It’s time for the penultimate episode of Loki. Now, for those of you playing at home who follow along with this channel, you know that for us, penultimate episodes are extraordinarily important. They’re supposed to do a certain thing, and that’s get us excited. Either the climax of the season happens here and we go downhill during the last episode, sort of recovering from that, or it sets it all up.

This episode was the latter. This is Loki Season 2, Episode 5, the penultimate episode, titled “Science Fiction.”

Wow.

The Filler Rumor

I’d heard many rumors from people online saying this was going to be a filler episode. It was going to be this, it was going to be that, we were going to get all this other stuff. None of what you’ve heard online is true. Kind of. From a certain point of view.

This episode is very important. Was it purposefully paced, which is to say essentially slow? Yes. Don’t hold that against it. I don’t consider this a filler episode, because everything that happened in it was vital.

Funny enough, the one thing I feel like the Loki show is doing very well is that it’s doing more in six episodes than most of the MCU has done since season 1 of this show. By that I mean it’s actually laying groundwork. It’s telling us something interesting. This show has something to say, and I find that fascinating. Hopefully you will too.

Right Back at the Explosion

The episode picks us up right where we left off. The only difference is that this time Loki isn’t dispersed everywhere, like it seemed was going to happen. We end up at the exact point of the explosion, but reversed, and we don’t know what’s going on.

He’s at the TVA and nobody else is there. He’s started time slipping again, but there’s not that far in time to slip into. He moves into the future at the TVA and sees himself standing at a desk. He comes back to the past, winds up walking around, and now he’s the one at the desk, hearing himself. So again, there’s not a whole lot of room to go.

Then he finds himself starting to jump through time, and each of the places he goes is a branch timeline.

The Branches Are Dying

That matters because the branches are dying. The same thing that happened to Victor Timely, turning into spaghetti and all that, is happening everywhere. The TVA is in some sort of special safety mode, or whatever else. Maybe it’s supposed to let everybody jump ship or something. But ultimately the thing itself is breaking down.

So Loki finds himself going to each of these places. He goes to the one where Eugene Cordero’s character is, and he’s in prison. He ends up at the doctor’s office where Hunter B-15 actually works in her real life. He goes to the place where Mobius works, where Mobius sells jet skis, which we saw from the trailer and all that. At the end of the day I was like, okay, I’m with you.

And then he goes to where Ouroboros is.

Fiction Has Different Rules

Ouroboros is a physicist who writes science fiction but can’t get published. And Ouroboros is the one who’s open to it. He’s the one who helps Loki understand that maybe you have to treat this as fiction, because the rules are different.

“Doesn’t sound like science.”

“No, but it does sound like fiction.”

You need to learn how to control your time slipping. That’s what he tells him, and he makes Loki understand that his time slipping is the key.

Sylvie Remembers

So Loki goes to try to find Sylvie, and Sylvie remembers him.

“I know you don’t know who I am.”

“Of course I know who you are.”

Sylvie’s read is that what happened was what she always wanted. She was very happy and content, even though things at her very fingertips were disappearing. She walks out with a little drink, and as she notices Loki, the thing disappears. Stuff is fading out. They have this heart-to-heart moment at the bar, and it’s interesting.

Then she’s at her record store, chilling out, listening to a record, and her branch timeline starts to disintegrate. She manages to get a doorway open and goes to where Loki is, and we see it all fall apart. As it’s falling apart, Sylvie disintegrates. Everybody’s going away. Loki’s trying to fight it.

Next thing you know, he finds himself back at that exact moment. He tells her, I think I figured it out. He finds himself back even further. He’s finally realized it, and he looks at Ouroboros and says you were right, I figured out how to control it.

“You learned to control your time slipping?”

“Yes.”

And that’s where the episode ends. It ends with him going, I know I can rewrite this. He appears back at the moment when they were all actually at the TVA, before all the stuff was going to go down, and he realizes that with his new ability, he’s going to be the one who has to go out and do the thing.

Where I Think the Finale Goes

My prediction is they’re going to do the thing. They’re going to fight. Everyone keeps saying he’s going to become He Who Remains, or this and that. I believe we’re going to get He Who Remains back, or we’re going to get Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains, because Loki goes back far enough to ask him about it and tell him about it.

Loki is going to play a much more pivotal role in all of this. And I still hold and maintain that by the end of this, he’s either going to be the God of Stories or he’s going to be on his way to becoming the God of Stories.

The Verdict

Loki Season 2 Episode 5, “Science Fiction,” gets an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I’m not even going to play around. I’m not even going to hide it. I firmly appreciate this episode, and it gets an eight from me. That’s right, 8.0 out of 10.

I’m a firm believer this episode was actually very pivotal to everything. Integral, if you will. A lot of folks are going to think it’s slow. I guarantee you people are going to be complaining: this was slow, this was this, this was that. You do not understand storytelling. Trust me, you needed this episode. We understand the stakes. We understand what’s at stake. And I understand more about the state of the Multiverse and the MCU now than all these other shows have told us.

Thank you, as always, to everybody who chooses to subscribe and be a part of Know-It-All Nation. I love each and every one of you, and I can’t wait to talk about this next week.

What do you think is going down, and how do you think the last episode is going to go? I’d love to hear your predictions. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.