the impression of being higher than us viewers. On the over side when the camera is on Loki, it’s far from him, with the result of making him look small.

It’s a fine detail that gives us a certain subconscious impression.

The TVA guy stares at Loki as the latter gives up and start signing. It seems he only signed one paper, without even trying to read them all. I wish they had let us see how Loki signs. I wonder if he writes his name with runes, since the inscription on Thor’s hammer was in rune.

We’ll see, we’ll find out Loki knows how to write in English so he might use it to sign.

Anyway as soon as he finishes signing another trapdoor opens below him and he finds himself in another room.

So far the TVA is reminding me more and more of “The House that sends you mad” from “The Twelve Tasks of Asterix”. Well, of a very dark Variant of it to be exact, a Variant that reminds me of something way more unpleasant, but we’ll get there. In the next room Loki is asked:

“Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being, were born an organic creature, and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul.”

Loki just asks if there are many people who don’t know if they’re robot and this is taken as a confirmation at which he’s urged to move through it. At Loki’s question he’s told if he actually were a robot and didn’t know it, the machine would melt him from the inside out.

Before thinking the situation is absurd let’s remember Vision exists in the Marvel universe and he’s a robot and he could have been programmed so that he wasn’t aware of this or might lose awareness of it due to a malfunctioning.

So if a Vision variant unaware to be a robot where to show up at the TVA they would just melt him from the inside out, no big deal.

The machine turns out to be a photographic machine, which doesn’t take Loki’s mug shoot but photograph his temporal area, which Loki has no idea what is and no one bothers to explain him.

Again, through the whole procedure there’s no request of consent nor explanations, Loki has no rights for the TVA, he’s merely supposed to comply.

Loki ends up in another room with another ‘convict’. They’re both demanded to take a ticket. The first convict refuses, Loki complain there’s just two of them so it’s useless but complies and put it in his pocket. Loki clearly has better manners or has figured out there’s no point discussing and is bidding his time to when arguing or rebelling might be worth something.

As Loki complains...

“This is a mistake. I shouldn't even be here.”

...we’re introduced with Miss Minute. Miss Minute is a cartoon watch which is supposed to FINALLY help people catch up before they stand to trial for their crimes. We’ll find out that Miss Minute is there not for the convicts’ benefit but for us viewers’ benefit as it explains us the origins of the TVA.

If we want to stretch things it might be there also for the TVA benefit as it might give them a sense of legitimacy.

Anyway Miss Minute’s speech feels like Odin’s speech at the beginning of “Thor”.

Is a self glorifying narration in which they paint themselves as the heroes and something that exist for other people’s benefit.

But it only paints the TVA in an even darker light because when it explains how one becomes a Variant it says:

“But sometimes, people like you veer off the path the Time-Keepers created. We call those Variants. Maybe you started an uprising, or were just late for work. Whatever it was, stepping off your path created a nexus event, which, left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another multiversal war. But, don't worry, to make sure that doesn't happen, the Time-Keepers created the TVA and all its incredible workers. The TVA has stepped in to fix your mistake and set time back on its predetermined path. Now that your actions have left you without a place on the timeline, you must stand trial for your offenses.”

A break here.

From this little bit we’re introduced to the idea there’s only 1 timeline because each time another timeline could be born, the TVA erases it. This begs the question of how we’re supposed to judge this bit in “Avengers: Infinity War”

Stephen Strange: [Panting] I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. Peter Quill: How many did you see? Stephen Strange:14,000,605. Tony Stark: How many did we win? [Dr.Strange stares intently at Tony for a moment.] Stephen Strange: [Pause] One.

If there’s only 1 timeline, it seems impossible there could be 14,000,605 futures… but actually the key might be that there could be 14,000,605 futures… but the TVA erases them. The time stone might show those futures who had the possibility to be born… and that the TVA squashes under their feet, all for the sake to make canon their favourite future, while all the others have to cease and desist. If this is true I do wonder if the actions of the TVA can be undone, so that we can have “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.

Back to “Loki” and to what Miss Minute said, which is pretty worrisome and not at all uplifting.

I mean… we can speculate who starts an uprising might be someone bad (which is not necessarily the truth, what about the people involved in the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War or the Resistance in WW2?) but a poor guy who’s just late for work?

They don’t really see the difference between him and a guy starting an uprising because for them the matter isn’t what they were trying to do or which kind of people they were, just that they created another timeline, a crime they clearly weren’t aware to commit as no one warned them about how this was forbidden by this self imposed authority.

Loki clearly finds all this idiotic but then he hears the previous guy arguing with some sort of guard who demands his ticket. Now the previous guy is clearly a dumb liar, as insists he asked for the ticket but wasn’t given one, when he was loud enough and alone enough everyone in the room could notice he was the one refusing to take a ticket.

Anyway at this point the guard vaporizes him. In short they just murdered him, without trial or anything for the terrible crime of ‘not taking a ticket’.

Loki is appropriately shocked and hurries to get his ticket.

Something that’s also worth mentioning is the whole TVA is clearly structured to make people feel powerless.

There’s no explanation, they’re forcefully dragged in an unknown place by people claiming authority from an unknown structure, they’re forced to comply, they’re stripped naked against their will, dressed all the same, handled like objects who’re not called by their name but ‘Variant’ with even assigned a number, threatened to be melted if they don’t know they’re robot (and what if they know? They don’t take their picture or they just melt them?) and subjected to an explanation in form of a cartoon that feels absurd and that merely has the point of legitimizing the TVA as heroes and them as criminals.

Anyway Loki finds his ticket and shows it in a scene that reminds me of “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade”. Do you remember when Indy and his father board a Zeppelin to leave Germany and Indy tosses a Nazi out of the window and explains his actions by saying the guy was without ticket so everyone shows his ticket at him?

Anyway at this point we’re shown the title, “Loki" with a filter that makes it look like an old movie and the letters changing font.

Okay, I’m a bit late but I should probably mention that, form when Loki go to the TVA the colouring had a huge abundance of yellow and brown with basically no blue (except a little in the Miss Minute cartoon) which gives an idea of this being like an old movie. The music is kind of creepy and there’s a clock tickling as we see it.

Which is an interesting idea. Even though the TVA seems so modern, furniture and the structure of the place felt all but modern. Even the robot that stripped Loki felt as if it just came out from a very old and outdated idea of how a futuristic robot would look like.

We resume the story but this time we’re at Aix-En-Provence, in France in 1549.

We’re in a beautiful gothic church and one of the TVA agents, explains that the corpses on the ground belongs to some Minutemen (the name for the TVA agents who do field work apparently) who responded to a routine Nexus event. As soon as they arrived someone jumped on them.

Mobius is there as well, and he’s apparently playing the part of the detective as he’s studying the corpses.

Hunter U-92, another poor guy who apparently has no name but just a number clearly suspect of someone and tells so to Mobius who agrees as the stab wounds look consistent with the previous, the Minutemen were hit on surprise and the reset charge (remember? The stuff that erase the deviation from the timeline) is gone.

Oh we’re also told this is the 6th attack in the last week THAT THEY KNOW OF. I hope for them it’s Saturday, because this would mean ‘only 1’ attack each day. This would be rather terrible if they were just at Monday since the day hadn’t even ended yet.

Now… remember when I was comparing the hunters of the TVA to police and wonder if the show would dig into police brutality?

Well, we’ve this scene in which someone enters in the place and Hunter U-92 is immediately ready to attack him with the wand they used against Loki or some other similar TVA weapon.

Only the one who got in is, apparently, just a kid, not the dangerous variant they’re searching and it’s Mobius who has to stop Hunter U-92 from attacking a kid who, for all they know, is completely unrelated to the crime, a kid that’s far from them and weaponless.

I don’t want to know what would have happened in Mobius hadn’t told him ‘Wait, stand down! Stand down’ (note how he has to say ‘stand down’ twice) and had physically stopped him in his track with his arm.

Mobius approaches the kid, speaking gently in French, apologizing for Hunter U-92’s behaviour, saying he’s just an imbecile.

Hunter U-92, annoyed by his comment, reminds him that he too can speak every language on the timeline, and that in short he can understand what Mobius is saying. The sentence though is more for our benefit, telling us those men can use the TVA version of Allspeak or whatever the “Loki” series wants to call it.

There’s a lovely visual showing us the kid and Mobius met in front of a beautiful stained glass window which depicts Satan.

To get the boy to talk Mobius draws a stick figure on some sort of small tablet he has and then passes it to the boy, telling him to tap on it. The boy does and the figure becomes a walking holographic projection which causes the boy to smile instead than assuming it’s witchcraft and running away screaming.

Okay, we are in 1549 and not in middle age, but that would still feel like magic even at the end of Renaissance age. But whatever, boys sometimes can put aside their fear for something that amuses them and this one had no troubles dealing with the guy killing all those TVA agents.

Anyway Mobius asks the boy if he knows who did that and the boy conveniently does. He points to the figure in the glass stained window, a horned demon, likely Satan. We might think it’s symbolic, that for the boy whoever kills someone is a demon… but… wait a moment.

Anyway Mobius says the boy shouldn’t worry because that devil is afraid of them and that they will put the boy back to where he belongs.

The boy smiles and Mobius notices his teeth are blue. It turns out that the ‘devil’ has gifted the kid with some… candies? Bubblegums?

I’ve no idea if those ‘Kablooie’ are actually some kind of American food, sorry about it but it’s clear although the kid has pointed to a devil, he wasn’t so scared by him to turn down his gift or to not try it out. And a devil giving him a gift doesn’t really feel like someone who wanted to harm him, despite the boy seeing him.

I get this feeling this ‘devil’ is targeting specifically TVA hunters only instead than the timeline or people inside it. He leads them somewhere and then attacks and dispose them. If he’s doing so because the TVA hurt him or because he wants to control the timeline that’s up to speculation.

We’ll later be said this guy is another Loki variant, and in this scenes we were given clues to figure out ourselves, like how he stabbed the TVA agents and how the boy pointed to a demon or, more specifically, to a horned figure, and we knows Loki wears horns when in his full Asgardian attire.

Anyway Mobius takes the ‘candies?’ ‘bubblegums?’ away from the boy and orders Hunter U-92 to run the candies for sequence period and temporal aura… not that Hunter U-92 thinks they’ll find anything but he’s worried because the branch is nearing red line and they need to go. In my understanding if it reaches the red line it could risk creating a multiverse.

Mobius sends the boy to play outside while Hunter U-92 orders to set a reset charge.

Again we aren’t explained what a ‘reset charge’ works.

However we’ve seen the cartoon with Miss Minute and in that one there was a reset charge and when it activated it didn’t rewind the timeline… it erased it. So the creepy things is it could be this reset charge just… destroys everything, erases all the lives in that alternate timeline because, in a way, they’re all Variants, and the TVA disposes of Variants.

Well, I hope I’m wrong because otherwise it means each time the TVA resetted a timeline they basically killed each life living in that universe, which would make Thanos, who ‘only’ killed half the population once, a rather tame mass murderer.

Anyway before the timeline is resetted another TVA person joins Mobius and it shows him a file about the just apprehended Loki. Maybe nobody except me cares but they had previously shown an image of a Loki file and in it there were question marks on where the race was. Now they’ve written ‘Frost Giant’. Either the file shown was for another Loki Variant or they managed to remember Loki was a Frost Giant and fix the file.

It could be the file for another variant though, as his height in it is given as 6’4” while in this file he’s 6’2” (1.88m) which is Tom Hiddleston’s true height (for who’s curious 6’4” is Jeff Goldblum’s height… not that I think the Grandmaster is walking around pretending to be Loki because well, this would be weird…)… or they messed up Loki’s height as well. We’ll see.

As I know some have wondered about it, Loki’s eyes are given as blue and not as green… which is correct as Tom Hiddleston said:

Loki is a sexy villain, but that’s not part of his ambition, is it? He doesn’t seem to be interested in love or sex but he has this sexuality about him, maybe it’s his lust for power. What do you think of Loki as a sexy beast? Tom Hiddleston: [Laughs] That’s the first time anyone has ever used that phrase about Loki. It’s fascinating isn’t it? I don’t know because it’s not a part of the conscious construction. I take relish in playing him. I think there’s a physical self-possession about him, a self-acceptance. Of course I’ve been very exacting about his physicality. You know, I was born with very blonde, curly hair, and a mixture of Scottish and English genes, and my complexion is very ruddy and healthy. In making him with this raven black hair and blanching my face of all color, it changes my features. Suddenly my blue eyes look a lot bluer, which lends a severity to my face. And even my own smile has a distorted menace to it. Whatever comes through me naturally is distorted. It’s almost like a filter on a light. ['Thor: The Dark World’: Tom Hiddleston on boom times for evildoers]

Which implies he never wore green contact lenses to play Loki.

Whatever, we’ll go on.

We’re back to the TVA and Loki’s trial starts.

He’s taken in front of the judge Ravonna Renslayer who addresses to him as Laufeyson. Except for a small comic later retconned in “Thor: The Dark World”, this is the first time in the MCU Loki is called Laufeyson… which is a little sad as he never identified as such (the closest he goes is to say he’s Loki of Jotunheim when he tries to trick Malekith) yet meaningful as well as the TVA evidently never recognized Odin’s ‘adoption’ as valid. For them he’s not Odinson, he’s Laufeyson because that’s what he’s born. ‘Loki Odinson’ in his file is labelled as an alias same as ‘God of Mischief’, nothing more.

But well, they aren’t really interested in his name, for them he’s ‘Variant L1130, AKA Loki Laufeyson’. Renslayer informs him he’s charged with sequence violation 7-20-89 which can mean everything and nothing at the same time as, to us, and to Loki, is just a collection of numbers, and asks him how does he plead.

Loki tries, as it’s his habit, to put up a polite yet confident front.

He claims a god doesn’t plead and has been a very enjoyable pantomime, but he'd like to go home… and boys, we know he would really like to do so. He’s putting up a front because we saw how uncomfortable and scared he was through his permanence at the TVA.

In an old interview that’s sadly no more available Tom Hiddleston said:

“The thing with Loki is that, if he’s afraid, he won’t show it. He’s been highly trained, through the experience of his slightly traumatic life, to shield his fears.”

Why didn’t we see him scared in “The Avengers” even though he took risks in it too while now we’re allowed to catch glimpses of his fear here and there?

“The Avengers” had to paint him as the big adversary, the great obstacle the heroes have to overcome.

Are we going to feel that bad for you in this movie, or are you gonna – ? Tom Hiddleston: Yeah. He does some pretty nasty things. On one level, it was like, I knew I had to up the ante because there’s seven superheroes that make up the Avengers, and, in order for the film to work, the film is the most redemptive, feel-good, kind of fist-pumping story. And, in order for the audience to be pumping their fists for Iron Man, and Hulk, and Thor, and Captain America, they need to overcome a really big obstacle. And, unfortunately, that big obstacle is me. [LAUGHS]. I hope I have retained a sense of his kind of emotional damage [like we saw in Thor]. There is a lovely scene with Chris Hemsworth where you see a glimmer of his — his vulnerability, but… he’s yielded to the dark side, you know? [Interview With Tom Hiddleston AKA Loki]

In this episode the Loki we met isn’t the adversary, he’s the main character, so we get glimpses of his true mind. He’s afraid or confuse, yet he reacts to all that by putting up a front, by presenting himself as confident and in control. It started from when he found himself in an unfamiliar situation, facing the Mongolic people and it continues and will continue and mind you, it’s a good and popular technique to hide your fear.

By presenting yourself as confident, your opponent might believe you might have some reason to be confident and be more careful and hesitate in attacking you, and sometimes this is all the advantage you need.

Renslayer remains unfazed, as she likely knows Loki has no advantage over her. She knows he’s powerless, in an unfamiliar environment he knows nothing about, forced to wear a collar that somehow controls his time, submitted to rules he knows nothing about and surrendered by enemies.

