Heart of the TVA: Loki Season 2, Episode 4 Recap (With FAQs!)

Alright friends, we’re now in the second half of Loki, Season 2 and things are moving at a nice pace.

I guess time moving differently at the TVA isn’t so bad after all.

We left off last episode with Miss Minutes, aka Miss Steal-Yo-Man, baiting Renslayer with allegedly juicy info – a secret about her.

Just what is that secret? Will we find out where General Dox, Brad Wolfe, and crew are? Will the Temporal Loom finally get fixed?

Let’s find out in my Loki Season 2, Episode 4 recap, Heart of the TVA.

SPOILER ALERT: This post may contain spoilers to movie or show plots.

Protocol 42

We start off back in The Citadel where episode 3, 1893, left off.

And boom, the secret is revealed right off the bat: He Who Remains wasn’t always alone.

So who else was there when he created the TVA?

Miss Ravonna Renslayer herself.

And she had no idea because He Who Remains pulled a Protocol 42 on her and erased her memory after she slipped through a Time Door back to the TVA.

And not only that, but he asked Miss Minutes to erase all their memories.

They as in, who else? Well, that part’s still a secret to be revealed.

But wait, there’s more…

There was a war, presumably the multiverse war, and Renslayer was commander of the army.

Is this the war that Marvel execs have teased in upcoming MCU movies?

Renslayer is peeved and rightfully so.

You mean a man used a woman to get what he wanted and then pulled it all away from her as soon as he got it?

Excuse me for the rant, but men have been doing this since the beginning (and end) of time apparently.

Anyway, Miss Minutes preaches the concept of no scrubs and proposes they don’t need He Who Remains and they can run the TVA on their own – together.

Hmm. Maybe they are all cutesy Thelma and Louise after all.

La-di-da

We jump to Victor Timely arriving in the TVA only to find himself in the War Room staring at the weirdo Mt. Rushmore-esque artwork with variants of himself.

Yeah, I’d be weirded out too.

He quickly leaves and starts wandering through the hallways of the TVA.

And just as I was starting to get worried, Hunter B-15, Loki, and Mobius all walk up on Timely.

Sylvie arrives as they are trying to talk him into helping them out.

And as soon as he finds out the help they are requesting is to fix the Temporal Loom, he’s in.

Hunter B-15 has split off and gets off an elevator with Judge Gamble.

We finally learn where General Dox is – and as suspected, she’s being contained. Like good ol’ Brad Wolfe.

Gamble, while hesitant, suggests they let Dox go so she can advise on the Temporal Loom situation.

Chicken or the egg

Loki, Sylvie, Mobius, and Timely are off to find O.B. and Casey, who are hard at work still trying to figure out a way to fix the Loom.

Timely fangirls a bit when he meets O.B., who wrote the TVA guidebook on which he says his work is based.

Except O.B. says he wrote the guidebook based on a 19th century inventor named Victor Timely.

Uh oh.

It’s like a snake eating its own tail.

Ouroboros

Kind of makes me even more convinced that the internet chatter about O.B. being a variant of He Who Remains just might be true. Hmm.

Anyway, they ask for each others autograph to which Sylvie butts in and reminds them they have more important things to do. Like saving the Loom so they don’t all die.

Yeah, definitely more important.

OB and Casey bust out a not-to-scale model of the control room, gangway, Throughput Multiplier, and Temporal Loom.

OB then explains the plan of how they can enlarge the Loom so that it can handle more branches without creating an overwhelming backlog.

Mobius and Loki, who start bickering over who’s going to be the one who goes out on the gangway this time.

OB points out that whoever it is will have to be super quick or it’s not going to work.

To which Timely pipes in with a theory about why: the Loom’s decay is happening more quickly than the multiplier’s throughput capability.

And why does he know? Because he had the same problem with his prototype back in 1893 and he already has a prototype of the potential solution.

OB, Casey, and Timely get to work on turning the prototype a reality.

Pie break

Mobius, ever the cheerful corporate employee, suggests a pie break.

Seriously, who eats pie in a time like this? Sylvie’s wondering the same thing and calls him out on his corporate drone-ness.

Clocks don’t tick at the TVA, do they? You found out you’re a Variant, and you haven’t even looked, have you? It’s just another bad day at the office for you. Timelines are just lines on a monitor. Doesn’t matter if a few disappear. Because you’ve never bothered to look if one of them was yours. Who cares if a few just disappear? Enjoy your pie.

Sylvie

The trio disperses, separately.

