Visually this finale is the most stunning thing in the entire mcu. And as much as I hate the idea of Loki being alone I think this is a perfect ending that beautifully completes his character journey.
That might’ve been one of the best pieces of storytelling the MCU has ever told. The allegory on determinism weaved in with the ought/is argument within the frame of individual wants and purpose-driven choice… As a season the first as a whole is still better, but this isn’t just the best episode of the series - but up there with the best moments of TV in recent memory.
Not to mention the implications for what this poses on the future Kang arcs and Renslayer’s future as a seemingly(? vaguely left to interpretation) foil of larger importance. Watching the relatively well done caricature that was Loki upon initial introduction into deeply multilayered literal time god/jailer (again beautifully vague) of the multiverse over a decade later was so well written. I think I’m even still absorbing some of what I just saw.
Balancing comedy, brevity and existentialism - all while maintaining impeccable pace. 10/10, hats off to everyone involved.
Great episode, but I’m so freaking confused.
Did Loki create Yggdrasil?
That Loki will end like this seems perfect to me as an ending. But I feel like there are still things to resolve. I hope with future series and movies they give more context and information to everything we saw and in what it will have an impact on the plot.
this season only need the first and the final 2 eps, the other 3 served for anything
8.5/10
Sensational
So Loki becomes
The God Of Stories.
I must say the vfx were
off the charts amazing
To be fair some of the best
I've seen in any D+ show.
Still didn't have a clue
what was going on
and none of it made any
sense including Loki's
2.0 upgrade to
God Mode but it was
all very beautiful.
The cinematography was
amazing and that 3rd
act did get very emotional.
Where does that leave
Loki now, what about
Kang and his future in
The MCU (Mr Majors)
What about
The rest of
The Multiverse Saga
And most importantly where
does that leave us for
Avengers 5 and 6
for our Saga Cappers.
2026-2027
"I Guess Time Will Tell"
Wow, a Marvel story with an actual ending, been time. As much as I dislike a lot of this season (but found it better than the first), this is the first time I actually felt that this have that comic book spirit.
Loki is hands down the most selfless character from the entire MCU. His character development was out of this world. The finale was perfectly executed, even though he deserved to have his own happy ending, in my eyes.
The emotional beats would work better if all the timeline mumbo-jumbo were easier to understand, imo. It's a drag to the show when characters start explaining what happened or will happen if this did that.
Figures that for MCU series having trouble sticking the landing, Loki is the one to do it twice, and this time outdo its own Season 1's ending, tying back to that episode and then even further in vintage Benson & Moorehead headtrip style, plus a rare heartfelt, coherent character writing that gives the twistiness meaning. If nothing else, the show's pleasing tangible special effect and production design easily surpasses the eyesore of almost all of post-Endgame MCU projects, which is necessary for the stakes and especially the final image to hit with the appropriate weight.
WOW THAT WAS GOOD, they could have not done that in the comics, amazing, i love the greenery
That’s Marvel? That’s what Marvel is supposed to be
Loki is the most well-developed character in the MCU. This ending was truly worthy of the character!:green_heart:
The best growth of any character in the entire story, period. Amazing. As sad as it is he was destined to be alone, he always did have glorious purpose.
I’ll say it again, the growth of Loki throughout this series has been absolutely phenomenal. To go from a selfish villain to a selfless hero has been an epic journey. This is MARVEL in all its glory!
10/10. Peak. This might be one of the best comic book TV finales or even episodes ever. Maybe this is recency bias but I don’t really care, this straight up floored me. Incredible.
I wanted a post-credits scene. Seems more final w/o one.
Can I kill Sylvie so we can get Loki back? I mean like her but not as much as Loki!
Centuries later :joy: made me laugh
What an epic finish. It was a glorious purpose after all.
Be careful of claiming you are burdened with glorious purpose... You just may end up being so. What a great character arc. Series stands so far above much of the rest of the drek Marvel/Disney is churning out.
