By Julian
Episode two of Loki Season Two is now streaming on Disney+. This time, the multiverse has always been a fun idea in concept. It’s becoming a bit chaotic for the MCU’s multiverse mayhem in Loki Season Two. So what kind of crisis did the God of Mischief and his fellow TVA friends get themselves into this time? Let’s find out, shall we?
Episode Two Breaking Brand finds Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Mobius (Owen Wilson), and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) in 1977 on the Sacred Timeline to apprehend Hunter X-05 (Rafael Casal). X-05 was hiding in plain sight as an actor named Bradley Wolfe until the gang ended up capturing him. After his detainment, they receive new information from desk clerk Casey (Eugene Cordero) about how Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is getting help from the TVA’s mascot and animated AI, Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). Loki restates his discovery of Renslayer and He Who Remains’ (Jonathan Majors) partnership in the past adding more urgency to their search.
Meanwhile, Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) was busy trying to fix the chaotic Temporal Loom. However, he has no access to the blast doors which is a precursor to a temporal meltdown. The only other person who can open them is He Who Remains who is still dead. Now the last resort is to find Miss Minutes again to do the job.
At the same time, Loki and Mobius continue interrogating “Brad” about how his TemPad did not block tracking. Loki, being the God of Mischief starts being mischievous in his interrogation tactics with the TVA’s Gizmo that creates a jail timedoor. After almost shrinking Brad, he reveals that Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) found a new life in a branching timeline.
Brad takes Loki and Mobius to 1982 Brixton, Oklahoma where they find Sylvie working as a cashier at McDonalds. Loki tells her he saw her in the future when the TVA was collapsing. Sylvie, as usual, doesn’t want anything to do with the TVA anymore. Brad begins to panic about how everyone in this timeline is going to die. Sylvie looks into Brad’s psyche to see that General Dox (Katie Dickie) and her loyalists using Reset Charges to prune all the branching timelines. The gang stops Dox and her loyalist from time-bombing the timelines but returns to the TVA to find the branched timelines and trillions of souls in those timelines all dead. Sylvie goes back home after stating how the TVA has always been the problem. Whereas for Loki, it’s the only defense against He Who Remains and his variants.
Right, it’s a good episode yet slightly jarring. For me at least. I may have to re-watch it again. But how and why did Hunter X-05 decide to run and hide in this episode? We’ve only seen one branching timeline and not seen the devastation Dox and her loyalists were wreaking in the other timelines. If we had seen those timelines, maybe we would have some idea of why those lives are important as the plot suggests. But we don’t have that connection, they are just squiggly lines on a monitor. I don’t know, maybe this is the precursor for the eventual incursions, or the multiverse concept is becoming more convoluted as the MCU continues this story.
Loki season two-episode two Breaking Brad is a good yet slightly jarring follow-up to the first episode premiere. Two episodes down and hopefully the show doesn’t lose sight of what made the first season great in the first place.
