Warning: This article contains spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 3.
After a season and a half of either being absent or underutilized, Loki‘s Ravonna Renslayer finally got a decent bite of the action in season 2’s third episode. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s former TVA boss was revealed to have teamed up with Miss Minutes to intervene in the life of Victor Timely and, in a classic bootstrap paradox, put him on the path to becoming He Who Remains.
Unfortunately for Ravonna and Minutes, Victor takes off with Loki and Mobius back to the TVA by the episode’s end while Sylvie boots Ravonna to the Citadel at the End of Time, where He Who Remains’ remains, er, remain. Who knows what’s next for Renslayer, because Miss Minutes ends the episode by admitting that she has a massive secret to tell her that will leave Ravonna “real angry.”
It’s a mystery for now what this game-changing secret could be, but it’s possible the comics reveal the answer.
Ravonna’s Marvel Comics history may tell us what her big secret is
In season 2, episode 3, Victor and Ravonna strike up an instant connection, one which hilariously infuriates the jealous Miss Minutes. This recalls the vast and complex romance Ravonna and Kang share in the Marvel Comics universe, with the duo’s various variants having what you might call a “love/hate” relationship — generally, one of them ends up dying whenever they get together, it’s a whole thing.
So what if this is not the first time that Ravonna has met a Kang? As per the recording Loki heard of He Who Remains getting very cozy with her in episode 1, what if Ravonna and He Who Remains once led the TVA together? Yes, in season 1, we learned Ravonna’s real identity was Rebecca Tourminet, a high school teacher from Ohio, but it’s possible this is just another fake identity implanted in her brain. In the comics, Tourminet was an alias Ravonna used, not her real name.
In the source material, Ravonna hailed from the 40th century and was the daughter of King Carelius, the ruler of Earth during this period. Perhaps this is her origins in the MCU too and she and He Who Remains had some kind of whirlwind (or maybe eons-long) romance in the past (or maybe future — urgh, time travel). They established the TVA together and had the “partnership” that is so often discussed in episode 3. However, once HWR got too power-hungry or else Miss Minutes manipulated him, he wiped Ravonna’s mind and sent her to work at the TVA.
This might explain why Ravonna becomes attracted to Victor so quickly (unless she’s just got a kink for conmen and snake oil salesmen, in which case, no judgement) and make sense of her deep-rooted thirst for power. If Ravonna once ruled over time at He Who Remains’ side, you can bet she would be angry if she found that out. And would do anything to resume her place on the throne.