“This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I finally watched it, and now it’s time to talk about it. The finale of Loki season 2 dropped last week. Marvel has been going through a bit of a rough spell lately. Their content isn’t getting as many viewers as it once did. Their newest film, The Marvels, a Captain Marvel sequel, came out last week and scored the worst box office opening of any Marvel movie to date. More and more people are talking about superhero fatigue after 15 years. Loki season 2 proved to me they’ve still got what it takes. Let’s talk about what made this story so good.

The first answer to that question is Tom Hiddleston. He has been Loki now for twelve years, first appearing as Thor’s trickster brother and the main villain of the first Thor movie in 2011. Since then, he has appeared in five more films and two seasons of his own series. Along the way, he has become perhaps the single most well-developed character in the entirety of the MCU. His story arc has been the longest, and the changes his character has gone through are more significant than anyone else, even Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark. And Hiddleston has been outstanding every step of the way.

When Loki first appeared as the villain in Thor 1, he was seeking to take over Earth as its new ruler. He was driven by a deep-seated jealousy of his adopted brother, Thor, and a wildly overinflated sense of self. He announced that he was burdened with “glorious purpose,” and thus was meant to rule others. From his perch as a small-g god, he looked down on humans as little more than mindless drones waiting for someone to shepherd them toward fulfilling their real potential as his willing slaves.

Over the course of the next ten years, Loki experienced some real growth. As much as he hated his brother because of his jealousy of the affection showed to him by their father, Odin, he loved him as well. They were family. This was helped by Thor’s unrelenting loyalty to him and desire for them to be close in spite of his many transgressions. To perhaps put that another way, Thor’s patient love and abundant grace slowly softened and then warmed his heart.

After his thorough defeat and capture in The Avengers, in the second and even more in the third Thor films, the two started working together. By the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, Loki actively interceded to save his brother’s life from the evil Thanos, sacrificing his own in the process.

That seemed to be the end of Loki’s story, but the character was popular enough that Marvel wrote him a whole new chapter in the Loki series. When the Avengers were traveling through time to collect the Infinity Stones, their stop at the end of the first Avengers movie resulted in the space stone’s being dropped at the defeated and captured Loki’s feet. He quickly used it to transport himself somewhere else to escape. This act created what we came to know as a variant from the Sacred Timeline. This prompted the Time Variance Authority (TVA) to appear out of nowhere and take him into custody as an illegal variant. If you want to know what all of that means, go watch the first season of the series.

What Loki went on to discover over that season was the secret behind all of reality. Everything we know of as reality is being overseen by a version of Kang (the Ant-Man 3 villain) known as He Who Remains. Long ago…or perhaps a long time from now…most of the Loki series happens outside of space and time somewhere (somewhen?) that never actually gets explained…He Who Remains won a multiversal war against all the other Kang variants.

He went on to create the TVA to preserve and protect the timeline on which he won. This keeps him in power to avoid another multiversal war that could destroy all of reality, but also removes all free will from people. Any decision we might make that deviates from the Sacred Timeline creates an alternate reality that the TVA shows up quickly to eliminate. And by “eliminate,” I mean erase it from all existence, thus ending the lives of that entire new universe’s worth of people. Evil, right? Yes, but he’s saving all of his reality from an even worse fate, so he feels justified in doing it. There’s no hatred or passion here, and in fact He Who Remains is a jovial, funny character, but rather a grim determination to make the hard choices that save lives.

Loki season 1 ends with Sylvie, a female variant of Loki, killing He Who Remains to give free will back to the multiverse. Season 2 opens with what happens next. Without the TVA’s actively pruning branches of the Sacred Timeline, the multiverse starts to spin out of control. Worse yet, the Time Loom that weaves all the raw strands of time into one coherent reality can’t handle the overload, and is threatening to break apart, destroying everything in the process. And, I know that sounds like some crazy, science fiction silliness to just write it out, but in the context of the series it really does all make sense thanks to some stellar acting by a great cast.

The bulk of the season is about how Loki and his friends race against the clock as well as a couple of villains (a rogue TVA agent, and Miss Minutes, a rogue AI that takes the form of an animated clock, both of whom are in love with He Who Remains and his variants) who are the one poorly developed part of the series, to prevent the spaghettifiction (watch the series and that word will make sense) of all reality.

In the final episode, appropriately titled “Glorious Purpose,” Loki finds himself back in He Who Remains’ throne room where the latter reveals that he always knew things were going to go this way. He knew Sylvie was going to kill him, and that the Time Loom would fail, and that Loki would start slipping through time and wind up right back where the adventure began. He presents Loki with a choice: let everything spiral out of control, or work with him to preserve the Sacred Timeline. The first option means losing everything and everyone he has come to hold dear. The second means killing Sylvie, whom he has come to genuinely love, to prevent her from killing He Who Remains, keeping everyone locked in the deterministic world over which He Who Remains has long been presiding. In other words, it means putting back in place the thing he worked throughout the entire first season to stop.

Because of his gaining control over his time slipping as well as the flow of time itself, Loki has at this point spent centuries trying to find a way to prevent the destruction of the Time Loom, and has come to finally realize that there is no way to prevent it. The binary choice of He Who Remains seems like the only possible option. He won’t kill Sylvie, but he doesn’t want He Who Remains to stay in charge of all reality.

In a moment of inspiration after having meaningful conversations with Mobius and Sylvie, he realizes what kind of a god he needs to be. That’s the key moment. He realizes what kind of a god he needs to be. He goes back to the room in the waning moments before the Time Loom explodes and calmly walks out to where the Loom is. Because of his mastery over time, the temporal radiation that had been destroying another character every time he tried to fix the problem had no effect on him. Using his powers, he destroys the Time Loom itself. Immediately, all the various realities start to come unraveled and die. But he begins to grab them up one by one, imbuing them with life once again as he does. He grabs the timelines, walking up a set of stairs that appear out of nowhere, and holds all of them together as they continue to grow and expand. In the end, he sits on the throne, but rather than this being an act of dominance and control, it is an act of sacrifice and love. He sacrifices himself and his desires for his life in order to allow for all of creation to exist freely and fully on its own.

It really is a beautiful scene. The cinematography is brilliant. The sound editing and musical score during the scene are amazing. The acting, of course, is top notch. The whole thing culminates in what is perhaps the single best scene from any Marvel property to date. It is topped by the final Avengers assemble moment at the end of Avengers: Endgame, but only just barely. Maybe not at all. Loki’s sacrificial love, his willingness to lay down his life for his friends, is a beautiful picture of the Gospel.

Jesus laid down His life for us when He died on the cross. He defeated the powers of sin and death. That act didn’t immediately make everything perfect, but it gave us a chance. It gave us a chance to live, to really live, rather than simply being slaves to a power (sin) that was otherwise greater than we are. If we will use this chance wisely and well, we will find real life in Him.

As Marvel continues down its current path, things are going to get weirder and weirder. We’ve done all the stories that seem down to earth enough to be believable. What’s left are the ones that start to look more and more like the comics. For some fans, this will be too much. Loki certainly crosses the line into the “too much” territory. But this is one worth watching. You don’t have to watch everything Loki has been in to make sense of it, but watching at least the first Avengers movie will be worth your time if you haven’t. Even if not, though, watch this season for the Gospel connections alone. Marvel has many more stories to tell on the big screen. I, for one, am still excited about them. Stories like this one are why.