It's The End Of The World In The New Episode Of 'Loki,' And The God Of Mischief And The Variant Don't Feel Fine
The third episode of the Disney+ series Loki has our Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and the Variant (Sophia Di Martino) getting to know each other in a less-than relaxing environment. To say more veers into spoiler territory, so here is your obligatory spoiler warning for Loki Episode 3, "Lamentis."
Read on to learn what happens, including what it could mean for the show's remaining three episodes.
Loki Gets Around, and so Does the TVA
That space-time portal that Loki jumps through after the Big Bad Variant at the end of episode two? The exotic location they end up in is...back in the TVA. Di Martino's Loki wants to face the Time Keepers and presumably destroy them. Despite her years of planning, however, there are still things about the TVA she doesn't know. She's unpleasantly surprised, for example, when she realizes her magical powers don't work inside the Authority.
She improvises, fighting through Minutemen, with Hiddleston's Loki right on her heels. She makes it to the golden elevator doors that supposedly lead to the Time Keepers before Ravonna (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) faces them. Our Loki steals a space-time remote control (the TVA device that creates those time portals) and jettisons himself and Di Martino's Loki somewhere unknown.
That somewhere unknown turns out to be Lamentis-1, a habitable moon that — in the original Marvel comics — is an outpost at the edge of Kree space. The bulk of the episode takes place here in 2077, just hours before that moon is obliterated when the planet it orbits breaks up.
Loki and Sylvie: The Variant Odd Couple
The two Lokis come to a détente on Lamentis-1 out of self-preservation. The space-time remote control is out of juice, and they reluctantly agree to work together to get off the moon before it's destroyed.
This joint mission also allows our two Lokis to get to know each other (and for us, of course, to learn more about them as well). We learn that Di Martino's Variant prefers to be called Sylvie and that she approaches problems differently than Hiddleston's Loki.
Where Loki prefers guile and diplomacy, Sylvie leans toward a more direct, confrontational approach. And where Sylvie prefers focus when on a mission, Loki can't help but lean into his hedonistic nature when the world is facing complete destruction. (As an aside, the scene where drunk Loki breaks a glass on the train bar seems to also be an homage to the first Thor movie, where Loki's brother takes to smashing coffee cups in appreciation of the drink.)
On a fancy train en route to a ship the two hope will have enough power to charge the TVA remote control, the two have time to wax philosophical about love (Is love hate? Mischief? An invisible dagger?). This exchange also makes it canon that Hiddleston's Loki, as well as Sylvie, have had romantic liaisons with princes and princesses, confirming the god of mischief's bisexuality or pansexual orientation. The purple, pink, and blue color scheme on Lamentis-1 may also be a nod to Loki's bisexuality, though Lamentis-1 in the comics is also purple.
Loki also shares memories of his mother, a woman who Sylvie says she only has a blip (a potential reference to Thanos' snap?) of a memory of. They also talk magic and then Sylvie takes a nap, which seems quite a stretch to serve the story. Different people react to potential death differently, I suppose.
The two don't land on an answer about what love is, but they do land outside of the train when Loki's drunken revelries catches the attention of some guests. The guards confront them and — after a lovely fight scene — end up thrown off the train.
Sylvie Might Not Be a Loki at All
"Lamentis" also drops some clues that Sylvie might not be a true Loki Variant at all, but a Marvel character called Enchantress. In the comics, Enchantress' non-supervillain name is Sylvie Lushton, and she receives her powers from Loki himself.
In Loki, Hiddleston also keeps referring to her mind-control powers as "enchantments," another nod to the Enchantress character, who also has the same magical abilities. We also learn more about Sylvie's abilities in this episode, including a scene right at the beginning that shows her mentally manipulating Hunter C-20's (Sasha Lane) mind and using her memories to interrogate her in a more comfortable space. Namely, her memories of a time before the TVA.
The TVA Agents Don’t Know Everything
That leads us to another big reveal of this episode — all the TVA agents are Variants themselves! Sylvie knows this and had to delve back hundreds of years into C-20's memory to pull out one of her drinking margaritas at a mediocre Mexican restaurant.
Loki is sure that the TVA Agents don't know this, and I can't wait for the likely scene in the remaining episodes where he breaks the news to Mobius (Owen Wilson). Will that information be enough to have Mobius or other TVA Agents go against the Time Keepers in some way?
Every Good Apocalypse Features the Collapse of Society in the Face of Annihilation
The last moments of the episodes have Loki and Sylvie in a city in chaos. Loki broke the TVA remote control when he was thrown off the train, and their last-ditch hope for survival is highjacking the spaceship trying to take off. They get to the city and go through an amazing one-take fight sequence where the two try to make their way the ship. They fail, however, and they along with the guards fighting them all stop and stare dejectedly as the last hope of survival blows up in front of them.
That can't be the end for Loki and Sylvie though — there are three episodes left! How they survive and where they go from there, however, will have to be answered next week.