Loki - S02E03 - 1893

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for The Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in The Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:14] Welcome to the MCU, where the Lorehounds are your guides to the multiverse and beyond. I'm David. I'm Alicia. And I'm Jean. And we're here to help you convince the man that you've sold mechanical pants to that they've made him a little bit taller.

[00:01:49] We'll be recapping and breaking down the third episode of Loki season two, sharing Easter eggs and our current theories about what is exactly going on.

[00:01:59] And then Jean is going to walk us through the major departure from Kang's comics origin story in Comics Corner before we get into a little feedback. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about Loki as we discuss the rest of the season.

[00:02:11] Email your feedback to MCU at the Lorehounds dot com or head over to our website at the Lorehounds dot com and use the contact form or record us a voicemail.

[00:02:22] For ad free versions of this and all of our podcasts, check us out at Patreon dot com slash the Lorehounds. I'll share more about our Patreon as well as programming notes for our upcoming schedule, as well as our affiliates at the end of the podcast.

[00:02:37] Also, we'd be forever grateful if you could get us more ears tuned into the Lorehounds MC universe. All you need to do is drop a five star rating and review wherever you're listening. Apple Podcasts is especially helpful, even if it's just a few quick words.

[00:02:50] We read all the reviews and they really mean a lot to us. And before we get started, just a quick spoiler warning. We'll, of course, be spoiling all Loki episodes up to and including the one we're talking about today.

[00:03:02] But spoilers for the rest of the MCU and the Marvel comics are also on the table. All right, gang, welcome to Episode three. What are we halfway through? I think this is our this is the midseason finale. Midseason. That's right.

[00:03:18] Fortunately, we don't have any crazy news out of the MCU this week, so we can probably get straight into the episode. Alicia, you want to set up the episode for us? This episode is titled 1893 and it was directed by Khosrow Farhani, who is the Loki production designer.

[00:03:37] He started as an illustrator and concept artist on tons of big movies like Avatar, tons of stuff you've seen, but also including Marvel movies like Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

[00:03:48] And he was he was also the assistant art director on some projects when he graduated to production designer for shorts and music videos and a couple lesser known features, including one called Bliss that features Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek.

[00:04:03] And yet he also did some writing and directing for some of them, too. But Loki's really the first big gig where he gets to be a production designer and now also a director of this episode.

[00:04:13] And he contributed to the script for this episode with his writing partner, Jason O'Leary, who helped him on a previous lesser known film called Tilt. And that's the only other credit on Jason O'Leary's IMDb. So we really have so the usual Eric Martin.

[00:04:31] He's the one he created the story and he led the teleplay. But then this writing duo contributed. So it's really a case of like them seeing the talent of Farahani and trusting him to grow. And I think it really paid off. What do you guys think?

[00:04:45] I'm liking what we're seeing so far, Jean. Well, why don't we just lead this into your into our hot takes? Jean, I haven't heard from you on this episode. What? Yeah, I've been quiet. Yeah, I've been quiet. I I just maybe my favorite episode. Nice. Of the series.

[00:05:05] Nice. Oh, of both seasons? Of the series. Both seasons. Wow. I don't know if I'm being a prisoner of the moment, but I was really happy with this episode. Uh huh. Just the overall vibe was really cool for me.

[00:05:25] And Jonathan Major's side, like with all the things that are circling around him. Mm hmm. Just watching him on screen is is distracting. He's amazing in a good way or the bad way? In a good way. OK, because he's an amazing actor.

[00:05:48] And this amazing actor has some horrible allegations made towards him. And I watched that episode and just thought to myself, wow, if he did these things. He's thrown this incredible talent away. Right. And it saddened me.

[00:06:13] Not only saddened me for what we've lost, but saddened me because he's done these terrible things. Sure. But still just watching this episode. This was a great. Like I said, it's possibly my favorite episode of the series. Would it rank overall in all Marvel television?

[00:06:35] Wow. I didn't I didn't think about that. Yeah, I know that's a big wide question. I don't know if that's an answerable question without a more deeper. But if Loki is your favorite series. Is it my favorite series?

[00:06:46] I don't know. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. No, no, no. I'm thinking about it like you're you're saying and I'm thinking. And let me get back to you guys in the episode about that. Yeah. On both of those questions. Definitely. Yeah. Any other thoughts?

[00:07:03] No, I want to get into the meat and bones. Well, I see you've got here something about Ouroboros everywhere. Oh, I see. I see Ouroboros everywhere. You're right. In the show, you mean? In the show. Yes. In the show. Not in the primary world.

[00:07:16] Not in the world, but in the show. In the show. Yeah, I'm seeing, you know, this does there's a specific scene where it was just like, OK, this is this is really I have to stop thinking about this, you know, snake eating his tail thing.

[00:07:31] I have to get out of it. But it's just so present in my mind that I see it, the motif everywhere that it could conceivably pop up.

[00:07:42] So and that's a good thing for me because it's reinforcing, you know, a theme in the in the show for in my eyes. So I'm cool with it. I'm cool with it.

[00:07:54] We touched on this before in a previous episode when we were talking about circular patterns and where the automat was versus advancements and repairs and these long curved hallways.

[00:08:09] And I don't wonder there's a lot of curvature in the TVA architecture and we get a lot of walk and talk shots.

[00:08:16] And I've got some notes on this later, but I don't wonder if there's some subtle visual language that's happening about Ouroboros and this infinite looping thing that's happening. So it's very cool. Very cool. Alicia, how are you feeling about this episode?