Finally, a show that has a coherent beginning and ending aligned with its initial message. It's a relief not to have to wait for three years (and hope for one or two strikes) to witness a story that starts and concludes sensibly, with character evolution consistent with the storyline. Loki (despite a few minor flaws) is a small masterpiece in the vast arid desert that the last two phases of the MCU have been.
One day I'll come back to this show and I'll understand it all but as it is now, I didn't care about the characters and found it very confusing to follow. Some fun scenes though.
This season was Meh. you don't actually get to care about anyone as everyone in the multiverse is constantly dying and coming back to life
Not just the best episode of the series, but one of the best episodes of television I've seen, period.
You think Marvel is over? You haven't been paying attention to the literature, son!
Without a doubt one of the best thing Marvel's ever created, This is what Marvel should be.
Loki's Character Development is supreme.
Glorious purpose, Loki is saving the current MCU, literally. Probably the best thing to come out from Marvel in a long time.
[7.4/10] I can appreciate the poetry of Loki’s ending. When he entered the TVA, Loki was an egotistical, self-centered,d arguably megalomaniacal villain who thought himself entitled to a throne. When he leaves it, he does so through a selfless act, one meant to give freedom and choice to those he cares about, at the cost of taking himself out of the story. He ends up sitting on a throne, but not the one he thinks, and the way he “changes the equation”, or rewrites the story where he’s fated to lose, is by removing himself from both. That is a hell of an arc for one of the MCU’s signature characters.
I can also admire the chutzpah it took to do an episode like this one. Honestly, kudos to the creative team behind the series for convincing the powers that be at Marvel Studios and Disney to give them millions of dollars to craft something this avant garde and downright weird under the banner of arguably the most mainstream outfit there is. This is some Twin Peaks, or at least Vanilla Sky-type stuff coming from The Mouse, which is not something I expected, and deserves kudos for boldness alone.
At the same time, a lot of this just straight up makes no sense. Loki spends countless centuries trying to get Victor Timely to successfully adjust the loom, Groundhog Day-style when he could just travel back earlier in time and prevent this from ever happening, which is a little maddening, especially when others explicitly make the point that he needs more time to get this done.
And when he does figure that out, the only point he cana think to go back to is the confrontation with He Who Remains, which he likewise repeats over and over again, without ever considering that there are other points in the timeline where a much less onerous change could avoid this altogether.
And then, his ability to simply wander into the multiverse, and gather a bunch of branches together, and bind them into a tree, comes out of absolute nowhere. You can kind of chalk it up to him developing these time manipulation powers in this stretch, with this being the ultimate expression of his self-training. But unless I’ve missed something, which I’ll admit is entirely possible, they never came close to setting something like this up.
Despite all of those gripes, if you can set aside the expectation that all of this needs to add up, something Loki has been bad at throughout this season, then this episode is pretty enjoyable!
However contrived the setup, Loki doing the Phil Connors routine in the TVA is a lot of fun! Everything from rushing characters through the interactions we’ve already seen, to his amusingly specific tips to Victory Timely about suit latches and modules rolling away, to his saying Mobius’ lines before he does is a hoot. (Though I would have liked to have seen more of a change in Loki after spending centuries learning theoretical physics.)
His struggle to prevent Silvie from killing He Who Remains is more of the same, mostly, but still enjoyable. The sense of HWR having been through all this, knowing how to play the god game, to where this is all child’s play to him, even against a more trained and better-equipped Loki, makes for an interesting dynamic.
It also gives Loki a philosophical choice. One of the big recurring motifs of the series has been Loki thinking he had a glorious purpose, and finding out that he was fated to lose, or that his grand goals were meaningless in the greater scheme of things. He Who Remains reinforces that here. When the loom fix fails to stop the problem of infinite scaling, it renders all his actions pointless. When HWR explains that stopping Silvie won’t change his fate, it makes those efforts feel pointless. Loki is once again confronted with the prospect of having no option that doesn’t result in his defeat.
