While there are characters on Loki who are constantly connected to aspects of themselves, Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) seems to have one specific element to his character that tends to stick: His writing.
**Spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 5 “Science/Fiction” lie ahead, beware!**
After the explosion of the Temporal Loom and the spaghettification of Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) in episode 4, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is the only member of the team to remain in the Time Variance Authority. As it is struggling to hold itself together, the TVA is slowly fading away as Loki himself begins to time slip once more. But before he leaves, he grabs one of the TVA handbooks that O.B. and Victor Timely accidentally co-wrote together and puts it in his jacket.
Whatever is making Loki time slip again is bringing him to all of his friends one by one, which will eventually help him bring the band back together. When Loki is drawn to O.B., he learns a lot about this new version of the inventor. First and foremost, he is a writer—he’s also a teacher of theoretical physics at Cal Tech, though just to make enough money until his science fiction writing can pay the bills. Though Loki’s conversation with O.B. is initially frustrating because this new version doesn’t understand what Loki is going through, Loki eventually gets O.B. on his side to help him recreate the tools he needs to bring back the TVA.
But what is really sweet about all of this is that O.B. will always be a writer, someone whose love for writing thrives in all worlds and timelines. Creating and inventing is his passion—and whether it is his science fiction work or the TVA handbook, he’s someone who writes to help others.
O.B. as a writer is just really nice, actually.
While I did want to cry for him when he was just trying to put his own books on the shelf of a bookstore, it was great to see that his love for writing was shared on his branch timeline in Pasadena. This O.B. may be a professor, but his true passion is clearly science fiction. When they’re discussing the TVA and what is happening to Loki, O.B. says, “With science, it’s all what and how. But with fiction, it’s why. So why do you need to do this?” It’s such a simple moment, but it shows a deeper meaning to O.B. as a character and how a writer approaches an idea.
A writer does always ask “why”—it is the ultimate question of fiction as a whole. Why are we telling this story; why would this character do this? In that moment, O.B. is asking Loki why it is important that he finds his friends and loved ones, and it’s such a writerly thing to think about. Everything about O.B. is amazing, and honestly, even when he admits that he lost everything because he got too invested in building the tools for the TVA, I thought to myself, “Yeah, that sounds like a writer.”
(featured image: Disney+)
