Welcome back to the blog readers. I am absolutely loving the second season of Loki so far, and these episodes are only getting better and better. Last week's installment was an absolute riot with twists and turns galore, a hoot of a performance from Jonathan Majors, and more questions than answers. Would we continue the rise in quality of this series? Would this episode, titled "Heart of the TVA," directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and written by Eric Martin and Katharyn Blair, continue the upward trajectory? Stick around to find out.
NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.
After this episode aired, I went to Twitter (that shit will never be called X no matter how bad Elon Musk wants it to be) to get some reactions, and something was pointed out to me. Marvel always reserves their fourth episodes for the most shocking and crazy moments in their series, and this actually makes sense. In WandaVision (2021), we learned that Wanda is not only responsible for the Hex, she is actively controlling it. In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), John Walker murders a Flag Smasher in front of a crowd of people. In the first season of Loki (2021), Loki is pruned and sent to the Void where he meets other Loki variants. In Hawkeye (2021), the assailant of Clint and Kate is revealed to be Yelena Belova. In Moon Knight (2022), Mark is killed and finds himself in the afterlife with himself and Steven Grant separated. In Ms. Marvel (2022), Kamala is revealed to have moved through time and finds herself in 1942 India. In Secret Invasion (2023), Gravik kills Talos while attempting to assassinate the President of the United States. See what I mean with these fourth episodes? It really does make sense.
With that being said, this episode was nothing short of fantastic. It did not take long for Ahsoka's fifth episode to be topped as my second favorite television episode of the year (only behind The Last of Us episode "Long, Long Time"). This episode literally had everything I wanted: killer performances from everybody involved, natural humor between the characters, some callbacks to previous events, and a cliffhanger more shocking than the one in Avengers: Infinity War (2018). This episode could have been a season finale and I would have been left completely satisfied. My question is where do we go from here?
There is literally so much to talk about here, and I want to start with Tom Hiddleston. I have been singing this man's praises the entire season, and I plan on doing that here again. He was good in the first season, but there is something about Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead that unlocked something brilliant about him. We are legitimately getting the best version of Loki that we have ever seen in the MCU, and Hiddleston is really working for that Emmy nomination. I think just his argument with Sylvie alone is enough to give him that nod. His talk of optimism and hope is just as uplifting as ever, and he even gets in some buddy-buddy humor with Owen Wilson's Mobius M. Mobius. He was just brilliant here.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a gifted young actor who killed it in the first season, but her character Ravonna Renslayer just became public enemy number one. After last week's cliffhanger ending that Miss Minutes had a secret that would anger her, we find out in the cold open that Renslayer indeed worked with He Who Remains at the End of Time and he eventually had her memories wiped, along with everyone at the TVA. This gives Renslayer the motivation to take over the TVA for herself, along with Miss Minutes. Some of the shit that she does is crazy. First she turns X-5 against General Dox and her Minutemen, and then manipulates everybody into wanting to die before turning them into liquid with the same cube crusher device that Loki and Mobius used against X-5 in the second episode. The most savage part of this whole thing was how happy Miss Minutes was to see people LITERALLY DIE. We saw none of them being crushed, yet it was insanely brutal and borders torturous.
The main source of laughs this episode was the budding buddy-buddy relationship between OB and Victor Timely, who was taken to the TVA after last week's shenanigans. The two completely hitched it off, and the performances of Ke Huy Quan and Jonathan majors in these scenes was nothing but hilarious. Them playing against each other was pure genius, as was the revelation that OB's work was inspired by Timely's. It was a nice touch and a nice illustration of a lesser-known paradox I forgot the name of.
I want to go more into the performance of Jonathan Majors here. You are already aware that I think Majors is a very gifted actor and performer, and I am still suspending judgment on him until his trial is over. Innocent until proven guilty, right? Anywho, I was attracted to his performance this week more than I was last week, because now there is more for him to do. Take the aforementioned scenes with Ke Huy Quan. His interactions with Renslayer and Miss Minutes are also something revelatory. I also love how curious Majors plays Timely here because it was a variant of him that created the TVA. And it eventually was his interaction with a rebooting Miss Minutes, where she tells him he will never be "him," that spurs the greatest drift from the timeline. This inspires Timely to be the one who volunteers to save the day, only for him to instantly be vaporized by the temporal radiation. Majors also plays a dual role in this episode as He Who Remains, who we learn worked with Renslayer at the end of time. He is cold and calculated here, more in line with his "Conqueror" variant from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).
Next I want to talk about the callback to the first episode of the season. Remember in that episode, Loki time-slipped to the future of the TVA and ran into Sylvie before getting pruned by an unnamed person? This episode is that future. There are a few things that we learn about this scene here. Miss Minutes attempted to take over all the systems within the TVA, leading to Sylvie getting stuck in one of the elevators and having to force her way out. Loki was pruned by himself to close the loop and bring him back to this moment. And the person on the other end of the ringing phone was OB, hilariously. I love how this scene directly interplays with that scene from the first episode, and I love the duality of it.
The final thing I want to talk about is the biggest cliffhanger in Marvel history. Yes, bigger than Avengers: Infinity War. As the crew is scrambling to fix the Temporal Loom and they have their plan in motion, Victor Timely steps up to volunteer to save the day. As we discusses, he is instantly vaporized by the temporal radiation, a move that swiftly brought my jaw (as well as the jaws of Loki, Mobius, B-15, Sylvie, Casey and OB) to the floor. Loki realizes what is about to happen and the group watch in horror as the Loom explodes, enveloping everything in its path in radiation. We stay on Loki's face as the screen around him turns white and we get some static that just ends the episode. Holy fucking shit. What in the word does this mean? What are the ramifications now that the TVA is most likely destroyed and everyone in it is probably dead? I cannot wait for this next episode, seriously.
Like I said, Ahsoka's fifth episode was already topped as my second favorite episode of the year so far, and I cannot believe some of the things that were allowed to happen here. Thank you all for reading, and I absolutely will be seeing you guys for the next episode. Holy shit.
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