Except, of course, there’s one. Break the loom. The loom ensures some peace and joy, but is rough and tumble in its own right. Destroying it brings with it the possibility of utter chaos, and a multi-diminsonal war that could end in apocalypse, but it also comes with freedom, choice, possibility beyond the mandates of the sacred timeline. We know how these things tend to go but the fact that the crux of this series comes down to a choice between stage-managed stability and outrageous, possibly self-destructive freedom is a marvelously cool thing to build an increasingly far afield superhero story around.
The other side of the coin is that, from there, “Glorious Purpose” turns into a bout of the sort of ponderous monologues and hollow exchanges that are the stock and trade of such mind-bending works when the characters are backed into a corner. There’s some power in Mobius’ speech about living with the burden either way, and of Silvie’s speech about the chance to fight your own fight, and in Loki meaning to say goodbye to his friends, and deciding to save them with an act of heroic sacrifice. The presentation is just pretentious and opaque in a way that makes me roll-my-eyes, even when I’m appreciating the boldness of the project. There’s a fair amount of nonsense here, masked through platitudes and bromides and some fantastic acting, and it makes it hard for me to fully buy into what “Glorious Purpose” is going for here.
But I buy in a little, and that's enough! Owen Wilson kills it as a man who finally has the gumption to look into his own life, and contemplate what he gave up to do all this. I’ve never really cared about Renslayer, but something about her waking up at the end of time, with the debris-covered remains of the TVA is a captivating image, if nothing else. And while it’s totally bananas, the sequence of Loki barreling into the multiverse, reverting to his imperial form, and weaving the strands of the multiverse together with great physical exertion and personal sacrifice, is some incredible imagery, a set that's moving in its poetry, even if it doesn’t make much sense.
That's where I come down on Loki. It doesn’t really make sense, and I’m not sure it ever has. This has been timey wimey nonsense from the beginning, with only the usual blockbuster mystery boxes to justify it. I’m not really satisfied with how any of the temporal shenanigans work, nor am I clear on what the real consequences of any of these misadventures is.
But at the end of the day, I still like the characters, who bounce off one another with comic energy and occasionally poignance, in a way that kept me coming back. And I still like the creative team’s willingness to use this bizarre, silver age setup to explore what it means to have “glorious purpose”, to make meaningful choices in a universe where meaning has been stripped from you, to be the best version of yourself, and the one you never imagined becoming.
Loki remains a mixed bag, but it is a moving and fitting ending for the MCU’s trickster god, finally worthy of the latter part of his title, and on that score, it’s worth holding onto.
Great season! I understood NOTHING from beginning to end. It’s about time Hollywood leaves the sacred temporal line (the one and only) alone.
We were in the midst of the creation of Yggdrasyl! Loki roots Uggdrasyl and becomes time itself! The tree of life! And so selfless he was he saved everyone! Nörse mythology at its finest. That is Feige! Thanks Hiddleston! Thanks Disney for giving us the best the MCU has ever created. Nothing compared to this!
GLORIOUS PURPOSE?? It feels like they’re breaking the rules by having a second episode with this title. It feels so perfect. First episode and last episode of the show. Breaking all the rules just like Loki throughout this series. Wonderful wonderful finale. I think I’ll sit here and let time pass.
He went full Bolvar Fordragon! Never go full Bolvar. :snowflake::skull::crown:
this was certainly one of the best marvel production endings. but, for me, it doesn't quite redeem a weak season like this one. ok, prettier than anything from marvel, but with such a poorly written narrative. this show in the hands of people who know how to make tv shows and not extended films would be so much better. the pacing was never right and the text was never good.
but i'm sad that mobius lost his boyfriend :( owen wilson the gold of this series.
The Slyvie boss fight part was very Soulslike
Honestly I think that this second season was really boring...
