Episode 2: The Variant (Spoiler Discussion)

I think this is something that will be revealed for sure.

Loki is going to be key in spreading a lot of chaos.

Which I think is the/was THE plan.

I think our show's Loki is absolutely a pawn in the "Evil" Loki's plan.

I think... The TVA will not exist by the season's end...

Which mean that the branching timelines will still be a thing and retroactively... Always were after Loki ends the TVA.

 

Ep 2 was as engaging and interesting as the first and moved us faster to revelations etc. than I was expecting.

I mean... I figured the "Evil" Loki was gonna hide in the shadows longer but here we are. And apparently our Loki's time as a pseudo TVA agent may have already come to an end.

Very much enjoying the ride so far.

 

I'm wondering if that's a misdirect. I'm still going with female Loki. If it is an Enchantress, why not go with Amora?

 

This is the best Disney+ MCU show to date.

 

Its still Loki - the TVA folks have identified her as such - but she hates the name so she goes by Sylvie.

 

Blond hair makes an Enchantress connection of some kind intriguing....


But let me throw this out there as a "see if something sticks" kinda speculation...

Maybe "Evil Loki" is in the body of a female version of Thor Odinson from that Loki's home reality/timeline?

 

But it’s weird they need to eat and take coffee breaks then.

 

Of course the best use of it

 

I guess that dude Sylvie possessed had her powers because an ordinary human wouldn't be able to toss Loki around like that. Frost Giants and Asgardians are stronger than humans. Loki walked away with just scrapes and bruises after being rag dolled by the Hulk while Blonsky got hospitalized with a single kick from the Hulk.

 

Mobius better get his jet ski by the time the season ends!

 

my jaw dropped at the Lady Loki reveal and stayed that way until the credits.

Owen Wilson is a perfect fit for the tone of the MCU. Deserves to be in the movies, as does Julia Louis Dreyfus.

So glad this show is connected to the MCU. Disappointed I wasted my time with all the pseudo Marvel shows (sad about Daredevil that was the exception and was great). I havent been this psyched about a MCU property since before Infinity War. You did it Feige

 

Yeah... That without explanation felt like an oversight.

Loki took direct gunfire at close range, went toe to toe with a super soldier without blinking and got pounded by both his brother and the Hulk in A1.

Unless as you say those possessed also get some kind of physical goosing then it it makes no sense they should be able to do anything against Loki physically as they are still just human beings.

 

I was expecting Lady Loki to be on the show, so that wasn't a huge shock. I hope the "Sylvie" thing is more of an easter egg and they don't copout on Lady Loki.

This has definitely been the best of the D+ shows thus far, IMO. And Owen Wilson has been a phenomenal addition.

 

The actress who plays Lady Loki seems like someone who could play Doctor Who in future.

 

The Sylvie rumor is something I heared last year for the first time. Couldn‘t remember where and when, but I remember the evidence was spotted in a Social Media post.

But imho the real Enchantress in the MCU should be Amora and not Sylvie Lushton

 

Echoing others, this is already the best MCU show so far. Having a lot of fun with it through 2 episodes!

Speaking of fun, Owen Wilson is just delightful. I hope he's not a one-off. He belongs in the MCU.

Lastly, I'm surprised at how much the show has already taken off by the end of episode 2. I'm certainly eager to know where it goes from here.


By the way, this is kind of off topic, but also kind of relevant: I'm still trying to grasp the rules of time in the MCU. I'm pretty sure that every single instance one goes back in time, a new branch is created from that moment you travel back, right? So I've always wondered: is there still a future after Thanos won? In other words, after the Avengers went back in time in 2023 to begin their quest they still left behind that world, or that timeline, they came from where half of all beings in the universe were gone, right?

Reason I'm asking is because the way I interpret time travel, when you travel back it doesn't matter what you change because it's not like everything between the point you just travelled back to and the point you travelled from just disappears (ie. like Back to the Future). When you leave a point in time that reality still exists. It's inevitable that if you go back in time you've just created a branch with a new future from that point forward.

(If you're wondering how this relates to Loki, I'm simply wondering if when they go to 2050 in the latest episode it takes place in the "dystopian timeline of a Thanos victory or if it's after the Avengers victory in Endgame. It doesn't really matter at all; it was just a fleeting thought of mine. Mostly I'm curious about your thoughts on the above questions.)