[00:08:37] Yeah, I'm also very positive. I think this might be my favorite episode of the season, at least tied with first, but maybe even more because I do love a good history time trip. You know, this is. They're dangerous though, aren't they? Yes.

[00:08:53] They can really screw up a show if they don't do it right. If they don't do it well. And luckily this I think this episode nailed it. Yeah, it might be one of my favorites of the entire series too. But, you know, long live alligator Loki or croaky.

[00:09:09] I still have a chat group with friends called croaky is love. So I'm. Oh my gosh. But yeah, I am not sure though how I feel about like Jonathan Major's Victor Timely affectation.

[00:09:23] Everything else in the episode is nearly perfect, but at times I don't know it felt a little put on to me, but maybe we'll find it. We'll find as we get to know this character that indeed it is an affectation.

[00:09:35] It's you know because it's hiding the Kang underneath. I loved the other villain emerging Darth minutes. We'll get into that, but that was great. And yeah, there's a lot of exposition this episode and world building dropped, but they did it in fun ways.

[00:09:54] Like this is this is how you do it. You know, you don't just have you have to make it visually captivating and disperse it out to make it you know where you actually you get an exposition drop and you go, you know.

[00:10:08] And yeah, the there's a warning. There's a Chicago World's Fair lore bomb incoming and I've got some Edison beef to unpack so. Deep in your notes there. There's like a whole page of World's Fair notes, which I love that is so on brand for lore hounds right now.

[00:10:25] Here's this will niche thing. Let's go deep. Oh my Lord. It's an iceberg. Right? I love a World's Fair. They yeah, a lot of cool stuff. And this was one of the best of all history. Yeah, very cool. I would imagine David.

[00:10:40] I was delighted and entertained. I really had a lot of fun. I don't know where I could put it in my power rankings for series or season, but I can certainly say that this episode looked great.

[00:10:54] The camera work in this series in the season is exceptional and I just really noticed it in my second watch today.

[00:11:03] I think it's been going on the whole time, but I really noticed it today how they're using and I'll talk about a particular scene. That's a good example later on, but it really exceptionally and what's the word I want to say confident filmmaking.

[00:11:20] The people who are editing the show, filming the show, directing the show, cinematography in the show really feel like they know what they're doing. They've got a point of view and they're executing on it. And it's great. I absolutely love it.

[00:11:34] I loved the open and I loved everything from the opening credits to the aged look for Miss Minutes. You know, all of that was really fun stuff. The music they played with some different music cues.

[00:11:47] There's more mystery now about Renslayer and Miss Minutes. I feel like we're getting some interesting character developments as well as growth on top of opening up more mysteries with certain characters.

[00:12:03] Something that occurred to me as I started watching the previously on and then I went, I jumped onto our discord channel and posted this so that I was on record. But I think the loom is bullshit.

[00:12:19] I think it's a, it's a, it's, I think. And then later in this episode they really gave us the clues for this. Do we really need the loom and we can talk about it later, but like, I don't think that the loom is something that if it weren't there, how would that change reality?

[00:12:38] I don't think that it's necessary to the existence of reality. So, but we'll talk later. I heard, I listened to a couple of different podcasts. I've heard some mixed reactions. I think overall people are, but then there's some really strange criticism out there where people are just bagging this saying that this episode was, you know, the saggy middle.

[00:12:59] They don't understand where the plot's going, that the Victor timely stuff really annoyed. I was like, what show are we? How is it that we're watching so two different shows? And I certainly get that if you're not bought into a story, it's easier to find the seams and the edges of where they've stuck stuff together.

[00:13:17] If they're there or if it's seamless, you're still gonna, you know, maybe see them. But I don't understand. I feel like this is a solid MCU. This is some of the best MCU television that we've gotten in the history of MCU television. Yeah. Totally agree.

[00:13:34] I mean, it stands up to some of the best television on TV. Period. General. This is a solid show. Yeah.

[00:13:42] Absolutely. I don't, so I'm scratching my head and I'm trying to be open because, you know, criticism and critique are important to listen to various viewpoints. But I still am like, what's going on? Because this show is firing in all cylinders for me.

[00:13:56] And that said, on the Victor timely, Jonathan Major's character affectation, it did. It was just on the borderline for me. It didn't take me out, but I did notice it. I wish it had been more of the character's affectation. So he was playing it up a little bit more on stage.

[00:14:17] And maybe it was something that's inherent in his, because we did see it in his character for he who remains, right? That he's a little glitchy, he's a little, you know, in his head about stuff.

[00:14:30] But then, so, and for me in the show, just his little mannerisms, it drew out scenes a little bit longer than I think necessary. And we could have packed a little bit more energy and punch, but I can totally get for, I've heard from some other podcasters who say it just totally took them out. Fine. I can totally understand why it would take somebody out.

[00:14:54] So I think it's a borderline presentation, you know? But that's, I can see some personal likes and dislikes there. Anyway, it didn't bother me that much. I noticed it, but it didn't take me out.

[00:15:09] So yeah, I think in sort of in summation, thinking about the characters and looking at like Sylvie and Loki, and we're going to get into it. But I think that we're seeing growth. We're seeing growth with Renslayer and, you know, growth, just meaning that character is moving from a starting point to some other point. It doesn't have to be in a good way. Right? And I like that. It's giving me depth.