In the last 6/7 years it seems that you can't create a plot without talking about time travels and multiverse, nothing else is considered to develop a story.
This way you can make it happen everything and one second after delete and erase all... no consequences, no endings... all happens without something that really happens.
I hope that this trend will chance soon.
I feared the writers had made Loki have some idea of sacrificing himself for the good of all. I didn’t like that. An all to abrahamic trope, that has died with the last age.
Him walking to the branches and… killing them, effectively, as a god of chaos and destruction however… ahhh… yes. We must destroy in order to create.
So… he will be he who remains, king of all time? And the time line’s effectively turning into Yggdrasil? Oh, my gods. Yes. I liked that. It’s still a self-sacrifice, but somehow more palatable. I’m definitely ambivalent about this end though. Might file it under “love-hate”.
It started pretty bad.
"Not faster, earlier". Really genius ? You needed several tries to realize that ?? You thought that maybe if the radiation kills Victor instantly, it would be possible to withstand it for several minutes if you tried a few seconds earlier ??? When did Loki become this dumb ?
Then it becomes like a regular time loop, (except he has the possibility to start back earlier). This part is enjoyable, but I'm a sucker for time loops. Until he finally manages to fix the Loom... just to realize that it's not enough either.
And that's when things get more interesting: more loops trying to prevent Sylvie from killing He Who Remains, nice to see him again by the way.
It then gets epic when we discover that everything, including this, was already predicted and planned by HWR, but also that the experience is honing Loki's time powers to incredible levels.
Finally, a nice touch by returning to one of the first scenes of the show, the moment that changed Loki's destiny a first time, to be used to change it a second time.
HWR was maintaining a single timeline, destroying any freedom and the existence of the other branches. Loki is now so powerful in time magic that he can, by himself, maintain all the timelines and the whole multiverse, becoming Yggdrasil.
Interestingly what happens to Loki here, is not new to the MCU, this is exactly what Dr Strange did in Infinity War, except it wasn't shown. It shows that Loki has now become at least as powerful as the Time Stone. Probably better since there are a stone by branch, and they're useless in the TVA. It could just be that deactivating the magic barrier would allow to use the Stones in the TVA too, but anyway his time slipping seems to be independent from his magic and definitely sent him to moments when the barrier was on. Well they always had the color in common but up till now Loki had always been more associated with the Tesseract.
Anyway, that's a superb finish. It has tremendous potential for the future of the MCU.
As for the TVA, we still might see them again as they seem to have become a Kang monitoring agency instead.
This is only a 6 because of the Acting in this, which was good, and this episode actually invests most of its run time in the emotions of the character, which is the only important thing given the outcome
The key issue with this show is that very obviously, from the beginning, they were trying to get to the ending where lokis glorious purpose was sacrificing himself (throne ascension!) for other people, but what's critical to make that final piece work is why and how did he arrive to that emotional state. The show never actually shows us how he comes to learn these moments (except maybe, a little, in this episode), so the big character and self sacrifice moment is completely lost. Are these people even friends, aside from loki and slyvie and loki and mobius and maybe ob. It's intended to be a big character study show, but it did not spend enough time studying the character. Why, exactly is he so intent on preserving free will/the branches etc
Glancing at the reports of where hiddleston improvised/changed lines in season finales (!!) to make the emotional logic of the character work(!!), it feels like he's the only one who understood the character arc, because the writers of this show certainly did not.
This writers spent all their time on exposition and trying to Make Things Happen in The Plot, but none of the day to day happenings even make logical progression sense. Like what is ravonna even doing, the liz carr/tva rebellion plot - it's so underdeveloped I could not explain to anyone else what's going on
This series (and to some extent, loki, the mcu character) is a awful waste of acting talent and I wish tom hiddleston and ke huy quan a very "get some better written roles"
Outside of Loki himself, low key this show was ass
Good show. They can still do more Loki if they want and they're doing a season 2 of What-if. There's plenty of other Loki's out there.
