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T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N T H E S U N
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Again, hear me out: Qiqi
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Wow. This is the final episode. Only six.
Happy birthday!
good resolution
I think it's time to ask
the "best casting decision" people have always argued is Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man
but ... Tom Hiddleston acted his heart out as Loki, it really seems like he loves the character.
Go ahead?
Yeah, I got that much. But why
I guess "God of Stories" is a new comics thing, but last episode was called Science/Fiction for a reason. Fiction is a story, and last episode Loki learned to master his own story by timeslipping into points along his own timeline.
Number one: I fucking knew it.
Number two: I feel like everybody should know the name Natalie Holt because she's the composer for the Loki series and holy fucking shit. This is some John Williams grade good shit here. Her music is doing as much heavy lifting here as any of the MCU heroes could manage, particularly that fucking amazing reworked finale Loki theme. The MCU should have her just score everything from now on because damn. Seriously, Disney, just make her the main MCU composer already.
Number three: seeing the direction Loki has gone from his petulant, greedy days of the first Thor film has been pretty awesome.
Also, I feel like it would be pretty awesome now for Loki to speak with Odin. Odin always treated his sons with love even as he knew Loki was a struggle, but now? Oh, Thor killed a Thanos and saved a universe? Loki saved all of them by making Yggdrasil. I feel like Odin would tell Thor "great job", and then go over to Loki and go "holy fucking shit, I can't even wrap my mind around how amazing this one is".
Very interesting to see where things ended up at. In particular, the mainline MCU films
Oh, and Ke Huy Quan in this series was excellent. More shows need this guy, he's invariably great and I love his delivery of everything.
So he rips the Loom apart, which causes it to try and kill the timelines. But Loki can now fuck with time so he starts juicing all the existing timelines and collecting them into the Yggdrasil. So there's still a near-fractal multiverse, but seemingly infinite is not infinite.
Now there is a limited number of timelines doing their own thing and thus a limited number of Kangs that can exist, as opposed to the prior situation where existence was a non-convergent series that inevitably resulted in endless waves of destruction through the multiverse until He Who Remains brought the hammer down and forced everything into the Sacred Timeline. It's a middleground, where the multiverse is still complex but also stable. No pruning has to happen, people still have free will, but reality just seems less inclined to spin off a new reality from every possible outcome.
If the visuals are any indicator, each of the "vines" is a collection of adjacent realities heading in a common direction instead of splitting apart. Loki collects and invigorates them into Yggdrasil, which is a collection of intertwining close realities that are each their own "Sacred Timeline" but without the fractal infinity problem. Loki scaled the problem back to something that could be handled.
This was my take as well.
Loki "solved" the Kang paradox by culling infinity to a limited number of timelines. He uses the Loom explosion to kill everything except the Sacred Timeline and then uses his godly powers to keep as many as possible of them alive afterwards. He then recreates the TVA but dedicates them to stopping every Kang in the remaining timelines. It's a pretty utilitarian solution, all things considered. Basically he chooses to kill Hitler, except with multiversal stakes.
I do think they could've done a better job of explaining the ending, but keeping it metaphorical wasn't a bad way to go.
Behold Loki, God of Chairs.
One caveat
Loki destroys the Loom himself, which I assume weakens what it does since the original all-destroying time wave doesn't happen this time and instead all the existing realities start dying but still exist (plus the TVA still exists). This is where Loki can make his change by grabbing up all existing timelines and sustaining them.
So it's not Loki culling what he has to, it's him saving everything that can be saved. He Who Remains tried to destroy everything outside the Sacred Timeline, Loki has now prevented that and broken the multiverse out of the Kang paradox.
Cosplay indeed
He never really wanted to rule, he just wanted to not be alone or fear being alone. He always knew he didn't belong in the family he was raised in, but he knew he was meant for something more.
Seeing Odin on the throne his whole life for hundreds of years, what else would he imagine that "glorious purpose" would be, other than to rule? And to know the whole time that throne was meant for someone else.
And to never be the golden child, to not have feasts thrown for him, to not be sent out for grand missions to save the realm. Just behind to learn magic from his mother.
He was loved but he wasn't able to see it or accept it because no matter how much Odin, Frigga, Thor loved him, he had no real purpose there, but he knew he had one.
It took literally losing everything to have the clarity to figure it out. And by everything I mean it, to be told that not only are "you" meant to die, you aren't even you, and you don't even get that glory. You shouldn't exist, and for a moment the only place he existed was outside of all space and time. He was nothing to the universe.
But that allowed him to step outside of the noise of his existence and find himself, and have the chance to find for himself where he actually fit. He found people who cared about him, not because he was family, but because he earned their care, and cared back.
And in the end, his throne isn't one of power, it's one of service. All of time needed protected from the absolute dictatorship of He Who Remains, and he could provide that protection, without taking away from the limitless possibilities of time, as He Who Remains did.
He Who Remains removed himself from the timeline, stood outside time and controlled it all, alone. Loki put himself in the middle of all time, not to rule it but to make sure it had a chance to live.
His choice here was a complete and utter rejection of where he started in the MCU, trying to get people to bow before him because he believed they wanted to be ruled. He now understood that no one should bow before someone who wants to rule, and everyone should be free to at least try to have their own freedom.
The imagery of the branches of time forming his cloak was awesome.
I could go on and on.
I can't imagine a better ending than this. As others have said, it retroactively made Season 1 better, and I already loved Season 1. But it justified the "talky" finale of S1, and more.
This might be the best thing in the MCU. Amazing music. Amazing acting. Amazing visuals. Amazing production and design and art and everything about it. Nothing was lazy, nothing was minor. Every little piece of junk on every set made everything authentic, visually.
It's almost a shame fewer people will ever see this than the average MCU stuff. This finale deserved to be in theaters. Everyone involved here deserves to sit up at the top of the MCU throne with the "big hitters" like RDJ, the Russo's, etc. This is proof positive that the problem with the MCU isn't fatigue, it's problems with production.
I'm sure I'll have more to say, but just A+++ stuff here. If I have one single complaint it is that maybe Hiddleston could have not done the hair flippy thing quite so often.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
so for based on this finale
Not entirely sure I fully understood everything and all the implications, even after reading everything here, but overall this was just glorious.
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PSN: AbEntropy
Also Mobius's line, "Purpose is usually more burden than glory" was a hard hitter. Very much fits in with the themes of sacrificing oneself for others that the MCU is based around.
Also also the Spongebob-esque "Centuries later..." slide 😄