For All Time. Always.
Episode 6 of Loki Season 1 begins this finale with a cacophony of noise. This noise soon manifests itself into a variety of different speeches through time before converging on Sylvie and Loki. They find themselves face with a strange castle ominously floating through space. The pair eventually head up to the castle where the holographic Miss Minutes awaits them. They’re in the Citadel at the End of Time, about to be offered a deal by “He Who Remains.” Specifically, this deal includes the chance for Loki to rewrite history. In this alt-timeline, he’ll be offered a chance to win the battle of New York and kill Thanos. He’s even offered the gauntlet too. It seems too good to be true though and both Loki variants can sniff out a trap. When Miss Minutes leaves, doors open to reveal a robed man intent on talking to them in his office. This is Kang, as we soon come to learn, and now we get a good look at Phase 4’s Big Bad. Sylvie immediately takes a swipe at him – given he’s allegedly just flesh and bones – but he easily thwarts their threat by teleporting around. It turns out Kang already knows everything that’s going to happen, boasting that he’s all-knowing and paved the road for them to face him. Back at the TVA, Miss Minutes returns and hands over files for Renslayer. They’re not what she wants but are apparently documents she’ll find more useful. Mobius suddenly shows up in her office and confronts Renslayer over her betrayal and the truth about the TVA. After some convincing, she decides not to kill Mobius after all. She’s going to go in search of free will instead. At the End of Time, Kang discusses how he discovered universes stacked atop one another. This allowed him to communicate with his other variants and come to a peaceful agreement. At least for a while anyway. Eventually these different variants disagreed and this led to an all-out war. The beasty Alioth was actually created by all these tears in reality and is capable of eating time and space itself. Kang harnessing this beast’s powers allowed him to stop the multiversal war and caused a sort of peace to descend over everything. The catch-22 here though comes from Loki and Sylvie’s current choice. If they decide to kill this conqueror and stop the TVA then his variants will come in and they’ll be stuck with multiple devils to try and stop. The alternative is that Sylive and Loki take over and run things. Kang is too old now and he allegedly doesn’t have any knowledge beyond this point. This is it. Sylvie wants to kill him while Loki is not so sure this is a good idea. The two inevitably fight, the end of which results in Sylvie killing this variant. In doing so, Loki heads back to the TVA and unveils the bad news to Mobius…who doesn’t recognize him. New branches are cropping up all over the timeline and countless different versions of Kang seem to be arriving. As Loki looks up, he stands back in shock as he notices a statue of this conqueror has been set up in the TVA. The end has begun.
The Episode Review
So now it becomes clear that the big bad of Marvel Phase 4 is going to be Kang the Conqueror. He’s the one who’s been orchestrating all of this and there’s an almost symbiotic link to the way he’s killed off with the way Thanos was at the start of Endgame. Now, I’m not completely clued up on Marvel lore here but surely if the timelines have been rewritten then is Loki still scheduled to be killed by Thanos in the future? Or has this been changed now? Loki has been a bit of a rough ride at times but in the end the finale just about captures what makes this universe so enthralling. Sure, there’s a lot of exposition but to be honest it works quite well to end things with an ominous sign of things to come. Not every show needs to finish with a big, bombastic fight and the subdued conclusion to this one does set the stage for Phase 4 to finally begins. This is a far cry from the best in the genre – especially when it comes to time travel shows – but there’s certainly some goosebump moments for fans as the big bad is revealed. It’ll be interesting to see how that affects everyone else on Earth and all our other heroes. How will this tie in to the Eternals and the other marvel films too? My knowledge of Marvel isn’t as extensive as others but if I’m correct then all these branches have been changed to see Kang conquer all. So does that mean every timeline and every hero on Earth is now conquered by him? Do comment below if you’re well versed in this and we’ll happily update the recap to accommodate this info! In the meantime, this final episode sets things up nicely for Phase 4, with some good character growth for Loki across the season. Sylvie has been much more of a mixed bag while the wacky variants and ideas work reasonably well across the season – if you can take to the contrived nature of some of this. Personally, WandaVision is the better show and the time travel ideas here don’t always work that well. Still, this is at least better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier. With the show certain to return for season 2, it does help to numb the sting of that cliffhanger ending at least.
