Will Loki Become the MCU's New He Who Remains In Season 2 Finale?

Loki Season 2 Episode 5 had the monumental task of delivering something epic after that game-changing cliffhanger ending to Episode 4. The TVA was lost in an explosion of time and reality as the Temporal Loom ruptured before Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Mobius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), and co. could all execute the plan to expand the loom's scope and preserve the surviving branch timelines of the multiverse. 

(SPOILERS) In Loki Season 2's penultimate episode "Science/Fiction", Loki finds himself time slipping again, while stuck in the vacant headquarters of the TVA. As reality starts to turn into spaghetti around him, Loki slips away into different branch timelines where his friends from the TVA have all been returned to their home realities and lives. After a classic heist-style mission to 'get the band back together' Loki and Co. once again find out they are too late to stop all reality from going spaghetti – until Loki shocks himself by finally controlling his time slips and warps away from annihilation to once again give himself a chance to fix the multiverse. 

Will Loki Become The MCU's New He Who Remains? 

While Loki Season 2 Episode 5 may not feel as epic as some hoped, it does have some notable connections to the Loki Season 1 finale and the debut of He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors).  

The first thing a lot of fans are pointing out is how Loki's time slipping – especially the controlled version – looks a lot like the powers that He Who Remains displayed when he first met Loki and Sylvie. While it was technology-based and looked like super-speed or teleportation, He Who Remains explained that his Temp-Pad had been loaded with data of how his meeting with Sylvie and Loki would play out – keeping him one step ahead at all times. It now seems clear that He Who Remains harnessed time slipping as a force and weapon that helped him both harness the time beast Alioth to win the Multiversal War. 

Even more telling was the proclamation that He Who Remains gave to Loki and Sylvie. He claimed that even though he knew how events would play out, Loki and Sylvie needed to go on the journey to reshape their characters into what was needed. Finally, he offered them a simple choice: kill him or take his place. 

...But maybe the choice wasn't so simple, after all? 

He Who Remains framed it as a choice of one thing or another – but with two people present, maybe it was always about both choices being made. Sylvie chooses to kill He Who Remains, while Loki (having completed the necessary journey and growth in both character and powers) will end up taking his place. 

Avengers: Secret Wars MVP

A lot of MCU fans have theorized that Tom Hiddleston's Loki will turn out to be the true MVP of the big Multiverse Saga culmination in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. How exactly Loki was going to show up to give the heroes the push they needed has been unclear... until now, perhaps. If Loki masters the power of time slipping and essentially becomes the new He Who Remains, he also becomes the one person with the x-factor power to fight back against the Council of Kangs and whatever dark new reality they may create. Theory: in the end, Loki gives the role of He Who Remains back to a surviving Kang variant, who becomes the He Who Remains we know – providing the very "reincarnation" He Who Remains foretold of before Sylvie killed him. That's the kind of time-looping that Loki's storyline has been all about. 

It will also give Loki Season 2 and its smaller-scale, more character-focused storyline true meaning, and relevance to the larger MCU Multiverse Saga, which is something fans need to see by the time Episode 6 is over. 

Loki Season 2 is now streaming on Disney+.