The 'Loki' Season 2 Finale, "Glorious Purpose", Is Glorious

It’s very easy to talk about all the ways Marvel is screwing up these days. I would go so far as to say some are anxious to write the studio’s epitaph, eager to see Icarus plummet to the Earth. And the studio is certainly not above criticism, especially as it took an already busy schedule (three blockbusters per year is quite a lot!) and then threw TV shows on top of it. You also can’t look at stuff like Thor: Love and Thunder or and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and think the studio is doing its best work. So I’m not surprised that reaction to The Marvels is a bit hard on the movie even though (as I said in my review), it’s a lightweight trifle that easily sits alongside other flawed-yet-enjoyable Marvel movies.

But when Marvel does something right, I feel like that’s worth as much attention as when they go wrong. My initial reaction to the Season 2 finale of Loki is that Marvel did something very, very right.

[Spoilers ahead for Loki: Season 2]

I fully admit that Season 2 of Loki had trouble following up the highs of Season 1. The first season, in addition to its magnificent aesthetic and unique setting, successfully made the argument that in order to turn around this “variant” of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who we thought we knew, they needed to not only go back to when we saw him in The Avengers (as opposed to his demise in Avengers: Infinity War), but then show how someone who was violent, traitorous, and aggrieved, could be heroic while not betraying what we already knew about him. Rather than Loki just saving a bunch of people from a burning building and calling him a hero, the Disney+ appeared determine to make the character understand himself, what he wanted, and push him towards a new conclusion.

The second season retained a lot that worked from season one (Tom Hiddleston isn’t going to stop being amazing as Loki, and the aesthetic is still terrific), but it also tried to manage a plot that at times felt distracted or simply spinning its wheels. Loki was the focal point of Season 1, but by trying to make the show more of an ensemble piece, it not only lost some of the strength of Hiddleston’s magnetic lead performance, but it also seemed uncertain of its own direction. Does it really matter that Miss Minutes, a cartoon clock, is in love with He Who Remains? Sure, it’s weird and fun, but it’s also pretty random and lacks a worthwhile payoff. Did we need to spend a bunch of time tracking down Brad (Rafael Casal)? Casal is an enjoyable performer, but his character was fairly meaningless to the larger story as was the notion of rogue TVA hunters.

And yet I couldn’t give up on the show because I was such a fan of the character and this particular world. I’m glad I stuck with it.

Loki’s Purpose Meets His Nature

In The Avengers, a dying Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) tells Loki he’s bound to lose. When Loki asks why, Coulson replies, “It’s in your nature.” And as a villain in a superhero story, loss is the only outcome even though Loki believes he’s “burdened with glorious purpose.” A hurt child in his brother’s shadow, the Loki we’ve known is one looking for a throne like a shiny bauble. He has no interest in ruling or responsibility; he just wants the power and the prestige that comes with being a king.

The season 2 finale of Loki, “Glorious Purpose,” turned that expectation on its head by having Loki both triumph and lose. The “how” of it all was largely unimportant (a bunch of technobabble involving a time loom, pruned branches, multipliers, etc). What was important was forcing Loki into a position where he would have to make a real sacrifice that also advanced his character. To do this, they had to walk Loki through some important checkpoints.

In the previous episode, “Science/Fiction,” Loki comes to the conclusion that he loves other people, not just Sylvie (who as a Loki variant, is kind of like loving himself, which does fit for this character). He finds that it’s not enough to be able to control space and time or rebuild the TVA. He needs his friends back. We can argue over how well the film cements the friendships beyond Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and Mobius (Owen Wilson), but the show at least argues that Loki cares for others both in the abstract (trying to save all time from collapsing) and specifically people he knows. It’s a big change from a guy who, in a different timeline, was still comfortable screwing over his own brother.

That change then gets us to the finale where Loki, now in control of his time-shifting, first tries to find a technical solution to the branching timeline problem by altering the loom. When that fails, he tries to go back to He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) to see if he can’t stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains and triggering the collapse. He can’t, which means that in order to protect He Who Remains, Loki would have to skill Sylvie. In both instances, this is Loki trying to get the problem off his plate. If the loom fixes the timelines, then the problem is solved. If He Who Remains survives, then it’s not ideal, but at least it’s better than the alternative.

So it’s immensely rewarding when Loki realizes that his throne does await him, but it’s not what he thought it would be. Loki understands that if he’s going to both save the timelines and avoid killing Sylvie, then he has to sacrifice his ambition. He has to be the one literally holding all the timelines together. From a larger MCU perspective, this is marginally useful because it keeps the multiverse in play, but it’s also one where He Who Remains (a variant of the big bad, Kang) is no longer in charge, so that death still has important repercussions.

The MCU element is nice, but the conclusion for Loki is why the episode shines. Part of the reason why Marvel stuff can be overwhelming is that it needs to retain a status quo. Heroes need to remain heroic, the world has to be saved, and if you conclude a character’s story, that means you’re in a tough situation when it comes to bringing them back. One of the reasons people like Endgame is that there is a sense of finality to it in that Tony Stark dies and Captain America gives up his shield. These two characters came to the end of their narrative, and endings are what give us catharsis.

The ending for Loki (or at least where we’re leaving him for the foreseeable future) is perfect because he does lose. He has to lose his friends and his hopes because he understands that to rule means sacrifice. Do I wish he had learned this organically over the course of the season rather than Mobius spelling it out for him? Sure, but I also feel like everything else we’ve seen reasonably gets Loki to the place where he goes from believing it’s his right to rule, to not wanting to rule at all, to accepting his rule as a burden for the good of others, not for himself. Loki always had godhood, but now it means more than mischief.