Loki isn’t the first who was carried in front of her and she knows he won’t be the last. The system is unjust and the trial a farce but she’s persuaded for it to be righteous and the right way to deal with ‘Variants’ as this leads to the greater good of avoiding wars into the Multiverse so justice and fairness are clearly not something she has to care about.

Anyway she pressures the issue and, understanding she won’t let go, Loki shifts the blame on the Avengers, pointing out how he came into possession of the Tesseract because THEY traveled through time, according to Loki in a ‘last-ditch effort to stave off his ascent to God King’.

So yes, even though he was soundly beaten by them and he’s in a bad spot Loki still tries to play highty and mighty and not cower up in fear. But how did he know about the Avengers travelling through time? We saw he noticed the whole thing with the case, but how did he knew the Avengers were involved and not some other guy?

Remember how I mentioned that “Avengers: Endgame” had Loki walking vaguely near 2022 Tony Stark and we Scott Lang asking Tony if he wears Axe body spray?

Well, Loki clearly has a fine nose because he recognized the Axe body spray coming off from 2022 Tony Stark and figured out he was a future version of 2012 Tony Stark.

It’s kind of a pity they hadn’t kept these bits in the series but whatever, I get why they might have cut them.

Loki, like most of the fandom, blames them as the Time Criminals and suggests if Rendlayer were to provide him a taskforce he could eliminate them for her.

As he spoke we see Mobius intruding in the trial and sitting down as it carries on.

Back to Renslayer, she isn’t interested in the Avengers, claiming they were supposed to go back in the past but Loki wasn’t supposed to grab the Tesseract and escape.

Loki laughs at the absurdity of the statement and demands to know who decided this.

The answer is the Time-Keepers who dictate the proper flow of time so that Renslayer can dictate the proper flow of time according to their dictation.

And you start to see the horror of this system.

The Time-Keepers arbitrarily decide which is the proper flow of time and impose it on everyone. They basically make the rules according to what they like the most… and, of course, they don’t inform anyone of which ones the rules should be.

When Loki picked up the Tesseract and escaped there was nowhere a big warning sign saying ‘if you do so you commit a crime’. He didn’t even know there were Time-Keepers and a sacred timeline and the TVA did nothing to fix this.

While in many countries you’re supposed to know the law and pledging ignorance is not an excuse, the TVA is a self imposed and not recognized Authority of whose existence nobody knows anything which dictate rules according to the Time-Keepers’ tastes.

There’s the risk of total annihilation due to a multiverse war?

Fair worry but then why they get to decide how the sacred timeline should be? Which are their criteria for it? Why the Avengers going back to time was okay?

Although they saved lives, the whole things was incredibly messy as discussed in “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier”… and that series only touched the tip of the iceberg.

But whatever. The Time-Keepers, which Loki defines gods because that’s basically how the TVA paints them, at the moment remind me of the gods of gods in the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” comic and with them the whole idea everything is a tale.

The Sacred timeline feels like nothing else but the tale the Time-Keeper enjoyed, their canon, as if they were Marvel. Everything else is a fictional Au written by fans that gets a ‘cease and desist letter’ and is erased from the net.

Anyway Loki is feed up. He decides to plea ‘guilty’ but not of the crime they’re trying to pin on him but of… using his magic against them. Only his magic doesn’t work.

Hunter B-15 is probably the first who realizes what’s going on and, chuckling, explains it to Renslayer who’s not catching up. As Loki gets angry for not managing to use them, Renslayer explains magic powers don’t work at the TVA, which might explain why she didn’t recognize what Loki was doing while Hunter B-15, used to fieldwork, did. Renslayer might have never seen people using magic powers but Hunter B-15 might have done so.

Only no, because in an interview Gugu Mbatha-raw said about her character:

“She had a history of a hunter and a more military role like Wunmi’s character” [Many Sides of Loki | Marvel Studios' Loki Cast & Creators]

So, no, I’ve no idea why she didn’t catch up. Was she playing dumb? Has she been so out of the field she didn’t recognize the signs? Or, despite being the judge at Loki’s trial she hadn’t read his file and didn’t know he could do magic? It can be, as I said the trial is a farce so she might not have cared to document herself beyond a certain point.

Hunter B-15 is still laughing. She’s enjoying this.

Anyway she decides Loki is guilty and sentenced to be ‘reset’… you know, like the timelines.

Note again how Loki had no rights in this. He had no lawyer, he wasn’t explained things, he was just asked how he pled but that one was more a pro-forma than anything else. They had already decided he wasn’t allowed to do what he did and therefore guilty.

The trial was a farce to give the TVA a semblance of justice but it’s all a show.

Back to Loki, he has no idea what they mean with ‘reset’ and they didn’t even have the courtesy to explain it to him. Angrily he says:

“You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends!”

To which Renlayer replies:

“It's not your story, Mr. Laufeyson. It never was.”

So yeah, now they’ve started with the references to stories which are another subtle jab at the “Loki: Agent of Asgard” plotline.

By the way, keep in mind Renslayer’s reply.

As Loki complains they have no idea what he’s capable of and tries resisting being taken away Mobius speaks up.

Fundamentally Mobius wants Renslayer to pass Loki to him as he has a plan.

There’s clearly a story behind the relation between Renslayer and Mobius, they aren’t just professional to each other, they’re closer than that.

Renslayer agrees although she says he’ll get the blame for whatever goes wrong.

Mobius looks at Loki, Loki stops struggling and asks him who he is and Mobius smiles in a satisfied manner and doesn’t reply.

The scene shifts to them walking through the place, Loki threatening to burn the place to the ground. Mobius clearly doesn’t take him seriously, saying he can start from his desk.

The fact is… Loki is powerless and Mobius knows. We know too, we’ve seen how the trial went. However there might be more at play. Mobius knows the whole of Loki’s life which as far as we know, included only episodes of violence post discovering who he was and during his permanence on Earth.

To him Loki’s statement might feel more an expression of frustration than a sincere threat.

As they walk Loki happens to see the world outside the place he’s in from what looks like a window. He’s surprised and Mobius encourages him to have a look.

Loki points out he though there was no magic there. I’m not sure if he’s saying so because he sees car flying and assume it’s magic.

In “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World” magic was compared to science so maybe that’s what he’s saying, that the world he sees seems to advanced.

Mobius insists there isn’t magic there so Loki says that’s not real.

They exchange some more lines in which Mobius continues to play on Loki’s declaration he’ll burn the place down.

I’m curious.

We know Mobius is actually chasing another Loki Variant, one who killed many TVA agents (we’ll see some of them got burned down too).

He’ll later claim this Loki is not dangerous, but what’s the difference between this Loki and the other? What makes the other dangerous? And can’t this Loki get dangerous too?

Is Mobius doing the same that Loki does?

Acting confident and joking about Loki burning down the place because he actually fears he might have the potential to just do so if not handled correctly?

We’ll see.

Once they’re on a lift Mobius decides to introduce himself as ‘Agent Mobius’ and offers him his hand to shake… and I’m reminded of this scene from “The Avengers”.

Natasha: But you figured I'd come. Loki: After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.

The TVA doesn’t see what they’ve done as torture or even as ‘wrong’… but many states wouldn’t approve of some sort of vigilante capture a person for something THEY labelled a crime, force him to undress, destabilize him to the point he’s not even sure if he’s a human or a robot, put him through a mock trial and then threaten him to be ‘reset’.

It’s in dystopic universes you find authorities who can just arrest you for breaking laws they made up without your knowledge and then decide of your life.

Mobius might not be looking like Natasha but, after all this, someone acting like a friend would make him automatically more cooperative and, in a way, it does.

Hunter B-15 had to drag him where Loki just follows Mobius more or less quietly.

Anyway, back to the story.

Mobius decided to introduce himself in a friendly manner and I would want to remark Loki asked him who he was when they were at the trial so this is a rather late introduction which he might be doing right now because we just hear Loki sighing as he’s clearly unnerved.

Mobius is playing the role of the good cop in a way, trying to gain his trust.

Loki doesn’t handshake, he’s not going to make friend so easily, but asks him if he’s taking him somewhere to kill him.

Mobius says no, that’s where he just was which, if it’s not a lie, means that resetting Loki would have meant to actually kill him. So again… what about the timelines that get resetted? All the people in them get killed? The place gets razed to the ground? Disintegrated? What?

Mobius’ reply might be truthful but it’s also clever because he’s setting himself up as Loki’s ‘saviour’. Others wanted to kill Loki but he? He just saved him which begs the question of ‘shouldn’t Loki be a good boy and comply with Mobius’ requests and trust him and all the stuff?’

Now… I know that people feel like Mobius is a good guy because he saved Loki but the story will make clear he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart… but merely because he needs him.

We’ve seen Mobius with the boy before, he made him comfortable so that the boy complied and gave him info, which is one of the many interrogating techniques.

That’s what Mobius is doing here.

Anyway we proceed with the best known scene of “Loki” as it was in the very first trailer.

I remember people discussing Mobius’ words about Loki liking to talk, as in the first movie he was often silent and quiet.

Well, to be honest if the movie had been left in his original cut Loki would have surely talked more, but what stuck with me watching “Thor” wasn’t so much that Loki was often quiet, but that many times he attempts to speak but he’s silenced.

On the Rainbow Bridge Volstagg asks him:

Volstagg: What happened? Your silver tongue turn to lead?

…which means Loki normally was skilful at persuading people to believe what they say or to do what they want them to do, which doesn’t necessarily makes him a chatter, but surely someone who knows how to talk. And we see that in “The Avengers” when nobody is there to interrupt him he allows himself to monologue. It’s an interpretation, of course, with whom people can disagree.

Anyway Loki decides to talk with Mobius. It’s not a stupid decision. Mobius is clearly not seeing him as a threat but he’s not being overly hostile either. Loki is completely a fish out of the water so it’s in his own interest to play along with Mobius, talk with him and find out more information about the place. In fact the first thing he asks is how long Mobius had been there, because this is tied in how much knowledge he could have.

In fact, the more he’d been there, the more he might know.

Mobius though remarks since time passes differently at the TVA he has no idea… which is a convenient reply as it only confuses Loki and explains nothing. In fact he could have said not the exact time he’d been there but give an approximation like ‘a lot’ or ‘very little’, instead, by giving out a vague reply he gives Loki an info he could do nothing with (time passes differently) and no real info about himself. At the same time, by giving out an answer, he again seems amicable, like how, when Loki asks what his answer means, he says Loki will catch up, as if he’s not withholding information, it’s just ‘complicate’.

Loki resorts to check the information Miss Minute gave him in her cartoon, which Mobius confirms because he has nothing to lose.

Loki laughs and tries to spark a response by being rude in defining the TVA system.

“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.”

Note, ‘little club’, ‘three space lizards’, ‘funny’, ‘absurd’.

He’s mocking the system, likely in order to get a response, but also in order to gain some measure of control.

It’s something he has done during the trial and is something he did in “Thor: The Dark World” facing Odin… or in “The Avengers” when he was held captive. But in “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World” he had some understanding of what to expect. Here he’s blind flying, trying to test Mobius to see what he can get out of him while still trying to hold a façade of control.

On another note Loki says rather often how all this is absurd. To him this is a world of nonsense, like the one Alice found when she ended up in Wonderland (and it’s ironic how “Alice in the Wonderland” also contain a mock trial about the stealing of tarts in which rules are made on the spot as well as Alice here and there questioning her own identity or discussions about paths…) but I think having him repeat ‘it’s absurd’ so often it’s also for us viewers, to drive home we’re in a dystopic universe.

The TVA isn’t good, it’s absurd, with its rules that don’t make sense, a huge bureaucratic world and we might laugh at it if it wasn’t that’s also an organization that kidnap people from their timelines and subject them to their rules, rules they follow without questioning, like religious fanatics.

Who says what the Time-Keepers chose it has to happen is better than something else? They don’t know but, what’s more, they don’t care.

But let’s go on.

Mobius don’t fall for Loki’s provocation, he just retorts

“I thought you didn't like to talk.”

Which is a convenient way to answer Loki without giving Loki any answer.

They enter in a room which, Loki comments, looks very much ‘like a killing-me kind of a room’.

Mobius turns the situation by shifting the blame on Loki. It’s not that the room looks like a killing-him kind of room, it’s just that Loki is not big on trust. Because Mobius is totally deserving Loki’s trust because he saved him and was nice to him and acted like the perfect good cop so Loki really, should trust him. If he’s not doing it then it’s because he’s lacking in the trusting department.

But Loki had had his fill with trusting people and then discovering he wasn’t his parents’ son nor an Asgardian. His answer his moved by all the pain that discovery caused him.

“Trust is for children and dogs. There's only one person you can trust.”

Mobius’ reply again doesn’t take Loki’s words seriously, as if they were just something to slap on a shirt. He’s being passive aggressive in order to force Loki to question himself and keep control of him. The more Loki is unsure and question himself, the easy for Mobius is to manipulate him.

A break here.

It’s not that everyone has only one person they can trust… actually sometimes you can’t even trust yourself, while some other times you’ve plenty of people you can trust.

The idea you CAN’T trust in anyone is as damaging as the idea you should blindly trust in people but, in Loki’s situation yes, he should definitely only trust in himself, everyone in that situation should do it, trauma of being lied through your whole life or not, because Mobius isn’t doing all his out of good will but out of his need to use Loki.

So he’s not to be blindly trusted, he’s to be assessed so that one can see up until which point Mobius can be of some aid, so as to turn the exchange one of reciprocal benefit. If Loki were to hand himself in his hands, instead, only Mobius would get a gain for it, while Loki would risk to be used and then disposed once he has ended his purpose.

As Mobius is fiddling with a round thing that apparently control a projector, Loki questions him again, but with those words he has raised the bar a little.

If Mobius wants him to trust him, he has to start giving more clear answers.

“If the TVA truly oversees all of time, how have I never heard of you until now?”

Mobius is still good at diverting the attention as his reply irritates Loki and causes him to lose track of the conversation.

Mobius: 'Cause you've never needed to. You've always lived within your set path. Loki: I live within whatever path I choose. Mobius: Sure you do.

There are two things from the exchange.

One is that Mobius ends up confirming that the TVA is sort of a secret organization that decides for others, that’s ABOVE OTHERS. They don’t let you know which rules you’ve to follow, they decide which rule you’ve to follow and then let you blind fly until you stumble into a rule you didn’t know exist and break it. And then they come to punish you. And that’s when you learn they existed.

The second is that again Mobius, while not openly disagree with him, is dismissive of Loki. He has made him defensive by pushing him to say ‘I live within whatever path I choose’ then he hadn’t outright said ‘no, you don’t’ but by the way he replied he hugely implied it in a manner that sounds more like he had said ‘oh, you naïve child, and your delusions, of course you don’t chose your path’.

As Mobius invites him to sit down Loki tries to attack him since Mobius gave him his back but Mobius uses what we’ll learn is a Time Twister to loops him and send him standing back where he was. Then Mobius very calmly insists for Loki to have a seat, again driving home the point that Loki has no choices and is powerless.

Loki complies and sit down.

We can argue if he should have or not but the truth is there was no real point in resisting beyond making things difficult for himself because if there’s something true here is that he’s powerless and he should just bid his time and search for a weakness, instead than resisting.

Of course this is all well and good for Mobius, as things are proceeding in the way he wants.

Loki crosses his arms, which, in body language, hints that he’s feeling anxious, resistant, tense, insecure, afraid, or responding to distress. Arms crossed indicate also defensiveness, unyielding attitudes, and perseverance working as an act of self-comfort.

Long story short, Loki is not comfortable or willing to cooperate and he’s physically putting a barrier between himself and Mobius… and letting Mobius know of this.

Mobius is unfazed.

“If looks could kill.”

