#184 – Loki Season 2 Finale — Glorious Purpose

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest for All Time. Always. Not the name of this episode, however. It's called Glorious Purpose, the name of the first episode of this series. I'm gonna go into this being really honest Maniacs. We just need to talk about this. This was not just a finale. This was not just a good episode of Marvel tv. This of the deepest, most emotionally resonant and visually stunning episodes Marvel has ever made. And I have to admit, this is my favorite episode of Marvel Television ever. And if you've been listening to Marvel Maniac for a while, you know I don't throw the word masterpiece around lightly, but after watching the Loki season two finale again, yeah, this was a masterpiece and it always stuck with me. I wasn't. The podcast was offseason when it came out last time, so I came back here and I did a recap of the whole series. Basically a full season two recap that did not scratch the itch I have right now to talk about Loki. Because where things are leading in the multiverse saga with Dr. Doom and no more Kang, this is the perfect time to revisit the being that's holding the multiverse together with his own two hands. If there was a chronological order for the Multiverse saga, Loki season one and two would sit at the very beginning both seasons. Because it's what creates the actual multiverse that technically we've been in all along. Time is crazy and it will warp your mind. And this episode. Loki masters it. We've seen him go from the God of mischief, desperate for power, desperate for recognition and desperate for something to a God who finally knows exactly what kind of God he needs to be. And that's not my line. That's his. I know what kind of God I need to be for you. For all of us. Centuries in the making and sent literal centuries in the un in universe with Loki time slipping and reliving moments over and over to master the loom and over a decade in the making for us fans who watched him evolve from. From Thor in 2011 to here. I know what kind of God I need to be for you. For all of us is a line that Tom Hiddleston actually put in there as a reference to the first Thor movie before he falls and is defeated. It's. It's an echo of how much Loki has changed and giving new meaning to glorious purpose. There's so much to love about this episode that if the runtime were even three hours, if it were at this pace, it would go by like one. This episode comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Even though it's a 40 minute standard episode, maybe even longer. The hundreds of years. We have to talk about this. The finale quietly drops. The fact that Loki spends hundreds of years, centuries, mastering the temporal loom. This isn't just a training montage. This is an eternity, persistence. And that montage, There is a montage. And it's. You know that song, you know, if you watch the episode. I don't know the name of it, but it's. You know what I love about it? It makes Victor Timely's very traumatic death, in my opinion, from two episodes ago. And it kind of makes it a little bit comedic only because it's a montage of him going out there and dying and dying and dying and dying and dying. And it's not like we want him to die. We want him to get to that point hundreds of years down the line where Loki has mastered everything. And when Victor Timely steps out, fixes the loom, all that time he walks in and he says, pumpkins. One of my favorite lines. Why does he say that? I have no idea. I don't know if that's something people said in the early 1900s, but he said it and he said it with conviction. The fact that hundreds and hundreds of years to figure out how to fix the loom and expand it so all the timelines can branch through it, it's impossible. You cannot account for infinity, affinity infinity timelines being born and living and. And moving. It can't be tamed at this level in this way. Oh, my goodness. So think about it. Just hundreds of years of trying the same thing over and over again and failing and adapting, learning. And not for glory, not for a throne, not for applause, just for the simple, impossible goal of saving his friends and ultimately saving all of existence. I'm like, blown away by this episode, even watching it for a second time. If there's a single moment in the MCU that defines true heroism, this is right up there with Tony's snap in Endgame. Except Loki's sacrifice isn't a quick dramatic gesture. It's a burden he has to carry forever. And it's his glorious purpose he's always spoke of. This is main Loki energy. We got bits and pieces of what Loki could be. He could be a good guy, but he's the master of mischief in the movies. Up until the very last moment when Thor thought the Tesseract was destroyed on Asgard and Loki had it that's just who Loki was and who he became. This version of Loki is carried right out of the Battle of New York out of failure, learns what happened in his life in about 10 minutes and changes course based off of that. This makes him