[00:15:37] There's rich, these aren't, it's not empty calories. The show actually has some nutrition in it in terms of what it's saying about the human condition and about motivations and attitudes about things. So on top of some great history and details and all the MCU connectedness stuff on top of production, which is looking gorgeous. So yeah, I'm really satisfied with what we're getting.

[00:16:03] So, sorry. That's a lot. No, no. Yeah. I just, I don't see the criticism. Sure. Like, yeah.

[00:16:12] I know some people are feeling confused, which I don't know. On the one hand it's like, okay, I understand that would make you enjoy it less, but selfishly I'm like, no, but there's so few shows that have this sort of complexity that tickles my brain. I'm like, let me have this one.

[00:16:28] And it's not like, I don't think most people want to like take it away, but it is a bummer not to see as much enthusiasm as for season one, because I think this season is at least as good, you know, just as good. Yeah.

[00:16:41] I agree. I think the criticism, like you said, people have their own likes, you know, and what holds them to a story and what pulls them away from a story. I get it. I get all of that. But at the end of the day, I think this show is so much cooler to watch than a lot of other shows that we've watched.

[00:17:06] Right. You know, and I'm not even talking about just story wise. It's just a cool ass show. Yeah. You know, like the characters, the sets, the visual, the music, it's a dope ass show. So yeah, you can see little things like people...

[00:17:25] There's always going to be little things, right? Yeah. You'll see those little things. But if you let those little things take you out of the show, then the show is not for you. Right. I've also heard a lot of people who are waiting to binge this one. Interesting.

[00:17:38] But I also think that, like, yeah, we have to be honest, a secret invasion fallout is real. It's real. It's real. It's real.

[00:17:44] Same with Andor. Andor suffered the same thing. We got an exceptionally high quality product that was given a lot of side eye because of the previous two... Well, not Mandalorian, but in terms of Bokoboba and Obi-Wan. I love Obi-Wan. Yeah, well, you know, I'm not saying...

[00:18:05] I know, I know. But people felt shaky after those. And so they were less willing to give their time. So I think you're right. I think secret invasion really messed up.

[00:18:16] But then it's like when we have quote unquote showrunners, whatever Marvel is calling them these days or what have you. But when you have writers who are writing a story with a point of view, fine, you can have some red yarn string leading out to various other characters or other particular movies. You got to hit the spot.

[00:18:35] But let writers do their jobs. Let directors do their jobs and tell these stories. And bang, we get so much better of a product ultimately.

[00:18:44] I also think because I had this conversation with a friend of mine at work, and I also think that people want to be in the know of what the story is. And this is not giving you that. If that makes sense. Say more.

[00:19:04] So with the Marvel shows, there's always been a sense of I know what's happening. Right? Like I know the characters. I know these, the storyline. I know where the end is going. The story is predictable.

[00:19:18] Right. People are used to that. That's what they, you know, we set up this big bad and everything is going to lead to the big bad. So I know where the story is going. All this other stuff. I love it. I like it. I want to see it. But it's leading me to a point. Right?

[00:19:34] That is obvious and is built within the narrative structure of how we consume fiction. Yes. Right? There's going to be an ultimate battle that's very Western Judeo. Right? Loki is not that. You're right. I think you're right. And I think a lot of people have...

[00:19:53] Which is why I love it. Exactly. Exactly. But a lot of people have issues with not knowing. Yeah. It's the unknown to them. Like, oh, where's the story headed? Sit back and watch where the story goes, bro.

[00:20:08] And I've heard that criticism specifically. People are like, well, I don't know if I like the show because I don't know that they know where they're going. They know where they're going. They know where they're going. They're giving me that faith.

[00:20:18] Yes. They know where they're going. We don't know where they're going. Exactly. I would say this. As a faithful Marvel comic book reader, I had ideas of where the MCU was headed on film. Right? Yeah. I had the general knowledge of the entire saga. Right?

[00:20:38] And the moment they teased Thanos for me as a non-comic book reader, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Yes. We're going to fight that dude eventually somehow, somewhere.

[00:20:50] They've done enough on this show for me as a knower of these characters for me to not know where it's headed. Boom. Fist bump through the screen here. It's a roller coaster in the dark. It's like the Space Mountain of Marvel characters.

[00:21:08] This podcast is not sponsored by Disney. No, no, no. But if they would like to send me theme park tickets and plane tickets. Absolutely. We'll get you Alicia's edges, no problem. I think that's the cool aspect of what this particular show is doing.

[00:21:27] 100%. We don't know where it's going. I think that's why I was delighted and entertained. Because I was. Alicia is a great metaphor. I'm on a roller coaster and I don't know where I'm going. Don't know.

[00:21:41] And for a timey-wimey show, they're keeping it light so that we don't have to. They're telling us in the little lower thirds visual cues, this is a branch timeline or is a sacred timeline.

[00:21:54] Ouroboros says, dude, we got to make the thing bigger so it can handle the capacity. It just simplified everything. We don't have to think about, oh, what's going on here? The machine is too small. The MacGuffin needs to be fixed. The MacGuffin needs a MacGuffin.

[00:22:16] But I think where the show, for me, and we'll talk about it, is doing interesting stuff is in some character development. There's some deeper themes that are happening with the Lokis and with the Victor Timelys and with Renslayer.

[00:22:30] I think B-15 and Mobius is getting some stuff. I think B-15 is not getting enough stuff. I agree. Agree with that. But everybody else is getting something. And Ouroboros, I think, is a flat dimensional character. But even Miss Minutes got some development.