It’s a simple sentence that let Loki know that yes, he gets the message Loki isn’t going to go down to this willingly, but also reminds him of Loki’s powerlessness and of how Mobius is unafraid and in a position of power. ‘If looks could kill… you would kill me, but looks can’t kill so you’ll have to sit there and do as I say. Your resistance is futile. Amusing even.’

Loki doesn’t play along, making clear he doesn’t plan to cooperate. At least not easily. Mobius doesn’t believe him.

“Really? Even when you're wooing someone powerful you intend to betray? Come on.”

It’s an interesting sentence for Mobius to say, because he’s lampshading Loki isn’t using with him the same technique he used with Thanos and the Grandmaster. Since the story knows Loki should act more cooperative and obedient according to his previous records, I wonder which point they’re trying to make. Is the idea that Loki started to act as such after his one year imprisonment in Asgard, understanding opening defiling Odin got him nowhere and that he should have instead played along, therefore this Loki hadn’t gotten to that point yet?

Or is the idea Loki is deliberately choosing to act like this because he has already figured playing along with Mobius wouldn’t work?

We’ll see.

The answer could as well be a Doylist one, the audience expects him to act a certain way, the author is aware Loki normally acted in a certain way but they wanted him to act differently for… reasons.

We’ll see.

Mobius continues to make a show of his power. He is specialized in the pursuit of dangerous Variants but not like Loki, Loki is just a pussycat… only it’s EXACTLY like Loki… as it’s Loki he’s pursuing. Another version of him. He’s not telling him that though, exactly because the whole point of the discussion is making Loki feel small so that he can control him.

Credits when it’s due, Mobius is playing a dangerous game because the Loki he’s pursuit and this one might be two different Variants but they’re always Loki and this one has all the potential to become the same as the other, if he’s not already and just keeping it buried inside himself.

Anyway, the fact that Loki is so contrary, forces Mobius to act as if he were willing to make Loki some concessions for his cooperation. A reward for good behaviour if so we can call it.

“You answer them honestly, and then maybe I can give you something you want. You wanna get out of here, right?”

The truth is I genuinely doubt Mobius can grant him that, or, at least, not that in the way Loki might intend it. The TVA erased the timeline he came from. He has no more a place outside of the TVA. The most ‘getting out of there’ could mean is what will later happen, make him a worker for the TVA. He won’t be allowed to go back home, he’ll just have to serve them in exchange for having them not delete him.

Mobius though shifts cards and pretends it means he can go back to where he was, asking him what he would do, should he return.

I particularly enjoy this dialogue.

Mobius: You wanna be king? Loki: I don't want to be, I was born to be. Mobius: I know, but king of what exactly? Loki: ( Scoffs ) You wouldn't understand. Mobius: Try me. Loki: Midgard.

The ‘I don’t want to be’ echoes what Loki said to Thor in “Thor”…

“I never wanted the throne! I only ever wanted to be your equal.”

…and ties in with what Odin told him as a child…

“Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.”

Which is something Loki hints at in “Thor: The Dark World” as well.

Frigga: You know full well it was your actions that brought you here. Loki: My actions. I was merely giving truth to the lie that I had been fed my entire life, that I was born to be a king.

“The Avengers” suffers of a huge plot problem in this regard, which is the jump between Loki in “Thor” and Loki in “The Avengers”. In the year that went between the two Loki is deeply changed but “The Avengers” refused to explain why, it just shows us a different Loki.

To search for an explanation we’ve to read interviews:

“And in the time between the end of Thor and the beginning of the Avengers, Loki has explored the shadowy highways and byways of the universe – and he’s met some terrible, terrible people and probably had some awful experiences, which he has survived and overcome. So by the time he arrives in The Avengers, he knows the extent of his power – and he’s unafraid to use it. And more importantly, he’s unafraid to enjoy it.” In Marvel’s The Avengers, Loki sets out to remake Earth as his personal kingdom. “That’s his motivation. Thor has his own kingdom in Asgard. Why shouldn’t Loki have his own? As Loki sees it, planet Earth is a world at war with itself. All of these races and tribes are fighting each other. And if they were united in the reverence of one king, there would be peace. It’s not that he plans to attack Earth. It’s that he plans to ‘restructure’ it as a new kingdom of which he will be the head. Loki feels that it’s his birthright. He feels that he was born to rule. And he sees the human race as an incredibly weak people who actually were made to be ruled. And, in his mind and in his opinion, the human race functions better under rule.” [The art of The Avengers]

“I think he went, like with everything else, to—Joss Whedon and I discussed it—to a sort of… it was just, like, the worst place imaginable. I think he went to, sort of, all of the darkest recesses of the universe. I’m sure he had a brush with—several brushes with death. I think he ran into the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. It was really, really, really unpleasant, I think. I don’t have any frame of reference for that, except for imagining what it might be like to be kidnapped by a terrorist or something and have to survive a very, very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for The Avengers, that whatever compassion he had left was absolutely shriveled to a minimum because of the experience that he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life—in a way that Thor and Odin and Frigga find very, very difficult to understand.” [Tom Hiddleston - live on stage Q&A: Popcorn Taxi - part 2]

And in the end we stumble into this:

“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what went on because it’s this dark, dark secret that I didn’t make up yet. But, the other day, I had trouble with that because he had this very passionate Shakespearean tragedy thing going on in Thor and then I needed a villain who’s not only capable, but ready and willing and anxious to take on all these heroes. For me, he just basically went on some horrible walkabout… That was pretty much as far as I got.” [Joss Whedon told Comic-Con the question he doesn’t want us to ask ever again ]

So fundamentally “The Avengers” didn’t know what happened to Loki that changed him, they just went with the idea something bad happened, which of course should have happened since Loki met up with Thanos, who’s famous for torturing his daughters. They also tossed in that while on Midgard he was under the influence of the Mind stone.

“Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fuelling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.” [www.marvel.com/characters/loki/on-screen]

Ultimately though, what happened is never stated nor explained.

When Loki wants Asgard’s throne it’s clear he’s doing so because he associates it with his father’s love. Who gets the throne is the son Odin’s love.

“To prove to Father that I am the worthy son. When he wakes, I will have saved his life. I will have destroyed that race of monsters. And I will be true heir to the throne!”

But Midgard? Midgard is chosen by Thanos, because he needs the Tesseract, which is there. Did Loki wanted it too? Or was it Thanos who chose for him? Hard to say but “The Avengers” still ties Loki’s wish for a kingdom to his father.

THE OTHER: You question us? You question him? He who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated? LOKI: I was a king! The rightful kind of Asgard! Betrayed! THE OTHER: Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond the Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.

It makes sense. When Loki is told his whole life is a lie, his first action is try to erase the truth by erasing Jotunheim. That was as much personal as practical (they were at war with Jotunheim). Becoming a king might have been another attempt at still erasing the truth. He doesn’t attempt to become king of Jotunheim, as it would be his birthright, but of something else, Midgard. He’s imitating Odin.

Loki: I went down to Midgard to rule the people of Earth as a benevolent god. Just like you.

All this to say that Loki’s reply ‘I don't want to be, I was born to be’ is actually a lot more layered that it sounds is actually a lot more layered that it sounds and that’s why he doesn’t think Mobius would understand it and gives him a simple answer, something he thinks he could understand. A location over which he could rule.

At the same time the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. A moment ago Loki said he ‘live within whatever path he chooses’ yet he claims he was born to do something. This wasn’t a choice, this was predetermination. Or letting Odin dictate his path.

Anyway Loki claims he would then move to conquer Asgard and the Nine Realms and agree when Mobius suggests him to go for the space… and honestly I think here Loki is just playing a part. He’s giving Mobius the answers he thinks Mobius wants, an evil Loki. “Loki” clearly is not going to retcon “Thor: Ragnarok” and we’ve seen that in that movie once Loki had the throne of Asgard he didn’t start a conquering rampage but just contented himself with it.

So, no, Loki doesn’t want to rule the universe, he just wants to prove himself something he was told was true.

Mobius don’t take him seriously, either because he knows Loki doesn’t aim to universe domination or because this is convenient for him. He says something interesting though, albeit misleading.

Loki: Mock me if you dare. Mobius: No, I'm not. Honestly, I'm actually a fan. Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering why does someone with so much range just wanna rule?

With ‘I’m actually a fan’ I don’t think he means he supports Loki, I think he’s subtly hinting he’s very interested in Loki. The other Loki, the Variant he’s trying to catch and that holds them all in a stalemate. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes might have appreciated Professor Moriarty’s intellect. This Loki and his other Variant might have a shared past… which makes this Loki interesting as well.

Then Mobius lead Loki in a loop in Loki’s reasoning. Loki is big on how he decides what he does. He values his own freedom. A huge part of why he reject the TVA system is because they want to dictate what he can and can’t do.

Yet in “The Avengers” he said:

Loki: I come with glad tidings, of a world made free. Fury: Free from what? Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart...[Like a gunslinger, Loki turns to face Selvig who's standing behind him and places his spear against Selvig's heart. Selvig's eyes glow black.] Loki: You will know peace.

and

Loki: Kneel before me. [The crowd ignores him. Three more Loki's appear, surrounding and blocking the crowd from escaping.] I said KNEEL! [While the crowd quietly kneels, Loki embraces out his arms with a wide smile] Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

It’s unclear how Loki came up with those ideas, albeit the fact he came from Asgard, which is a place where Odin rules as a supreme ruler and humans are viewed as inferior…

Odin: She does not belong here in Asgard anymore than a goat belongs at a banquet table.

…this might be another result of Odin’s awesome parenting, and not necessarily the result of Thanos’ manipulation… though the two might have superimposed so that it’s hard to say where one stop and the other begins.

Loki confirms this view here as well.

Loki: I would've made it easy for them. Mobius: People like easy. Loki: The first and most oppressive lie ever uttered was the song of freedom. Mobius: How's that one go? 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.

On a personal note I think Loki wants to see himself above of this, but it’s clear that he too had to deal with choices that breed shame, uncertainty and regret, never mentioning he believes he was seen as inferior by Odin and deprived of his path.

Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me.

The fact he thinks Odin would have never put on the throne of Asgard a Frost Giant (a monster and therefore even more inferior in the Asgardians’ opinion than humans) no matter what and that he thinks this got confirmed when Odin told him he couldn’t do it, which pushed him to let go of Gungnir.

Loki wants to be above… he wants to be the master of his fate after instead he was forced to dance on other people’s strings (Odin, Thanos) but deep down he’s drawing from his own experience the downsides of freedom. He just wants to overcome them.

Mobius then says he’ll show Loki a sampling of Loki’s greatest hits… which are basically the end of the battle of New York.

It’s fundamentally a close up of how he was beaten and how he asked for a drink, which Mobius mocks further offering him a drink, which Loki refuses pointing out he remembers that scene.

We kind of stumble in a problem the series has. Mobius says:

“It's funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature.”

The problem here is that the sentence is misleading. Loki at the moment has two big failures on his shoulders, the one in “Thor” and the one in “The Avengers”. It doesn’t make a lot and note that in “The Avengers” he also had minor successes. He walked away from SHIELD’s facility with the Tesseract, he managed to have Clint Barton steal the Iridium, he let the Avengers capture him so that he could let the Hulk lose, which worked and he could recover the scepter and escape, he managed to open the portal and let the Chitauri in. Basically, since he let himself be captured and even Steve knows, Loki won all the battles except the one who decided the war. Which yes, was a big loss because it was the one that mattered the most but still it shows Loki’s losing record isn’t as big as Mobius makes it look like.

Loki ends up bringing up Coulson. To prove his point that Loki isn’t really good at winning Mobius could bring up the fact that Coulson was resurrected in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” but no, he prefers to say the Avengers came together to literally avenge him by defeating him.

Now yes, Coulson’s death played a big part in all that, they felt guilty and sorry for him, as they all were tied to him one way or the other and this made what Loki did personal enough they could easily put away their differences… but I’m not overly fond of this theory because it implies if Coulson hadn’t died the Avengers would have never came together, would have never overcome their difficulties and would have lost.

Which, I guess, might be a possibility “Loki” might want to explore, we saw in a trailer an image of New York completely destroyed… but it’s something I don’t particularly like because it paints the Avengers in a pretty dark light.

If they didn’t have a common grief, they would have never cooperate for the common good.

Of course it’s not that Mobius care, this explanation is convenient for him, an Augustinian view of evil in which evil collapse its evil’s own doing. Because Loki killed Coulson, Loki set up his own defeat. Evil loses because it’s a snake that bites its own tail… which is an interesting view, really, but, in this case, it put a huge shadow on the Avengers.

Whatever, let’s go on, Mobius’ point is to make Loki feel small, not to explain him why he lost.

But still… he would manage to make a better point if the series weren’t forced to use only the footage from the movies. But well, I guess they had no other choice.

I enjoy the next bit of discussion. Mobius asks Loki:

“Do you enjoy hurting people? Making them feel small? Making them feel afraid?”

Which is exactly what he’s doing to him. There’s a huge irony in the whole discussion. They both think they’re in the right doing what they’re doing/what they did and that this excuses their actions.

They set up a moral motive, Loki sees himself as a liberator, Mobius sees himself as the saviour of the sacred timeline so they are above others, they came make them feel small and afraid and don’t have to feel guilty for it.

They get to a stalemate, although Loki isn’t looking at the screen, which is our clue he isn’t enjoying what he’s seeing, the people suffering. He didn’t like to look at them in “The Avengers” either, not looking when he ‘freed that eyeball’ as Mobius put in. Even when Thor forces him to look at the attacked city he shows he’s distressed. Loki however enjoyed being at the centre of the attention, it’s that what got him to smile, not hurting that man.

But whatever, to try to compensate, the series shows us some unseen material from Loki’s past, namely when he played the role of D.B. Cooper.

On a sidenote this hugely confirms my theory Loki used to hang out on Earth since he could play that part. Among the other things which the series didn’t show Cooper appeared familiar with the local terrain; at one point he remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly mentioned that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive (at that time) from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He asks for 2 bourbon and soda, paid his drink tab (and attempted to give flight attendant Tina Mucklow the change). He even offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle This makes Loki someone who knows very well how things work in Midgard… contrary to Thor.

Mobius introduces the whole thing saying

“You're really good at doing awful things, and then just getting away.”

And yes, it was awful. Although Cooper is described as extremely polite I can’t imagine that the crew who knew he had a bomb onboard felt comfortable with dealing with that situation. The worst part though is that he did it because he lost a bet with Thor.

Now they don’t exactly dig in what the bet was, but Heimdall was likely watching his every move and Thor asking him to do something similar as penance for losing a bet paints Thor also as pretty awful.

The best part though is that Loki excuses it by saying ‘he was young’. The whole thing took place in 1971, in short, 41 years before “The Avengers”. 41 years are a lot for a human, enough to make them say ’41 years ago I was young’, but Loki is at least 1047 in “The Avengers”. We don’t know how fast exactly Frost Giants and Asgardians age but, unless they do an abrupt jump, if Loki was young 41 years ago, he probably still is, which would match with the fan theory he’s actually around 17 in human years.

Now we can take Loki’s sentence as something a young person would say, as in a span of a short time they effectively grow and change a lot so their slightly younger self might feel a lot younger to them, or he might be talking in a more metaphorical sense.

Discovering the truth about himself and what followed forced him to grow faster. Now he wouldn’t do such immature things… which is a rather sad though.

At Loki’s request of where was the TVA back then, Mobius replies they were right there with him, just surfing that Sacred Timeline. Loki asks then if that has the Time-Keepers' seal of approval.

He scores one on this one as Mobius can’t reply, he just says not to think in terms of approval or disapproval.

Let’s remember something else that had the Time-Keepers' seal of approval was Thanos wiping away half of the universe but not just that. There’s also Thanos travelling through time to get to that future and stop “The Avengers” from undoing what he did with the infinity stones, which means they approved Tony Stark’s death in order to stop him.

Awesome people, don’t you think? More similar to writers who’ve to sell a good story than to people who care and wants to protect the people who lives in the timeline.

