Loki Is Saved, But Who Did It And Why?
Thursday night “Ouroboros,” the Loki Season 2 premiere, debuted on Disney+ and unsurprisingly, the titular trickster god survived the episode’s events. While no one expected Tom Hiddleston’s signature character to die one episode in, it remains a mystery how he survived. We have a few ideas how it was achieved, in spite of the odds stacked against him, but of course they aren’t possible to explore without SPOILERS.
In the beginning of the premiere, Loki is unstuck in time, bouncing across the present, past, and future. Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) tells Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) the only way to fix the situation is for Mobius to use a Temporal Aura Extractor in the Temporal Loom.
At a precise time, Loki must then use a Time Stick to prune himself — something that, in Season 1, would have instead led to the Asgardian prince being sent to the Void at the end of time.
Unfortunately, just before the process begins, Loki is once more unstuck in time — sent to the near future — and without his time stick. As time is about to run out, he hears a phone ringing and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) appears from inside an elevator. Seconds later, Loki winces in pain, and soon we see that someone is pruning him from behind.
Loki is saved, as is Mobius, but it’s never revealed who pruned the god of deceit.
There’s who I think pruned Loki, and who I hoped did it. Let’s talk about the latter first.
General Dox Or One Of Her Loyal Hunters
It’s my sincere hope that the person behind the Time Stick that pruned Loki is either General Dox or one of the Hunters loyal to her. It’s pretty clear by the end of the Season 2 premiere that there’s a schism in the TVA, and Dox is leading the antagonistic side.
If Dox or one of her hunters were to encounter Loki by chance in the TVA, they might very well prune him without warning; but in the hopes of eradicating him from the timeline rather than saving him. They would likely be completely oblivious of the plan get the prince of lies un-unstuck in time, and so would have no idea they were actually helping him.
It would make for a wonderful, ironic moment. However, I think this isn’t the most likely option. If that’s what had happened, there would be no reason to not reveal it in the premiere episode.
No, I think the most likely candidate is one of the few major players from Loki Season 1 who doesn’t show up in the Season 2 premiere.
Ravonna Renslayer
It’s Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who personally prunes Mobius and who orders Loki’s pruning in Season 1. In fact, fairly early in the episode Loki makes a point to say that even though it was Hunter D-90 (Neil Ellice) who personally pruned him in Season 1, that Renslayer was the one responsible because she ordered it.
The trickier question, assuming Ravonna is Loki’s savior, is why she did it. Frankly, there’s so much mystery surrounding her character, it’s impossible to narrow it down. We still don’t know why she left the TVA in the first place.
But beyond Ravonna, there’s another more obvious choice.
Sylvie
Assuming Loki’s savior is someone who’s already been introduced in the series, the next best option is Sylvie. Really, she would be the top choice, if it weren’t for the fact that her being the most obvious choice kind of makes it a little too obvious.
How could Sylvie prune Loki from behind when she was in front of him? Well, the answer is the same that will likely be the answer to so many things in the series: time travel.
Sylvie greets Loki with, “There you are!” implying she was looking for him. Assuming she’s got some form of time travel handy, then once she knows where and when he is, a version of her in another time and place could’ve been standing by to go to Loki’s location to prune him.
Of course, in the end we don’t know any more than you. But if you can’t nerd out about nerd food like Loki, what’s the point of being a nerd?