[00:22:47] I think Ouroboros, there's going to be a reveal. I think there's going to be a reveal, but I don't know that we're going to get a Loki-Sylvie, like, oh, we're struggling with our core motivations and our identity.

[00:22:58] Who are we? We learned about Ravonna, what motivates Ravonna. We learned about the Kang variant, core motivation. I think that it's going to be like the He Who Remains type reveal where it's like, here's the character, boom.

[00:23:17] And then we explore, if there's another season or a future project, then we explore what is the psyche of Ouroboros taking all this into account. Do you see what I'm doing on screen here? Double fingers crossed. Give us more Ouroboros. He's testing well.

[00:23:38] Like, Jean, you were saying that they're getting to play in a sandbox because they're doing the TVA Tiny Whimey thing and all these timeline stuff. They can play in a sandbox where they're not as restricted by the source material.

[00:23:52] And they can play in a wider thing so they can bring in new characters and stuff. And I think that's invigorating. That's enlivening. And the characters that we already have, have already been envisioned in a different way. Which is awesome.

[00:24:08] Yeah. And we'll talk about it as we go. In the comment corner, right after this break down. Well, 24 minutes into the pod, I think maybe we should finally get into the scene by scene breakdown.

[00:24:18] We're going to take a quick break first and then when we come back, we'll do the breakdown. And we're back. Okay, Alicia, you want to take us through the episode breakdown? And again, thank you, thank you, thank you for these excellent summaries.

[00:24:50] Really appreciate all the hard work that you put into them. Thank you for pitching in. It was fun to work tandem this morning. Yeah, it was funny. We were both in the document today and I almost wanted to start chatting about things that we were writing about.

[00:25:02] Well, I did kind of write. I just thought that. So I was restraining myself though. Dear listener, I was drinking coffee. I was drinking, watching and sitting in bed. So yeah, I was with you.

[00:25:16] Okay, so we start with the cold open in 1868 Chicago. So we are 25 years before the date in the episode title.

[00:25:25] After an awesome ragtime rendition of the Marvel opening credits, we step out of a time door, picking up where we left off with Ravonna Renslayer, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, starring her as the Queen of Hearts. Who's awesome by the way.

[00:25:39] Yeah, yeah. This was really a showcase episode for her. She's looking for Miss Minutes, Tara Strong, also awesome.

[00:25:46] And this is where we left them in the season one finale and Miss Minutes, she gave Renslayer these coordinates promising her to take her to the most important person at the end of time.

[00:25:57] So Renslayer is a bit like WTF when they roll up to her shantytown and she's told to shove the TVA manual, which is like basically corporate bathroom reading to her through a random window.

[00:26:08] And this was a contingency plan, she's told that he who remains made in case of his death. So Ravonna does it with a side of snark. And on the other side of that window, we see a little boy making candles, a young Victor Timely played by Nasri Thompson.

[00:26:23] And this book is about to change his life, creating a new branched timeline. So first of all, what about that production design?

[00:26:31] The whole, so we mentioned this in the intro, doing period stuff is really dicey and it's a fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong.

[00:26:45] And this was a very stylized historical thing, the way that they did the, and they did a very similar film green feel to it as we do we have in the TVA itself.

[00:26:56] But however they did it, whatever alchemy that they have, it felt right. You know, I felt like I was displaced in time into this place.

[00:27:06] And the way that they, whatever they did, it, it worked. And I was really nervous when she, when we started to pan back to the shanty town or like, I'm like, oh no, we're doing a time thing. Oh no.

[00:27:19] And by the end of the episode, I was blown away at how good they, they nailed this all. Yeah. I, it was, it was as soon as she stepped through the time door and right into the mud. And I was like, okay. And she's walking. I'm like, okay.

[00:27:41] And then the white folks are looking at her. I'm like, oh boy. Oh boy. We, we in some trouble here. We in some trouble. Where are we? And get out the pruning stick because you're going to need it soon.

[00:27:54] Yeah. These white folks don't want you walking around here, Ravonna. Like you own the world. And she stepped through that like she owned the world. So it was really, um, it was really jarring to see how she played it in that time period. Right.

[00:28:13] Being a black woman in this time where she doesn't know where she's at, but I know, I knew that she was in a time period in a place where the way she was just walking confidently down the street, down those mud alleys would have put her in imminent danger.

[00:28:35] And I felt it like from, from get go. I loved the cold. I love the opening with the ragtime music. It was so cool that they did that. I think it helps set the vibe. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I heard it.

[00:28:52] It wasn't just a fun little, oh, aren't we being cutesy? It helped us click into, into the mode.

[00:28:59] Yes. And I think that's what exactly what you just said. It clicked into my mind immediately like, oh shit. Okay. This is where she's at. This is the time period that she's in. And I'm just like, oh man, what is going to happen to her? Right.

[00:29:14] I wasn't even thinking about the other characters. I was just simply thinking to myself, what is going to happen to her in this time period?

[00:29:21] I was just going to say, to set the time period where we are in American history timeline. This is three years before the 13th amendment abolishing slavery is ratified. Now, luckily she lands in Chicago, which Illinois was the first state to ratify that amendment. And it was long, like an anti-slavery state important in the Underground Railroad.

[00:29:46] They officially banned slavery in the state constitution in 1848. So about like 20 years before this, but obviously, yeah, these are still dicey times. It's better than her landing in Mississippi, but yeah.

