Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, Ke Huy Quan, Tara Strong, Jonathan Majors, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Writers: Eric Martin, Katharyn Blair, Michael Waldron
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Available on: Disney+ Hotstar
Four episodes in, Loki has primarily chosen to focus on how the branched timelines can be incorporated into Time Variance Authority (TVA) without burdening its temporal loom. It is yet to address the mysteries it had introduced in the first episode. The latest chapter, chaotic with urgency, has the characters literally run against time, i.e. its resident creepy, sentient clock, to save the TVA from imploding. With Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) back in the building, the contesting visions for TVA are swirling around, with people either being pruned or boxed to death as either coercive measures or temporary attempts at self-defence.
The episode starts with Miss Minutes providing Ravonna Renslayer with a glimpse into an erased memory. Renslayer and He Who Remains’ (Jonathan Strong) conversation in the past indicates that she was significant in building up TVA along with him. Once she leaves his fortress, located at the End of Time, he calls upon Miss Minutes to enact code 42, to erase Renslayer’s memory, along with everyone else’s at the institution. “I continued to do all the work to keep him there?” Renslayer asks Miss Minutes in the present, who concurs but menacingly. Miss Minutes is trying to fold Renslayer into a plan and expresses the two of them don’t need He Who Remains, but it is not simple to make sense of the sentient clock’s fidelity, whose disturbing crush on He Who Remains persists even as she is resentful about the lack of adequate acknowledgement on his behalf.