Anyway Mobius says they’ll go back to Loki’s escape and to a little psychobabble, which tells us not even Mobius sees this as a psychology session or therapy or whatever you want to call it. This interrogatory’s aim isn’t to let him know Loki better, he believes he knows him already. He’s trying to shape Loki into a willing collaborator because that’s his goal, not heal Loki or whatever.

Mind you, I think he’d like to get to know Loki in the sense he’s trying to catch a Loki and knowing Loki better might help him in his work… but so far he really hadn’t asked anything he didn’t know already so no, this isn’t a big ‘let’s get to know Loki’, though he might find some interest in seeing what makes him tick in the conversation, this is just a ‘let’s manipulate Loki into cooperating’.

Loki wants to stand, Mobius uses the Time Twister to loops him ‘back in his cage’. Because don’t mistake the situation just because he’s not being aggressive or physically abusive, Loki is in a cage and Mobius makes a show of showing it to Loki. He can’t stand up without Mobius’ permission and Mobius further remarks it by saying he ‘can play the heavy keys, too’, in short that he can play the role of the ‘bad cop’ that slams back the prisoner in his chair when he tries to move.

Or should we assume Mobius feared Loki was going to attack him?

Maybe, as I said Loki and Mobius might be more similar than it looks like, both acting in control and high and mighty to hide they are actually in a tight spot. Mobius isn’t a hunter, he might not be strong, he might not know how to fight beyond waving that Time Twister and the TVA wand, while Loki knows. We don’t know from which race Mobius is, but Asgardians and Frost Giants are naturally very physically strong, much stronger than humans, and Mobius might belong to a race that’s just not the same.

But still the scene works conveniently for Mobius, because it’s another chance to drive home how he completely control Loki.

Loki’s reply, regardless of it being sincere or not, is good because it says Mobius just overreacted as Loki merely wanted to make a point.

After an exchange in which Mobius gives him permission to stand and Loki remarks he’ll do what he wants, which in a way he did since ultimately he stood, he asks him what he wants.

Mobius says

“I want you to be honest about why you do what you do.”

Loki calls it a lie and he’s probably not completely right but neither completely wrong. Mobius likely doesn’t care about why Loki did what he did in the past, that’s not a time he has to deal with, but he cares about forcing Loki to be honest. Loki has to trust him and cooperate with him and this includes that he has to open up. Mobius has to already know the answer to his questions, otherwise he could never know if Loki is being honest and he knows them because he knows Loki’s future, how he evolves, how it pained him to see Frigga die, how he saved Thor even though it lead him to be stabbed, how he didn’t aim for space domination when he was king of Asgard, how he came back to save Asgard, how he died for his brother.

So Mobius is not lying when he says he wants Loki to be honest… but that’s not because he cares about the answer, which is what Loki figured and why Loki called him a liar. It’s a matter of control and Loki can see it.

Loki: I know what this place is. Mobius: What is it? Loki: It's an illusion. It's a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate attempt at control. Now, you all parade about as if you're the divine arbiters of power in the universe.

And Mobius claims to be sure to have such a role which again, it’s an awesome irony because they both play the same game, they act as if they’re superior than others.

Mobius shows him his speech about freedom, which of course feels like a slap on his face because now it’s turned against him and his mad scramble for power.

Loki catches up and insists on his freedom, on how he’s the one in charge of his destiny who will win because HE did it, not because it was supposed to happen or was allowed by the TVA.

Mobius tries to bring him down again informing him if he hadn’t picked up the Tesseract he would have been taken to a cell on Asgard… or, you know, he might have been out there killing TVA men staging the 7th attack in the last week that they know of. But let’s not tell this to Loki at this stage. It might give him ideas about not being completely powerless against the TVA.

Mobius shows him the scene of his return to Asgard, which Loki rejects as a trick as ‘it never happened’.

Mobius agrees, it didn’t happen TO HIM, but it would have because they know also how his future was meant to be and that he should think of it as ‘comforting’. Which is not considering how his life was meant to be.

Note how Mobius is showing him only Frigga. How she was there for him when he came back, how she asked him if she wasn’t his mother and how he rejected her, hurting her. Loki doesn’t know what the argument was about or what pushed him to say so, all he sees is her being there for him and him hurting her and as he watches he moves closer.

Then Mobius explains how Loki believed to send the dark elves to Thor and instead sent them to Frigga… only he’s conveniently overlooking Loki had no idea they were Dark Elves or that there was a Dark Elves attack. Loki assumed the Kurse was just another Marauder arrested by Thor.

The Marauders were a collective of loosely affiliated alien pirates composed of many different races. When the Kurse is captured no Asgardian figured out what he is, they’re all persuaded the Dark Elves are dead, exterminated by Bor. For all Loki’s know this is a prison uprising, the Dark Elves’ ships hadn’t even appeared yet and started their attack when Loki sent Kurse on his way.

Mobius is cherry picking facts so as to shape them the way he wants.

Loki is shocked at seeing Frigga’s death which Mobius knew would have happened because he knew how he reacted when this happened.

He tries to rationalize what he saw by thinking they captured Frigga and forced her to play that part, while Mobius insists that’s the proper flow of time and that’s what has to happen because it has to and the TVA makes sure of it. However, although the TVA ensures Frigga’s death, he tries to make it all Loki’s fault. He caused it, and now Mobius wants to know if he enjoys hurting people, as if he could not know how devastated Loki was when Frigga died. He asks him if he enjoys killing people like he did with his mother.

He knows the past time Loki felt completely responsible for it, he’s trying to get him to feel the same even if Loki actually never meant to kill Frigga.

On a sidenote, he’s trying to send him on a vulnerable loop to get his collaboration like Thor did that time… but it’s a dumb move. Let’s assume Loki swallows they could send him back to his time and accepts to submit to being jailed. The TVA would still ensure he would direct the Kurse to Frigga so that she’ll die because this is the proper flow of time for them.

Although I doubt he meant it, Mobius actually isn’t giving Loki reasons to cooperate with him permanently, just to think harder to a way to avoid that future.

I don’t really know what Mobius is thinking but he seems so sure that he can come out as so overly powerful and righteous he can both bend Loki to his will by saying he’s to blame for Frigga’s death and, at the same time, that he should do nothing to prevent it.

Anyway at this point Loki attack him and is looped again. He ends on the ground with Mobius apologizing, BEFORE PUTTING THE TIME TWISTER IN HIS POCKET, saying it because the Time Twister just loops him, not the furniture… but he actually meant it, because Loki had been standing by a while and he could have looped him to just standing there.

Mobius goes on trying to make him again feel even more smaller.

“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.”

In short he was born to be used by the sacred timeline to create heroes. But it’s a ridicule argument, in itself, because every living being create pain and suffering in his life, albeit sometimes in smaller measure than Loki or for better reasons. And the idea that people become better only through pain and suffering and death… is scary because somehow it legitimize it. It makes right to kill Coulson because then the Avengers can be born. It makes right for Thanos to wipe away half of humanity because so the Avengers joined forces again.

It’s a damaging and wrong mindset… that Mobius is of course pushing forward because that’s the narrative the TVA spins. They don’t save people, they just decide who lives and die according to their taste… which works if you’re a storywriter but it’s awful if you’re talking of real people.

Loki calms down and asks again what is that place. Mobius offers him his hand in a classic stick and carrot game. He wants Loki to obey. Loki complies and they’re interrupted by Hunter B-15. Mobius is forced to leave with her but not before telling Loki:

“Don't go anywhere. It was just getting good. Spirited.”

In short he was enjoying making Loki feel miserable, which I don’t think he does because he’s a jerk but just because that’s his job. Like Hunter B-15, they’re very motivated in doing their job to the point they don’t realize the other isn’t just ‘a variant’ but a person with feeling. They think they’re doing the people a service by murdering the extra.

Kind of like how Thanos saw himself as noble when he murdered half of the people in the universe to save the other half and expected people to feel grateful to him.

By the way, do you think that Loki is complying too easily?

Not really, do check the way he let Mobius pull him up and how he then moves his left hand for a moment inside his pocket to pull it out immediately afterward. We’ll come back to it in a moment. For now let’s follow the plot that has Hunter B-15 claiming that talking ‘to that Variant’ is a mistake as he should just be reset, read, if Mobius had been honest, killed.

For Hunter B-15 Loki is not a person, he’s just a Variant, a Variant to destroy. Actually it’s not even because the other Loki Variant is killing their units, because Mobius says she thinks all the Variants should be reset.

And remember about how Loki could be in a jail or plotting the 7th attack in the last week that they know of? Well, that’s just what the other Loki variant did as they just lost another unit.

I know I should be cheering for this Loki but I’m also really cheering for that other Loki variant. Go burn the TVA to the ground.

Mobius goes back to Loki and… discovers he disappeared. Because when Loki let Mobius pull him up he caught his chance to stuff his hand in Mobius’ pocket, steal the Time Twister and put it in his own pocket. That’s what Loki was thinking when he calmed down, a plan to get out of there, a chance to take the Time Twister.

Now… don’t the TVA know in advance what happens in the TVA? What the Variants would do once they’re captive? Because Mobius seems genuinely surprised and they’ve to search for Loki so for all their bragging about knowing everything and controlling everything maybe they actually don’t. They can’t control the Variants, which is why the other Loki Variant can attack without them knowing in advance. Their sacred timeline doesn’t cover it so they’re blind to it.

Of course it’s possible he let Loki take it on purpose but I want to think against it.

We see that Loki has looped himself in an early point of his entrance in the TVA and has noticed Casey, the guy at the desk who has taken the Tesseract. He follows him, clearly planning to get the Tesseract back and, with it, to leave the place.

Mobius and Hunter B-15 search for Loki, giving each other the blame for his disappearance. Hunter B-15 would like to catch this chance to dispose of Loki but Mobius rejects the idea since he believes he can still help.

Loki tracks Casey down. Casey recognizes him and he forces him to kneel behind the desk. He asks him his name and once he has it he tells him in his most threatening tone to give him the Tesseract or he’ll gut him like a fish.

Only Casey wants to know what’s a fish because he wants to know what he’s being threatened with, before complying and he has spent all his life behind a desk so he has no idea what a fish is. I guess he also doesn’t know what it means gutting.

Loki can’t imagine not knowing what a fish is… which is kind of weird because he should know for example humans never head of bilchsnipes… but maybe due to his name he’s thinking Casey is human. Honestly the whole TVA staff seems human. Can I say I don’t like it?

In the comics though, the TVA staff was made by people cloned. They literally were made by the TVA. I wonder if this is Casey’s situation.

Anyway Loki clarifies he’s threatening him with death. It doesn’t unfazed Casey much (do people die INSIDE the TVA?) but, to Loki’s relief, he complies, opens his drawer and give him the Tesseract whose light is still mostly turned off. Loki feels a moment of relief before noticing that in the drawer there are assorted infinity stones.

At Loki’s confusing Casey explains they get a lot of those, enough to use them as paperweight. I guess the infinity stones influence might allow people to do different choices and become Variants as they can influence them.

Something inside the TVA though, turns off their power.

Loki is confused as he picks up a green one, which should be a time stone. We hear the sound of stones moving but we can’t see if he placed it back where it was.

Loki is utterly confused as he walks away with the Tesseract in a daze looking at the sacred timeline and wondering if the TVA is really the greatest power in the universe. Behind him, Casey nods.

The elevator opens, Hunter B-15 tries to hit Loki but Loki uses the Time Twister to disappear again so she misses him completely and almost hits poor Casey. Note that the blow would have been fatal for either Loki or Casey.

Hunter B-15 didn’t care of how Mobius said no pruning or resetting, we can see that the cart, which gets hit instead of Loki, disappear.

This time Hunter B-15 didn’t go for physical pain, she went for the kill.

Loki is back in the interrogation chamber where he put the Time Twister on the table and watches on the projector his future. First Frigga’s death, as if to try to accept it, and he’s almost in tears, then he lash forward to Odin telling him and Thor that he loves them and that they should remember that place. This too touches him emotionally. He sees Thor telling him how he thought the world of him and he sees them fighting side by side against Hela and then telling him maybe he’s not so bad. He smiles at seeing that, laughing sadly but then… he sees his death at the hands of Thanos. It’s obviously traumatic but, I hope, when he can think at all that in perspective, he’ll be able to see the truth.

He wasn’t born to cause pain and suffering and death. He also saved lives, his brother’s specifically but also the ones of some Asgardians.

And, at the same time, he could see, he could learn his father and brother did love him, or at least that was the intended message of those scenes (I won’t dig into them portraying it correctly or not).

The file about him ends.

Loki gives into a slightly hysterical chuckling and the door behind him opens. It’s Hunter B-15 who asks him what’s so funny.

Loki replies ‘Glorious purpose’ which can mean all and nothing. According to the file his glorious purpose wasn’t to become king, but not even to cause pain and suffering and death. At the same time it’s not a particularly uplifting message the one that file gave him. The moment he could start again with Thor, Thanos killed him. In the end, even if he tried to change, his life would be one of pain and suffering until his death.

Loki and Hunter B-15 fight and somehow she doesn’t have anymore her murdering wand nor the men following her.

She’s alone and disarmed but she’s clearly a trained to fight and rather strong. Loki is smarter though. As soon as she slams him on the table he grabs the Time Twister, unlatches his collar and wraps it around her neck. Then takes on her his revenge for having been looped way too many times that day by looping her a lot until he makes her disappear. Where to I’ve no idea but I hope for him far enough. He was clearly taking out on her all the abuse he suffered from her and Mobius. In the end he tosses the Time Twister again on the table.

Meanwhile Casey is retelling his misfortunate meeting… evidently finding the idea that Loki would turn him into a fish much worse than the idea Loki threatened to kill him and then complains about the hunters showing up and pruning his cart.

Really, it makes me wonder if the TVA doesn’t use the world ‘dead’ in conversation. It’s all ‘reset’ or ‘prune’. I’m not saying they don’t know of it, just that they don’t use it to define what they do because it would make them look bad. You murder a living being. You reset a timeline, prune a branch. There’s a psychological difference that allows them to see Variants not as living beings but as objects.

As he speaks Hunter B-15 appears in front of him so that’s where Loki sent her.

Meanwhile Loki has remained in the room in which he was. He seems worn out as he sat on the floor against a wall, his face in his hands and the Tesseract set next to him.

Mobius, who gets into the room holding one of those TVA wands, finds him like that. Mobius rubs in he has nowhere left to run.

Loki states how he can’t go back to his timeline, then decides to comply with Mobius previous request. He tells him he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because he has to, because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. And claims to be a villain.

Is he being sincere or just telling Mobius what he wants to hear?

I like to think he’s being both. In “The Mentalist” Patrick Jane once tried to teach Teresa Lisbon how to gain someone’s trust. His first suggestion was to ask that person for a favour, so that they would feel more powerful, when this didn’t work he told her to get that person to lower their guard she should lower her own. I get the feeling Loki is doing this. He’s lowering his guard, giving Mobius what he wants, so that Mobius will lower his guard too. Like when he accepted his hand only to steal the time twister.

There’s a power in being sincere as well, which is to make Mobius feel more powerful by giving him power and therefore push him to underestimate Loki.

Mobius, who previously told him

“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.”

Now saying him that’s not how he sees it.

He’s either giving him the carrot in his carrot and stick game or he’s just remarking one of the main characteristics of the TVA. The TVA is neutral, they don’t approve or disapprove actions, people has no choice, they’ve to follow a path and Loki’s path was to do what he did so that others could become better. The TVA doesn’t really seems to care of the moral axis of Loki’s alignment… or their own or everyone else, they only care of the ethical alignment.

Now, as I’ve seen fandom discuss this, in roleplays people created character alignments to give an ‘ideal’ for a character to live up.

This caused the birth of two Axis, the moral axis (Good, Neutral, and Evil) and the ethical axis (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic).

