The second episode of Marvel Studios’ Loki is here and while the first episode of the Disney+ series got viewers up to date on the God of Mischief’s story to now as well as introduced the Time Variance Authority (TVA) – and opened the door to a lot of speculation in the process – the second episode really started the adventure in earnest. Part of that included some more major reveals about how the timeline works and the nature of variants including a pretty major one about just how many versions of Loki are out there.
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Warning: spoilers for the second episode of Loki beyond this point.
After Loki‘s apprehension and general introduction to things in last week’s “Glorious Purpose”, this week’s “The Variant” saw Loki conscripted into working with the TVA officially in order to help capture the variant that has been killing Hunters. Pretty early on in the episode, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) gets to go on his first real mission, but he’s in for a surprise in the pre-mission briefing. Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) reveals that there are a lot of Loki variants. In fact, there are countless versions of Loki out there.
Mobius proceeds to explain that there are almost more Loki variants than any other type and no two are alike. He notes that they do generally have similar appearances, though there some outliers – and we even see little holograms of some of them, including one that can only be described as a Hulk-like Loki. They also all apparently have various powers including shapeshifting, illusion projection, and image duplication, qualities that make them tricky to deal with.
The idea of there being many variants of Loki isn’t a surprise to fans of the comics. The God of Mischief has appeared in many forms in comics and is even in multiple iterations, with various versions having died and returned as new versions – Kid Loki, for example. However, the variant most of interest on Loki is the one that is currently wanted by the TVA and the identity of that version is no longer a mystery by the end of this week’s episode, either. After figuring out how the hunted variant is hiding from the TVA, Loki and the TVA track them down to an impending “class ten apocalyptic event” in 2050. Loki ends up coming face to face with said variant – and it’s Lady Loki (Sophia Di Martino) who has zero interest in teaming up with the trickster MCU fans know and love.
Loki is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays.
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