Loki 2×04 “Heart of the TVA” is mostly about hope and about what you do when everything is lost. For Loki, who has been there so many times before, the answer has often been to give up. Why wouldn’t he? Was has Loki had to live for? Even when he’s had a family, even when he’s loved people – he’s never felt worthy of their love, and he’s never felt like there was a place in his family, or anywhere else, for that matter, for him.
But Loki has found not just a place, but a purpose, and that gives him the clarity to be the one delivering the hope speech to Sylvie in this hour – a Sylvie who is as lost as Loki once was, but a Sylvie who wants the same things Loki once wanted: a place to belong, to call home. Whether that place is the TVA, or somewhere else she can build, with Loki or alone, remains to be seen, but the episode dangles that hope in front of her and us before ending in quite the cliffhanger.
So let us discuss the end, and the beginning of Loki 2×04 “Heart of the TVA”:
Ouroboros
Loki 2×04 “Heart of the TVA” spells it out without actually giving us the answer – because we’ve suspected from the start, from the moment we first heard his name that Ouroboros might actually be, had to be, the beginning. The name is, after all, a dead giveaway. Well, that and, you know, the TVA handbook.
But who came first is actually the smartest question Loki asks in the episode, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Just like with Ravonna and Miss Minutes and their own very complicated relationship with He Who Remains, there’s something to be said about history and something to be said about choices. Some might believe time is a causal loop, the snake eating its own tail, but if this is really the case, then what is the point of doing anything at all? It’s all predestined anyway.
The question of O.B. and Victory Timely – or He Who Remains, will likely be answered, cliffhanger or not there are still two episodes left, so it’s unlikely everyone will actually die, impending explosion or not. But if there is one lesson in Loki, it really does seem to be that free will is something worth fighting for.
I asked for your help, and you walked away
Loki 2×04 “Heart of the TVA” does a great job of showcasing the dynamics between Sylvie, Mobius and Loki. In a way, Sylvie and Mobius are on totally opposite ends of the scale. It’s like black and white, and Loki stands in the middle, trying to get them to find a middle ground that neither of them is inclined to accept.
“He’s just trying to see in the dark, like the rest of us,” he tells Sylvie about Mobius, which is just a more poetic way of saying hey, he’s trying his best. Which he is. Mobius truly is. And so is Sylvie, honestly. She’s there. Sure, only because she has no other choice, but she is. She could still be ignoring the world. So, gotta give the girl some credit. And fine, Loki would be telling Mobius the same, if he had to have the opposite conversation because this is who Loki has become.
But Sylvie is also right in forcing Mobius to look at the thing he’s been too scared to look at in the face, the thing Loki respects him too much to force him to confront – his past. Ignoring it does him no good. Sometimes, we need a friend (or someone friend-adjacent) who isn’t afraid to tell it to us how it is. Sylvie is being that for Mobius right now.
Hope is hard
“Trying to fix what’s broken is hard. Hope is hard” Loki tells Sylvie in this hour, and it is immensely powerful to hear Loki, of all people, be the one delivering the hope speech, the one we would expect the hero of the hour – of the show, to be delivering. But that’s what Loki is now, isn’t he? He is no longer an antihero; he hasn’t been for a while. He might still wear the horns but he’s a full-on hero now because he has chosen to be.
In the end, that’s the thing about free will. You decide what and who you are going to be, just as you decide who you will surround yourself with. Loki has made those decisions for himself, and he will continue to make them. We have to admit, we quite like his choices. All we’ll ask is that, by the end of his MCU journey, the sun can shine on him and his brother once again. Then, well, we might say this was truly a worthwhile journey all around.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of Loki 2×04 “Heart of the TVA”? Share with us in the comments below!
The first 4 episodes of Loki are now available on Disney+, with new episodes available weekly on Thursdays.
