Loki Season 2 saw the end of Loki’s story as the god of mischief and a new beginning as the savior of the multiverse. Loki’s transformation from a ruthless, mischievous scamp to a selfless and noble god who earned him the title of “the god of stories” is probably one of the most beautifully written stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At last, he has claimed his throne, although not quite in the way most people were expecting. The finale may have marked the end of Loki’s villainous journey in the MCU, but it also raises many questions regarding his new role, the TVA, and the multiverse. With that said, here is the ending of Loki Season 2 explained. Major spoilers ahead:

T.S. Elliot’s Poem

After acknowledging that the Temporal Loom cannot scale for infinite branches, Loki concludes that stopping the sacred timeline from branching is the only way to prevent the meltdown. So what does he do? He uses his new powers of time slipping to return to the past, where Sylvie kills He Who Remains (Kang). Again and again, Loki fails to prevent her from killing Kang to stop the timelines from branching and eventually scolds Kang for not defending himself. Hearing this, Kang stops time with his temp pad and tells Loki he paved the way for Loki to time slip back to the citadel. This implies that there is no way Loki can change the spaghettification of the multiverse unless he kills Sylvie. Loki responds, saying, “We die with the dying. We’re born with the dead.”

Loki isn’t just saying something that sounds hopeless amid defeat. He is actually referencing a line from T.S. Elliot’s poem, Little Gidding. The line that Loki refers to is only a fraction of a verse, which actually states, “We die with the dying:/see, they depart, and we go with them./We are born with the dead:/See, they return, and bring us with them.” This line refers to the cyclical nature of life and death and how death is inevitable. When someone dies, a part of ourselves goes with them. On the other hand, a part of themselves goes with us as death serves as a reminder to appreciate life to thrive and grow. So, in the context of Loki, he realizes that first, he cannot control how all his friends will die, and second, he must sacrifice himself to allow all of his friends to live and thrive. 

More Than Two Options for Loki? 

After Kang tells Loki that the Temporal Loom works as a failsafe to destroy all branched timelines, Loki says that he will destroy the Loom. But Kang tells him that would unleash a multiversal war in which nothing survives, not even the sacred timeline. So Loki, determined to find another way, time slips and travels to the past to look for some answers.

First, he goes to when he first meets Mobius in the time theater back in season one. Here, he asks Mobius, “How do we choose who lives and who dies?”. Mobius then tells a story about how he hesitated to prune a variant on one of his missions as the variant was an eight-year-old boy. The timelines started to branch, and more variants started to appear because he “lost sight of the big picture.” With this story, Mobius helps Loki understand that sometimes one must make difficult choices to preserve peace. He then says that “most purpose is more burden than glory,” a beautiful reconstruction of Loki’s famous line, “I am burdened with glorious purpose.” With this knowledge, Loki knows he cannot always control his friend’s lives to benefit his own. 

Later, Loki time slips to before Sylvie is spaghettified in one of the branched timelines. Here, he asks her what to do as he believes preserving the sacred timeline is the only answer, or there will be complete eradication. But Sylvie asks him who he is to decide who has free will to live. She then says, “I grew up in apocalypses, Loki. I lived through enough of them to know that sometimes it’s okay to destroy something.” When she says this, she sparks an idea into Loki’s mind, and he adds to her thought, saying, “…if there is a hope that you can replace that thing with something better.” At this moment, Loki realizes that the only way to resolve the timeline issue and still save his friends is by destroying the Loom and replacing it with something better. In other words, he must make the ultimate sacrifice and become the new Loom for all eternity.