Loki season 2 ending explained: Was this Tom Hiddleston’s final appearance in the MCU?

Loki season 2 finale spoilers follow.

Hands up if you got emotional watching the Loki season-two finale.

If your hand even paused to consider on the way up then you’re as callous as Loki was when we first met him on the sacred timeline.

Back then the God of Mischief was hellbent on living up to his name in truest of fashions when he manipulated Thor (Chris Hemsworth) into starting a war with the Frost Giants so he could claim the throne.

The wayward deity sure has come a long way. Even longer, dare we say, than the Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who sacrificed his life to protect the universe (and his brother) from Thanos.

Now this Loki is charged with an even greater task. He’s not just got the burden of half the living creatures in the universe on his shoulder (a burden the previous Loki shared with the Avengers) he has the burden of the entire multiverse resting on him.

There was zero doubt the season would end without him saving the flow of time, and that didn’t come without sacrifice. But whose?

Here’s how Loki brought its timey-wimey season two to an end.

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Loki season 2 ending explained

The penultimate episode ended with Loki realising that he could control his time-slipping, which is a nifty power.

Having fixed the loom only to discover it would never be enough to contain the new strands of time, Loki had an epiphany. He realised what he needed to do was to go even further back in time and stop Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) from killing He Who Remains so that the sacred timeline and the TVA would always remain intact. That did, however, mean all other branches (and the lives on them) would continue to be pruned.

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He returned to the point in time where Sylvie was about to kill He Who Remains at the end of time and attempted to reason with her, but she’s also a Loki, which equates to being stubborn and determined, so she didn’t relent.

“If you want me to stop you’ll have to kill me,” she told him over and over again as they – for a time – became stuck in a loop of fights throughout which Loki could not bring himself to kill her.

Eventually, He Who Remains froze Sylvie and sent her away temporarily so that he could have Loki’s undivided attention when he revealed that not only did he know about Loki’s time-slipping, he paved the way for this to happen too.

“Did you really think I was just going to sit back and let her kill me?” He told Loki.

Of course not, because this master manipulator has been puppeteering Loki from the start.

He Who Remains then decided that Loki needed more time to digest all that he has just found out, and so he brought Sylvie back and encouraged Loki to go through the loop a “couple hundred” more times and then come back when he was ready to talk.

Loki is no amateur though, and simply froze Sylvie again.

He, in fact, had been through this loop one too many times before, had had this conversation with He Who Remains and in that time had learnt how to pause time.

You can’t not be impressed.

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What it all boiled down to in the end was this: the Temporal Loom is a failsafe which will delete all timelines that aren’t supposed to be there, except the sacred timeline.

Loki could either break the loom and cause a multiversal war (thanks to all He Who Remains’ variants, which are already out there). However this, according to He Who Remains, would lead to the destruction of everything, even the sacred timeline.

Or Loki could kill Sylvie and save the sacred timeline, though all other timelines would be lost.

It’s not an appealing choice either way and so Loki vowed to find another solution outside of the ones He Who Remains offered up.

First, he paid a visit to Mobius (Owen Wilson), travelling back in time to the first time they met (because even Loki needs some emotional support sometimes).

During possibly this season’s warmest, most endearing Mobius and Loki moment (a Moki moment, if you will) the two had a heart to heart in which Loki asked, “How do you choose who lives and who dies?”

By this he was referring to all the pruning the TVA, and by extension Mobius, had done.

Mobius then told a story of sacrifice involving Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and how she was forced to do what was necessary to protect the greater good, which is the lesson Loki took away from their talk.

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It was a strain for Loki, who then asked how someone can live with that kind of a choice, to which Mobius answered:

“There is no comfort, you just choose your burden.”

After this tear-jerking talk, Loki time-hopped back to the moment everything began to fall apart, when all of the timelines began to disappear, to when it was just him and Sylvie.

It wasn’t long before she deduced that he must kill her in order to save the sacred timeline and in a typical scornful, Sylvie way she scoffed and said that she would not give him her blessing.

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She refused to believe that her death was the only way and that the sacred timeline was the only one that mattered, especially if that meant taking away people’s free will to choose what kind of an outcome they would want for themselves.

“It’s not enough to protect the sacred timeline,” she told Loki, before adding, “who are you to say we can’t die trying? Who are you to say we can’t die fighting?”

Stop it with all these strong, emotional beats.

Loki came to the realisation then, that destroying something (ie the temporal loom, the TVA) is okay “if there’s a hope you can replace that thing with something better.”