[00:29:57] Absolutely. And how much better is subject at this point of American history? But yeah, so they already set my mind into this time period with the ragtime Marvel music. And then I'm just like, okay, I'm locked into this episode because I need to see what's going on. I needed to see what was happening.

[00:30:20] So they got me from jump. I just stamped my fingers like instantaneously, they got me. I was hooked.

[00:30:27] Yeah. I have to add in something else along the American history dark side line that wasn't covered in the episode, but Chicago, I have to laugh every time I hear the name because it's actually a Pottawatomie word. And yeah, my father's side of the family is Pottawatomie and in Pottawatomie, it means skunk or onions. So basically this was called like the Valley of smelly onions.

[00:30:52] But you wouldn't see any Pottawatomie at this time, or at least few and far between because in 1838 was the trail of death, which is the Pottawatomie version of the trail of tears. So 30 years before that they were removed.

[00:31:09] Interesting. Because I think Chicago and that Northern area too was also a destination for the Underground Railroad, right? And then post slavery too, folks moved up from the South up to the North. The great migration.

[00:31:24] Yeah. And you had industry to draw people up into these urban environments and things like that. So yeah, really, wow. I didn't understand it about the Native American history as well and how that was part of that same region.

[00:31:38] And calling it skunk makes sense because of the fur trade, obviously from the 18th century. That they used to grow onions in the Valley where the city was. That makes even more sense. Forget the fur trade, I like the onion business.

[00:31:55] No, it was definitely part of the fur trade because when I trace my ancestors back, I can find newspaper articles relating to that. And yeah, the Pottawatomie's closest allies were the French. Like, okay, so I'm going to say a word in Jean, I'm going to say Pottawatomie word and Jean you tell me what you think it means.

[00:32:14] Bonjour. I would say good day or hello. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's from bonjour. Yeah. There you go. Wow, we got some... That's crazy. Yeah, via the French. Some interconnectivity here. Awesome. Well, again, good writing leads to depth like this, right? You know, when people care about the details.

[00:32:39] I don't know what they're talking about these critiques, man. Look what we doing over here. Yeah. And who couldn't love Steamboat Miss Minutes? I mean, come on. Come on.

[00:32:53] That was a really great detail. Again, attention to detail, right? And bringing that stuff around. Even when Miss Minutes was jumping around inside the barn, they lit up like the corner when she was hiding behind the table. Yeah.

[00:33:09] Whether it was post or practical, doesn't matter. It looked right. When Ravonna is talking to Miss Minutes, it feels like she's looking at the right spot. So however they're doing the magic ball on the stick kind of thing, whatever.

[00:33:22] They're nailing these details, these VFX to practical, this transition, which is really easy to screw up. Yeah. But that's one thing that Marvel should be good at. And they're showing this to us to hear. Right, right.

[00:33:36] They should be able to do that weird green screen person in a suit of ping pong balls kind of stuff.

[00:33:42] Yeah. Absolutely. But where do you think Victor's parents are? Do you think – because the reason I ask is we're going to obviously talk about this more in Comics Corner.

[00:33:54] So maybe I'm just putting this in our minds to think about. But is he there on this timeline alone? Meaning could he have come from somewhere else or are his parents just at work or something?

[00:34:06] Yeah, I was confused. But in a good way because I was asking those questions. I was asking those questions. I was like, okay, this is – because when she said put it under the window and then we see this little black boy sitting under the window. And I'm like, okay, I know who this is, right?

[00:34:27] Exactly. In my mind, I know who it is, but I know who it is. Yes. I know who it is and I'm just like, okay, how? Why? And what's going on here? And we'll talk about that later.

[00:34:41] I don't know about you guys, but I really felt Nasri Thompson nailed the physical acting of Jonathan Majors. I felt that he mirrored Jonathan Major – how Jonathan Majors would have performed that scene pretty well. Yeah.

[00:34:58] I got a really nice physical vibe, the way he hunched, the way he moved his lips and was just around. It felt like a nice continuity because you can – there's a way to disassociate when you see a child actor playing a character from before. You just go, okay, well, they just got to – and then as long as they kind of get the lines right, we can suspend some disbelief there. But I really felt connected to him as Victor Timely, as Jonathan Majors.

[00:35:25] Okay. Yeah, no, impressive. I'm always doubly impressed when kid actors do well because – Exactly. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Because I can't do it and I'm a grown man. So what about this music too?

[00:35:40] Yeah. So yeah, I love the – I love this new soulfully epic Loki-Toki music that they played over the opening. So Natalie Holt again for the win. Can't praise her enough.

[00:35:52] So the music on the title card, was that the Loki theme? I didn't – the TikTok? It seemed different to me and I was wondering if that was He Who Remains theme. I mean, I haven't gone – I'm no musician, so.

[00:36:07] Yeah, I mean, I haven't gone into a music analysis. I haven't listened to them side by side. Right. But it definitely also felt different to me because it stood out to me. I was like, whoa, this is heavier, darker, more powerful. Yeah, it did have those tones.

[00:36:22] Yeah, and the same with the end credit music was a much heavier, darker – it was definitely the Loki theme but in this much more orchestrated way, darker and heavier.

[00:36:36] And didn't you say the – what are we calling them? The head writers, the – because we'd call them show runners normally but they don't have that title I don't think. The executive producers for this, the pair. Didn't they do – you said they do horror.