Spectacular ending to this season! Still not quite sure where this leaves Loki? Maybe one more season to see where it leads us. :thumbsup_tone1: :thinking:
While the season seemed to be going well, everything suddenly went back to square one in the finale. Also, I don't understand why Loki is not affected by temporal radiation and can turn himself into loom. As a result, nothing universally changed between season 1 and season 2. Then they destroyed Loki. A meaningless season.
Whatever pacing issues I was having in the first half of the season, holy crap did they make up for it in the second half, as this may now be my favorite climax of any MCU project. Loki running so very far to find his purpose. The Groundhogs Day shenanigans. The conflicts with Kang and Sylvia. And seriously, Loki's ascension and the birth of the new Yggdrasil is just so stunning and haunting, and have me so recharged to see where the franchise goes from here. I loved this.
Season finale that I hope will be the final series in a big way. I liked season 1 better
Well, that felt like a series finale.
Loki's new costume looks great.
It was a solid season, packed with a lot of great characters. If this is Tom Hiddleston's last time playing Loki, I think it was a perfect ending.
Wow!!!! okay this was a ride to say the least but marvel would probably ruin it on the next project he is in :grimacing:.
They can just have rounded character arcs :skull:. Someone needs to tell them not everything has to be open for overreaching arc; this is why Loki show works.
I just know the moment we see another MCU character pops up around Loki it's gonna all for nothing :dizzy_face::dizzy:.
But damn!!!!! All I kept thinking was, “This is the Loki we used to know?”
Incredible climactic storytelling on this one and dare i say, not only the best mcu episode but the best mcu storytelling, movies and shows including, imo. cant believe this exists. its so rich with poetry. i am lovin it.
What was the point of season 2? He Who Remains in this episode actually adding to the plot/mcu is the only highlight of the whole season.
This season was below average according to me.
There was no proper explanation for most of the things. Things happened and powers were gained because Deus Ex Machina.
Main point of Season 2 was branches have people with life's, we shouldn't kill them. Throughout the season, people on the branches were killed and resurrected nonstop.
In the end, Loki's decision, we can't save the Loom from exploding - So let's stop He Who Remains from dying, so that atleast the Sacred Timeline survives, other timelines be damned. Like it's defeating the entire premise of the show.
Loki became God of Stories without the name drop. How he got the power to save multiverse - nobody knows. No explanation. No setup, nothing
Bahut gandha story tha.
How's Loki gonna eat tho?:neutral_face::expressionless:
I dont want my lord to go hungry.
So Marvel is finally back? Nah shouldn't get used to this. But Loki (especially Se2), brings back the memories from a time when Marvel produced peak Movies.
Trust him he's a good witch :D
The way marvel has been doing lately, it's so nice to see something be actually glorious. What an ending. Imo one of the best character arcs in marvel. Sometimes you don't need huge fights or long cheesy dialogues and this ending proved it. Beautiful CG set-pieces followed with a great Tom Hiddlestion performance filled with poignancy and meaning to the brim. That's storytelling
I really enjoyed this final episode. But it was obvious from the beginning that Loki had to do it alone - first of all, it didn't make much sense anymore to send Timely when he himself spent centuries learning all about the device. So that was a distraction at best that had no chance at working out. But he had to have his "Strange"-moment redoing the past over and over again to finally face what he has to do. Really liked that conversation with Mobius. Instead of killing He Who Remains or Sylvie, he's choosing a third option.
So, Loki's now the king of time... but with no adoring followers. Poignant - if this had been the Loki from "our" universe I'd have said fitting character arc. But I spent this season asking myself, is this Loki? This docile man who sometimes wields a bit of magic? Maybe among all that technobabble there was an explanation (either here or in season 1) why Loki would care so much about timelines and the TVA (except for Sylvie and Mobius). But if there ever was it's been lost to me.