a superior being. We just mention it again, that line, I know what kind of God I need to be for you, for all of us. It's a deliberate echo of his plea to Odin and Thor. I could have done it, Father. I could have done it for you, for all of us. And Odin's like, no, Loki. And I wasn't sure if he meant. I still never know if he meant no. You can't be forgiven. What you've done is too much. You're banished. Or, no, don't fall. Don't give up. Stay here with us. You're my son. I don't know. We should find Anthony Hopkins and ask him. Back then, it was all about conquest and proving himself. And here it's just about letting go of everything for the sake of everyone else. And the fact that he spent centuries starting off with seeing these people as his friends. It just goes to show how much Loki really needed, maybe just some genuine friendship in the main timeline, to be a more of a heroic God, and not someone who feels like he's living in the shadow of his brother, but always alongside his brother, proud to be his brother. The image of Loki walking through the collapsing loom, grabbing the timelines in his hands and infusing them with life, it's just mystic. The walk to the throne is also way more detailed than I remember in my mind. Loki's just sitting there in the middle of all these green strands, like that shot we see at the end of the series. Like, I imagine him there. If he gets moved from there, it's going to be traumatic because it's always good to think, well, at least Loki's there protecting the multiverse, even though there's tons of horrible things happening. Multiverse related. So he shapes the multiverse into Ygdrasil. This is part of the mythology of this religion, and it's the World Tree, so he sits at its root, giving power and strength to the multiverse. Something I just have to mention, just out of it, just makes me wonder, like, there are strands, they're literal, tiny strands of what look to be really firm rubber, right? Loki grabbing them in a way. Like, I'm wondering, is he putting his hand over, like, the year 1500 and eliminating everyone in there because they're so tiny? Or is the universe so precious and so Small. It's almost on that quantum realm shrinking level where every timeline lives in these strands, but the strands are deeply protecting the timelines in the worlds. And if you look at it simply, Loki is a giant to them, like he is as big to them as they, the strands are to him. So imagine entire universe is fitting in there. That's my theory. It. I mean, it might not make sense. I have some big theories for this. Where is this gonna go? Loki, the God of stories, except it's a lonely, lonely throne, and he lets Sylvie and Mobius go live their lives while he stays behind to protect it all. And that's his choice, his burden, his story. One of my favorite, favorite parts of the episode is when he goes back to stop trying to stop Sylvie from killing he who Remains. One of my favorite lines from he who Remains has always been, see you soon, because it is. It was the line guaranteeing multiversal war and the Kang Dynasty, and it was all leading to that. So how do we pivot? How do we turn this story as a lead into the Kang Dynasty, into Loki's story of saving the multiverse and potentially no more Kang variants ever, because of the situation Jonathan Majors got himself in. This episode was filmed long before this. I mean, the season was filmed long before anything happened. And they had plans for Kang, and big plans at that. However, there's a lot in this episode that visually shows Loki beating He who Remains, the ultimate Kang variant. In my opinion, the rewrite will go like this. Kang is gone. Loki recognized the threat. Loki saved the multiverse from him. And that conversation with he who Remains, when he goes back in time and starts freezing time and up, kind of upping he who Remains who Laughs at Loki, knowing how long he's been doing this, making fun of Victor Timely, asking how he had fun with that, and the path he paved for Loki to end up right back in front of him. Reincarnation, baby. And it is hurtful. But then you have this realization through the scene that Loki knows even more than he's letting on. We don't know how many centuries went by, how long he tried getting Sylvia to stop trying to kill him, all of this. And in that moment, he who Remains gives him no hope. He says, look, the multiverse, you could let her kill me, or you can stop, and we could protect what's ours, what's worth saving, what we can keep. So Cain doesn't want to die. I don't know. Like, he's exhausted the whole thing from where he says, one of you have to kill Me it was all another plan from him. And he, he, he has the ultimate plan to make the temporal loom a fail safe. So he who remains will end up back on top reincarnation by pruning variants and taking the throne. Loki may have just ended King's multiversal control entirely. That could make he who remains the real villain of the Multiverse saga. But Loki already defeated him by taking this throne. Or Marvel is keeping