The alignments of the moral axis are pretty easy to figure out, so I’m not even discuss them, but the one of the ethical axis are basically meant to tell if a character follows the law or not.

The TVA is clearly lawful aligned, they blindly follow their rules as if they were a dogma, a faith. Hydra is lawful. Steve Roger is lawful, as he wants to follow rules.

Loki in a good part of the movies doesn’t follow the rules, we saw it from the start, in “Thor” he decided to act to interrupt the coronation, which was against the rules of Asgard, and then he tricked Laufey, which is against the rules of war. In “The Avengers” he let himself be arrested so as to unleash the Hulk. In “Thor: The Dark World” he pretended to join forces with Malekith so that he would remove the Aether from Jane and then stole from Odin the throne… and so on. He’s not the only one though, Thor himself as moments in which he’s chaotic, like when he invades Jotunheim against his father’s order and how later will invade that SHIELD facility, or how he’s challenge his father again in “Thor: The Dark World”.

Actually all the Avengers here and there had been chaotic… and here and there had been lawful.

Loki’s situation places him more on the chaotic axis because he has no other master but himself. In short he doesn’t respect anyone else’s rules, sometimes not even his own as he claims Frigga isn’t his mother when he clearly feels she is and fights to avenge her… but he too had his own moments of being lawful.

That’s because people aren’t roleplay characters and they wouldn’t feel realistic if they were just sitting on one alignment.

But whatever, let’s go on.

Loki picks up the Tesseract, and Mobius asks him if he tried to use it.

“Oh, several times. Even an Infinity Stone is useless here. ( Scoffs ) The TVA is formidable.”

And here we’ve Loki trying on ‘wooing someone powerful he intend to betray’, to put it with Mobius’ words. I wonder if Mobius can realize it or he’s so sure in his idea he’s powerful he misses it.

Either way he has gotten what he wanted, Loki acting this way means he has acknowledged they’re powerful enough he has to play along with them.

Mobius tell him:

“I can't offer you salvation, but maybe I can offer you something better.”

And here I feel an echo of Thor in “Thor: The Dark World”:

“I did not come here to share our grief. Instead I offer you the chance of a far richer sacrament.”

I wonder if Mobius is trying to play that same game to get Loki to cooperate. Loki though has seen the video. Maybe he knows too. And well, at least Mobius came out more honest because he told him he can’t offer him salvation. Remember when he babbled about what Loki could do if he were to go back to his timeline? It was all a pourparler, words that weren’t meant to turn true as Loki is not meant to go back to his timeline. Ever.

That timeline doesn’t exist anymore it was reset.

But at this point Mobius has to be honest and give Loki something back, the reason why they’re interested in him… which is the dangerous Variant they’re hunting is HIM, or better another Variant of himself.

Meanwhile in Salina Oklahoma, 1858 Hunter U-92 and his men are checking on something. They find an object from the early third millennium but discover there’s oil on the ground and think it’s just someone who found himself a time machine and came back here to get rich. Hunter U-92 thinks he’s not worth the paperwork of searching for him and that they should just prune the timeline. Then they notice a figure in a black cape.

The figure has a oil lamp which they drop on the petrol covered ground. The fire spread to the Minuteman who start to die by arson. Hunter U-92 tries to crawl to the reset charge but someone grabs him and pulls him back. Then a hand, clearly not his own, picks up the resect charge.

And either this is the story sharing with us the 7th attack or the other Loki’s Variant has just managed to make the 8th attack in the last week that they know of. Really, I would say for the TVA it’s better to hope it’s not Monday.

As for me, I’m sorry for them but I hope it’s Monday there.

I’ve no sympathy for bureaucratic regimes who views people who don’t complain with their wishes as things… pardon, as Variant, and implement on them the “Final Solution” under the guise of pruning or resetting them.

This doesn’t mean everyone at the TVA is necessarily evil… but they’re dangerous, they’re fanatic who live in a regime that elect them at judges of other people’s lives. Judge Ravonna Renslayer dictates the proper flow of time according to the Time-Keepers dictations without bothering to question them, or the justice of it. At the TVA no one asks himself if it’s right or wrong, they just do it, they don’t know any other way to do it.

It’s not that they want to be evil, they actually want to be noble and just, they believe in the propaganda that’s all spread on the creepy posters around them and think they’re incredible, courageous and dedicated workers and don’t question their work or their lives at all.

They’re just many little Adolf Eichmann mostly bereft of initiative, cultural and moral depth; the latter did not go beyond the conditioning that had been given to them by society.

They lack empathy for what they destroy, for what they prune or reset and so they won’t stop thinking at what they’re doing.

Long story short, we should be grateful the TVA doesn’t exist because, really, that’s a creepy organization that pulls out the worst from people empowering them to murder others and telling them they’re doing something good.

Mobius, Casey, Hunter B-15 are brainwashed by the TVA worldview. It’ll be interesting to see if prolonged interaction with a Variant, Loki, might open his eyes or not. For now they’re like children who can’t distinguish good from bad because they buy a wrong narrative in which they’re above it.

I’m curious to see if they will ultimately eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the good and the evil or if they’ll remain ignorant and dedicate executors of the TVA. We’ll see.

Well, this was long. Thank you to all the people who remained through this long, long episode study of mine. I can’t wait to see the next Loki episode!

#loki #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #mobius m mobius #thor #thor odinson #mcu the avengers #mcu loki #mcu thor #mcu thor ragnarok #mcu thor the dark world #mcu avengers endgame #mcu avengers infinity war #frigga #tony stark #clint barton #steve rogers #odin borson #9 worlds study #9 worlds study mcu loki

[pinktwingirl]

Loki Series Rewrite (AKA Loki Series But With Squirrel Girl) Ep 4

INT. TVA - DAY

Mobius and Ravonna are talking.

RAVONNA

Every moment those variants are out there, we're all in danger.

MOBIUS

I'm working on it; Doreen's locket is charging... It should be ready any second now-

Just then, an AGENT enters, holding the locket.

AGENT

Sir, we got a location.

MOBIUS

Well, there you go.

AGENT

He's on Lamentis-1, 2077. I can only assume she's there with him.

MOBIUS

That's not good... We need to get them, fast.

INT. TIME THEATER - DAY

After Loki and Sylvie are apprehended and Loki is stuck in the time loop, Mobius interrogates him in the time theater.

LOKI

You betrayed me!

MOBIUS

No, you betrayed me! You followed that variant when I explicitly told you not to, and now you're working with her?! 

LOKI

How did you find us?

MOBIUS

Oh, well, you can thank your friend Doreen for that. You know, she went through all the trouble of fixing it when it was broken just to find you.

Loki's eyes widen.

MOBIUS

You know, I have no idea why she bothers putting up with you. At first, I thought, "well, maybe, she's smart. Maybe she sees something in you that I don't." But now, I think maybe she's just being naïve and she's wasting her time and trust on someone who doesn't deserve it.

Loki grits his teeth.

MOBIUS

How long have you been working for the variant?

LOKI

Me? Working for her? Please.

MOBIUS

Okay, so, if you're not working for the variant, what is it? You're partners?

LOKI

Absolutely not. She's... difficult and... irritating, and... she tries to hit me all the time!

Mobius raises an eyebrow.

LOKI

No. Not partners, no.

MOBIUS

Yeah, I guess you don't do partners. Unless, of course, it benefits you and you intend to betray them at some point, like you'll probably do with Doreen.

LOKI

It was a means to an end, Mobius. Welcome to the real world. Down there, we're awful to one another to get what we want.

MOBIUS

And now I gotta have a prince tell me how the real world works? Look, if you're not gonna cooperate here, I'm just gonna have to send you back for another round in the time loop...

LOKI

Wh-No, wait! Wait, wait, wait.

He pauses for a moment, and Mobius sits back down.

LOKI

Of course it was me pulling the strings all along. 

(Beat)

She came to me on Asgard a long time ago... and then, she took me to one of her apocalypses... and that's where we hatched our plan together.

Mobius raises an eyebrow.

MOBIUS

Which is...?

LOKI

Coming along very nicely, thank you.

MOBIUS

And the variant?

LOKI

Doesn't matter. She's a pawn.

(Beat)

Something very, very big is going to happen, and when it does, I'll dispose of her.

MOBIUS

Well, we saved you the trouble there. She's already been pruned.

Loki's face falls.

MOBIUS

So, assume I do set you free. Does that-

LOKI

H-hang on, wait, what did you say?

(Beat)

MOBIUS

Assume I do set you free...

LOKI

The variant. She's gone?

MOBIUS

Yeah. Not before she took out two of ours. Yeah, she was going to her time cell, broke free, Hunter B-15 stepped in, popped her... So you might wanna fire off a thank-you note to Hunter B-15, because it looks like you're the... superior Loki. I would've bet on her, but... that's what makes a horse race.

Loki tries to look unaffected and shrugs.

LOKI

Good riddance.

After a pause, Mobius starts laughing, which irritates Loki.

LOKI

What? What's so funny?

MOBIUS

You know, for the god of mischief and lies, you really are a terrible liar.

LOKI

Is she alive?!

MOBIUS

Yes, she's alive. And I know that little story you told me was a lie too. So why don't we try this again, and you tell me the truth this time?

Loki clenches his jaw. 

INT. TVA HOLDING CELL - DAY

Doreen slowly regains consciousness, blinking a few times before taking in her surroundings. She notices she is still in her ballgown and bound to a chair with handcuffs. She tries to use her strength to break the handcuffs off, but Ravonna enters.

RAVONNA

Save your energy. If you break those handcuffs off, they'll just put themselves right back together.

Doreen glares at her. Ignoring her warning, she uses her strength to snap the handcuffs off, but, like Ravonna said, they put themselves back together on Doreen's hands.

RAVONNA

Told you.

DOREEN

What do you want?

RAVONNA

I want to know what you saw in those restricted files you accessed. And I also want to know why you're working with Loki. He's a murderer and a liar.

Doreen scoffs.

DOREEN

Yeah, that's rich, coming from you. You're lying to all these people about who they are, and they don't even know it.

RAVONNA

That's different. It's a necessary lie.

DOREEN

There are no "necessary lies," only ones that benefit you at the expense of others. These people had families! Real homes! And you took that from them!

RAVONNA

We are preventing the universe from falling into chaos.

DOREEN

And at what cost?

RAVONNA

(losing her temper)

Whatever cost is necessary!

(She pauses.)

You know, despite what you may think, I am trying to help you.

DOREEN

I don't need your "help."

RAVONNA

Really? So you would rather side with the man that nearly enslaved your entire planet?

DOREEN

That was the past. He's changed.

RAVONNA

You know, I would think that someone as smart as you would be able to tell when they're being taken advantage of.

DOREEN

You don't know Loki.

RAVONNA

On the contrary, Ms. Green, I know everything about Loki. Every variant of him - they're all the same. Destined to be a selfish, lying murderer from the day they're born to the day they die.

DOREEN

That's not your choice to make! The only ones who get to decide who we are, are ourselves.

RAVONNA

Not as long as the timekeepers are around. Free will is a poison that leads to chaos. Having a set path to keep everything in its place is the only way to keep life in the universe safe.

(Beat)

Look... You can still do the right thing here. All I'm asking you to do is help me stop these Loki variants. With your help, we can save all living beings from their reign of chaos. We aren't your enemies, Doreen! The universe needs us to protect it... for all time.

After a moment, a scornful smirk grows on Doreen's face.

DOREEN

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

Ravonna glares at her. After a moment, she steps closer to Doreen.

RAVONNA

You wanna know what happens to you on the timeline?

Doreen's face falls.

RAVONNA

You'll spend the rest of your life hiding from people who either want to lock you in a prison or a lab cage. Did you really think running around stopping bank robberies was going to change how people see you? You're a mutant. A freak to the rest of the world. You will always be an outcast. 

Doreen clenches her jaw, blinking away tears as Ravonna leaves.

INT. RAVONNA'S OFFICE - DAY

Mobius is talking with Ravonna, growing more and more suspicious of her.

RAVONNA

Case closed.

(She and Mobius clink glasses of whiskey.)

Cheers.

MOBIUS

Cheers.

RAVONNA

To putting all of this behind us. Now we just need to take care of sending the mutant girl home.

MOBIUS

Oh, hey, where is she, by the way?

RAVONNA

Holding cell 15.

Mobius frowns.

MOBIUS

You put her in a holding cell? Why?

RAVONNA

She's an associate of the variant. She could be working with him.

MOBIUS

Yeah, but we don't know that! She helped us find him! I don't see why she should be punished for a crime she hasn't even committed yet.

RAVONNA

I'm not taking any risks on this one, Mobius.

Mobius gives her a suspicious glance.

INT. TVA HOLDING CELL - DAY

After Mobius is pruned and Loki is reunited with Sylvie, Ravonna forces them into Doreen's holding cell. Loki's eyes widen when he sees Doreen is being held by two agents with a time displacement collar around her neck.

LOKI

Doreen...

In a last-ditch attempt, Doreen tries once more to break her handcuffs off. One of the agents shocks her with an electric staff, and she screams in pain. Loki glares at Ravonna.

LOKI

You said you wouldn't hurt her!

RAVONNA

Consider this a taste of your own medicine. Your break your promise, I break mine.

The agents release Doreen, who collapses to the ground, now sobbing. Loki rushes over to her and helps her up.

DOREEN

(Crying)

Loki... M-Mobius... It's my f-fault he's dead... I couldn't stop them... He was... I c-couldn't...I should've...

LOKI

No, Doreen, look at me. It's not your fault.

DOREEN

I sh-should've stopped them... I-I...

Exhausted, she passes out.

RAVONNA

(to Loki and Sylvie)

Once the timekeepers are ready, they'll deal with you.

(She gives a passing glance to Doreen.)

And once she's had her memories of the TVA wiped, we'll send her back to the main timeline where she belongs.

Loki glares at her as she and the agents leave them and lock the cell.

We cut to later, where Loki and Sylvie are looking after Doreen, who is lying unconscious on a bench in the cell.

LOKI

It's been at least an hour... Do you think we should try waking her up?

SYLVIE

She just had 50,000 volts of power forced through her body; I think we can let her rest a little longer.

Loki looks down at Doreen, still concerned.

SYLVIE

If she's not a variant, why did she come here? Who is she?

(Beat)

LOKI

She's... a mortal. One of the kindest I've ever known.

(He gently tucks a strand of stray hair behind Doreen's ear.)

Ever since we met, she's made a point of looking after me.

(He lets out a light laugh.)

I can't, for the life of me, understand why. I assumed it was just out of the goodness of her heart... Or, perhaps, just pity...

He looks up and sees Sylvie studying him with a curious expression. Before he can ask why, Doreen begins to stir. 

DOREEN

Loki...?

He gently places a hand on her back as she starts to sit up. She glances at Sylvie, still regaining consciousness.

DOREEN

Oh, hey... Sorry I almost stabbed you in the face...

SYLVIE

Well, to be fair, I did kick you in the face, so I suppose we're even... Are you alright? Where'd you get the dress?

DOREEN

Oh... I had to go to Asgard to fix the locket. My clothes didn't exactly fit in, though, so I had to change.

LOKI

Well, that's why you should always rely on a genderfluid demigod to design your costumes. I know what works.

Doreen smirks.

DOREEN

Yeah, well, you weren't there, because I was too busy trying to save your ass!

(After a pause, her smile fades.)

Loki, everyone here... They're all variants too.

LOKI

I know. I told Mobius. That's why they...

(His voice trails off.)

DOREEN

I hacked into their database to get information on the agents... But Ravonna came after me before I could tell anyone. I'm so stupid! I never should've let my guard down!

SYLVIE

There'll be time for taking blame later. Did you find anything out about the timekeepers?

DOREEN

No... I'm sorry... I didn't get that good of a look... Oh! But good news for us, I did figure out why magic doesn't work in the TVA! I guess they have these things called "runes" set up around the whole area? So as long as those are active, your powers are useless.

