Loki: Episode 9

9. 1893

Ravonna Renslayer travels to 1868 Chicago in the sacred timeline and meets Miss Minutes there who instructs her to drop the TVA handbook at the house of a young boy. They then head over to an 1893 branched timeline where the boy is now an eccentric inventor by the name of Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), a variant of He Who Remains. It doesn’t take long for Loki and Mobius to track them down, after which a tug of war for Victor’s trust ensues. Sylvie joins the fray in a bit in her persistent mission of killing all of He Who Remains’ variants, but Loki intervenes. Victor ends up with Renslayer but Miss Minutes manages to get rid of her and have some alone time with Victor at his lab in Wisconsin, where she chastises him for not even thinking about giving her a body despite being his most loyal sidekick from the get-go. Renslayer, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie eventually catch up. Sylvie spares Victor’s life, with Loki and Mobius taking him back to the TVA. Instead of killing Renslayer, Sylvie dumps her at the End of Time where she and Miss Minutes discover He Who Remains’ rotting corpse.

This episode has a different vibe somehow. It is definitely more fun with all the chase scenes happening as well as the pursuit of Victor Timely and his trust. We also finally get to see Renslayer back in action along with the start of her supposed romance with He Who Remains, although it is made clear that Timely is just a variant. This makes you wonder what the big plan is. Is Victor Timely going to be He Who Remains eventually? But he is just a variant, now isn’t he? Like some sort of a failsafe double? I don’t know. For now, what is clear is that he will be used to open the blast doors of the Temporal Loom. What is to become of him after that is still up in the air. Perhaps a more interesting curiosity is what Miss Minutes and Renslayer will come up with. For an anthropomorphic AI, Miss Minutes surely stole everyone’s thunder in this episode by unleashing that eerie side of her that we never saw coming. Her banter with Renslayer is just pure entertainment and we are so here for it.

“Time is everything. It moves in each and everyone of us. It shapes our lives. Our futures. But perhaps we can shape it.” –Victor Timely

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