Kang in the shadows and we'll see him again when it's least expected. Some fan service would definitely be seeing Dr. Doom defeat the Council of Kangs that we see in the post credits scene for Ant man and the Wasp. Now I got a prediction for Thor and Loki reuniting in Doomsday. But I also want to say another prediction. Loki doesn't have to actually mentally be in the center of the multiverse at all times. I mean, yes he does in reality, but one of Loki's powers, which Loki's powers have advanced over the course of this show. Lighting a sword on fire, literally pushing out green powerful magic to destroy the Multiversal loom and make a throne that he was destined to sit on. Glorious purpose. Loki has this ability throughout the series, we all know it, that he can duplicate himself well when he's the master of the multiverse, holding all strands and he has access to all the multiverse at any given time, I believe that Loki will learn to project himself into the. Into the multiverse to gather the Avengers and warn them about Dr. Doom. Something like that. And I predict, I. I predict Thor's return and I predict Thor's death. Okay. I predict the Thor will one day find Loki again. And in my opinion, it's going to be when he's trying to recruit people and maybe he saves his brother for last because it's hard to face Thor because he also can kind of see every other Thor and which one counts as his real brother. I don't think they'll get into that kind of complicated situation. What I think is going to happen is in classic MCU fashion, it'll just be too late. Thor will die in front of Loki. A death that finally pushes Loki to actually join the Avengers. This could be towards the beginning of the movie, the shock and awe reverse opening, where it could be later. It could be at the beginning of the movie, mirroring Loki's death at the beginning of Infinity War. I don't want Thor to die, trust me. But there's going to be shock value moments. Big ones. This is the end of an era. The Kang Dynasty isn't happening anymore. And Doomsday is the plan going into secret wars. So I think they're going to utilize Loki's new powers in a lot of different ways. My prediction, if this thing ends in Battle World, the can't I keeps on to say King Dynasty, Doomsday. I think Loki will be the final Infinity Stone to which everyone is trying to get to to save the multiverse. And what that reminds me of is Vision having the the Mind Stone in his head for the very beginning, knowing, well, Thanos is gonna have to get that somehow. And boy does he. We're sitting at the middle of the multiverse knowing that there's going to be a Battle World and everything's going to collapse in on each other. It gives you that similar feeling to well, what's going to happen to Loki? Because he's kind of actually making it live. So I think he's going to be the end goal, end game Loki. The TV show will be the most important, maybe only necessary watch for this movie because it was so perfectly made. So yeah, he could project duplicates of himself maybe after the Thor death anywhere in the multiverse from his throne. So he might be getting a multiversal Avengers or something along the lines of that. Or going to what used to be the sacred timeline 616 and recruiting the Avengers, we know, including the new Avengers. And all of a sudden I've talked about this whole episode already. Favorite moments. Again, let me just highlight the montage at the beginning of the series. Not series of this episode spanning hundreds of years of Loki trying to get the temporal loom to work. Talk about determination. He's like me fixing my PC last month. I wasn't even fixing it, I was cleaning it. And if I messed up, I could have ruined it. So if I. I didn't have time travel, so I had to do it right. Loki trial and aired this for. I wanna, I'm gonna put a guess at like close to 7, 800 years is like this episode takes place. Can you believe that? Have you ever seen a TV or show that takes place over years? Aside from like National Geographic, how the world formed in Pangea or something like that? This is insane. And the, the level of depth and character and passion coming from Tom Hiddleston playing this part. I mean he makes this show so much better. There can't be another Loki right now or anywhere. If there's Loki, it's got to be Tom Hiddleston. I mean, even at the end when he's just a guy sitting on a throne with the whole multiverse around him. But his facial expression says so many things like, I did it. One, this is how it's meant to be. Two, this is what true glorious purpose is. Three, I'll fight for this at all cost to save my friends. It's unbelievable. And that's where we'll leave this episode for now. But I want to hear your thoughts on Loki altogether as a show. Season one. Season two. Did season two beat season one? What's your favorite episode? Did it land? I think it did. Marvelmaniacpodmail.com and speaking of new chapters, starting Monday, August 25th, Marvel Maniac is shifting into a three episode a week podcast. Yes, we're doing it