Major Spoilers ahead.

Seriously.

Loki and Sylvie reach the End of Time…

There’s an apple in this week’s episode which goes to symbolise the entire show. Bear with me here. In English translations of Genesis the apple is the fruit which Eve eats in contravention of requests by God to do anything at all but this.

She’s talked into it by a snake or serpent who tells her she’ll rival God in knowledge – knowing the difference between good and evil – concepts which to that point appear to be foreign to her. We don’t know why they’re alien but the implication appears to be that in gaining this knowledge she’ll see the world for what it is – including the challenge of knowing you could act egotistically and against the consent of others because you feel like it – because you can. It is, according to the story, the very essence of knowing like God knows – that one can act evilly if one so wishes and that’s just that.

In submitting to the command not to eat the apple one is suppressing one’s free will for a greater good (so it goes) of not letting evil get a foothold in the world.

This is the exact gambit the person at the end of time puts before Loki and Sylvie.

“I’m here and it’s as bad as you think,” they say before revealing that without them there it would be so much worse. Some evil against the possibility of much evil. They believe the ends justify the means, but they acknowledge there’s no way of verifying this without acting and then observing the consequences.

Eating the apple allows you to have this knowledge and see if the consequences are what was promised or not. It doesn’t usher in evil, it ushers in the potential for evil.

When Loki and Sylvie enter the citadel at the end of time they find someone there who claims to offer them exactly the same choice – all while noisily eating an apple. We’re going to come back to this in a bit.

Before we discuss the consequences of choices made it’s worth examining this episode a little because there’s a lot going on. This isn’t an action packed episode. For once Marvel have stuck to their guns and delivered a consistent ending to a story which was never about fighting and explosions. Unlike the collapse in WandaVision’s last act with a bunch of entirely unnecessary whizzes and bangs, Loki sticks to its narrative tone and continues to push at us the idea that we are faced with a truth in which not only do we get to make our choices but we might not be free in making them despite how we feel about this.

This episode (and the entire series) has done a lot of heavy lifting for the wider MCU – introducing a comprehensive view of the cosmic underpinnings of the world in which Marvel takes place. We’ve been introduced to cosmic entities who make Thanos seem like nothing more than a mayfly while also telling us how the MCU believes their version of many worlds and time travel works.

I have to say it’s been a neat set of lessons and they’ve, largely, managed to wrap all this exposition into a good story about a man-child coming to terms with his own self and how he’s destroyed most of his own chances at happiness.

Hiddleston has been great because he’s been asked to play ham, am-dram, poignant and everything in between. I have really liked Loki’s story – even where it’s been pretty conventional in that it’s taken him from bad boy to standard hero. However, I think it’s taken him through that and the end of the show leaves him pretty much back where he started – alone. Except this Loki isn’t alone. He’s glimpsed and grasped all he didn’t realise he wanted and then lost it. Some say better to have loved and lost than never have loved – we’re going to see exactly what Loki thinks of that idea I think.

Still, the show is very much in two parts – the story of Loki out of time, literally facing up to himself and what that means together with the world building necessary for Phase 4 of the MCU which only properly starts hitting our screens later in 2021.

This episode exemplifies the challenges of making that work – and although I found it really satisfying, I can see how others are going to see so much talking on screen as tedious and exposition heavy. This episode in particular could be characterised as a 45 minute long mid credits scene designed to prepare us for what’s to come.

But back to our apple.

This show has done existential dread really well for prime time family fare. Loki and Sylvie are, in the end, faced with a simple choice whose consequences are literally unfathomable. They are asked to look inside and figure out whether they can step away from their own needs and desires and do something for others. Their response is varied and neither feels forced.

I remember reading complaints about how the TVA was presented after episode 1 – that people felt there should be more negative messaging around the openly bureaucratic TVA; that it was fascist and should admit it. The show went on to criticise the TVA as an organisation but as the most adult of shows yet in the MCU it comes full circle and reminds us of the gambit faced by Eve. Accept the conditions put on her without her understanding or consent or risk something far worse. The key word here is risk – because there’s no certainty that accepting the conditions is the right thing to do nor that throwing off the yoke will definitely lead to worse outcomes. Just a probability.

And just like Eve, Loki and Sylvie are given the choice. There is no perfect information for them – just a choice which they have to either accept or reject based upon what they know. They bring themselves to this, and that informs their view of how the world should be more than any knowledge they are given by others.

Loki has always kicked against authority – regardless of its nature. He has kicked because it’s there. Loki is, in one sense, the ultimate libertarian and would love Ayn Rand. He’s a charming, attractive White man though, so we tend to forgive him these heinous acts of self-centred violence where we would condemn others. We pretend his selfishness is iconoclasm.

Yet the show is, if nothing else, a rejection of everything libertarianism stands for because it very clearly lives the consequences of its actions. The more I think about it the more I think this show in particular has philosophical chops none of the other Marvel entries to date have managed, and it’s managed these without being too on point or without being specifically issue driven. It’s put before us a character whose very being is built around selfishness and wishing to be free of others’ expectations and their authority. That drive is, I admit, quite attractive. Yet it destroys us all in the end. It destroys community, it destroys collective responses to pandemics, and it destroys the possibility of building something greater than ourselves.

I don’t think Loki even gets that at the end but perhaps, as he sits on the floor after being sent away by someone he loves, he at last understands what it means to be more than independent of all others.

So. The series does not work as a standalone. But then have any of the three television series worked that way? I also don’t think it quite works within its own rules – because there was no foreshadowing of the person they’d find at the end of the universe. Except you can argue that it’s structured like a comic and on that basis I can’t think of ANYONE watching this show on a standalone basis, so I don’t think I have any time for that kind of criticism.

Was He Who Remains foreshadowed? Yes, if you knew Easter eggs. Does it matter? I don’t think so because this fits into a canonical timeline whose purpose is not simply to tell standalone stories (even Black Widow didn’t quite manage that) but to fit those stories into a wider universe. I would have liked to see much more about Loki in this final episode, more about his thoughts on what happens, on what he does and what he thinks about where he finds himself at the end. I wanted Loki’s emotions. We don’t really get them – which is a shame.

I would also have liked there to be more to the pivotal encounter between Loki and Sylvie – it feels too brief for us to weigh it properly.

The episode and the series worked for me. I think it sticks the landing. Just. I think others won’t feel the same way and I understand their arguments and can’t really refute them – but I enjoyed it the way it was.

The real test here is – do I want to watch season 2? Absolutely I do and why isn’t it ready to watch now?

Rating? 8 Braeburns out of 10.

Stewart Hotston