[00:36:51] Oh, the directors. The directors, yeah. Yes, their background is in sci-fi tinged horror. So I got that vibe on the front and the backside of this totally and throughout the episode even though there's a lot better stuff. I'm not correcting this episode though. No. Yeah, but –

[00:37:07] But still it was there. I mean, yeah, I think the credit goes to Natalie Holt for that. But I do think it must be tied to the fact that some version of Kang is arriving this episode. Yeah, there's a gravitas to that. Totally.

[00:37:22] And it plays out in the music. Yeah. You know, like the heaviness to like a seriousness to the tone. So this mid-season sagginess critique? Yeah, I don't – hey, get out of here with that. I mean, too far gone. Get off our lawn, right?

[00:37:37] It's like the music is saying even though we're having a fun time here but there's like this really dark stuff. There's like this stuff is happening that is not really fun. So it's going to be interesting to see how they pay that off. Yeah.

[00:37:53] Cool. All right, let's roll. All right. So then we flash back to the TVA in time for a meltdown. The bombed branches from last week are growing back and they need to increase the diameter of the loom's intake ring before it chokes on a knot of unprocessed time.

[00:38:08] But they can't open the blast doors without the temporal aura of He Who Remains or the administrative access of Miss Minutes.

[00:38:15] OB, K Hui Kwan, is doing his version of freaking out while the rest of the gang, Loki, Tom Hiddleston, Mobius played by Owen Wilson, B-15, Wunmi Misaku and Casey Eugene Cordero try to stay calm and throw out ideas.

[00:38:30] The verdict? They're going to follow that hit on Renslayer's Tempad so they can be, as Mobius puts it to Loki, face to face with the woman who tried to kill us both. Nice.

[00:38:41] I love how they use this, during the whole thing, loom status elevated is flashing auditorily in the background. I love like they use a science gobbledygook that makes just enough sense to satisfy a science nerds, but it's also silly enough for people who don't give a shit to just go along for the ride.

[00:38:59] Right. And K Hui Kwan does a perfect job of saying, you know, gobbledygook, gobbledygook. Yeah. And they're like, wait, what? Oh, the thing needs to be bigger. Boom. Yeah. That's all you need to know.

[00:39:09] And we got to go on a, on a MacGuffin hunt. We got to find the person who can do the thing. Great. Simple mechanics. So Star Trek-y. Straightforward. I just love like this, the sci-fi that just is just like, it's just sci-fi. It's science fiction. It's so cool.

[00:39:34] Well, we have a fun line later too, which I'll, I put in the notes, what Victor Timely says during his presentation. So.

[00:39:41] I do wonder why they're worrying about how much time they have in a place that might be out of time, but the past seems to affect the present in real time. So I'm hoping we're getting some sort of answer this season about what the nature of time is within the TVA versus, you know, our reality or, you know, the, all the timelines.

[00:39:59] Okay. Does that, we need to talk about the loom because I think the loom is, it's manufactured bullshit. It's, and this gets into the central tension, which again, we'll talk about later. I hate always saying that, but there's some more better scenes to talk about it.

[00:40:18] But the fact that the TVA exists and whenever Loki talks about, Oh, it's, you know, world ending or all we're going to die. K. He, uh, K. He, Kwan says, Oh, you know, the TVA is going to be destroyed. They always say the TVA is going to be destroyed. They don't say all time is going to be destroyed.

[00:40:34] They don't say existence in reality is doomed. They talk about the TVA. So if time is a naturally occurring phenomena and branch, a timeline branches are conceivably a naturally occurring phenomena or part of the system, the system, you know, something happens and it forces a branch and the branches sort of goes off.

[00:40:59] Well, it's just, it happens all the time theoretically in our real world. Theoretically, of course.

[00:41:04] Exactly. And then if you have incursions, that's sort of, I'm kind of thinking of it weirdly as natural wildfire, right? Wildfires normal, right? An electrical discharge happens. You know, there's human caused wildfires, but then there's naturally occurring wildfires systems have built to, to, to adapt to that.

[00:41:24] So if you've got two branch timelines, they incur, they cause another branch timeline to do for that all feels part of the phenomena of the, the existence of this, you know, uh, this world. So long comes, uh, you know, Kang, you know, to the X, you know, infinite, whatever, uh, um, what do you call those little numbers on the back?

[00:41:44] Let's say let's go.

[00:42:15] And the TVA aren't naturally occurring things, they're built things. So the TVA is bullshit and the loom is bullshit. And if it's blown up and destroyed, there's going to be some chaos, no doubt. But it's not something that the loom is not necessary for timelines to exist naturally occurring in this world.

[00:42:38] Yeah, you're absolutely right.

[00:42:40] So to piggyback on what you're saying, just pulling from what he says later in the episode, when we see Victor timely giving his presentation, he says time is the future of energy. The temporal loom, he says, inverts the temporal decay of the electricity flowing through it, uh, lowering its entropy and gathering it into fine threads of power.

[00:43:02] And so the real science translation of this is, so entropy is the word that's used to describe the fact that existence, um, that things just fall apart over time. So that's why your kitchen gets messier wind wears down stone. That's all entropy. But apparently someone in the TVA, whether it's OB or some version of Kang has figured out how to reverse this process, which would be kind of like reversing the flow of time and they can harness this to get energy from it.