for a specific reason. We're kicking it off with daredevil Monday the 25th and Wednesday the 27th. And from there we're locking in a rhythm that keeps the conversation fresh and the theories coming without burning out. So Fridays will be our movie and or extra series if we want to get to X Men 97 or Eyes of Wakanda might do an episode on that Friday will remain a movie slot. Or it'll take the place of other shows like Marvel Zombies coming out in October. I'm not going to overdo this, but I just want to say Daredevil season two has confirmed the return of Jessica Jones. The Punisher is confirmed for a miniseries or movie for Disney plus special presentation. And now the Punisher is going to be a big part in the new Spider man movie next summer. This means to me a couple things. One main thing, the Netflix shows are important and we're not going to cover every single one, but we're going to cover the ones that are officially canon. So Daredevil, Daredevil starting really to get to the Punisher. I want to get through the Punisher. I want to talk about it. I want to be caught up in time for his journey on the MCU big screen. I mean, that's the biggest jump from the first one. Well, we've seen actually Daredevil in Spider man, but like not as Daredevil. We're going to have Punisher coming off of his journey on Netflix to a movie on Disney plus to Spider man in July of next year. That's a lot of Punisher. So we're not just going to sit back and do recaps. We're gonna go through the whole Netflix saga, taking out Iron Fist and Luke Cage because we don't know if they're confirmed yet. We can always come back to them later. We'll do Daredevil, we'll do all the Punishers, we'll do Jessica Jones and we'll do the Defenders. That's why these two episode a week per Daredevil, per Netflix series is important to me. So we don't just sit in one show for months. And we're keeping Friday open in case you're not interested in Daredevil or the Netflix shows. Maybe you'll just want to recap. Maybe we can do one of those on the Patreon patreon.com marvelmaniac Michael Finney holding down that hero slot. You can join our Wall of Heroes. Just join the Patreon patreon.com Hero Marvel Maniac. We release new minisodes every Saturday at 5am and I've been having a lot of fun with them recently. We talked about what if Captain America didn't leave Tony Stark his cell phone? Would that have changed the impact of the movie a little bit more? Last thing I want to do is overwhelm anybody or give my audience just one option to watch Daredevil and Netflix shows for a bunch of months. It might feel a little like, oh, the podcast is kind of changing. It is, but in a positive way, in a way that won't affect you that much. If you really don't want to watch or follow along with these shows, I'm leaving Friday open for suggestions. Movies, series that we might have missed. Definitely Marvel Zombies and anything. And I'm explaining this to you in detail because you're here and you if you've been listening, you deserve to know the game plan. That's a little Ryan Trahan shout out for you. Great YouTuber there. Wouldn't it be cool to get someone like him or Haley on the show? I feel like just assume everyone knows who he is by now. I wonder if he's a Marvel fan. All right, let's reflect a little bit more. Loki's journey has gone from villain to anti hero to savior of the multiverse. He didn't take the throne for power. He didn't save the multiverse for applause like he would have maybe in Avengers. He did it because he finally understood his place in the story, even if it took hundreds of years. Be reminded that he already was a few hundred years old. I don't know how old, but old. And as he sits there alone at the root of Yggdrasil, sorry for mispronouncing that he's holding all time in his hands and it's clear that Loki didn't just survive. Loki won Loki beat Kang, and that's why he cleared the table for Dr. Doom, a threat that maybe he who Remains was trying to protect at all costs. And if he who remains ego is as big as he seems in this episode, he probably has some secrets he knows about an inevitable Dr. Doom foe. And I'm sure Loki will be the first one to kind of start seeing the ripples in time, the incursions. There's so much that we can speculate on, and we're moving pretty fast through time now. It's a longer episode before the finale. I just had to do it, especially because it's just my absolute favorite. Thank you for being here. Special shout out. And thank you to my co producer Nova for helping me pull this episode together again. Patreon.com marvelmaniac there's also a tip jar in the about section of this episode. Never expected, always appreciated and I'm so excited to have covered Loki with you. I'll see you next week with our Daredevil premiere, but more importantly this Friday with another X Men tie in movie. We got a lot of fun ahead of us, a lot to cover, and I am about the most excited I've ever been about this podcast. So strap in, get ready for the ride, and until next time, Avengers disassemble.