And so he went to replace the loom with something exceptionally better.

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How does Loki fix the temporal loom in season 2?

In perhaps the most heartfelt moment across all of Loki’s MCU arc (even his crushing moral death in Avengers Infinity Wars) Loki made the ultimate sacrifice.

He travelled back to moments before Victor Timely walked along that gangway towards the overloading temporal loom and took his place.

This time he needed no suit of armour, no protective gear. Just himself.

“I know what I want, I know what kind of god I need to be you, for you, for all of us,” he told Sylvie, Mobius and the rest before locking the doors behind him so that he couldn’t be followed.

He then walked down the gangway of doom towards the temporal loom.

As he did, the temporal radiation began to strip away at his clothes until he was striding forward in his Asgardian finery complete with the Horned Helmet.

This was a significant moment given that he wore this helmet during his days of royalty and that the horns are a symbol for the powerful sorcery he wields. It’s a moment that foreshadows the end.

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Loki finally reached the Temporal Loom, outstretched his hands and let out a guttural scream using his powers to destroy it all.

Dying branches began to freeflow all around him.

Taking hold of them, one by one, Loki began to imbue them with magic, reviving them. He continued to do so, collecting them as the others watched from the TVA and when Mobius asked what he was doing Sylvie solemnly but in awe replied:

“He’s giving us a chance.”

Loki then slipped through a rip in time which closed after him and ended up at the end of time.

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In his hands he was dragging a multitude of branches, all glowing Loki-green.

Finally he reached He Who Remains’ gold throne, yet ironically He Who Remains was nowhere to be seen.

In his absence Loki sat down, bearing the weight of all the branches in his hands. He pulled them together and when they touched, they wove into a glorious tree, with Loki sat in the middle holding them, but simultaneously a part of them.

Gareth Gatrell//Disney+

What happened to all of He Who Remains’ variants in Loki season 2?

In a segment simply titled ‘After,’ the TVA was up and running like clockwork.

Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) was back to being her formerly cordial and helpful self (though no one seems quite sure whether or not she would flip again and decide to kill them all).

Mobius gave a report to B-15 (Wumni Mosaku) about one of He Who Remains variants but during the conversation it was made clear that none of the variants knew that the TVA exists.

This implies that each version may not even be aware of the other, meaning the avoidance of another multiversal war.

It’s only a theory but it is one supported by the fact that we saw the younger version of Victor Timely on his timeline.

Despite OB creating new TVA handbooks, little kid Timely never received one.

Who knows though? Renslayer was also seen at the end, discarded and left at The Void. The menacing look in her eyes didn’t suggest she was done with her crusade for power. She could begrudgingly seek to form an alliance with He Who Remains again.

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What happens to Loki and the end of season 2?

Mobius decided that it was time to leave the TVA and find out what it is that they strove so hard to protect. He had a touching goodbye with B-15 who reassured him that there would always be a place for him at the TVA.

Naturally Mobius returned to his former life on the timeline to spy on his other self enjoying a mundane afternoon with his sons. His longing and ache for a life he was ejected from was apparent.

Sylvie popped up and she sympathised with him before commenting on how weird things are without Loki.

After that moment had passed, she decided to leave through a time door but before she could disappear Mobius asked her where she was heading to.

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She shrugged and asked the same, to which Mobius replied:

“I might just wait here for a little bit, let time pass.”

His words travelled along a branch echoing and echoing until they reached Loki, sitting on a throne that befits him more than all the others he has converted in the past.

He smiles a little, suggesting that he sees and hears of all their lives ticking on, that he will always be a part of them.

Marvel Studios//Disney+

Was Loki season 2 Tom Hiddleston’s last appearance in the MCU?

Tom Hiddleston has not confirmed whether this will be his last appearance in the MCU.

However while we do LOVE the God of Mischief (who quite frankly should be rebranded as the God of Time – or something more spectacular after that performance) it would be a shame to ruin such a beautiful end to his story arc by bringing him back.

It would be like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) or Chris’ Evans Captain America returning. Know when to hang up the horned helmet.

The montage of his time across the MCU at the beginning does suggest that the creators did indeed intend for this to be Hiddleston’s final outing as Loki. It had an air of finality to it.

That said, Loki’s sacrifice does mean there are multiple Lokis running around on the timeline. Who’s to say one of them couldn’t pop up in the MCU later on down the road? Let’s just hope Marvel sticks to their guns with this incredible, iconic end.

Loki season 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Disney Plus.

TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since.  For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing.  She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.