There’s some folks who think last week’s episode of Loki was a little bit on the boring side, and that people didn’t feel quite so motivated. I’ve heard those rumors online. Then Season 2 Episode 3, “1893,” showed up, and this one’s pretty epic, because I feel as if we’re finally starting to see the big picture.

The first two episodes were a lot of problem solving, and we’re still living underneath those issues. The Loom is having issues. Even though Dox went through clearing out the lanes last week, getting all of the extra threads and branch timelines deleted, or erased if you will, those things are still happening and they’re going to continue to spread. It just staved off the inevitable. You get a little bit of that in the beginning, when the guys are talking very quickly to Ouroboros.

Miss Minutes Ain’t Right

The episode starts in 1893. Actually, that’s not true. It starts sooner than that, because we finally get caught up with Ravonna Renslayer. She shows up in 1868, and who’s there with her? Miss Minutes.

Miss Minutes plays a major part in this. A good friend of mine, Jayen, who’s another reviewer online, does a lot of movies and stuff like that. She’s a great person to talk to, especially on Twitter. Sorry, X. Anyways, she was just saying, “Miss Minutes is here and I am scared,” and I had to agree. I was like, oh yeah, me too, for sure. You can tell she ain’t right.

She’s been leading Ravonna there, because even though He Who Remains was stopped by Sylvie at the end of time, there’s apparently a plan that was put in place, allegedly, by He Who Remains. I say allegedly because I think Miss Minutes is playing a little bit fast and loose with the keys there.

One of the things Ravonna has to do is take a certain package and leave it in a window. The window she leaves it in belongs to a young boy, a Black boy, who’s in the middle of what looks like an experiment. He picks the thing up, opens it up, and damn if it ain’t the TVA’s handbook.

Bro, I swear I did not see that coming. I didn’t. In film and television there’s a thing called Chekhov’s gun, which is that if you show a gun in a movie, then by the end of it that gun better go off. We’ve had two episodes where the manual has been a major part of the plot, so why wouldn’t that particular gun go off? That’s where we are now. So, you know, hey, go off.

Victor Timely and the Chicago World’s Fair

Twenty-five years later they get a hit on the TemPad, and this is when Loki and Mobius show up. They’re searching for Renslayer. First they showed up in 1868, but she wasn’t there, so they fast forwarded to 1893, and there’s the Chicago World’s Fair, where you see all kinds of inventions and stuff.

This is where we get the scene that was at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the scene where we meet Victor Timely. Well, now you get the whole of it. You get everything building up to that moment, and then beyond it.

Victor Timely is literally an inventor back in the day. He’s got the TVA handbook that’s been inspiring him, and his presentation is a Temporal Loom. It’s a tiny version of what will eventually become the big giant one, the one that, according to Ouroboros, is still going to break if they don’t figure it out. The temporal aura they need in order to operate the Loom and get in to fix it is He Who Remains’. Barring that, they can get Miss Minutes. So their whole plan is to track down Renslayer in order to get Miss Minutes and force her to help them.

I don’t know if y’all realize, but I don’t think they’re going to be forcing anybody to do anything.

By the way, the entire episode feels like this entire era. The music they’re playing, the whole nine yards. It’s very Westworld, this whole thing.

He’s selling everybody on power, on the ability to generate power, and he puts himself up there with Edison. Then there’s a guy who wants to offer him money for it, and he’s like, it’s a prototype, it’s a prototype.

“Step aside, hornswoggler. I was here first.”

“$1,000. That’s my final offer.”

“I believe we have a deal.”

A brilliant con man. Victor Timely’s a con man, which I found very interesting. His whole deal is he uses his genius to get money so he can keep building and inventing things. He rips this one guy off for a thousand bucks, which back in the 1800s is a lot of money, probably the equivalent of almost 100,000 today. And he has another lab across the river.

The Ferris Wheel and Sylvie

So there’s some running around. Loki and them track him down, and at one point they’re literally wrestling over who’s going to take him with them, whether it’s going to be Ravonna or Mobius and them. He faces down these people, and they go into this giant Ferris wheel that has whole rooms of people in it. It isn’t a little teeny tiny car. It’s a whole thing you get into, and it goes around.

