Earlier this week, Disney released a new promo featuring some of the new and returning shows coming to Disney+ and Hulu. The promo featured a couple of new shots of Loki season 2, including one image that has potentially huge implications for the plot.
As you no doubt recall, at the end of season 1, Loki is transported to what looks like an alternate version of the Time Variance Authority. In this new version, the statue of the Time Keepers has been replaced by a statue of He Who Remains (although he’s wearing Kang’s armor from the upcoming Quantumania), and Mobius has no idea who Loki is.
In the promo, we see Loki pruning a mosaic of the Time Keepers, with the severed head of one of the robotic Time Keepers lying in the foreground. In the extended version of this scene, shown to D23 Expo attendees last fall, Loki reveals a sculpture of Kang’s face behind the mosaic, suggesting that it was covered up at some point in the past.
There are several important details in this shot. First, the fact that the mosaic depicts the Time Keepers shows us that Loki has ended up back in the “original” TVA from season 1. Second, the severed head shows that he’s ended up back in the time immediately after the events of season 1. Third, he’s still wearing the ripped up shirt that he was wearing in season 1, showing that almost no time has passed for him since his confrontation with He Who Remains. (In other shots, he has a change of clothes and a new coat.)
So if season 1 ended in the “new” TVA, and now he’s back at the “old” TVA, what does that mean for the plot?
In the D23 trailer, we see Loki glitching through a hallway as he explains, in a voiceover, that he’s been “pulled through time.” Ever since season 1 ended, many of us have been referring to the “new” TVA as an alternate timeline, but other fans have speculated that Loki has actually been pulled back to an earlier era in the TVA, before Kang set up the illusion of the Time Keepers. If that’s true, then season 2—or, at least, the first episode of season 2—might show Loki getting forcibly pulled from one era of the TVA to another.
What’s great is that, if that theory is correct, it means we’ll get “our” Mobius back! Loki and Mobius won’t have to start over from scratch, and we won’t lose the beautiful Lokius ship uh, friendship that they built up in season 1.
With Loki season 2’s summer release window approaching, we may get our first official trailer within the next few weeks. In the meantime, I’ll just be sitting here, poring through promos of my favorite show again and again and again. It seems I’m in a time loop of my own.
(featured image: Disney+)