I love Loki, he's (after Tony) my favourite character of the MCU because he's complex, 3-dimensional, he has major issues but he's coming around in the end in the movies... without losing that sense of unpredictability and mischief. And the writers managed to make his journey emotionally credible, from the villain in Thor to the loyal brother in Infinity War. Here, though, this journey to self-sacrifice lacks the emotional facet. Honestly, if I hadn't loved Loki before this series, I might not even have stuck through it to the final because of that lack of emotional depth and involvement.
Anyway, this season does end on a very high note - certainly the best season finale (episodes 5+6 taken together) of any of the MCU series so far. And as much as I'd have loved to see this Loki return to the Marvel movies at some point, I think this is a good end point for him (even if I'd have liked to have come to that point slightly differently).
Shout out to Loki for being the first ever Disney+ marvel show to end on a fucking high note. Jesus Christ the start to this season was janky as hell. But episodes 5 & 6 really pulled it together for a deeply emotionally resonant and fucking beautiful ending. I'm still processing and I may just rewatch the entire episode again but Jesus I have nothing more to say other than this was just beautiful.
So how does it work in the Marvel universe, he's going to seat on this throne forever? Seems pretty boring. Good thing that Gods probably can't develop hemorrhoids from too much seating.
Otherwise, great tv show, not comparable with all that garbage Marvel producing nowadays.
I liked many characters, but Jonathan Majors was definitely the star for me here. I only saw him in Creed before, he's a great actor indeed.
What a turnaround!
From a self-centered, narcissistic, sociopath to someone who spent centuries learning things to be able to achieve his glorious purpose. Not to mention the sacrifices he made to get there and will continue to make until he stays as Yggdrasil.
This is how a character arc should be. Where the first season felt quite a letdown in terms of his character development, this one finally shows why Loki is the likable character he is.
You either die a villain, or you live long enough to become a hero. Glorious purpose, indeed.
Sweet ending. I don't like sweet endings, but not with this one.
Watched this episode: Faith in the MCU completely restored :heart_eyes:
Watched The Marvels: Faith in the MCU lost again :sob:
There aren't enough good things I can say about this show. What a phenomenal ending, everyone was brilliant but special props to Mr. Tom Hiddleston for knocking it out of the park, you sir, are a LEGEND.
Loved this season and Loki's character development since Thor 1.
I am not going to say I was disappointed and hand this a 2 like a lot of people on here would. Not sure how I feel about this being the last time we will see Loki though. Since there’s apparently no plans for a season 3.
all hail Loki, the God of Time!
This is truly the best thing marvel has produced post end game and one of the best thing the MCU has created, period.
I love marvel unapologetically and even i can say this is more than the superhero genre, this is full on sci-fi and its up there with some of t best.
This was a fantastic episode overall.
It deserves this episode as series finale. I mean there is not much to go on or tell after this season.
Ok, I must admit that they pulled it off in the end. One Loki’s glorious purpose is met. Nevertheless, I must say the journey was painful. Part of the blame lies with the context in which this has been released. As an example, Wandavision took advantage of peak-Marvel to extract fan patience while Loki S2 does not have that luxury.
Marvel is tottering and there isn’t any patience for even tiny missteps. Such a pity, because, in the context of peak Marvel, Loki S2 would be peak.
What's up with the renslayer scene though? Seems in a TVA-disused far future, and purple light was previously associated with he who remains. Back-up-back-up plan of his?
Nice come back to nordic mythology with yggdrasil, literally holding worlds/timelines together.
Possibly the best final episode of any MCU show until now. This might even be the best they’ve done in all of Phase 5 so far.
So sad about Jonathan Majors, he was truly a great actor
Shout by AmirBlockedParent2023-11-10T20:57:57Z
Wow, Loki really nailed it! The power of strong character development is on full display here, proving that a great story doesn't need a villain or cliffhanger.