After that he just had to play clean up, maintaining the timeline’s flow and snipping off any branches that might begin to diverge. Then one Kang - this one - discovered and weaponized the monster called Alioth, using it to end the multiversal war by destroying all the other realities and leaving just one: The Sacred Timeline. War erupted as Kang variants fought to defend their universes and annihilate the threat posed by the others. Everything was hunky-dory until, lo and behold, it turned out that some versions of himself were power-hungry conquerors (get it?!) and the newfound peace between realities fell apart. In brief: “He Who Remains” is/was/will be a scientist from the 31st century who discovered the existence of alternate realities and made contact with them, trading knowledge and gardening tips with variants of himself for the betterment of all of their universes. Majors as Don’t-Call-Him-Kang had his own entire arc, where he laid out his personal history, explained the role of the TVA and the dangers of the multiverse, and offered Sylvie and Loki a choice: Take his place in regulating the Sacred Timeline, or kill him and kickstart an all-new multiverse. Obviously, that’s a more significant movie set-up - introducing a major villain - than any of the previous Disney+ joints were allowed, but the biggest surprise was that I… didn’t hate it? For me, it worked because it wasn’t just a winking cameo in the final seconds. Beyond Alioth, inside the Citadel At The End Of Time, Sylvie and Loki discover this dude called “He Who Remains”, played by Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors - who we already know has been cast as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. LOL remember how just last week I was all like, “They’re hinting pretty hard that the person behind the TVA is Kang, but I’d hate that because it’d be an 11th hour addition and thematically the bad guy should be another Loki and/or Eugene Cordero”? Welp, that was a swing and a miss, as a certain someone would say. I’m still not convinced the logic around some of the bigger events is watertight, and I definitely have some lingering questions, but Episode 6 was the strongest MCU television finale to date. While it was a talky episode with a big info dump in the middle, it didn’t abandon the themes that the season has been kicking around this whole time: Trust, truth, freedom, and loneliness. Yes, undoubtedly the reveal of the man behind the curtain was a huge set-up, but the episode also paid off the character development of Loki and resolved his relationship with Sylvie in some unexpected ways. It’s hard to believe that Loki is only the third Marvel show on Disney+, because it feels like I’ve been asking the same question forever now: Will have a satisfying conclusion, or will the finale be hijacked to set up the larger MCU? Apparently, the third time’s the charm, because the Loki finale actually - finally - did BOTH.
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