 

Well since everyone is openly talking about it I guess we can't put the genie back in the bottle now.

Yes, a girl on IMDB was credited as "young Sylvie", which caused this rumor last year.

Before I found out the international credits spoiled it I was theorizing this would be the case based on that IMDB credit, the fact that Tom Hiddleston apparently pitched a Loki/Enchantress story in 2013 (quote below), the fact that Sophia Di Martino is blonde, the fact that she says not to call her "Loki" and that "this isn't about you" to Loki, the fact that Loki says he wouldn't treat himself that way, and the fact that her main ability she constantly uses seems to be "enchanting" people to control them rather than Loki's usual illusions.

That said, even if she is Sylvie Lushton that doesn't mean Di Martino won't be playing some version of Amora or Loki in this show. The MCU takes inspiration from the comics but doesn't always follow it to the letter. I could easily see her either be some exiled version or reincarnation of Amora. When Thor was exiled he became "Donald Blake", and kid Loki at one point was a human kid named "Luke". Making "Sylvie" something similar but for Amora could set up the possibility of how Loki can by the end reincarnate into "Luke" (Kid Loki).
Alternatively, Sif also had a human body (similar to "D. Blake" or "Luke") after Ragnarok, which Loki took over to become Lady Loki. It's entirely possible that in the MCU Loki will get this Enchantress' body instead.

But on the other hand maybe she is just Sylvie. After all Sylvie was at least given powers and probably even entirely created by Loki in the comics. If she was somehow created by/from Loki that could help explain how she could trick the TVA into thinking she's a Loki variant plus create an interesting dynamic with regards to what she thinks of Loki. Or perhaps the fact that she's made of Loki actually makes her a version of Loki, but she has since formed her own identity separate from him and thus doesn't want to be called his name?

There's luckily still a lot of ways this could turn out.

 

Gotta love Loki not being able to get one up on Mobius for most of the episode. Really looking forward to seeing what happens through that door and if they can track Loki. TVA is hiding something. Can't wait to see if the Miss Minutes thing becomes a recurring gag.

Seems like time travel / multiverse rules are all over the place. That's not bad though because the rules can change and evolve as changes in the TVA or Multiverse occur. Hulk may have been right in EG about the past not impacting the present just due to the fact that the TVA resets any resulting branches. Plus we never saw most of the EG scenes in A1. Those events may have occurred in some fashion unbeknownst to the Avengers because of how they lived them or the TVA snipped the branches and reset. However if the sacred timeline splits into a multiverse with parallel timelines and places where they intersect the rules may shift.

Even the current TVA seems to exist on it's own timeline outside the sacred one with the ability to jump in and out of others.

 

The time traveling aspect is getting reeaalllly convoluted at this point, but I suppose time travel would be like that. This show seems to be bending a lot of the previous rules and leading audiences to go, "but wait... didn't this happen," or "what about that." You have to kind of be cool with how loose and fast they run with the whole thing.

Nevertheless, this show is a lot of fun. Based on the previous shows, I thought that we were going to have weeks before we met the cloaked figure. But the show is running at warp speed, and it's my favorite watch out of all of them so far.

 

The movie delays may have screwed things up a bit, we would have had Dr.Strange 2(originally May 2021) by now and that would have for sure provided more deeper rule set on multiverse as it is a big scale movie and this is a mini series.

 

It was a solid episode, I expected the Lady Loki since it was previously mentioned around here. I remember Agents of Shield already having some Enchantress in a early season. I don't know if this Lady Loki is suppose to be another or just a different timeline alternate reality Loki. If they were ever going to do Amora the time may have passed with Thor basically done unless she will be a villain for Jane but that won't have the same feel.

Owen is great in the MCU, would love if his character can some how survive and make the movies. I think he would be great.

 

I've been wondering are the Timekeepers going to be that much different than Watchers if they ever get fully established. I know Watchers don't interfere with the affairs or living creatures and their lives they just watch. The Timekeepers seem to monitor the flow of the timelines making sure the central one is not messed with but they seem like they decided what timeline is important. Really hope Kang is involved as a Timekeeper or someone that use to be with them.