While they’re there, Sylvie shows up. Oh yeah. And Sylvie’s none too happy. She’s pissed. Sylvie’s done with him. She’s like, I’m going to kill him, and she’s hardcore about it. Loki has to fight her, and she’s like, well, this looks familiar.

He’s starting to convince her, because he’s telling her that if the Loom breaks, everyone’s out of time, and they can’t exactly let that happen. At one point they both go to blast each other, and they blast each other out of the cart.

Miss Minutes Goes Basic Instinct

Eventually Renslayer manages to get away with Victor. They get onto a ferry to head over the river and up to his actual lab. She makes a statement about it being a partnership. Earlier, the guy who wanted to pay him for his prototype offered it as a partnership, and he said he doesn’t do partners. Miss Minutes is watching off to the side. Next thing you know, they dump her outside. They literally dump Renslayer off the ferry in a little dinghy, and she’s got to paddle her way across to get to him.

They get there, and this is when Miss Minutes goes all Basic Instinct, Single White Female, all that stuff. I mean, she goes nuts.

Tara Strong reprises her role as Miss Minutes, and by the way, Tara Strong: beautiful, excellent voice work. Stupid good. I’m drawn in every single time.

She’s apparently like, why didn’t you ever create me a body? You never once used your genius, in all those eons and eons. And I’m like, oh God. Every man knows that conversation. It’s the whole “why haven’t you done this thing, what’s going on,” and the whole time you’re sitting there going, um, okay, and how do I get out of here? He’s no different. It’s just shy of saying she wants to be his girlfriend, which kind of gave me those Young Frankenstein vibes. “Say it. He was my boyfriend!”

So he manages to grab the TemPad and get her sucked into it.

Don’t Make Me Regret This

It’s a fun ride, man. At the very end of this thing, Renslayer’s got a prototype of the wand that makes them go away. It’s massive. It’s a big giant thing, almost like a Gatling gun, and she’s holding it on Victor and telling them both off, both being Loki and Mobius.

That’s when Sylvie shows up and knocks them all down. They get up, and she says, “Don’t make me regret this.” Sure enough, they leave with Victor Timely and head back to the TVA. That’s apparently going to continue next week.

Then she faces down Renslayer, and I’m telling you, it’s rough, bro. You don’t know where that’s going to leave off, and I really want to see where they take us.

The Jonathan Majors of It All

Good story building again. I liked all the characters. I thought Jonathan Majors was doing a really nice affected version.

They keep saying he’s a variant of He Who Remains. I don’t know if that’s the case, because Miss Minutes also keeps implying that she knows how to turn him into that eventual guy. I don’t know all the ins and outs of how they’re doing this particular version of Kang. According to some leaks online, I think he’s actually supposed to become He Who Remains, not just be a variant. But that could be wrong. They’ve been changing and tweaking some things.

Either way, this feels really good. I like where they’re going with the show.

The Verdict

Loki Season 2 Episode 3 is a straight 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I’m going to back off a little bit on this one. I was really excited last week because it felt like a better episode. I think this one’s good. I think it’s very good. I think they’re laying down some good groundwork. Nothing crazy that blew me away, but the episode was really good nonetheless, so check it out for yourself.

Obviously Marvel’s got a lot of pieces to pick up, especially after all the nonsense they’ve been putting out. I had a conversation with Mrs. Know-It-All today. It had to do with Star Wars, but it feels relevant to this. I feel like the issue everybody’s running into over at Disney is they’ve given us so much by way of spectacle for so long that now we’re expecting it. So when the shows don’t match up with the level of spectacle we believe they deserve, we get judgy and we get upset.

I like where this show is going. This is the first thing they’ve done in a long time, other than WandaVision and the first season of Loki, that feels like it’s in line with the MCU we’ve known. It’s nothing new, but it is new. So I don’t know. We’ll see.

Your turn. Tell me what you think of “1893,” and let’s start speculating and do some theory crafting: is Victor Timely a variant of He Who Remains, or the man who becomes him? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.