[00:43:28] So it's kind of like the dream of nuclear fusion. That's always a decade away in reality, but with reversing the actual flow of time. So even more impossible. But as Loki says, all science is fiction or sorry, as Victor says, all science is fiction until it's, um, but yeah, so he's wants to, he says, I aim to power the entire planet with it. But then the question is indeed. So what is the TVA loom powering? Because that's what it was built to do to power something.

[00:43:58] Exactly. What is that and what's going on? And it's certainly, well, we're jumping at, we're going to jump ahead here because we could talk about Kang, but yeah, it's something that to, to empower Kang to fulfill on his destiny that he perceives for himself. Right. Yeah.

[00:44:16] But we also have to remember what he, he will remain set like they're branching these timelines to prevent other Kang's from coming into existence. So he already gave the game away in season one. It already told you why we're here. The TVA is not here because it needs to exist. The TVA is here so that this Kang can exist.

[00:44:38] Doesn't run rampage over all other timelines. No, that this Kang can exist. Right. Right. Yeah. Can be King.

[00:44:45] He who remains is the catalyst for the TVA. The TVA has highfalutin, you know, ideals that, uh, you know, the, the, the bureaucracy, the, the workers are, are, are being told, but the existence of this thing, this entity is wholly in the service of Kang.

[00:45:09] A hundred percent. And they told us that in season one. They told us this in season one, the TVA doesn't need to exist. It could blow up because the only thing that it really will affect is Kang. Right. Life will go on. Exactly. Time will flow. Exactly.

[00:45:27] As intended. Right. Because the TVA is the anomaly. The TVA to me is the thing that should not exist. Right. It's the unnatural part of this. Yes. That's what I think.

[00:45:40] Yeah. And I love how they've kind of snuck it in on us because we're all on Loki's side, you know, or theoretically our point of view. So we're going to kind of identify with him and we're in Sylvie's this antagonist.

[00:45:53] So it's, I think it's a really great thing to, I, I had the flash of the loom as I was watching the previously on for this episode. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute. The loom is, you know, so if the show is doing its job, it's dropping hints and clues and creating a pattern where our human brains can sort of make some deductions about what they're doing with the show.

[00:46:21] That's good writing. It's just straight up. That's just good writing. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm not going to apologize for it. Don't apologize. Don't apologize. They need to apologize for their critiques, man. They need to apologize. We're not apologizing. This is not an apology podcast. No.

[00:46:36] No, it is not. We all have different tastes, but yeah. But yeah, the visual side is looking pretty good too, right? Yeah.

[00:46:45] So I got a soapbox again. Sorry if I'm hogging the mic here a little bit. I wanted to point out the camera work in this particular scene. So we've got two groups of characters on the far side of a room. We have a big space and we have a big thing happening. So it's very easy for the audience, for us to be disassociated and not feel the heat of the moment. Right?

[00:47:10] So one of the things that they've done in this and they're doing throughout the episode and probably for the series, but I'm only just sort of waking up to this now is that they're using all the tricks in the book of how to shoot different scenes. Locked on wide shots, intermediate shots, steady cam follow shots, walk and talk shots.

[00:47:33] So we go from like wide scenes to closeups where somebody is talking. And then the thing that really caught me was when Loki walks from one side of the room to the other, the camera is in front of him. And so he's walking towards the camera and the camera is backing up.

[00:47:49] He gets over to that group over there. The camera kind of comes out to a medium shot, gets everybody. They talk, they zoom in on a couple of times on some faces. And then when they decide to make their decision, they leave off. Then the camera spins around and then zooms in on the computer screen.

[00:48:06] So we're just getting a whole bunch of, and it's not a one. I mean, there's long takes and individual shots, but the whole scene is made up of several others. And it is really, really expert level. Not only shooting, but editing the way that they edit everything together to give us the closeup so that I'm connected to Loki. I'm connected to Ouroboros.

[00:48:31] I feel the intensity. I get the humor when Mobius says, well, we can hack into the system. And so all that energy is there as we move across the scene. But then I get the whole, I get the sense of the control room and the totality of how big the TVA is and how big this sort of time thing is.

[00:48:52] And then they do it later in the Chicago scenes and crowd shots when we go wide. And then we go narrow again, really, really, really excellent camera work. And I cannot praise the filmmakers enough for all the work that they're doing and the editors because the editor is hitting the shots and the transitions perfectly.

[00:49:12] So I don't know if you nerd out on that kind of stuff, like I do, I'm no expert. I just enjoy it. Definitely start paying attention to how they're using camera to tell the story, how the camera is in service of the story here. Okay. I'll take it back.

[00:49:28] Yeah, I mean, I have to compliment them also. You know, you said about we can hack into the system. It's just this was such a funny episode too. You're just like, we can hack into the system. Oh, really? That's such a relief. No, I'm wondering. Like just all the comedy hit this episode. So many good lines.

[00:49:44] Yeah, it's perfect. Okay, so maybe we should move on. Boom. Yeah, great. Just great. Yeah. And we got that. You guys familiar with HH Holmes?

[00:51:11] Yeah, I mean, it's a really good book. It's a really good written book of the historical analysis that I've, you know, this modern, the sort of contemporary style of finding an interesting thing in the past and pulling it forward and examining it. But it does dump a lot of history and it talks about how Chicago developed and it talks about how the fair came to be. But then it goes into deep. The main core of the story is the Holmes murder and the hotel and all of that stuff.

