Loki S02E01: 'Ouroboros'

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‘Loki’ starts its second season with the same self-assurance and humor of its first time around.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The second season of Loki starts where the last one left off -- where we eventually discover is somehow another timeline or perhaps the past of the TVA -- but Loki is unrecognized by his old friend Mobius and flees. This is all well and good until Loki experiences some sort of horrific distortion, a delightfully awful looking effect -- and becomes the first real storyline to address here.

We also get introduced to a few new characters, mainly other judges including the militaristic General Dox (Kate Dickie) and the potentially empathetic Judge Gamble (Liz Carr) and new two hunters -- Dox’s right hand friend and kinda of a jerk Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal) and apparent ally of our pals that we only now meet, Hunter D-90 (Neil Ellice). Hunter B-15 delivers an impassioned speech to explain that pruning timelines is effectively like killing untold trillions of lives (which is hard to deny) and that their mission isn’t valid at all.

Finally Loki arrives and is able to leverage his visits to the past (and future perhaps) to reveal that there have been Kang statues the whole time. Loki is still freaking out about his recent conversation at the end of time with He Who Remains, basically incoherently not explaining fully to a confused Mobius, while also being highly concerned about the location of Sylvie (who had a TemPad and could be anywhere or anywhen).

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So finally we got introduced to the funniest new character, the TVA main engineer Ouroboros or “OB” as played ably by Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan -- naturally the name is funny because it’s a similar concept to the Mobius strip, an infinite loop of a snake eating its own tail. Although I don’t think that thematically there’s anything to that yet for OB. The whole trippiness of the time slipping and OB talking to Mobius and Loki at different points in time was quite fun and often very humorous.

The big solution where the wrong choice would lead to Mobius losing his skin and Loki being lost in time was only funny because the matter-of-fact way OB mentions it and how often they hammer home the skin loss thing. The production design continues to be completely on point, case in point Mobius’s bulky time suit with huge pipe as he walks towards the giant Temporal Loop -- a pretty clever answer to something that was never really explained in the first season.

The tension ramps up in the final moments, as Loki races through the future trying to find a way to be pruned while a phone keeps ringing -- and suddenly he spots Sylvie wrenching her way through an elevator just as we hear that great music sting again, right before Loki is pruned violently. Although this time it’s to save him from his time slipping, amusingly getting Mobius knocked back to safety.

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The cliffhanger seems to be about Dox taking many hunters somewhere in time, serious overkill for Sylvie (you’d think) -- and that leads to a credits sequence filled with all sorts of great new references to the new season with the great score by Natalie Holt still kicking ass throughout.

But you don’t want to skip the post credits scene, unusual for this show, where we run into Sylvie in 1982 in a “branched timeline” in a commercial for McDonalds (which I can forgive) as she looks around at everyone being happy, feeling free for the very first time. No wonder she says she wants to “try everything”. An absolutely killer ending and a fantastic start for the new season. And if you think this one was fun, the next few are even better.

Note: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. We support the strike and emphasize the importance of actors and writers, and ensuring they and fellow creatives are compensated and treated fairly for their work. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn't exist.