Loki Just Invented a New Type of Time Travel in the MCU
Everything is turning into spaghetti.
Loki Season 2 was always going to have a bigger scope than Season 1, but in the back half, we’re seeing just how huge the scope is. At the end of Episode 4, we witnessed Victor Timely essentially disintegrate as the temporal loom explodes, unable to handle all the new branches in an un-pruned multiverse.
It didn’t seem like there would be room for a bigger ending in Episode 5, but somehow this series found a way. But just what happened to top the previous crisis, and how will Loki get out of it? Here’s everything you need to know.
Spoilers for Loki Season 2 Episode 5, “Science/Fiction.”
What Happened at the End of Loki Episode 5?
Sylvie unwinds from her tense refusal of Loki at her local record store.
Loki Season 2 Episode 5 gave fans exactly what they wanted: a glimpse into the “real” lives of the TVA agents. Mobius is now a single dad recreational vehicle salesman named Don, O.B. is a sci-fi author, B-15 is a doctor, and Casey is one of the escapees from the 1962 Alcatraz prison break. Loki realizes, with the help of O.B., that he needs to assemble all his old friends in order to get back to the TVA before the temporal loom exploded.
In the episode’s last moments, we see Sylvie just chilling listening to The Velvet Underground. She’s interrupted when the world around her completely disintegrates, echoing back to what happened to Timely and something O.B. warned Loki about in Episode 1: “You heard about how if you fall into a black hole you turn into spaghetti?”
Sylvie escaping the disintegration of her normal life.
While she manages to escape the record store and find Loki and the rest of the crew, it isn’t long before everyone there is spaghetti-fied too, leaving Loki so bereft he manages to control his time-slipping, rewinding to only a few moments earlier. In the last seconds of the episode, we see him time-slip back to the end of Episode 4, just before the Temporal Loom explodes. Strangely, his new time-slip powers allow him to stay in his own body, not appear as a second, separate version of himself.
Let’s Do the Time Slip Again
Loki time-slipped back to the moment right before the Time Loom exploded.
So why is this all happening? Without the temporal loom, there’s nothing turning raw time into the timelines. If there’s no loom, then of course, things are going to get unraveled. This changes everything we know about Loki. Sure, he can control his time slipping now, but he can’t ever travel back to Earth without risking disintegrating. The only way to save everything is to back in time and, as Loki says, “rewrite the story.” Presumedly, this means they’ll find a way to keep the Loom from exploding at all.
Loki Season 2’s biggest criticism may be that it’s stuck in the past, but for Loki, it’s the only way to fix everything.