Loki frowns.

LOKI

Well, how is that "good news" for us?

DOREEN

Because... Ravonna didn't count on me teaching Tippy-Toe how to hack into their systems and disable the runes, and also the time displacement collars, your welcome, which she should be doing right about...

The time displacement collars and handcuffs suddenly deactivate and fall to the ground.

DOREEN

Now!

As she stands up to move to the other side of the cell, Loki and Sylvie test their magic and see their hands are now glowing green.

SYLVIE

Oh, I like her.

They join Doreen at the other side of the cell.

DOREEN

Now, we just need to figure out a way to get out of here...

(Beat)

LOKI

You have the strength and speed of a squirrel, right?

DOREEN

Proportional strength and speed, yes.

LOKI

And squirrels have a jaw strength of around 7,000 pounds per square inch, right?

DOREEN

Right...

LOKI

Which means that, converted to your size, you should be able to chew through any metal wall, correct?

Doreen gives him a sour face.

DOREEN

I really don't like where you're going with this...

LOKI

Do you have any other plans for breaking out of an impenetrable steel cell?

Doreen sighs.

We cut to Doreen chewing through the wall and creating a tunnel to a corridor in the TVA. She spits out a piece of the metal and gags.

DOREEN

Uuuuggghhh, that was so gross!

(She climbs out of the tunnel.)

Okay, guys, you should be good to-

Before she can say another word, Loki and Sylvie use their magic to create another hole in the wall, and simply walk out of the cell.

DOREEN

Wh-?

(She turns to look at the hole they made.)

You could've just done that the whole time?!

LOKI

You did give us our magic back.

(Beat)

DOREEN

What did you just make me chew through the wall for, then?!

LOKI

Because it was amusing, of course.

SYLVIE

It was quite funny.

Doreen scowls at them.

DOREEN

You know, it was annoying enough having to deal with one Loki; now I have to put up with two of you?!

Loki and Sylvie laugh as she flips them both off. They each take a hand to help her to her feet.

DOREEN

Alright, I'll go gather some weapons and maybe get some more intel. You guys go take care of the timekeepers. I'll catch up with you later.

INT. TVA - MOMENTS LATER

Loki and Sylvie are running through a corridor, while Doreen goes the opposite way.

SYLVIE

Was it really a good idea to leave the mortal girl to take on all those agents by herself? Shouldn't we be helping her?

They stop running to see Doreen being ambushed by a group of agents. They try to prune her, but she uses the cape on her dress to temporarily blind them and kick the prune sticks out of their hands. She then jumps on top of the group as they all run in her direction and slams their heads together, knocking them all out simultaneously.

(Beat)

LOKI

She'll be fine.

SYLVIE

Yeah.

They continue running.

We cut to them running towards the timekeepers' chambers, when they run into Ravonna and several other agents, with their prune sticks ready.

RAVONNA

Right on time. The timekeepers are waiting for you.

Loki and Sylvie glare at her.

INT. TIMEKEEPERS' CHAMBERS - DAY

After discovering the timekeepers are fake, Loki turns to Sylvie.

LOKI

Sylvie... Trust me, we will figure this out.

SYLVIE

Not another pep talk, please...

LOKI

No, listen to me... We've come this far... We're not turning back now. We just need-

Before he can say another word, Ravonna prunes him.

@drawntothedarkside

#loki #loki series #loki series rewrite #loki series rewrite project #loki series but with squirrel girl #sylvie laufeydottir #squirrel girl #doreen green #mobius m mobius #ravonna renslayer #dorki #squirrel girl x loki #loki x squirrel girl #doreen green x loki #loki x doreen green #tva #disney plus #marvel #mcu #mcu fanfiction #tippy toe

[confusedgoldenflower]

There is No Glorious Purpose

DISCLAIMER: This is a Loki Show re-write which means I do not own the original show but some direct quotes will be used, it will not align perfectly with the cannon of the original show, and it will also be written the way I think it should have gone seeing as it was 2012 Loki who just went through Thor 1, Thanos' clutches and Avengers 1.

This is not a Loki/Sylvie or Loki-cest fic.

If you don't like, then please hit that back button and have a nice day. You don't have to agree with me, but I do expect common human decency.

For anyone remaining, please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Blue Time and Space

“Friend, I think there’s been a mistake; I am Loki of Asgard and you will regret this. I am burdened with glorious purpose, I stand at the right hand of Thanos.” The words were bitter in his mouth but then again, so was the bile that he dry-heaved up during his reconditioning.

“Yeah, yeah, come on.” B-15 waved it off, at least the letters on the helmet was the only thing pertaining to the person’s identity after they came through the yellow, rectangular prism. He watched her closely as they neared, fists clenched and fully aware of how far away the Tesseract had ended up. The cerebral recalibration the Hulk so kindly dealt him did nothing to deter him from his secret goal.

“What infinity stone conjured that?”

B-15 stopped, their own subordinates armed but waiting for their leader’s response. Then she laughed.

“No, no, it’s from the TemPad.”

“Pardon?”

“You’ll see soon enough, now, come on, I don’t wanna have to give the whole spiel again.” B-15 came at him. The baton-like weapon she wielded hurt. But he was Asguardian. He also had use of his magic now with the restraints in ruins. Twin daggers parried the baton thereafter. He came close to overwhelming her more than a few times but her subordinates always stepped in.

“Agh!” It was humiliating to be overpowered by not only a simple blow to his back but also to admit it.

B-15 smiled down at him, “let’s go, and reset th-.”

“Don’t touch that!” The soldier picking up the Tesseract and staring at it like a confused child paid him no mind.

“Ok, Variant, let’s go.” B-15 slapped something on his neck, his body involuntarily jumped the opposite way. He was dragged out of the sand and towards another yellow rectangular prism. Another soldier grabbed something that resembled an old Midguardian lantern. They passed behind him and he could not manage to twist his neck enough to watch them. Then yellow.

He involuntarily gasped at the non-consensual setting change, pain flaring in a memory. A shriveled stomach flipped. But… His brows furrowed as he soundlessly analysed himself and his sadir in respect to the surroundings. I can’t feel him… I can’t hear him.

The two soldiers carrying him wasted no time in dragging him across the floor of the large room. It too reminded him of past Midguardian styles…. But he didn’t miss the Tesseract being turned to the man behind the desk.

“Where is this? Where are you taking me?”

B-15 laughed from in front of him, “your trial, Variant.”

“Why, and what is that anyway?”

Next thing he knew, he was pushed into a room with a robot, “hello?” It said something before lasering his clothes off. He gaped in horror as his fine Aguardian leather was destroyed and he was left there in the nude. The robot smiled at him in some sort of sadistic glee as his scars and healing wounds were flaunted like war-torn cadavers against his unusually pale skin. The floor disappeared.

He landed. He folded. He panted.

“Please sign this.”

His head whipped up to the man he could barely see over the stack of paperwork on the desk. A gulp, a deep breath and Loki was the vision of regal honor. Silently, he noted that he had somehow been clothed and thanked whatever power granted him that.

“What is this?”

The man looked at him with an exhausted droll stare, “everything you have ever said.” He grabbed a paper off the printer and laid it on top. Loki nodded slightly, then signed. The world blurred.

“Please step through.”

“Pardon?” The room was slow to come into focus.

“Jotnar, please step through.” Jotnar? He hadn’t noticed his glamour having failed him. The sedir he had so ardently loved and utilized and developed was a small, twisted ball in his center. He was locked in a cage.

“Wha--how…?”

“Magic is no good in the TVA, now please, step through.”

A red-eyed stare remained on the agent as Loki stepped through the unconnected threshold. Nothing happened. Another bout of vertigo and he was being told and none-too-kindly to take a number.

“For what, what is all this?” His blue hands gesticulated some as he addressed the man.

“Take. A. Number.”

Loki grit his teeth but he stepped to the small machine attached to the stakes cordoning off where the line was. He stepped into that small, simple maze. It was another large room stylized after the later American, Midguardian twentieth century. Even scrapers looked better as they drifted in the expanse of space. He slowly meandered up towards the window behind a very loud human.

“My dad is on the board of Goldman Sachs! One call and your whole job is privatized! What even is the ticket for, huh--aaaahhhhhggg!” Said human leapt out of his skin and screamed when he caught sight of the large blue alien. Red eyes merely gazed down at him without much agency.

“Howdy, welcome to the Time Variance Authority,” the bulbous screens lit up and an American, Midguardian southern drawl spoke happily through the speakers. Loki turned his attention to the screens as something finally began explaining things though his entire being made the unanimous decision that he did not like the talking orange clock.

“I'm Miss Minutes, and it's my job to catch you up before you stand trial for your crimes. So let's not waste another minute. Settle in, sharpen your pencils, and check this out. Long ago, there was a vast multiversal war. Countless unique timelines battled each other for supremacy, nearly resulting in the total destruction of...well, everything. But then, the all-knowing Time-Keepers emerged, bringing peace by reorganizing the multiverse into a single timeline, the Sacred Timeline. Now, the Time-Keepers protect and preserve the proper flow of time for everyone and everything. But sometimes, people like you veer off the path the Time-Keepers created. We call those Variants. Maybe you started an uprising, or were just late for work. Whatever it was, stepping off your path created a nexus event, which, left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another multiversal war. But, don't worry, to make sure that doesn't happen, the Time-Keepers created the TVA and all its incredible workers. The TVA has stepped in to fix your mistake and set time back on its predetermined path. Now that your actions have left you without a place on the timeline, you must stand trial for your offenses. So sit tight, and we'll get you in front of a judge in no time. Just make sure you have your ticket, and you'll be seen by the next available attendant. For all time.”

The workers responded to the screen, “always.”

Out of one dark order and into another, Loki thought and forced down rising bile.

“--Hey, I asked for a ticket and he didn’t give me one! I--ahhhh!....” The loud human was hit with the shining, golden end of one of those batons and literally melted into nothingness. Loki clutched the ticket between his fingers tighter.

“Next.”

He stepped up to the window and offered up the small scrap of paper. The next while found him bound in chains yet again. He knew a Midguardian courtroom when he saw one, and the one he was shoved into was more like a morgue.

“Next case, please,” the judge said from her elevated chair, heads above anyone else, but below three ugly “modern art” heads. How could it be that he could even miss Thanos’ disgusting chin?

“Laufeyson. Variant L1130, AKA Loki Laufeyson, is charged with sequence violation 7-20-89. How do you plead?” She continued. Laufeyson, how preposterous, it sparked an itch to kill the Jotnar king again.

“Madam,” he began with all his silver tongue, “a god does not plead.”

“Are you guilty or not guilty, sir?” She was completely unfazed by his appearance, much like her underlings.

He thought for a moment, “guilty of some offense against this Sacred Timeline of yours? Absolutely not. You must have the wrong culprit.”

A brow raised at him, “oh, really? And who should we have?”

“The Avengers, I suspect. I came into possession of the Tesseract because they traveled through time--undoubtedly in some desperate play to avoid my ascent as God Ki--....” He couldn’t feel Thanos anymore, so what was the point? Wasn’t… he… free?

“That’s quite an accusation.”

“The cologne of two Iron Morta--er, Tony Starks is quite difficult to miss. They are your Time Criminals.” He opened his mouth again to bargain; to survive but….

“We’re not here to talk about the Avengers.”

“No?”

“No. That was supposed to happen, you escaping was not.”

“Pardon? According to whom?”

“The Time Keepers.”

“Ah… the three faces behind you, I presume? Do they happen to be open for conference?”

“No, they’re quite busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Dictating the proper flow of time.”

“So then, what do you do, Madam?”

“Dictate the proper flow of time according to their dictations. How do you plead?”

The silver tongue was heavy. His back sent shocks of pain through him especially after the re-injuring the soldiers dealt. Chains often found their way around his wrists and never had it hurt so much as in the last year. He closed his eyes. He may have been able to assemble those Midguardian fools the way he had intended, the time traveling proved that, but what else was left for him? Just more fire, and lies, and deceit. I had so wanted to see Asguard again.

“The court finds you guilty, and I sentence you to be reset. Next case, please!”

“I raise an objection!” Loki opened his eyes at the interruption as the judge sighs.

“You may approach the bench.”

“Hey, there, blue-raspberry.” The older human man made a shy sort of wave motion at Loki as he passed with a folder under his arm.

“If you're thinking what I think you are, it's a bad idea,” the judge addressed the man.

“Okay, I'm just chasing a hunch.”

“Anything goes sideways, it's on you.”

“Okay. I feel like I'm always looking up to you. I like it. It's appropriate.” Loki knew when he was witnessing groveling. Norns knew he had to do it enough times in his life just to save his brother’s skin.

“Who are you?” He asked after the judge permitted Loki’s custody to the newcomer. Said agent was walking Loki around some halls. Vertigo viscously hit when he tried to remember every twist and turn.

“Oh, I’m Agent Mobius, by the way,” Mobius cheerily said as he shuffled the two into an elevator.

“And you’re not taking me someplace to ‘reset’ me?”

“No, no, no, that was the place you just were. Ravon--I mean Judge Renslayer can be pretty brutal, but I’m just taking you some place to talk.”

“To talk?” His brow raised.

Mobius looked up at his blue stature without a care in the world, “yeah, and we know you love to talk. Talkie-talkie.” A hand mimed a moving mouth. His brows lowered into a slight scowl.

“We seem to have different understandings of my persons.”

“Well, I am an expert on Lokis.”

“... Loki-s?”

“Yeah. You’ll catch up.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Hard to tell, time moves differently here in the TVA.”

He was led out again and followed the human past several large openings in the wall of the narrow hallway that lead down into double-doored rooms. One, he couldn’t help but step towards. Then found himself outside of the elevator again.

“Ope, can’t do that, sorry.”

He stared at Mobius who was now several yards away, “magic and time works differently here.”

“Oh, it’s not magic,” Mobius held up a small device in his fingers, “it’s science.”

“Magic is science.” Loki stated plainly as he walked towards what he assumed Mobius was indicating as the destination, back straight.

“Haha, ok, Loki.” The agent opened the door for him. He nodded in thanks as was polite.

“Let’s get you comfortable,” Mobius stripped him of his chains and cuffs, “have a seat.”

Slowly, he did as asked. He could have wept as his back was finally rested.

“Not big on trust, are you?” Mobius asked as he snapped a sodapop can open. He rejected a second that was offered to him by the agent.

“Well?”

“Trust is a twisted road.”

“Haha, nice one, let’s make that one into a button.” Mobius began fiddling with a machine on the table they sat at in the middle of the darkened room.

“If the TVA overseas all of time and space, then how have I never heard of you before?”

“‘Cause you never needed to. You’ve always lived within your set path; the story you’re meant to play a part in.”

“I live within the path and story of my choosing,” Loki responded bitterly on impulse.

Mobius laughed again, “well, there’s the lie, Loki, it’s not your story.” Mobius looked him in the eye as the machine projected an image onto the blank wall.

“So I think we could start with a little cooperation, hm? I specialize in the pursuit of dangerous variants--particularly dangerous ones unlike you. I’ve got some questions for you, and if you answer them honestly, then maybe I can give you something you want. You wanna get outta here right? So, we’ll start there. Should you get out, what will you do?”

Would Thanos know? Of course Thanos would know…. Of course Thanos would come after him for deserting….

“Take over Midguard, AKA Earth?” Mobius interrupted the silence, “finish what you started maybe? Be king?”

The simple answer slipped off his tongue, “I was born to be a king.”

“Happily ever after then? A nice feather in your cap?”

“Then the Nine Realms. Then all of space.”

“Ooooh, ‘Loki, King of Space,’ haven’t heard that one before.”

“Mock me if you dare.”

Mobius chuckled again, “I’m not. Honestly, I’m a fan; your biggest. I guess I’m just curious why someone with such range would settle for just ruling whether it be Presidential or Kingly.”