The Minutemen

We jump to the containment room where Brad, Dox, and all the other TVA cronies that were captured are being held.

Brad attempts to rally the troops, but Dox calls him out on abandoning the cause to go back to his life on the Sacred Timeline.

OOP.

Hunter B-15 arrives and asks Dox for her help. And her Minutemen.

HA! Why didn’t I think of that name before? I’m a Bostonian where minutemen originated from. At least in our timeline.

She and Hunter D-90 leave the containment room to let Dox and the Minutemen think over her proposal.

The Pie Room

Sylvie gets lost after running off, only to find herself in the dang pie room. Loki follows shortly after.

Sylvie is still frustrated and girlfriend could use a therapy session, but instead settles for a chat with Loki.

Which is kind of like battling in your own head since they are variants of each other, no?

Anyway, Sylvie admits she couldn’t pull the trigger when it came to killing Timely because he looked so scared.

And she’s having a hard time understanding how Loki trusts that OB, Casey, and Timely will work things out.

They seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how to handle this situation: destroy or have hope it’ll all work out.

Sure, burn it down. Easy. Annihilating is easy. Razing things to the ground is easy. Trying to fix what’s broken is hard. Hope is hard.

Loki

Sylvie is starting to come around, but is still worried about what comes next for Timely.

Loki suggests they let him return back to his timeline and keep an eye on him.

Sounds like the old TVA a bit, eh?

LOKI: You can’t give people free will and then just walk away, Sylvie. That’s not how it works. Now, for better or for worse, the timelines are free. It’s up to us to protect them. It’s up to us to do better than He Who Remains.
SYLVIE: Sounds like whatever we do, we’re playing God.
LOKI: We are gods.

Touché.

Access denied

Dox, Brad, and the other Minutemen are discussing B-15’s proposal. 

Brad doesn’t trust her and is convinced they’ll all just get pruned, so why bother helping. Dox isn’t so sure and seems to be leaning toward helping save the Loom.

And just then, a Time Door appears and out walk Thelma and Louise. I mean Renslayer and Miss Minutes.

She promises them their life on the Sacred Timeline if they follow her instead.

And yes, Brad practically melted at the thought of returning back to his cushy life as a celebrity in London. I think we all know that was all he needed for convincing.

Dox is hesitant. Makes me wonder whether her life on the Sacred Timeline was absolute poo.

Miss Minutes starts up the Time Box machine and it quickly encapsulates Dox and the rest of the Minutemen (but not Brad, cuz he’s all in already).

How does it feel knowing that all of us here would rather die than follow you out that door? 

General Dox

And with that, they are all squished into extinction.

Renslayer watches, holding her head high, while Miss Minutes watches with a creepy grin on her creepy orange face.

Brad looks away and winces – but then takes a peek because he probably figures he can use the trauma as material for a future movie or something. Such an opportunist, that one.

A cup of hot cocoa

Back in the basement of the TVA, Mobius and Hunter D-90 join the trio of engineers who are hard at work, with a cup of cocoa in hand. I guess it’ll have to do instead of pie.

But the TemPads are unexpectedly not connecting, which has them all worried, except Timely.

Timely is more interested in Mobius’ cup of hot cocoa that was created with a machine. A machine just for the purpose of creating hot cocoa. 

Mobius tries to steer him back to the TemPed problem but he won’t quit, so D-90 offers to take him to see the hot cocoa machine.

Hunter B-15 reaches the containment room to see how the chat between Dox and crew, only to find them all dead

She attempts to use her TemPad, but it too will not connect.

Miss Minutes appears on the screen, wagging her pixel-y AI finger: Access denied.

Meanwhile, Timely excitedly makes a cup of cocoa, or chocolate soup, as the advertisement on the machine calls it.

He offers it to D-90, who takes a sip and POOF – he’s gone.

The big Brad Wolfe appears behind where D-90 once stood, Time Stick in hand.

He asks for Timely’s prototype, but he is frozen scared. Dude just wanted some cocoa.

Back in the basement, Mobius, Casey and OB realize Miss Minutes has taken control of all the systems, causing the TemPad issue.

They set off to find Timely, arriving to the hot cocoa machine where all they find is a Time Stick and a spilled cup of cocoa. No Timely in sight.

Loki and Sylvie arrive shortly after. And then Hunter B-15, who clues them in about Dox and the Minutemen.

They’re running out of time to fix the Loom and must find Timely fast.

TVA Code 1127

Renslayer and Brad are interrogating Timely, looking for his device to fix the Loom, but Timely stalls them.

