Loki Episode 2 theory reveals [SPOILER]’s game-changing scheme

There’s a new Loki in town, and they’ve got a few tricks up her sleeve.

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Loki Episode 2.

The second episode of Marvel’s Loki ended with a bombshell revelation: the Loki variant the TVA’s been hunting through time and space isn’t an exact clone of Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief, but rather a female version of the trickster god.

Lady Loki (Sophia Di Martino) makes quite the entrance too, revealing herself at the exact moment she sends dozens of stolen TVA reset charges to various points in the Sacred Timeline.

It’s an act of pure chaos, and one that raises some interesting questions about Lady Loki herself — namely, what is she after?

Bombing the Sacred Timeline — Loki Episode 2 picks up where the premiere left off, with Lady Loki ambushing a group of outmatched TVA agents. From there, Loki spends a majority of its runtime building toward Lady Loki’s inevitable reveal. Once she finally meets our Loki, it becomes clear these two characters aren’t exactly on the same page.

Hiddleston’s Loki proposes working together to dethrone the Time Keepers and take over the TVA, which would grant him control of what he considers to be the “greatest power in the universe.” Lady Loki, however, turns him down. She’s not interested in ruling the TVA. She seems far more intent on causing as much mayhem as she possibly can for the time-traveling bureaucracy to clean up.

But if her plan isn’t to take over the TVA, then what’s she up to?

The Bigger Picture — Loki Episode 2 drops a few hints as to what Lady Loki might be planning. Her deployment of the stolen reset charges indicates that she intends to attack and undermine the stability of the Time Keepers’ precious timeline. One comment from the TVA agent she kidnapped at the start of the episode also reveals that she knows how to find the Time Keepers.

But the most interesting tease of chaos to come happens after Lady Loki turns down her alternate self’s offer to jointly rule the TVA, cryptically replying, “It’s not about you.” It’s an interesting and unexpected remark, especially coming from a Loki variant. This implies Lady Loki isn’t interested in rebelling against the TVA for her own purposes, but rather for the greater good.

How does the TVA factor into her plans? The first two episodes of Loki make it explicitly clear that the TVA does not care about the variants it captures, nor does it contemplate the freedom it robs those variants of by capturing and “pruning” them. This is an organization that, for all intents and purposes, acts autonomously to police the entire universe in accordance with its own strict set of rules.

Therefore, it seems very likely that Lady Loki isn’t interested in ruling the TVA so much as destroying the organization altogether. Her desire to find the Time Keepers and create as many branch realities as possible suggests that she plans to make a mess too big for the TVA to clean up, rendering the organization useless. That would in turn allow all variants to exist freely throughout the multiverse, unafraid of being detained and erased by cosmic time cops.

The Inverse Analysis — Assuming Lady Loki’s plan actually is to dismantle the TVA, that’d give Loki the potential to set up films like Doctor Strange 2 and Spider-Man: No Way Home while also exploring the questions of free will and determinism first raised in its pilot. Of course, we’re speculating as to all this, at least until Loki actually confirms the nature of Lady Loki’s scheme.

Fortunately, with Loki Episode 2 ending just as Hiddleston’s God of Mischief ditches the TVA in favor of following Lady Loki, there’s a strong chance we’ll learn more about the latter’s plans in Loki’s third episode. Who knows? We may even get the first hints of a love story Loki’s head writer alluded to a few weeks back.

Loki is streaming now on Disney+.