Warning! This article contains massive spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 4, “Heart of the TVA”
Summary
- “Heart of the TVA” reveals Ravonna Renslayer’s secret history and her involvement in the Multiverse War, leading to her desire for power and revenge.
- Victor Timely proves instrumental in preparing a fix for the Temporal Loom as Renslayer tries to overthrow the TVA.
- In a shocking twist, Victor Timely is killed, the Temporal Loom explodes, and everyone is seemingly engulfed in its destruction.
Loki season 2, episode 4, “Heart of the TVA,” continues the MCU’s latest multiverse adventure on Disney+ with some huge moments and reveals about Loki, Victor Timely, and the TVA. After Loki season 1 ended on the cliffhanger of Sylvie killing He Who Remains and unleashing the breadth of the multiverse, Loki season 2’s story has doubled down on the franchise’s mind-bending look at non-sequential space and time. While the whole season has upped the ante in terms of stakes, Loki season 2, blows the multiverse’s problems completely open.
After spending an episode back in 1893 to find Kang variant Victor Timely, he, Loki, Mobius, and several others return to the TVA to face s slew of new problems. Not only is the Temporal Loom continuing to spiral out of control, but the internal divide splintering the Time Variance Authority becomes even more multifaceted and dangerous. As has become par for the course in Loki season 2, “Heart of the TVA” answers some questions and leaves many, many more unanswered.
10 Renslayer’s Secret History Is Revealed
Loki season 2, episode 3’s ending teased a big Ravonna Renslayer reveal, and “Heart of the TVA” wastes no time following up on the cliffhanger. Miss Minutes snidely teased that she knows a big secret about Ravonna’s past sure to anger her, and that’s certainly the case. In the opening scene of the episode, Miss Minutes replays a recording of He Who Remains and Renslayer in the newly-constructed Citadel at the End of Time.
Harking back to a Loki season 2, episode 1 tease, He Who Remains thanks Renslayer for being so instrumental in the recently concluded Multiverse War. He promises that the two will rule together, but as soon as Renslayer leaves, He Who Remains has Miss Minutes carry out “Protocol 42,” which wipes the minds of Ravonna and everyone else involved in the TVA. Adding insult to injury, the TVA slogan, “For All Time, Always,” seems to be an affectionate phrase Ravonna and He Who Remains shared before her memory was wiped.
9 Victor Timely & OB’s Relationship Is An Ouroboros
The idea of looping cause and effect has been a running theme throughout the Loki season 2 story so far, and it expresses itself again in a heartwarming moment between OB and Victor Timely. The latter is a bit beside himself arriving in the TVA after Loki and Mobius swept him away from 1893 at the end of the previous episode, and he’s star-struck when he meets OB. The TVA handbook, which OB wrote, has completely defined his life, but OB actually feels the same in reverse. He claims he learned everything he knows from Victor Timely, creating an odd and interesting closed circle of inspiration between the two brilliant men.
8 B-15 Proposes An Alliance With Dox & The Minutemen
Dox and the unsanctioned pruning of thousands of timelines by her Minutemen has landed her and everyone involved in TVA confinement, but B-15 is determined that she can find common ground with the loyal – if not misguided – TVA General. B-15 appeals to Dox’s sense of loyalty and convinces her that they’re both trying to protect the agency’s potential to continue doing good for the multiverse. It seems to work, and a powerful new alliance almost forms.
7 Victor Timely’s Prototype Gadget Is The Key To Fixing The Temporal Loom
OB needs Victor Timely in order to replicate the Temporal Aura of He Who Remains and open the Temporal Loom blast doors, but the 19th-century inventor proves useful in another way, too. His “life’s work,” as he refers to it, can prevent OB’s Throughput Multiplier from being overloaded by the Temporal Loom. Integrating the two will allow them to stretch the rings of the Loom, allowing more multiversal branches to pass through.
6 Loki Makes A Case For Building A Better TVA
Though Loki season 2, episode 4 moves at a brisk pace, a slower scene in the middle is one of the series’ best. Loki and Sylvie have largely butted heads since the Loki season 1 finale, and they continue to disagree about whether the TVA can be a force for good or not. Loki’s speech about having faith in the good that can come from things shows how massively he’s grown since trying to enslave Earth, and his admission that, as Asgardians, he and Sylvie may be entitled to play a little god to protect people may foreshadow their eventual roles in a rebuilt TVA.
5 Renslayer Infiltrates The TVA And Kills Dox’s People
Angry and determined to take control into her own hands after learning the truth of He Who Remains’ betrayal, Ravonna Renslayer returns to the TVA with Miss Minutes to rise to new heights of power – and she isn’t afraid to spill blood to do it. Her first stop is to Dox and her men’s holding cell. She offers them a simple choice: they can work with her and be given the chance to return to their original lives in the Sacred Timeline once Ravonna is in power, or they can die.
Dox, understanding that Ravonna is too far gone in her quest for power and revenge, refuses, as do almost all of her me. The box-making device Loki used to interrogate Brad is brought out, and the group is slowly crushed to death. Only one changes sides and joins Ravonna and Miss Minutes to escape death – Brad.
4 Loki Prunes Himself To Fulfill The Events Of The Loki Season 2 Premiere
In the Loki season 2 premiere, Loki, suffering from Time Slipping, finds himself stuck in an indeterminate moment of the TVA’s future. There, he sees Sylvie, gets a mysterious phone call, and is pruned just in the nick of time by an unseen person. This episode finally catches up to that moment, and it’s revealed that present Loki saw his Time Slipping self from the past and knew to prune him. Furthermore, it was OB on the phone, trying to reach Loki about finally attempting to fix the Temporal Loom.
3 OB Reboots The TVA’s Systems, Locking Out Miss Minutes
As Renslayer and Miss Minutes infiltrate the TVA, kill Dox’s crew, and grab Victor Timely to gain information about his devices, OB thinks of a way to kick Miss Minutes from the TVA systems. He reboots the entire thing, and the devious AI seemingly devolves into more and more simplistic clocks until disappearing entirely. She’ll surely be back, but it allowed Loki and company to regain access to the TVA’s computers and attempt to stabilize the Temporal Loom.
2 Ravonna Is Pruned By An Enchanted Brad
Another equally important effect of OB rebooting all TVA systems is that it takes the magic dampener offline. Usually, no magic works in the TVA. However, Sylvie and Loki take advantage of the momentary return of their abilities to sneak up on Renslayer. Sylvie enchants Brad, putting him under her control. She has him walk into the room with Renslayer and Timely and casually prune Ravonna. Loki has established that pruned people are sent to the Void, not killed, so Renslayer will likely return at some point.
1 The Temporal Loom Explodes, Seemingly Destroying Everything
With everything in place to fix the Temporal Loom, Victor Timely volunteers to take the Throughput Multiplier beyond the blast doors as Mobius did in the Loki season 2 premiere. However, in a shocking twist, the Temporal Radiation has increased too much, and Victor Timely is violently stripped into threads and killed. Succumbing to the building pressure of too many timelines, the Temporal Loom explodes, and the last shots of the episode are the terrified faces of Loki, Mobius, OB, Sylvie, B-15, and Casey, realizing what’s happened as they’re seemingly engulfed in the Loom’s destructive blast.
Key Release Dates
