Warning: the article contains spoilers for Loki season 2 episode 3.
With the latest installment of Loki, season 2 episode 3, it’s clear that Tara Strong’s Miss Minutes harbors a lot of secrets. But one in particular promises to be especially explosive.
As someone who was created long ago by Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, Miss Minutes has seen the rise and fall of countless forgotten eras of the multiverse’s past. As part of that history, she apparently found out something juicy regarding Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Ravonna Renslayer.
As Ravonna and Miss Minutes both find themselves banished to the Citadel at the End of Time, the artificial intelligence who takes the form of an animated clock tells the Time Variance Authority agent that she knows “a really big” secret about her that would make Ravonna “real angry.”
There are a bevy of mind-blowing yet believable theories circulating about what Miss Minutes’ sinister secret is, concerning Ravonna’s connections to Kang the Conqueror and the TVA in general, but here are eight that would no doubt anger Renslayer and entertain the Marvel masses should they come to pass.
Ravonna is a former ruler of the TVA
One possibility about Ravonna’s past would take heavy inspiration from the comics. You see, Ravonna and Kang were romantically involved in volatile relationship that usually involved one of them dying whenever they got together. Should the comic-inspiration angle be true, Ravonna’s true origin may not be a high school teacher from Ohio, as discussed in season 1 of Loki, but rather, the daughter of King Carelius, the ruler of Earth in the 40th century.
Like the comics, Kang and Ravonna could have fallen in love and then formed the TVA together, explaining the allusion to them having a “partnership,” as heard in the recording of Loki season 2, episode 1. That same recording also made reference to Ravonna being key to the victory of some past war, which could be referring to her helping to establish a win for He Who Remains during the Multiversal War against other variants of himself.
Ravonna is a Kang variant
Another option? That Ravonna is actually a Kang variant herself. Since Loki season 1 has already established that variants can be played by different actors and even be gender-swapped, such as Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie herself being a variant of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, it’s entirely possible this is the case. This would make the budding romance between Ravonna and Majors’ Victor Timely a repeat of the type of relationship held by Loki and Sylvie in season 1; a character falling in love with a version of themselves from another universe.
Should this theory pan out to be true, it could be convenient for Marvel to actually replace Majors with Mbatha-Raw as Kang in the MCU going forward. Majors is currently embroiled in an ongoing trial involving an assault allegation against him. While the outcome of that trial is yet to be determined, depending on how it turns out, Marvel may be forced to cut ties with the actor to avoid controversy. If that happens, and our theory that Ravonna is a Kang variant is accurate, Marvel has a perfect replacement for the Multiverse Saga’s main villain built right into the canon of the story.
Miss Minutes knows every TVA agent’s origins
We think it’s entirely possible that Miss Minutes holds the keys to not only Ravonna Renslayer’s past, but the origins of every TVA agent, as was suggested by a Reddit user on the discussion thread for Loki‘s latest episode. If this were true, perhaps she could shed more light on the true identity of Owen Wilson’s Mobius, which has been heavily teased in past episodes. Personally, I’m waiting for the confirmation he’s some kind of jet ski salesman, if not a McDonald’s employee or perhaps even a variant of Phil Coulson.
He Who Remains wiped Ravonna’s memory to try to protect her
We know He Who Remains has some kind of past with Ravonna and we know he must’ve wiped her memory at one point, as is the intake process for all TVA agents. However, is it possible that the memory wipe in question was not necessarily done for insidious reasons, but to protect Ravonna from harm? This would be something like what Kirsten Dunst’s character goes through in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the film, Dunst has an affair with Tom Wilkinson’s character, despite the fact that he’s married. Apparently realizing the tryst did nothing but cause them both pain, they ended the affair and Dunst got her mind wiped. However, Dunst ended up falling in love with Wilkinson, again, anyway.
This plot point would also parallel the twist ending in the 2008 superhero film Hancock, in which it is revealed that Will Smith’s character becomes weaker whenever he gets closer to Charlize Theron’s character. However, once John Hancock loses his memory from being injured during one such vulnerable moment, Theron’s Mary Embrey uses that as an opportunity to distance herself from him, thus protecting him from harm from being weakened in her orbit. Maybe something similar is happening in Loki and Ravonna and He Who Remains’ romance has some darkly fated aspect to it, as the comics would suggest.
Victor Timely is not as innocent as he seems
Another overlooked possibility is that Majors’ Victor Timely is only pretending to be naive as a character. Throughout Loki season 2, episode 3, Victory seems to just go along with the plan of whoever is in his immediate company at the time, be it Mobius and Loki or Miss Minutes and Ravonna. In the end, both Miss Minutes and Ravonna got relegated to the End of Time. However, does Victor know more than he is letting on? Will he turn out to be a ruthless Kang variant who wants to conquer other timelines? Perhaps a plan to that end is already in motion and we just don’t know it yet.
Yet if Miss Minutes is aware of this, why would she behave in such an off-putting way by coming on to him so hard at the end of the episode? When Miss Minutes confessed her long-held romantic interest in Kang, Victor was so freaked out that he essentially turned her off. The behavior from Miss Minutes may have actually been an involuntary result of her programming.
Renslayer is a memory-wiped Miss Minutes made flesh
Some fans on Reddit have put forth the theory that Ravonna actually started out as a version of Miss Minutes put into a human body, a desire the A.I. discussed in the latest episode. When you consider the origins of characters like Ultron and Vision, this wouldn’t be too far off from what the MCU has already established about turning A.I. into physical beings, like Vision ostensibly evolving from J.A.R.V.I.S. but really serving as a completely different character.
There are myriad explanations that could be the reason for Vision’s distinct personality, with the Mind Stone sitting in his forehead being a major factor, but the point is that in the MCU, making an A.I. character into an entity with a full-blown body could result in creating an entirely new character. This could be the case for Ravonna, too, who may have started out as an attempt to bring Miss Minutes to life. When the experiment resulted in an individual with a completely different personality, that may have prompted Kang to wipe her mind.
Miss Minutes is actually the big bad of the MCU
Despite Miss Minutes sometimes coming across as impulsive, such as when she confessed her love to Victor Timely, there is undoubtedly something calculating and cunning about her. For instance, she seems to know a lot more than Ravonna when it comes to the plan of dropping of the TVA handbook into Victor Timely’s childhood home, as seen at the beginning of episode 3. As much as Ravonna’s talk of “partnership” with Kang makes us think she is making a bid for power at the throne at the End of Time, Miss Minutes seems even more equipped to actually pull off such a feat. However, since Miss Minutes’ love for Kang is decidedly unrequited, this would more than likely take the form of overthrowing the conqueror and taking the ruling seat all for herself.
Imagine if the next Avengers film was simply all of our heroes battling a giant animated clock. While that may sound silly, it would be uniquely imaginative for a Kaiju version of Miss Minutes doing battle with the Earth’s mightiest heroes. Plus, that would also conveniently take care of the problem of replacing Jonathan Majors as the main antagonist in the MCU, should Marvel be faced with that possibility.
Ravonna will be the key to introducing the MCU’s Fantastic Four
Another secret Miss Minutes may be keeping relates to the Fantastic Four. You see, there are multiple versions of Ravonna in the comics, one of which involves Ravonna originally being Valeria Richards, the daughter of Susan Storm and Reed Richards. With this version of the character, Valeria is bio-engineered by Doctor Doom to become Kang’s girlfriend. Should this storyline play out in the MCU, it could certainly be a reason Ravonna would be angry. Although, obviously, what’s more exciting for fans is it could be an excuse to tie Loki into the Fantastic Four.