After 14 years, Tom Hiddleston’s tenure as Loki could very well be over. As the smartest show Marvel has ever made, Loki, did an admirable job of giving context and character development to one of the MCU’s first villains.
Convinced that he was the rightful heir to Asgard, the God of Mischief went on a killing spree, harnessing the power of Chitauri aliens to attack New York. Even after it seemed as though he could be rehabilitated in Thor: The Dark World, he stabs his brother in the back time and time again. The end of Loki season 2 shows that Marvel can do wonders for character development given the right amount of time. After Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kills He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), the Temporal Loom starts to melt down, causing a cataclysm that would unravel every branch of time into nothingness. Loki bends over backward to find a way to save all of time before realizing it is essentially hopeless. He Who Remains tells him that the Loom is a fail-safe. It is designed to preserve only The Sacred Timeline and nothing else. Even the Time Variance Authority would be collateral damage — as would Loki and the rest of his friends.
Loki makes the final step into redemption when he essentially sacrifices himself for the greater good. He destroys the Loom, taking on the mantle of the new He Who Remains. Though he has a throne that he always wanted, he comes to understand what it actually means to be burdened with glorious purpose. He keeps the timeline going, destined to be apart from his friends as the God of Time. Though we don’t want this to be the end, this is the perfect way to send off the character for good. But just to twist the knife even further, the final moments of the series call back to Thor in a beautiful show of foreshadowing.
Loki makes the ultimate sacrifice
In the first Thor film, Loki and his adopted brother could not be further apart. Loki envies Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as he is the favorite son and does everything he can to supplant him. But after Odin (Anthony Hopkins) sends Thir crashlanding into New Mexico, his plans go awry. Stranded among mortals, Thor becomes humbled by his humanity. When he returns, he makes an impossible decision to stop Loki from destroying Jotunheim. The only way to do that is to break the Bifrost. This decision is significant because it means he cannot see Jane (Natalie Portman) again. This move is selfless which Loki is not in a place to understand.
But after centuries at the TVA, Loki finally understands the right thing to do. Even though it means losing Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Sylvie, he understands that growing the timelines in solitude is the only way to save all universes. He and Thor decide to risk it all to save the people they love, but Loki’s decision is even harder than his brother’s. He understands that there is a reason that He Who Remains is alone in a tower. By saving the timeline, he will destroy all the new relationships he has cultivated. This moment is not only heartbreaking but has also been a long time coming.
When Loki moves against his brother in Thor, he does so with the belief this will give him love. Even after Thor defeats him, he believes he is in the right, stating that it was “for you. For all of us.” In the final episode of season 2, Loki says the same thing, but this time with a different context. When he tells Sylvie and Mobius this is “for you, for all of us,” he also acknowledges he is finally doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Even more tragic, it seems unclear whether anyone will know what he has done to save time. Arguably the one person who would benefit from Loki’s change of character the most is a brother he hasn’t seen in years. Thor would be the first person to rejoice at Loki doing the right thing, but as viewers, we will likely never see them reunite. There are no plans for a Loki season 3, and this is about as much of a cap on a season as any.