Loki Season 2 Episode 4 Ending Explained: Did the MCU Just Reset Its Own Timeline?

Posted by Tobi Tarwater on Sunday, August 18, 2024

Who Pruned Loki?

Episode 4 is set during the flash forward from episode 1, and we finally get to see who pruned Loki to stop him from time slipping. It turns out that most fans were correct in guessing that Loki pruned himself.

Is Miss Minutes Actually Dead?

As soon as Ravonna and Miss Minutes arrive at the TVA, Miss Minutes begins to infiltrate the system once again, blocking everyone else from using their TemPads and keeping Ouroboros from repairing the Temporal Loom. Ravonna and Miss Minutes capture Timely to further delay the Loom upgrade, but O.B. finds a loophole that will boot Miss Minutes out of the system. He does a total restart, which causes Miss Minutes to glitch horrifically before seemingly fading out of existence. Knowing her resourcefulness, this isn’t likely the last we’ve seen of the sentient AI clock. If anything, this setback will only further fuel her revenge.

Why Did Victor Timely Turn Into Spaghetti?

With their powers temporarily restored during the TVA’s system reboot, Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) are able to rescue Timely and bring him back to the Temporal Loom control room. In a move uncharacteristically selfless compared to the Kang variants we’ve seen thus far, Timely volunteers to make the trip outside to place the Throughput Multiplier in the Temporal Loom’s controls. However, as soon as he steps outside, he is violently disintegrated by the Temporal radiation and essentially turned into spaghetti. This isn’t the first time that someone in the MCU has turned into noodle-like strands of essence – Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) did a similar thing to Mr. Fantastic (John Krasinski) in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – but it is a clear sign that the Temporal Loom has evolved beyond anyone’s control.

What Does the Temporal Loom Explosion Mean for the Future of the MCU?

Because the Loom’s output isn’t fixed in time, it overloads and seems to explode at the end of episode 4. Everyone in the Temporal Loom’s control room is basked in a bright light as the TVA appears to be consumed by the sheer power of the overlapping timelines. But what does that mean for the rest of Loki and the future of the MCU?

The destruction of the TVA and the collapse of time itself feels like a season finale-level event, but there are still two episodes left this season to wrap things up. Will everyone be scattered across time? Does the TVA building protect them from being turned into noodles, or were there other casualties as the timeline exploded? There are still several scenes with Loki, Sylvie, and Mobius from the trailers that have yet to appear in the show itself, meaning that there’s a good chance that these three are still alive somewhere on the timeline at least.  But we also know that Marvel likes to throw things into trailers that don’t always make the final product.

As for the rest of the MCU, the Temporal Loom explosion could very well be the event that resets the MCU’s timeline for good. Whether this reset fully integrates other Marvel properties like The X-Men films into the timeline or not has yet to be revealed. As the other timelines collapse within each other in this explosion, this could totally wipe the slate clean for the MCU to rewrite its own history. The MCU could also use this event as a way to pick and choose some things that they want to make canon from these other films without rewriting the history of every single character that they want to reintegrate or reintroduce.

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