Your Nerd Side Halloween Special part 1 and 2:
The following contains spoilers from Loki, Season 2, Episode 5, "Science/Fiction," now streaming on Disney+.
The final moments of Loki Season 2, Episode 4 made for an excellent cliffhanger, seemingly destroying the Time Variance Authority and the show's central characters. Thanks to Loki's unique time-slipping problem, he can potentially save the TVA, his friends and the entire multiverse. However, if he's successful, Loki and Mobius will each have a very difficult choice about the latter remaining at the TVA. After slipping to-and-fro around the TVA's discrete timeline, Loki finds himself jumping to branches within the multiverse. One stop brings him to Cleveland, Ohio on a branch timeline in 2022.
The location, seen in the Loki Season 2 trailer, was a personal watercraft dealership where meticulous fans guessed he'd find Mobius. A single father of two named Don, Loki goes to him expecting him to remember his time in the TVA. Eventually, before Don is unraveled with the rest of the multiverse, Loki recruits him for an attempt to make a targeted time-jump to just before the Temporal Loom exploded. It's a safe assumption that by the end of the finale, Loki will have succeeded in restoring the TVA. A more interesting question is if he'd tell Mobius about his life on the timeline, and how that information will affect him. Mobius deliberately avoided finding out what his life could've been, afraid he'd be tempted to give up his life at the TVA.
Mobius Is the Most Important Person in Loki's Life
When Loki first meets Mobius, the God of Mischief is openly antagonistic. Yet, unlike most of the TVA agents audiences meet, Mobius sees potential in this particular Loki variant. He recruits Loki to help them catch Sylvie, then an unknown variant beating the TVA at their own game. Even when Loki betrays the TVA, his new friend never truly loses faith in him. Mobius respects Loki in a unique way, giving him a level of faith and trust no Asgardian ever did. Loki tells Sylvie he wants his friends back, and Mobius was his first real friend.
Mobius was a true believer in the mission the Time Keepers laid out for the Time Variance Authority. When he discovered that mission was based on a series of lies, he turned against the TVA's leadership but not the organization itself. He is an institutionalist. He doesn't want to destroy it like Sylvie, he wants to make it better. He is the reason Loki is so determined to turn the TVA into heroes who protect the multiverse, from Kang or any other threat.
Mobius tells Loki he never looked at his origin because he wasn't sure he could handle learning he had a "good" life. By Season 2, he was one of the most important people at the TVA, even if the parameters of the mission changed. He led a life of import and purpose, serving something greater than himself. Audiences now know the answer to the question Mobius was afraid to ask, and it's clear his life at the TVA made him happier.
What Would Mobius Think of Don and Being a Father?
When Loki meets Don, he's fulfilling Mobius' lifelong dream of sitting on a Jet Ski. Yet, he's not speeding across the water on a beautiful union of form and function. Instead, he's pretending. Don is a sales person at a sport vehicle dealership and, arguably, not a very good one. While Mobius dreamed of taking a spin on a personal watercraft, Don is only able to provide that opportunity to others. Sure, he owns a pair of Jet Skis, but instead of using them he's trying to sell them off to any stranger that walks onto his lawn.
What's also clear is Don is not an engaged or attentive father. Both his sons call him while he's at the dealership, but he ignores them in favor of his futile sales pitches. The only interactions with his children fans see aren't exactly heartwarming. He threatens to throw away their toys and sends one son to chase another. He does care about them, though. When Loki tells Don about his other life, he is interested. He even says Mobius is "a cool name." But when it's most important, he has that paternal need to be with his children.
Part of what makes Mobius so good at the TVA is his sense of responsibility and duty. Don doesn't show the level of affection to his children that he shows to Hunter B-15, a pediatrician called Verity. The character fans know doesn't desire that kind of family, but Mobius would feel a responsibility to those children. Like Don, he'd forgo what he wants for himself because of his duty to be a father. This is exactly the kind of difficult choice about the TVA Mobius wanted to avoid. Loki admitted his motivations were partly selfish. To get his best friend back, Loki may never even tell Mobius about Don and the children.
Why Mobius Might Still Choose the TVA Over His Children
Knowing how Mobius felt about his origin, Loki is arguably justified never sharing those details if he successfully saves the TVA. Sylvie, on the other hand, might retain her memories of the unraveled timeline. She's not time-slipping like Loki, but the TemPad she took from He Who Remains is powerful in undefined ways. If she is aware of Don and the children, she'd eagerly inform Mobius about them against his will. Still, the Mobius at the TVA may find there is nowhere for him to "go back" to.
When the multiverse reemerged, time branched in the ways it did once before. This was how Miss Minutes knew where to find Victor Timely. He exists while the remains of He Who Remains are decaying along with the Citadel at the End of Time. This means if Loki is successful at stopping the Temporal Loom meltdown, the Mobius with him will be the one taken from a pruned timeline. If Mobius were to visit that recreated branch, he'd likely find a Don variant already there living that life. The TVA agents viewers have watched over two seasons are, literally, people with nowhere they could go back to.
If the choice was to stay at the TVA or fulfill his responsibility as a father, Mobius would likely choose the latter while desiring the former. However, with as fluid as the time-travel and multiverse rules are in Loki, it's likely that branch timeline reemerged from the Sacred Timeline complete with a variant of Don. This leaves the prime Mobius free to go back to the only life he'd ever known.
Loki debuts its Season 2 finale Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, at 9 PM Eastern on Disney+.
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