Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 1.
Loki season 2 packed a lot of plot into its premiere. The sacred timeline is crumbling, the Judges Council has halted any and all pruning of variants, Judge Renslayer is missing, Sylvie is being hunted more ferociously than ever, and most important of all, Loki is time-slipping.
Even though it’s impossible to time slip in the TVA, Loki keeps jumping between the past, present, and future. Mobius (Owen Wilson) seeks the help of his friend O.B., or Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) who suggests using the Temporal Aura Extractor to yank Loki directly out of the timestream and back to the present. They head to the Temporal Loom, a room within the TVA in which raw time is refined into the physical elements of the timeline. To make this work, Loki must also prune himself at just the right moment, thus violently ripping himself from every thread of time and space and making it possible to be yanked back to the present.
By the skin of his teeth, Loki manages to get pruned by a mysterious person at just the right moment. He is yanked back to the present and we end episode 1 with the impression that everything has been fixed. But is it really?
Did the Temporal Aura Extractor fix Loki’s time-slipping for good?
By the looks of the trailer, the answer is no.
Although the Temporal Aura Extractor was supposed to yank Loki back into the present, brief snippets from the season 2 trailer show the God of Mischief time-slipping in, around, and outside of the TVA, which indicates his precarious problem has not been resolved yet. In fact, one could even surmise that his time-slipping has worsened.
In one still shot that didn’t take place in the premiere, you can see Loki time-slipping in the TVA again. The room he’s in looks like the one in which Mobius showed Loki his future in season 1 episode 1; this would explain why the trailer also shows footage of Loki in his TVA jumpsuit and time collar.
Another image from the trailer shows Loki standing under the doorway of a dark room looking on at either a past or future version of himself. The mere sight of two Loki’s in the same room suggests that the mysterious person who pruned Loki at the end of episode 1 may very well have been… Loki.
The third image shows Loki time-slipping out in the real world. He emerges in front of what appears to be a Jet Ski dealership. Given Mobius’ appreciation for personal watercraft, this may have something to do with him. Did Loki time slip here on accident, or is he somehow in control of this newfound ability and sought out this Jet Ski dealership in search of a Mobius variant? The possibilities are endless.
Last but not least, an ominous still from the trailer shows Loki’s extremities unraveling into strands of spaghetti. This version of Loki is wearing a time collar, so it’s safe to assume it’s a past version of the character. Nevertheless, present-day Loki’s time-slipping problem clearly spirals out of control to the point that his existence becomes threatened. As O.B. said in the season premiere, “If you fall into a black hole you turn into spaghetti.”
Never mind that the Temporal Aura Extractor didn’t work, if Loki’s time-slipping has broadened beyond the four walls of the TVA and threatens to turn him into a plate of traditional Italian cuisine, it could indicate the severity of the branched timelines. As O.B. explained, the sheer number of branched timelines was likely the cause of Loki’s time-slipping. So either the branched timelines must be addressed to fix Loki’s time-slipping, which could explain why Loki and Mobius eventually seek out Victor Timely, or Loki isn’t time-slipping at all. My money is on the former.