Loki Season 2 Detail Points To Major Marvel Sacrifice In Finale

A small but harrowing detail in "Loki" Season 2, Episode 5, has some fans fearing the worst for the titular Asgardian god played by Tom Hiddleston. The episode finds Loki slipping through time and attempting to reunite with Mobius (Owen Wilson), B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), Casey (Eugene Cordero), and, of course, Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). When he finally finds a version of Ouroboros who's a science fiction author and professor at the California Institute of Technology, they work together to form a plan.

This A.D. Doug variant of Ouroboros keeps a board full of sticky notes that appear to chart his novel outlines. Those who looked closely will notice that one of those notes says, "Sacrifice. Something must be given up." Whatever that might be hinting at, it can't be good.

While it's understandable that this detail would alarm fans, there is a more, shall we say, esoteric explanation for it. Doug, a novelist, tells the titular Asgardian that his time-slipping isn't a science problem — it's a fiction problem. As such, his proposed solutions are derived from the tropes of storytelling. But if we examine those tropes, it looks like the sacrifice in question may already have taken place. While it's possible that something even worse awaits Loki and his friends in the finale, parts of Episode 5 already fulfilled that arc.

When we're talking about a storytelling formula — be it Joseph Campbell's monomyth or the famous screenwriting guide "Save the Cat!" — there is always a point at which our hero reaches a nadir when the situation gets impossibly dire. This beat is necessary so that their subsequent redemption feels even more monumental. The hero usually begins to break out of that low point when they make a sacrifice, giving up something they hold dear in order to acquire what they really need.

From that perspective, Loki's sacrifice already took place in Episode 5 when he came to terms with his self-motivation for trying to save the TVA. After admitting to Sylvie that his real motivation was missing his friends, he returned, dejected, to Ouroboros' workshop. His sacrifice was an emotional one, and it was at that moment the timelines began to collapse and he learned to control his time-slipping superpower.

In conventional storytelling structures, what usually follows a hero's sacrifice is a reconciliation and an embrace of their newfound power. We see Loki do both when he apologizes to the group for his selfishness and then learns to control his time-slipping. The next step of the journey is when the hero returns to face the challenge that they previously failed, and accordingly, the final shot of Episode 5 shows Loki returning to the TVA at the moment he and his friends previously failed to fix the Temporal Loom.

That said, there's worse to come for the god of mischief. Rumor has it that the Season 2 "Loki" finale sets up Kang as the true terror he's meant to be. It appears that Loki is about to face his greatest challenge yet.