Now Loki is over until season 2, I thought I’d look back on the finale to answer some of your biggest what the f**k questions.
I wanted to sit and think on this for a couple of days as the ending could be taken several ways but I think I might have cracked it and figured out what’s going on.
Who is He Who Remains?
Now Episode 6 introduced us to He Who Remains, the man at the end of time who had been controlling the TVA and pruning anyone who dislikes our videos.
In case you don’t know who he is this is basically a variant of Nathanial Richards aka Kang The Conquerer. Nathanial was born…or will be born…in the 30th century and this descendant of Reed Richards was a brilliant scientist. Eventually, Richards became bored of the future and he decided that he would remake the universe in his image thus he travelled back in time and attempted to conquer all.
Now the way that time travel tends to work in the Marvel universe is that when you travel back in time it creates a branched reality in which an alternate timeline is created that spirals off into its own thing. In the comics, every time Richards went back in time he ended up creating an alternate dimension and thus a separate version of himself which is why when people discuss the character they tend to use several of his many aliases.
These include the Scarlett Centurion, Rama Tut and of course Kang The Conquerer. In the show, He Who Remains was also a version of Kang and we can take it from his dress that this is actually Immortus, another alter ego of the character. In the comics, namely Avengers Forever, a past version of Kang attempted to kill The Timekeepers of the TVA so that he could stop them from making him evolve into Immortus and thus we know that it’s one of the last life cycles of the character.
Now He Who Remains is actually the name of the character that created the Time Keepers at the end of the last universal cycle and he placed them at the end of the universe so that when it was reborn they could learn from the mistakes of the past and create the one that we live in with fewer hiccups. He Who Remains and Immortus have been combined to create the character that we see but it’s clear he’s very much a version of Kang…just more evolved.
Think basically Prince when he became the artist formerly known as Prince and you get the idea.
We discover that it was he and his many variants that created the multiversal war that we were warned about in Episode 1 and thus in order to avert this, He Who Remains had used Alioth to wipe out several timelines in order to make it so that only the ones in which Kang didn’t rise up remained.
How Were Variants Created?
A big question over the series was ‘how are there variants in the first place?’ The TVA should surely be wiping things out the moment that they’re created and thus Sylvie would never have grown into a child at all. It’s likely only at the point in which certain decisions are made that they become a problem and when this happens He Who Remains sends in his troops to take the person out.
He then wipes their memories and enlists them into his ranks so that they can become a soldier amongst his ranks making sure he can never rise up. It shows just how terrifying that Kang is when the one thing he fears above all else is himself.
Now potentially the moment that Sylvie veered off too much was when she was playing with her Dragon and Valkyrie toys and it is possible that she decided to become a Valkyrie instead of a Loki. Thus the events in her timeline would play out differently with the Avengers not being assembled as she’d never work for Thanos and this may have given Kang the chance to rise up in his place.
That’s all theoretical at the moment but we do learn that He Who Remains uses Alioth to wipe out certain timelines that cause the most danger. This is actually hinted at when we look at the reset charges as when they go off there’s a cloud of purple smoke inside them.
This of course links back to the giant purple cloud Alioth and shoutouts to Supernerds Gaming on Twitter for pointing that out.
Who Gave Kang the Script?
Now we join him with Loki and Sylvie and learn that he has been given a script that will allow him to know everything up until a certain point. A big question hanging over this though is who exactly gave him this. Well, personally I believe that it is a future version of Sylvie who has been put in place to make sure that her past version follows in the footsteps that would be there to continue her destiny.
If we look at the comics, namely Agent Of Asgard, we discovered in that that a future version of Loki had been travelling back in time to manipulate his younger self into making sure that he would become him.
I kinda get the feeling here that something similar has happened and after she killed He Who Remains, everything descended into a multiversal war that he prophecised would lead to his reincarnation and that he would end up streamlining the multiverse once more. However, someone would’ve had to have remained behind to give him this script and as he’s dead he couldn’t have written it so it could definitely be Sylvie or as I call her She Who Remains.
Now it may also be Loki as he of course was quite happy to take over the position and the character very much viewed the dictatorship of the TVA as the lesser of two evils. With the script being so precise and also up to a point that He Who Remains doesn’t know what happens beyond it, we can surmise that there is someone who knows that moment was paramount and that they only chronicled up to that point so that Sylvie and Loki would be given a choice of what to do next.
The pair end up fighting and Sylvie kicks Loki through a doorway in which he lands in an alternate dimension. Now how this is possible is because we can see that before she does this that the sacred timeline has already started to split and branch.
This means that Loki can end up in an alternate TVA even when being sent back. He finds himself in a version in which Kang has already taken over and Loki is unknown to Mobius because his escape in Endgame was clearly beneficial to Kang. Loki wanted to carry on the dictatorship of the TVA in one single timeline but instead, because of Sylvie’s actions, there are now several of them amongst many.
Who is Ravonna Renslayer?
We end with a Planet Of The Apes-esque shot in which he comes across a statue dedicated to Kang and this iconography is something that is often seen amongst dictatorship regimes. Now though Mobius and B-15 don’t know who Loki is, there is someone who may. In the episode, we learn that Ravonna Renslayer was actually a teacher at Franklin D Roosevelt Highschool. Her real name was Rebecca Tourminet which is actually a moniker that the character took up when travelling through time in an attempt to appease Kang.
Now I believe that this is a clue to what’s going on and Renslayer says that only the person in control has free will. Thus, with instructions from Miss Minutes, she has travelled across to an alternate dimension to be with Kang so that the pair can rule over things.
I believe that this might be the key to how Loki will get back as she will of course be aware of the character after he came from her Universe. Who knows, Renslayer might actually turn good and help him out after seeing first-hand exactly the kind of man that Kang is.
Kang basically does whatever he wants now and B-15 and Mobius both remark on their leader almost wanting the timelines to spiral out of control.
Tony Stark Link
Now as for Kang though he is typically a descendant of Reed Richards I think that they might change things up so that Tony Stark is one of his ancestors. I know Tony Stark creating the villains is becoming older than my Mephisto jokes which I’ve milked more than Sony has Spider-man but there are some hints towards this.
Firstly Reed Richards isn’t in the MCU and though he is coming down the line, The Fantastic Four won’t be for a couple of years so it makes sense that they tie things in more with the current characters as Kang will be appeared in Ant-Man Quantumania and they’ll need to explain where he comes from. Saying Tony is easier than explaining the Fantastic Four.
Now that could still be done and the theory doesn’t hinge on that, however, the fact that we know one of Kang’s many aliases is Iron Lad would line up more and the time twister that he who remains carries looks very similar to the time travel GPS device that Tony created in Endgame. They could even link this time travel stuff into Kang and after Tony discovered how to travel through it, Kang may have found his great ancestors’ work and used it to cross into the multiverse.
What Could the Multiversal War Bring?
Either way, it looks like we are heading towards a multiversal war and we can guess what may happen due to the events of the comic Secret Wars. In that, the multiverse slowly started to implode in on itself and as realities collided they combined to create Battleworld. Here there were several versions of characters overseen by God Emporer Doom. The realities battled for supremacy and eventually, this led to the continuity being streamlined. It allowed for characters like Miles Morales to come across in the main timeline and I can see that being the way that they go with it.
Doom will likely be replaced by Kang but that direction is what makes the most sense to me.
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