The TVA is shutting down and the timeline’s about to bust. 

Loki’s running around the hallways of the TVA like a mad man.

B-15, Mobius, OB, and Casey are back in the Temporal Loom control room, trying to figure out how to proceed with Timely gone and Miss Minutes uncooperative. 

And suddenly we are back to episode 1, where Loki hears a phone ringing next to an elevator.

Suddenly Sylvie pries the elevator doors open and Loki time slips.

Or so we thought. Instead it was another version of Loki himself, not a variant, but kind of a variant I guess, pruned him!

Sylvie is shocked. Horrified. Confused.

I promise you this will make sense.

Loki

And then we finally find out who was on the other end of that phone, as Loki #2 picks up.

It’s OB, wondering where the heck he is.

Loki explains that Miss Minutes is hard at work infiltrating all the systems in the TVA, slowing them down.

OB explains they can gain some time if they reboot the system, which will take her offline.

Except that would mean no security protocols, such as the dampener that prevents magic from being used inside the TVA.

To which, of course, Loki and Sylvie immediately tell him to reboot the system.

Don’t have to ask them twice.

You’ll never be him

Meanwhile, Timely is walking Brad, Thelma, and Louise through the engineering plans for fixing the Loom in the boardroom.

Miss Minutes starts to stutter, realizing that the system is being rebooted.

And just before Miss Minutes goes offline completely, she leaves a warning directed at Timely: You’ll never be him.

X-5 heads off to investigate the reboot, leaving Timely and Renslayer alone in the boardroom.

And with the safety protocols gone, Loki and Sylvie attack, easily taking Brad down with their magic.

Two down, one to go.

Uh oh, Spaghetti-O

But then Brad walks back into the boardroom.

Hmm…I guess he’s not down. And that’s because he’s enchanted!

Loki and Sylvie grab Timely and make a run for it while Brad prunes Renslayer with a Time Stick.

Back in the Temporal Loom control roomhey scan Timely’s Aura and unlock the doors to the gangway.

Loki agrees to suit up, but Timely insists it be him in case something goes wrong, since he knows how the Temporal Multiplier works and could fix it on the fly if needed.

And just as the door opens to the gangway and Timely steps out, he turns to spaghetti.

An untimely death, you might say.

The crew stares at the timeline in disbelief as it explodes and everything goes dark.

Until next week, I guess…

Have questions? I might have answers.

This episode left us with a lot of new questions, hasn’t it? Let’s dig in to the most frequently asked questions after episode 4.

Does Loki Season 2 Episode 4 have a post credit scene?

No, there isn’t a post-credit scene in episode 4.

Yet again we are left without a tidbit, a morsel, a breadcrumb, as Mobius would say as to where the heck this is all headed.

I guess we’ll have to wait for the previews to hit social media as we get closer to next Thursday.

Who else was there when the TVA was created?

As we learn in the beginning of this episode, Ravonna Renslayer was there with He Who Remains and Miss Minutes when the TVA was created.

But unfortunately, he tricked Renslayer and wiped their memories, not just Renslayer. Miss Minutes stops short of saying who.

I guess we’ll have to wait for next week to find out!

Gotta keep us coming back somehow.

Is Renslayer back at the End of Time?

As we learn in season 1, when a person is pruned with the Time Stick, they are thrown back to the wastelands at the End of Time.

Should we assume she is there? Or does she bypass it and get dropped into the Citadel?

Looks like another mystery left for episode 5!

How will Miss Minutes reboot affect her?

Only time will tell with this one!

Many years ago, I worked customer service for an internet company and as I’m sure you’re familiar, one of the most common triage suggestions was to reboot your modem or router and all would be restored.

It worked most of the time, so maybe the reboot will work the same way with Miss Minutes.

Will there be a Loki Season 3?

Marvel Studios nor Disney+ have announced a third season of the hit series, Loki. As one of my favorite shows on the streaming service, I sure do hope there is a season 3.

However, I could also see them picking up the storyline in a future MCU phase with Kang the Conqueror, who is a variant of He Who Remains.

What was your favorite moment in Loki Season 2, Episode 4?

Don’t forget to tune in for episode 5 next week on Thursday, November 2, at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT.

And I just realized next week’s episode is on the Day of the Dead. Uh, should we be worried or are we gonna get a lovely ofrenda to remember Timely, Dox, and the Minutemen by?

Let me know what your favorite moment was in the comments section below. Until next week!