Did Loki Season 2 Just Retcon Its Own Season 1 Finale?

Loki's Season 2 premiere was one of the most highly-anticipated pieces of Marvel Cinematic Universe content in years – in large part due to the massive cliffhanger we were left hanging off of, at the end of Season 1. The Loki finale's ending spawned brave new worlds of the Marvel Multiverse, as Loki variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and broke the Sacred Timeline open into multiple different timelines – and unleashed the threat of the Council of Kangs on the multiverse. 

Sylvie turned on Loki and knocked him through a portal back to the Time Variance Authority. However, the TVA that Loki returned to was very different: we were left with the impression that Loki was now trapped in an alternate timeline, as the TVA was decorated in statues and carvings of Kang the Conqueror, rather than the Time-Keepers. 

However, the Loki Season 2 premiere "Ouroboros" quickly pulls the rug out from under fan expectations and theories about what happened in the Season 1 finale. 

(SPOILERS) Soon after returning to the TVA, Loki ascertains that he's actually gone back in time, not to an alternate timeline that's been changed by Kang. The main conflict of the premiere episode becomes Loki, Mobius E. Mobius (Owen Wilson), and Ouroboros "OB" (Ke Huy Quan) trying to stop Loki from being ripped across time periods ("time slipping") of the past and present. In trying to do that, we get big reveals about how long the workers of the TVA have been operating (400 years), and how their memories have been erased multiple times, while the TVA has been remade to cover up all traces of Kang/He Who Remains in its structure. When Loki finally reconnects with Mobius, he reveals the truth of what happened. 

Indeed, the mystery of Loki Season 2 is looking like it will be based on the premiere's title "Ouroboros", which is a reference to "uroboros", the circular symbol of a dragon swallowing its tail, as a metaphor for the circular loop of time. Already there's the mystery of what happened to Loki in his time slip to the future, where he saw Sylvie before being pruned – add the larger mystery of the TVA's secret history, and it seems Marvel will be keeping fans bubbling with theories for weeks to come. 

Does Loki Season 2 Ruin The Season 1 Ending?

That said: it's a fair criticism to say that Loki Season 2 may have side-stepped a more important place in the Marvel Multiverse Saga by going with a past-future time-slipping device, rather an alternate timeline. By choosing the simpler Back to the Future mechanics of time travel, Loki Season 2 could arguably leave the deeper questions and concerns of multiversal casualty untouched, thereby increasing the stakes even higher for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars to make all these fractured multiverse stories make sense.  

Loki Season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.