[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Loki, Season 2, Episode 2.]
The new season of Loki continues to keep the clock ticking as the titular God of Mischief (played by Tom Hiddleston) and TVA agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) attempt to manage the sacred timeline’s extreme branching. Setting out to find Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), the duo headed to 1970s London in order to confront Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal), who followed General Dox (Kate Dickie) in the Season 2 premiere.
Believing he’ll have answers about Sylvie’s whereabouts, Mobius and Loki bring the rogue hunter back to the TVA for questioning, placing him in a holding cell. While Loki and Mobius try decoding alterations X-5 — now going by the name Brad Wolfe — made to his TemPad, they’re forced to initiate a tense negotiation session in search of answers.
While Loki isn’t shy about getting in Brad’s face, embracing the villainous vibe the prisoner thinks suits the God of Mischief, it’s ultimately Mobius who loses his cool. When Brad tells Mobius he needs to “wake up” and seek out the life he was taken from on the timeline in order to work for the TVA, Mobius gets defensive and smacks Brad across the face before being carted out of the cell.
(Credit: Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL)
Chatting over a plate of pie, Mobius admits he lost his cool but deflects when Loki asks why he doesn’t want to learn about his past. What could be the reason? “It’s funny because that was something that wasn’t fully in the script early on,” executive producer Kevin Wright reveals to TV Insider.
According to Wright, “We would do these script sessions once we were all in London. The scripts were at a certain point where we started doing scene work. And so we would put the script up on the wall, and Tom, and Owen, and Sophia, and everybody would start coming in even if it wasn’t their scenes.”
“They were just fun debates we are all having in a room. So that interrogation played very different and something wasn’t sitting right,” Wright continues. “We were trying to all work on it. Obviously, Owen’s an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, as people sometimes forget, and Raphael, who plays Brad, is a showrunner in his own right with Blindspotting.”
(Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+)
“So, you have all these great minds in the room with Eric [Martin], all the cast, and Owen kind of threw out the idea of what if he’s the one that snaps, and it just opened this entirely new door for the rest of the scripts in the season,” Wright shares. This sensitivity to learning about his real life on the timeline is a touchy subject for Mobius as the season carries on.
When it came to that split moment in the interrogation room, though, Wright says, “It was funny, but it revealed this darker, more tortured side that I think Owen really does well and interestingly and because Mobius is something so very different for the first season, it’s just interesting, and you want to go and explore what that darkness is.”
As the episode went on, Loki and Mobius managed to break Brad down as he finally fessed up to where Sylvie was hiding, at a 1980s McDonald’s. Seeking answers for her appearance in Loki’s jump to the future, she claims she has no plans to return to the TVA and wishes not to be bothered, but that’s easier said than done.
It turned out that Dox’s mission was to secretly bomb all of the branching timelines set free by Sylvie’s actions. Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie work to stop the destruction after Slyvie learns Brad’s secret knowledge by enchanting his mind. Angered over the turn of events, she returns to the branched timeline she’s been living in, revealing that she’s in possession of He Who Remains’ (Jonathan Majors) all-powerful TemPad, which Wright says, “It probably plays its biggest role in Episodes 3 and 4, but Sylvie’s very smart. She finished this mission at the end of Season 1 and did not leave that Citadel without taking something.”
In terms of where it could take her, he adds, “If she’s in search of free will, that is maybe the greatest tool you could have in that search, wherever you want it to go. And it gives her a lot of possibilities and potential going forward.” Consider us intrigued. Stay tuned for more from Loki as Season 2 continues on Disney+, and let us know what you thought of the latest episode in the comments section below.
Loki, Season 2, New Episodes, Thursdays, 9/8c, Disney+