“... The first and most oppressive lie was that of freedom, and someone will always be above while masses lie below.”

“How does that one go?” Mobius had his nose in his paperwork.

“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.”

“Good. Yeah. You said ‘nearly every living thing,’ so I'm guessing you don't fall into that category?”

“All of us fall into some category.”

“Oh, riddles. Love that. Anyway, a sampling of your greatest hits.”

The machine whirled and he was met again with the annoying Midguardian heroes and his brother after they bested him in New York, “if it’s all the same to you… I’ll have that drink now.”

“That just happened,” he declared.

“It's funny, for someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature.”

“The last person who said that to me did not live long enough to regret it.”

“Phil Coulson?” The clip played and Thor’s “no!” rang out.

“Didn’t the Avengers come together to literally avenge him by defeating you?”

Loki kept his face schooled diplomatically blank against the small bit of triumph he felt rising. Yes, they had come together, a force to be reckoned with especially after Loki’s clever engineering of their test-run.

“Little solace for a dead man,” he said instead.

“Do you enjoy hurting people? Making them feel small? Making them feel afraid? Making them feel little?” Mobius looked at him with an expression all too familiar from a certain one-eyed Aesir.

“Your little games won’t work on me.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I think--.”

“I know what I am.”

“A murderer?”

“A liberator.” The memory of the Other’s lightning bolt sent a shock wave through his system. He was removed from them, but he could always be put back.

“Of eyeballs maybe,” Mobius scoffed and played the clip.

“Just look at that smile, you’re enjoying it.”

Yet another clip rolled and a wealthy crowd’s screams of horror rang out. He was the center of attention. No one in that moment had attention above him… but that blue still glinted in his emerald eyes.

“Did you enjoy hurting them?”

“I don’t have to play this game; I’m a god, you dull creature.”

“Of mischief? Right… I really see that shining through.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would.”

Mobius sighed, “let’s talk about your escapes.”

“You're really good at doing awful things, and then just getting away. This is one of my favorites.”

A plane’s PA system from the 1970’s dinged, “from the flight deck, Captain William A. Scott, Northwest Orient Airlines 305, on schedule to land in Seattle. Flight time today, approximately….”

The projection showed him from an outsider’s perspective on a plane, well dressed with his hair slicked back and shades covering his eyes. His past self spoke to the flight attendant.

“Bourbon and soda?”

“Thank you,” past Loki gladly accepted the drink.

“Absolutely. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

“I suppose we'll find out, won't we?” A note was handed off to her and she chuckled only in social politeness. A clear misunderstanding between them.

“Uh, Miss?”

“Yes, Mr. Cooper?”

“You might want to take a look at that note,” past Loki leaned forward and whispered, looking the woman in the eye over his sunglasses, “I have a bomb.” Her smile dropped. The scene skipped to when he had emptied the plane of all other passengers and was back in the air strapping a parachute to himself.

“Oh, this is the good part,” Mobius whispered.

“See you again someday,” past Loki says, still politely as he accepts the bag of $200,00 USD from the unnerved flight attendant. He had often wondered how she had recovered from the stupid, oafish ploy; he did his best not to harm anyone but he understood how it could have been quite the scare.

Past Loki turned and walked toward the tail of the plane, “brother, Heimdall, you better be ready.” He mumbleed before jumping out and getting collected by the Bifrost.

“I can't believe you were D.B. Cooper. Come on!” Mobius moved in his seat in a way reminiscent of an excited toddler.

“I was young, and I lost a bet to Thor. Where was the TVA when I was meddling with these affairs of men?”

“We were right there with you, just surfing that Sacred Timeline. So anyway, escapes… and a little psychobabble. What is it you think you’re really running from?”

He held Mobius’ stare. Time Keeper’s approval or lackthereof seemed utterly arbitrary, and the agent’s “fan-ing” of him lacking.

“Enough of this nonsense--.” Loki moved to stand but was hit yet again by vertigo and back in the chair.

“Back in your cage. See? I can play the heavy keys too.” Mobius tapped a finger on his own neck.

“What is it that you actually want?”

“I want you to be honest about why you do what you do.”

“This,” Loki motioned a blue arm towards the projection, “means you have seen my life, yes?”

“Yup. Back and forward, and variant and not. I’ve seen it all.”

“Then you must already know.”

“All I seek is a deeper understanding of the fearsome God of Mischief. What makes Loki tick?”

“Yet you have seen my life and all variations of it.”

“I wanna hear it from the ol’ horse’s mouth.”

“The satisfaction of my own ends,” he finally settled. “Is this your psychobabble? You, the great arbiters of power in the universe.”

Mobius nodded, “yup, we are!”

“Yet my path, my story and my actions are not my own? A semblance of free will belongs to every creature.”

“Hahaha, good one buddy. Look, this one’ll fire you up.” Loki stamped out the pain he had only otherwise felt when he was dropped from the Rainbow Bridge. He stamped down it all. And oh, it was easy. Simple. It was his simpler state of being.

The projection changed to Stuttgart and the projection-surrounded square of kneeling people, “the bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power….”

“Precisely. I was... I am on the verge of acquiring everything I am owed, and when I do, it will be because I did it. Not because it was supposed to happen. Or because you or the Time Variance Authority permitted me to. Honestly, you are pathetic. You are an irrelevance. A detour. A footnote to my ascent.”

Mobius giggled and scoffed, “you done? You’re gonna start taking things seriously.”

His body tensed. But all that happened was a twist of a wrist and the projection changing. He was faced with himself, bound and chained in Asguardian restraints with his glamor intact and cheekily knocking his ankles together to fill the hall of the All Father with the ringing of the metal clanging together.

“If you hadn't picked up the Tesseract, you would have been taken to a cell on Asgard.” Mobius informed him.

“Loki,” a familiar honey voice said in the ringing silence.

This future Loki addressed the woman in beautiful clothes, “hello, Mother. Have I made you proud?”

Her face stayed grave as he continued with undetected fake cheerfulness, “please, don't make this worse.”

“This is the future?” Loki asked.

“Yup, like you mighta picked up, the TVA doesn’t just know your past, we know your whole life as it’s meant to be. Think of it as comforting.” Loki grimaced at that. Comfort? He did not know such a thing. The scene skipped and he recognised the dungeons.

“And am I not your mother?” A projection of his mother asked.

Future Loki chuckled bitterly, “no, you’re not.” Loki felt the need to claw off the blue skin.

“Hmm,” his mother responded, “always so perceptive to everyone but yourself.”

“And then the Dark Elves attack the palace, and you think you send them to Thor.” Mobius chimed again.

“You might wanna take the stairs to the left.” Future Loki says as most other prisoners are set free.

“But instead, you send them….” The image skips again and it’s to Frigga in the grasp of the hellish looking Dark Elf.

“I will never tell.” She declares before she is brutally stabbed and fades. Loki jumps up but only goes through the projection. He can’t help her. No, no, no, no. Another tick. Just another trick like all those in the last year! He would never do such a thing. He loved her.

“You lead them right to her.”

But why would he do that? He was spiteful but-.... No, the elf. Think, Loki, think! Ah, yes, the Aether must have been helping them and changed them to that form. But why Asgard? Why Frigga?!

“You’re lying,” he pants, “what led to this!? Where is she!? Do you have her?!”

“It is true. That's the proper flow of time, and it happens again and again and again because it's supposed to, because it has to! The TVA makes sure of it. And you did this to your own mother, Loki! What kind of monster does that?”

“I’m not a monster!” He shrieks, voice cracking. A chair slams into the wall. He does his best to compose himself but his breathing and heart rates are all still erratic.

“What led to this?” He motioned to the agent then the world blurs to the projected image of her dead face. Fresh pain spikes his back.

“Oops, sorry, only loops you, not the furniture. Now, why don’t you tell me, do you enjoy hurting people? Do you enjoy killing? Were you about to kill me like you killed your mother?”

He fixed red eyes on the blond nuisance, “I wouldn’t hurt her!” The stinging tears obstruct his vision, but he’s too prideful to wipe his eyes--or the society he had been raised by was.

The human met his hateful gaze, “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.”

Loki’s grimace was translated through his conflicted heart into an almost silent sobbing scream. A chitauri screeched as the projection showed the Midguardian protection force he had pissed off enough to coalesce.

But he wouldn’t do that to her… he wouldn’t… he couldn’t….

“What are you doing?” Loki barely registers the voice as B-15.

“My job. Is it yours to interrupt?” Mobius responds as Loki is still frozen staring at the wall, not even seeing the projection anymore.

“We have a situation.”

“Gah, there's always a situation. Don't go anywhere. And it was just getting good. Spirited!”

The doors closed.

Mother, I need to find her!

Escaping the room was easier than expected and the maze did nothing to deter his frantic heart.

“Hey,” he ducked down behind the desk the agent from earlier was manning.

“Hey, I know you. You’re the criminal with the blue box.”

“Shh,” he dragged the other down, “what’s your name?”

“Casey.”

“Give me the Tesseract back or I’ll gut you like a fish, Casey.”

“What’s a fish?”

“H-how do you not know what a fish is?”

“I’ve lived my entire life behind a desk, and I’d like to know what I’m being threatened with before I comply.”

“Do you not eat--death, Casey, violent and painful death.”

“Okay, okay, I comply, I comply, jeez.”

Casey leaned forward and pulled open a drawer of a moveable table, “this it?”

“Wha… Infinity Stones?” The stones, mostly green Time and red Aether or Reality, were jumbled together in the small space.

“Oh, actually, we get a lot of those. Yeah, some of the guys use them as paper weights.”

“The greatest power in the universe and you have them carelessly thrown about?”

“Well, we actually are outside of the universe AKA the Sacred Timeline. Pretty neat, right?” Casey’s musings as he stood up and presented another bulbous screen hanging from the ceiling were ignored as Loki closed his blue hand around the Tesseract. It was dim. So, so dim and dull and…. Lifeless. His jaw hung open.

An elevator dinged, “oh, you almost hit me, that’s so messed up!” Loki clicked the button and returned to the small room. Slowly, he pulled himself off of the floor, set the Tesseract down on the table and twisted the dial.

“Your birthright was to die!...” Future Odin gave future bound Loki a sadistic smile, “as a child, cast out into a frozen rock. If I had not taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me.”

“If I had not fully asked for true mercy, I’d just say swing it. It’s not that I don’t love our little talks, it’s just, I don’t love them.” He found himself muttering along with his near-future self.

“Frigga is the only reason you are still alive and you will never see her again. You will spend the rest of your years in the dungeon.” He moved back with his shackled projection. That was too far, even for Odin. A flash of a red cape and eyepatched face looking down and telling him “no” passed in front of his eyes. His finger rolled on the dial.

“I love you, my sons. Remember this place. Home….” Future Odin told both Thor and him as he disappeared into energy from the cliff Loki was fairly sure belonged to Midguard. A breath caught. What… how… could it be?

It skipped forward again, “Loki, I thought the world of you, I thought we were going to fight side by side forever.” Future Thor with shorn hair and different clothes regarded future Loki--actually regarded him. Had he died? What sort of trickery could this be? He gulped around the hope in his throat.

“Maybe you're not so bad after all, brother. Maybe not…. Thank you. If you were here, I might even give you a hug.” An eyepatched Thor smiled at his future, blue leather clad self as a glass liquor stopper was thrown.

His future self caught it, “I’m here.” He smiled at the sight, that’s all I ever wanted… to be your equal, brother. He sniffled.

His life skipped forward again, “undying? You should choose your words more carefully.” Blue features immediately smoothed out and drooped in horror at the site of the purple titan. A golden gauntlet endued with infinity stones closed around his neck. His future self writhed in the air.

“You will… never… be a… god!” He flinched at the cracking of his own neck, his future self’s body falling limp instantly. No! He wouldn’t let himself die to him! He watched helplessly as his future self’s body was dropped while Thor screamed. The power stone’s magic broke up the spaceship as Thor wept over him. Purple enveloped the screen and then “END FILE.”

“Hah… hah… hah… hehehehe,” his lungs spasmed.

“Glorious purpose,” Loki sneered to no one. He collapsed gripping the Tesseract.

“Loki?... Nowhere left to run.”

“I know. Will you be ‘resetting’ or otherwise doing away with me now?” He stared into the dull blue depths of the Space Stone’s container rather than bothering to look up at the human. There wasn’t an answer.

“I am tired, Mobius.”

Knees popped as the other slowly knelt by him, “listen, I can’t offer you salvation, but maybe I can offer you something better. A fugitive Variant’s been killing our minutemen.”

“So why me?”

“The Variant we’re hunting is, well, you.”

He lifted his head, “pardon?”

#Loki #loki series #loki show #loki spoilers #Loki Show Rewrite #loki series rewrite project #loki fanfic #loki fanfiction #Cannon non-compliant

[wolvesandpetals]

Playing house: Final chapter (Loki x Sylvie, Rated: T)

Masterlist of my Sylki fanfiction here.

Sylvie wakes up the next day to the sunlight well past morning. When her eyes adjust to the sudden blinding light, she notices Loki staring at her, wearing the same clothes that he was in last night.

That's right, last night he confessed he does not want to leave, that he likes it here. She wonders if that is the real reason he has been insisting that she plays along with this charade.

[[MORE]]

Rage from the previous night starts to bubble at the pit of her stomach again, threatening to rise up. She closes her eyes, trying to push it down.

"Good morning", Loki says merrily, unaware of her internal struggle. "Thank you for bringing me back to the room last night. I don't recall much after my seventh glass, to be honest."

Sylvie opens her eyes to glare at him. Does he really not remember, or is he trying to get out of trouble by pretending not to?

She cannot tell. She just doesn't know anymore.

"I was thinking, maybe we can start our tour at the-"

"No." She cuts him off sharply. She sits up then, rubbing her temples as the hangover headache starts. Along with it, begins the surge of her anger. She feels like screaming to the heavens above and the hells below.

"No?" Loki asks, confused. "Sylvie, we have the whole day. We can-"

"No we can't!" She finally snaps. "I can't. I don't want to. I don't want to be a bloody tourist in bloody LA!" Her fingers curl into a fist, until she throws her hands up in the air. "I don't want to walk around Santa Monica Pier pretending to be your bloody wife! You know why? Because I've been here. I've lived in the pier during the tornado of 4055. I've watched the city die. I was only a hundred years old at the time." Her voice breaks a little, but the anger helps her push away the painful memory and the emotions it brings. "You know why I had to do that? Because of the TVA. They stole my life. They made me suffer. All I want to do now is take them down and make sure nobody else suffers like me."

Loki has been listening quietly, letting her get everything off her chest. He has spent his whole life doing what is right for him, never what is just right. But this time, he is willing to do right by her. "I get it, Sylvie. I promise we will-"

"Stop lying to me!" She screams. Her eyes turn cold, and she maintains eye contact as she makes her accusations known. "You like this!"

"W-what?"

"You confessed last night." She tells him so that he can no longer try to deny it. "You've got your family again. You've got your father's approval. You don't have to work a day in your life. You love this timeline."

"That's not...." He begins, but decides to abandon his protests. If they are being honest with each other now, then fine, he will speak his mind too. "So maybe I do love it here. Yes. I love this life. I love that my parents are alive and my brother doesn't hate me. I love that I have a home, and I'm happy." He places a hand over his heart, feeling it beating so fast that a mere mortal might have passed out. He focuses on it, willing it to lend him strength for the confession he's about to make. "But that doesn't mean I won't help you get out of here." A teardrop slips out of his left eye, and he hastens to wipe it away. "Sylvie, I... I have been a selfish man. I've always taken all I've wanted... But for you, I'd give it all up in a heartbeat." He places his hands on her shoulders, never breaking eye contact. Her rage has vanished now, her features soft and vulnerable, and all he wants is to make sure she's okay. "I promise you I will get us out of here, even if it means never seeing my family again. I've lost them once already. Doesn't matter if I lose them again." He lets go of her and steps back then, his familiar defense mechanisms snapping into place, the walls around his heart going up.

