Loki Reveals a Major Piece of the MCU's Multiverse Lore

Loki Season 2's premiere episode has revealed a major piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Multiversal lore in the form of the Temporal Loom. With the introduction of the Temporal Loom, we now have a much better explanation of how the Time Variance Authority has crafted, pruned, and maintained the version of the Marvel Multiverse they want to see. 

(SPOILERS) In Loki Season 2 Episode 1 "Ourboros" Loki (Tom Hiddleston) tries to deal with the calamity of his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killing He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and breaking the Sacred Timeline up into a multi-branch Marvel Multiverse. Loki re-enters the timestream in the messiest of ways and ends up "time-skipping" – i.e., getting ripped between the past and present (and future) versions of the TVA. 

In order to solve Loki's time-skipping problem, he teams with Mobius (Owen Wilson) and TVA repairs and advancement agent OB (Ke Huy Quan) to pull off a desperate scheme: they need to pull Loki out of the timestream at the moment he's pruned out by a TVA wand. That requires access to the Temporal Loom and the use of a device called a Temporal Extractor.

Loki's Temporal Loom Explained

The Temporal Loom is revealed to be exactly what its name implies: a device used to weave together timelines for the TVA. The problem in Loki Season 2 is that the death of He Who Remains and the fracturing of the Sacred Timeline is overloading the Temporal Loom, which cannot keep up with all the new timelines that are appearing. 

It seems clear that the Temporal Loom was the means by which the TVA took strands of other timelines and weaved them together into the amalgamation known as the "Sacred Timeline." As many Marvel fans have pointed out, the design of the Temporal Loom is not-so-coincidentally similar to the device Kang The Conqueror was trying to use to escape his banishment, during Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. 

The exact nature of how the Marvel Multiverse works is one of the biggest questions at the center of the current Multiverse Saga. The Temporal Loom is a big chunk of answering that question – even if it leads to even more questions of how the actual timeline mechanics work. 

Loki Season 2 streams new episodes Thursday nights on Disney+. 

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing. Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.