In the “Loki” recap for episode 5, Loki finds himself teaming up with other variants while Sylvie searches for him and answers to the origins of the Time-Keepers and the TVA…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It appears that the curtain will finally be pulled back on the TVA in the final episode of “Loki” because the penultimate installment led Loki and Sylvie right to the doorstep for whoever is behind the mysterious time traveling organization.
After last week saw Loki and Sylvie captured by the TVA only to break free and go after the Time-Keepers, they were stunned to find out the mystical watchers over the sacred timeline were nothing more than androids.
Before the episode ended, however, both Loki and Mobius were “pruned,” which meant they were disintegrated and presumably dead, although considering the series is called “Loki” it’s tough to believe the God of Mischief was really going to be rubbed out with two episodes to go.
That said, the post credits scene revealed Loki woke up in a strange place after he was supposedly wiped from existence and that’s where things got really strange for him.
Meanwhile,, Sylvie was more determined than ever to find the truth about the TVA and who is actually running this shadowy organization responsible for ruining her entire life after shew as forced to go on the run when she was just a little girl when she was told that she created a nexus event.
With that said, plenty to unpack this week so let’s get to our recap for “Loki” episode 5 titled “Journey Into Mystery”…
The Void
After it appeared that Loki had been destroyed by Ravonna Renslayer at the conclusion of last week’s episode, he actually wakes up in a strange place surrounded by variants of himself. There’s Classic Loki — the older version. There’s Boastful Loki — a warrior who claims to have killed Captain America and Iron Man before capturing all six infinity stones yet he was obviously lying. Then we meet Kid Loki — the youngest version of the variants and finally Loki as an alligator.
Yes, there’s a Loki variant who is actually an alligator.
Considering all the weird and bizarre things he’s seen recently, Loki just accepts the alligator variant because why the hell not?
The bigger problem is a giant purple smoke monster named Alioth, who guards this particular realm known as The Void and the variants have arrived to whisk Loki away before he’s eaten. It seems Alioth eating a person is the only true way to die in this particular corner of the world and it sounds like a rather horrible death.
Meanwhile back at the TVA, Sylvie demands answers from Renslayer about the true origins of the organization as well as the mystery behind the Time-Keepers, who turned out to be nothing more than robots programmed to sound mystical and frightening.
Renslayer claims she has no idea what’s happening but she’s desperate for answers as well so she calls on Miss Minutes to bring up files on the origins of the TVA as well as the beginning of the sacred timeline. In reality, Ravonna is just stalling for time but she actually convinces Sylvie to trust her momentarily after revealing that Loki isn’t actually dead.
Instead, Renslayer tells her about this particular corner of the timeline called the Void where all of the people and worlds that have ever been pruned end up. It seems there’s no safe way to truly remove them from the sacred timeline without full calamity so this little pocket was created at the end of time in order to store this island of misfit toys.
As she continues to placate Sylvie while waiting for backup to arrive, Renslayer has Miss Minutes looking another file on a supposed prototype vehicle that could potentially travel to the Void. It doesn’t long for the Minutemen to arrive, which lets Sylvie know that Renslayer was lying to her all along but now she’s outnumbered and no closer to finding Loki.
With Renslayer offering her a permanent time loop — one that’s a happy memory — Sylvie decides there’s only one recourse. So she activates her weapon and prunes herself out of existence.
Considering Renslayer knows there’s absolutely no escaping the Void, she’s effectively gotten rid of her Sylvie problem without doing much of anything else. But that doesn’t solve her other problem about the mystery behind the TVA, which leads her to speak to Hunter B-15, who has been placed into custody after she turned on them when Sylvie helped her realize she had a previous life that was wiped from her memory before being placed into a permanent life of servitude.
Renslayer wants to know what kind of connection B-15 had with Sylvie so she can begin to understand what motivates and drives her. In the end, B-15 realizes that Renslayer doesn’t know the truth about the TVA any more than Sylvie did and now both of them are looking for the wizard behind the curtain.
The only difference is Renslayer wants to know the truth — Sylvia needs it and that’s why B-15 is convinced she’ll find out first.
After storming out of the holding cell, Renslayer calls on Miss Minutes to actually dig up the files on the origins of the TVA because even if she’s not supposed to know the secrets behind the organization, she knows whoever is pulling the strings is in serious danger now that Loki and Sylvie are after them.
Back in the Void, the variants take Loki back to their underground lair where they begin to tell him their individual life stories as well as the nexus events that led them here.
For Classic Loki, he reveals that he actually tricked Thanos into believing he was dead after the Mad Titan attacked the Asgardian ship following the events in Ragnarok but then he escaped to a small desolate planet where he lived for many years. When Classic Loki finally decided to return to the world, that was apparently a nexus event and he was wiped out of existence by the TVA.
Boastful Loki can only lie about his background but he does manage to mock the alligator Loki while revealing that he got pruned for eating the wrong neighbor’s pet.
After all the bickering and storytelling from the variants, Loki decides that he needs to stop being just a survivor like these other Lokis and take matters into his own hands to be reunited with Sylvie. Knowing that Alioth is a living, breathing creature — or at least as far as anyone can tell — Loki decides that he’s going to slay the best in order to return to the TVA and bring them down once and for all.
The other variants laugh at his plan but just as Loki is leaving, he’s greeted by yet another variant — this time it’s President Loki.
His arrival is marked by a takeover attempt after he conspired with Boastful Loki but then he’s betrayed as well because that’s just what Lokis do. In the midst of the fighting, alligator Loki bites off President Loki’s hand in a rather hilarious moment.
Finally, Classic Loki has seen enough and he opens up a portal to escape the fighting and Loki, Kid Loki and alligator Loki follow him through.