"Loki... I-" she tries.

But he doesn't think he can do this right now. "I need some air." And with that, he's out of the hotel room, the door wide open and still swinging the faintest bit from the pressure of his hand.

---

Sylvie spends the next four hours scared out of her mind, wondering whether he is coming back. He will return, she keeps telling herself. And even if he doesn't, it's not like she's ever had a... partner. She doesn't need one. Partners will only slow her down. She's better off-

Oh, hell with it! She cannot lie to herself anymore. She knows what the truth is. She knows she is not moving an inch from the room until he comes back. She has tried calling him a dozen times, but he never picks up. She did think about looking for him, but what if he returned to find her gone?

No. It's best to stay put. She's good at waiting, she has waited her whole life to bring her grand plan into fruition, after all. She can wait for him right here as long as she needs to.

---

Five hours later, the lock in the door turns. Sylvie reaches for the dagger hidden in her jeans, but relaxes when the door opens to reveal Loki. Their eyes search each other's to try to understand what kind of mood the other is in. Loki sees worry in Sylvie's eyes, along with fear, while Sylvie finds resolve in Loki's. Resolve for what? She wonders. What is his glorious purpose now?

He reaches inside his pocket to pull something out, then places it gently on the bed beside her. "I got you this. I thought it... I thought it'd look good with... well, with everything."

She picks it up to see it's a little necklace, with a green gem as a pendant. "Thank you." She says sincerely, clutching the object tightly in her hand. "I'm sorry for-"

He doesn't let her finish. "We have a flight to catch." She can tell that he's not angry anymore, just incredibly exhausted, and she decides to drop the matter for the time being. He reaches for their luggage, and she quickly places the necklace in the pocket of her jeans, deciding to wear it for the first time during some special occasion. Loki holds the door open for her. "Come on."

---

The flight back home is silent, but comfortable. There is so much they should talk about, but they have never been good at communication. Instead, she places her head on his shoulder, and he places his arm around her, and just like that, they know everything is alright.

They both feel incredibly jetlagged when they are finally "home", but the familiar place does give them relief.

"So it seems we can leave this town", Loki finally says, vocalizing what they learnt from the trip. He takes a seat next to Sylvie on the sofa, and sighs. "But we can't leave this reality."

Sylvie nods, wondering what their next move should be. If they can't leave, maybe they can lure the TVA to them?

A plan begins to form in her head.

She kisses him.

Loki feels his eyes go wide in shock for a few seconds at the sudden reaction, before he closes them and kisses her back. Slowly, he wraps his arms around her, pulling her closes. He can feel her nibbling his lower lip, and he uses the opportunity to slip his tongue into her mouth, making her moan. After a while, they break apart for need of air, but he doesn't let her go. "Wow, that was... Wow."

She is smiling, breathless, but she is looking around them expectantly.

"Sylvie?" Loki asks, trepidation creeping into his mind. "What is it?"

"I... I thought that..." She sighs. There is no easy way to say this, and this will hurt him. "Back at Lamentis, when we touched, the TVA showed up. I thought that if we..." She looks away, blushing.

"Maybe they'd show up again." He finishes. "I guess we are not a Nexus event in this timeline." The happiness he felt just a while ago disappears. He felt like for once in his life, he finally got something he wanted. But he didn't. It was a trick. Just like this whole world is. He cannot fight back the bitter taste in his mouth. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"I'm not disappointed." Sylvie reassures immediately. She grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze. Her smile melts away the tension from his body, and they both inch closer again.

So maybe she did kiss him to bring in the TVA.

Or maybe it was an excuse to do something she has wanted to do for too long. Maybe she wants this.

Yes, she wants this.

The happy feeling is back in his heart, though the emotional rollercoaster still feels raw, and he prays it won't go downhill again.

As if on cue, a giant glowing door appears, and in walks Mobius.

Loki and Sylvie move apart at once, putting a respectable amount of distance between them, which is unusual for two beings who love scandalizing others. Their shocks mirror each others'. It is Sylvie who voices it out loud first. "Wait, it worked?"

"What worked?" Mobius asks, confused.

"Nothing." Loki supplies quickly. "How did you find us?"

"There's a variant of a powerful witch in this town. Agatha Harkness. She was posing as your neighbor, Agnes."

"Agnes is a witch?" She is shocked. But she shouldn't be. The hints were always there. Thor said they have lived in this house for years, yet Agnes- Agatha knew they had just moved in. Sylvie was so distracted by everything else, so consumed by the urge to find the enemy behind the scenes, that she missed the one right in front of her. This is new for her, she never lets her guard down. Never.

Loki shoots her a sympathetic look, as if reading her mind. It's not like Agatha ever presented herself as a threat to them. Anyone else in their shoes would miss it too.

"Her speciality is feeding on others' powers." Mobius explains, trying to be as brief as possible. "She wasn't supposed to be in your town. She kept herself disguised from our eyes. The TVA found her today. And she lead me right to you."

"Oh. So that's the Nexus event you were chasing." Loki concludes.

"Yeah." Mobius confirms, and gestures at the yellow glowing door. "Now come on."

Loki steps towards it, without hesitation. Before he walks in, he turns back to see Sylvie frozen in her place.

Sylvie feels like her legs have taken roots. When she first got here, all she could think about was getting out. Every moment felt like hell while she was trapped against her will. Over time, she has started to think of it as her home. She cannot imagine waking up without the yellow wallpaper to greet her every morning, or the little red extension chord attached to the distant wall socket that she uses to charge her phone every night, or the neighbor's tuxedo cat that pays her a visit each night, curling up against her legs with its tail high up like a salute. She touches the wall, mirroring her action from when she first got here, but her emotions are very different now. Her home is about to be taken from her for the second time in her life. Her spot, the place where she can sit down with her legs spread out and kick some ass at Fortnite, will no longer exist. There will be no walks in the garden at the end of the day while throwing dirty looks at the neighbor's extravagant pool, no lawn to be mowed, no hedges to be trimmed. In a few moments, every domestic comfort she has known will be forever gone.

"Sylvie?"He walks over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders, his concern hard to miss. "What's wrong?"

"I..." She doesn't think she's ready to say it yet, and chooses the flip the script on him. "But your parents..."

"Would want me to do the right thing. They are annoyingly righteous." He says with the tiniest hints of a smile. His parents are gone. He wants them back, but he knows the price will be too high. All he can do now is go on, and hopefully do some things here and there that will make them proud. He knows he has to live on his own terms, not on the terms of the dead, but there must be actions he can take to honor their memory.

"But this house..." Sylvie looks around, her heart breaking. "I don't... I don't know if I should..."

"Sylvie", he squeezes her shoulders, making her look at his eyes once more. "When we've beaten the ones at the end, we can have a life like this again."

"We can't. Not on the same timeline." She says sadly. One touch, and it's a Nexus event. There is no place for two Lokis on the same timeline. There's no place for her happiness.

And that's just it, isn't it? That's the biggest thing she's losing, the biggest reason she doesn't want to leave - Loki.

"This isn't about you", she had told him when they first met. But now, everything is all about him.

"We can... stay at the TVA." He says cautiously. He doesn't know the logistics of it yet, but he knows they will find a way. The Ones at the time of time are the ones who decided two Lokis cannot exist on the Sacred Timeline. There must be a way to change that when they are defeated. "We'll figure it out when we get to that. I promise."

Sylvie believes him. She has to. What choice does she have anyway? They ended up here because of someone else's will. Who is to say she won't blink and find herself in some other place, away from him?

No. Her best bet is getting out of here with him, and finding a place for them that they choose, that they can keep.

Sylvie nods. She reaches inside her pocket, and takes something out. Loki realises it's the necklace he bought her at LA. That's the only thing she intends to take from this place. No words are needed anyway. Now he knows exactly how he feels. A huge smile spreads across his face. He did get what he wanted, after her.

"Can I keep this?" She asks Mobius.

"Sure." He says softly.

Loki looks at Sylvie and smiles. She smiles back, reaching for his hand. Her journey began when she was dragged through the door centuries back. Now she's about to walk through the door and end it all.

Time to face the ones- or one, him or her, whoever or whatever it is- at the end of time.

(The end.)

#loki x sylvie #loki fanfic #loki #loki disney+ #sylki fanfic #sylvie x loki #sylki #pro sylki #lovedaggers #fanfiction #fanfic

[dtrhwithalex]

TV | Loki (104)

104: THE NEXUS EVENT

D: KATE HERRON. W: ERIC MARTIN. Original Air Date: 30 June 2021.

Non-spoiler-free recap and review of the fourth episode of LOKI, which airs every Wednesday on Disney+.

RECAP

As Loki and Sylvie watch the world around them slowly but surely fall into complete destruction and collapse, the TVA is scrambling to locate the two and recapture them. Ravonna Renslayer especially is desperate to have the two variants located, being put under pressure by the Time Keepers. It is also revealed that is was Renslayer herself who was the one to pluck Sylvie from the time line and declare her a variant -- when Sylvie was merely a child, still on Asgard. It is also from Renslayer that Sylvie subsequently escapes and, as she reveals to Loki, has been on the run and in hiding ever since, growing up in apocalypses which were the only place her mere presence did not cause any nexus events.

Sharing a heartfelt moment as Sylvie recounts her life, she and Loki create enough chaos to spark a nexus event even within an ongoing apocalypse, allowing the TVA to locate and recapture them. Once captured, they are separated, with Renslayer forbidding anyone to interrogate Sylvie, while Mobius has Loki thrown in a time-loop -- where he is repeatedly threatened and beaten by LADY SIF (JAIMIE ALEXANDER) in a memory from Loki's earlier life on Asgard, where he as a joke cut off Sif's hair. After finally admitting that he played jokes out of loneliness and a desperate need for attention, Mobius retrieves Loki from the time-loop and takes him back to one of the TVA's interrogation rooms.

Loki tries to make Mobius understand that everything about the TVA is a lie -- as Sylvie has told him -- but Mobius does not trust him. He baits him into revealing what caused the nexus event on Lamentis-1 by telling him Sylvie has been disintegrated, and gets Loki to admit that he cares for her. Accusing him of such narcissism that he fell in love with himself, Mobius closes the case and has Loki returned to the time-loop.

Despite his distrust in Loki, Mobius questions Renslayer about what had happened to C-20 and her intentions behind not letting him talk to Sylvie, and eventually steals her TemPad to investigate the matter further. He learns that C-20 confirmed what Loki had tried to tell him: everyone at the TVA is a Variant, plucked from the timeline and brainwashed to serve the Time Keepers. Returning to Loki's time-loop he admits that Loki was right and wants to help him, but they are quickly found out by Renslayer, and she disintegrates Mobius.

Meanwhile, Hunter B-15, despite Renslayer's orders, went to see Sylvie and took her back to the apocalypse they had found her in. Questioning her about her powers, B-15 reveals that she, too, had been having memories of another life since Sylvie had controlled her. Sylvie shows her the memories again, effectively gaining B-15 as an ally.

Following the disintegration of Mobius, Renslayer takes Loki and Sylvie to see the Time Keepers who wish to witness their destruction. However, once in their chambers, Loki and Sylvie are freed from their constraints by B-15 and a fight between them and the TVA ensue. Gaining the advantage, Loki and Sylvie eventually find themselves free of any enemies, and Sylvie attacks one of the Time Keepers with her sword. The Time Keeper is beheaded and, as the head falls to their feet, Loki and Sylvie realise that these three beings are merely robotic avatars and not the real Time Keepers.

Without any way to destroy the Time Keepers and the TVA, Sylvie is lost. Loki, reminiscent of their moment on Lamentis-1 and Mobius' accusation of romantic feelings between the two, tries to communicate to Sylvie whatever it is he is feeling, but before he can make her understand, he is disintegrated by Renslayer who turns out to be alive, still.

The mid-credit scene reveals that Loki did, in fact, not die, but finds himself in another realm where he is greeted by various other incarnations of himself. Prominently among them: CLASSIC LOKI (RICHARD E. GRANT), KID LOKI (JACK VEAL), and BOASTFUL LOKI (DEOBIA OPAREI).

FAVOURITE MOMENTS

Loki is back in Mobius' presence and we are immediately back to bantering like an old married couple and I very much appreciated that. These two have such a lovely dynamic, I adore it. Never thought I would say that, but I really do. I love Owen Wilson in this role very much and he and Tom have such great chemistry.

I also really liked Hunter B-15 taking Sylvie back to the apocalypse they had found her in, and asks her about C-20 and the memories the both of them have lived while Sylvie controlled them. Her chocked back sob and then the "I looked happy" was just so nicely done. I was very happy to see that B-15 was immediately ready to team up with Sylvie and drop the TVA at a moment's notice.

The same goes for Mobius. I loved that, despite Loki's betrayal and the fact that he was so set in not wanting to trust him again, Mobius still couldn't shake the feeling that Loki's comment was more than just a quip and went to investigate. He is not just a mindless follower of orders and I love that very much about him.

FAVOURITE CHARACTER(S)

My main man Loki, always and forever. I adore this version of Loki so much. He is so much fun! I love that we get this actually, truly mischievous Loki, this chaotic mess. He isn't brooding and full of evil plans. No! He wants shenanigans and fun. I love it. And I love that we get to see more of his vulnerable side too.

But also, Mobius! My man! He's back!!! If this man doesn't get to ride a jet ski at least once I will be very upset. I will also be very upset if he is actually gone now. (Cannot believe I am saying this about an Owen Wilson character. This is new. Good on you, Owen, good on you.)

QUESTIONS, CURIOSITIES

Less a question and more a demand: if the mid-credit scene means Loki exists somewhere after being disintegrated, Mobius better be alive somewhere. I want that lad back, whole and in one piece. You hear me, Marvel? Otherwise you might have yourself another CoulsonLives on your hand, you just watch.

I've already seen a bunch of reactions to the whole Loki/Sylvie thing and most either go with happily shipping along, or being very against this concept out of some sort of incestuous concerns. And I feel like, am I the only one who watched that scene as neither romantic nor incestuous as such, but more as Loki being very confused?

Apart from Frigga, and possibly, to some degree and especially earlier in life, the brotherly love of Thor, I don't think Loki has ever felt love. And for the first time there is someone who not just understands him completely, but also accepts him exactly as he is. Especially following their conversation about love in 103, I think what was between Sylvie and Loki on Lamentis-1 that caused the nexus event, and makes Mobius accuse Loki of being in love with her, is not a romantic sense of love, but in a way a certain self-acceptance?

I'm sure Loki has some kinds of feelings but he doesn't know what they are or how to categorise them. And he is very confused about liking Sylvie and caring that she is alright. But I don't think he would have understood it as romantic love without Mobius' accusation of it. I don't think it's narcissism either. What I saw, was a glimmer of Loki realising that he can love himself, he can accept himself. If Sylvie, who is him, understands and accepts him, then so can he. But yeah, I'm curious to see where they're gonna go with this, certainly.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

Generally, this episode was absolutely amazing. Every week I keep finding myself becoming the shocked Pikachu meme while watching the episode, but this week especially. I can't wait to see what next week brings, and I hope very much that we find out Mobius is, in fact, still alive somewhere.

[still image taken from the episode's imdb page]

#tv blogging #review blogging #recap blogging #loki spoilers #loki series spoilers #loki show spoilers #loki #loki series #loki show #mcu loki #loki laufeyson #tom hiddleston #sylvie laufeydottir #sophia di martino #mobius m mobius #owen wilson #ravonna renslayer #gugu mbatha raw #hunter b 15 #wunmi mosaku #hunter c 20 #sasha lane #hunter d 90 #neil ellice #classic loki #richard e grant #kid loki #jack veal #boastful loki #deobia oparei