It seems Classic Loki is getting fed up with the way they all seem to chase power and control yet only end up losing because they can’t be trusted much less trust anybody else. With that, both he and Kid Loki decide to help Loki in his quest to escape the Void and stop the TVA once and for all.
While they know that facing off against Alioth is almost certainly a death sentence, the variants will at least take Loki to the location where the smoke creature resides so he can have a fighting chance.
As for Sylvie — she arrives in the Void and she’s immediately chased by Alioth but a car comes out of nowhere and offers her a ride to escape. The driver is none other than Mobius.
Mobius has now fully committed to the cause of bringing down the TVA but first he has to find a way out of the Void in order to go after Renslayer. He offers Sylvie help in order to find out who’s behind all of this and put a stop to it once and for all.
Around the same time, Loki arrives at the gate where Alioth waits and that’s when a giant Navy destroyer pops out of nowhere as another variant pruned from the timeline. In a funny twist, the ship is actually the USS Eldridge — a real naval ship that was supposedly part of something called the Philadelphia Experiment. Somewhere around 1943, the ship reportedly disappeared and was invisible to the human eye thanks to some kind of cloaking device developed by the government.
While the story was eventually debunked it seems the writers behind “Loki” decided to have some fun with it because in this version, the USS Eldridge created a nexus event and the ship disappeared to the Void where Alioth consumed anything and everyone in one fell swoop.
Seeing that gives Loki pause about his plan to attack and conquer but that’s when Kid Loki spots a car driving up towards them in the distance. When the car finally arrives, Loki is excited to be reunited with Sylvie as well as Mobius as the three of them begin to plot a way to escape the Void and bring down the TVA.
After hearing about Loki’s plan to kill Alioth, Sylvie more or less laughs at her counterpart for such a foolish plan. Instead, she offers an alternative — Sylvie will enchant the creature and make it reveal the path to the true force behind the TVA and the sacred timeline.
Before setting off on this epic adventure, Loki and Sylvie share some bonding time while trying to understand the nature of their relationship. Loki still struggles to tell her how he feels but they know that just them growing closer and touching hands somehow created the most bizarre nexus event in TVA history — so powerful that it actually showed up while they were still sitting on a doomed world where they should have never been found again.
The problem is Sylvie has never had anyone in her life and Loki has done everything possible to push away or otherwise betray anybody who ever loved him from Thor to his adoptive parents. Now Loki is determined to become a changed man and he promises Sylvie that he will not abandon or betray her in this moment of need.
With that said, it was time to attack Alioth.
After being led to the place where Alioth will be, Sylvie reveals that she stole a TemPad from Renslayer before pruning herself to the Void. She hands it over to Loki so he can escape but he refuses to leave her side. Sylvie can’t help but smile that Loki is already proving his worth to her.
He then hands the TemPad over to Mobius, who promises to return to the TVA and burn the entire thing down to the ground. Mobius thanks Loki for giving him the spark to start that fire and then they embrace before he jumps through a portal to go after Renslayer and the TVA.
Classic Loki and Kid Loki also decided to stay behind because they now call the Void their home and don’t want to leave. They give Loki their best wishes along with Kid Loki handing him a dagger to use as weapon.
Loki and Sylvie then set off to go after Alioth and hopefully find a way to enchant him in order to break through to the other side where the person controlling the sacred timeline is hiding.
As they approach the great smoke monster, Alioth darts after them and he’s such an overwhelming force that Sylvie can’t get a hold of him so Loki decides to create a distraction in order to give her time to work. As he does his best to get Alioth’s attention, Loki realizes that he’s not able to do enough that the beast actually pays attention to him.
At that moment, Classic Loki reappears and uses his powers of projection to build an entire city around them so that Alioth is drawn to the bigger anomaly as a seek and destroy mission. Alioth begins trying to chomp down on the buildings and structures but each time the creature is just jumping through the air as Classic Loki continues to create new and different parts of the city.
While Alioth is distracted, Sylvie calls on Loki to combine their powers in order to enchant the creature. Loki has never used enchantment before but Sylvie asks him to trust her — and after they combine hands, his abilities begin to kick into overgear.
Finally as Loki’s enchantment power is combined with Sylvie’s they are able to attack to Alioth and the powerful smoke monster is immediately under their control. From there, Sylvie clears Alioth out of the way and she shares a moment with Loki staring through the darkness to a castle that presumably serves as the home to the person responsible for the sacred timeline and the TVA.
Sylvie and Loki look at the castle and they know this is the final leg of their journey to get the answers they’ve so desperately wanted after the TVA plucked them from their respective timelines.
So who exactly is hiding in this castle?
Well there are plenty of guesses but the most likely candidate who’s been discussed over and over again this season is a character named Kang the Conqueror.
Kang’s actual name is Nathaniel Richards — he’s from the year 3000 and believed to be a descendant of both Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four as well as Victor Von Doom aka Doctor Doom. At one point out of boredom, Kang rebuilds Doctor Doom’s time travel machine and he begins venturing into the past in order to conquer it all. Behind his fearsome blue mask, Kang has conquered numerous worlds but he’s also splintered his timeline so incredibly bad that there are now dozens upon dozens of variant versions of him including an Egyptian pharaoh as well as a member of the Young Avengers named Iron Lad.
Kang has connections to several characters in “Loki” including a past relationship with Ravonna Renslayer as well as a rivalry with Alioth, who actually controls a larger empire on the timeline with both seeking to takeover more and more worlds.
Considering Kang’s many ties to time travel and attempts to control numerous worlds, it would stand to reason that he could be the person behind everything in the series. We also know that Kang is set to arrive one way or another in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” with “Lovecraft Country” star Jonathan Majors portraying the time travel villain.
It remains to be seen if Kang will actually appear or not in the “Loki” season 1 finale but we’ll find out next Wednesday when the last episode of the series debuts!