[00:51:38] Yeah, they had in the newspaper they're looking at in the show. There was an ad in there that said HH Holmes and it was for the hotel, which is now called the murder hotel. But yeah, so he allegedly killed a bunch of people. But later they caught him and tried him and hanged him in Philadelphia. And he confessed to all these deaths. But some of the murders he confessed to are people like already alive and he seemed to like to play up his notoriety once he got caught. So we're not sure how much is actually true.

[00:52:08] I don't know how much is sensation, but it is if for people who are interested in serial killers, he's a favorite because he's it's fascinating.

[00:52:16] Yeah, yeah. And the devil in the white city goes in. That's the core of the story about how this guy lures all these women into his and it moves. So that's weird because that ties across to the zaniac stuff, which is this misogynistic impulse that gets put into an individual like this. I don't know how to describe this, but anyway, this sort of gruesomeness. Anyway, interesting.

[00:52:43] Possesses, yeah.

[00:52:45] Yeah. And on the opposite side of evil, have you guys noticed how many food references there are in this show? The Cracker Jack stand is in a high traffic area and it's necessary and logical to go there. I agree. But it seems like you also pointed out David something about there was like a hot dog and the pneumatic tube.

[00:53:03] It was banana. Oh, banana. Sorry.

[00:53:06] Yeah. So, and it's in the ending credits as well. So during, if you watch the ending credits, you'll see one of the pneumatic tubes that has a banana in it. But when was it last episode or the episode before? Well, there's only two other episodes to go to. So I think it's when they're walking to the auto mat on this, the what do you call those filing cabinets? There is a pneumatic tube and we get a closeup of it as they're walking and talking.

[00:53:32] So it's kind of weird, but there's a really browned banana in one of these tubes. They show that shot again in the closing credits. So, hmm. Yeah. And there's all like the popcorn and pie and stuff. Pie. References. Yeah. Interesting. It's fun.

[00:53:48] Another fun little filmmaking Easter egg. They did a circle wipe transition at the end of the scene, which looks like an aperture closing on a camera. Notice that.

[00:53:59] And so that's like the nod to the very earliest filmmaking. This year was the year that the kinetoscope from, well, it was from Edison on paper, but we'll get into why Edison is a bastard in just a moment.

[00:54:13] But he basically saw something that a man, an Englishman named Edward Muybridge had made and he met with him and was like, Oh, tell me all about your zo-prax-a-tope. Praxiscope, sorry.

[00:54:26] And then he went back to his lab assistant, William Kennedy Dixon and was like, make this. And then slaps his name on the end. And that's how Edison worked.

[00:54:35] And yeah, that the kinetoscope it debuted, it was supposed to be at the world fair, but I think he was a little salty about something we'll talk about in a minute.

[00:54:42] So it ended up debuting in Brooklyn instead and May of that year, but it was immediately made irrelevant two years later when the Lumiere brothers showed people a train rushing out their heads in a projection. And that's what became moviemaking technology.

[00:54:58] Interesting. So this episode is packed with stuff because we're going to, you got this world's fair lore bomb about to go off. About to drop. Let's do it. So hang on listeners, strap in.

[00:55:13] Here we go. You're about to learn why the Chicago world's fair is one of the coolest moments in history. So yeah, world's fairs used to be big deals in general. And they were, the idea was like to share a culture and technology before we had the internet.

[00:55:26] So they don't seem like as big a deal now, but actually they do technically still happen. There was one in 2020, well, it's supposed to be in 2020 happened in 21 in Dubai and the next ones in Belgrade in 27, they're called expos now. But yeah, they've been doing...

[00:55:41] It was a way to bring people together, right? Bring people together. Yeah. It's not as necessary now, but when it started back in Prague in 1791, it was just blowing people's minds. And there was even another one in Chicago in 1933.

[00:55:54] But this, this is one of the most famous in history. It was called the world's Columbian exposition in honor of Christopher Columbus, speaking of a native American genocide. And it took place around Jackson park, which they drained and landscaped during this.

[00:56:10] And after that, it was like a nice public park. So that's why we saw it was like swampy when we saw it in the previous time. And now it's...

[00:56:16] In the book that I referenced, the author goes into a lot of how they had to landscape and build out the world's fair. It was a huge, huge undertaking. Yeah.

[00:56:27] And obviously there were a lot of power and money deals that were going on in there and that kind of stuff. But yeah, there's a really fat, if you're interested in urban planning and how cities develop, that's got a really good part of the book. Yeah.

[00:56:40] And the title of that book and also a Mobius name dropped this, it's referred to the fact that it was called the exposition area was called the white city because it did this whole Beaux-Arts neoclassical design thing, you know, a lot like the white house in the U S.

[00:56:53] And yeah, the whole thing covered 2.8 kilometers square kilometers or that's 690 acres for people who know what that means.

[00:57:01] And it had a man-made lake, which is still there and canals and lagoons and hundreds of temporary buildings representing 46 countries and the world's first Ferris wheel, which is still called a Rueda de Chicago in some Latin countries.

[00:57:15] And they also had like other inventions like the first moving walkway. So airports rejoice, the first squashed penny souvenirs, important things, world shaking stuff. Really the first squashed coins? That's hilarious. Yeah.

[00:57:29] So I did a little wiki reading about the Ferris wheel because I read something else about the Ferris. Maybe it was in that same book. I don't remember. I was interested at one point about Ferris wheels and how they came up.

[00:57:41] And so one of the, just a factoid about the Ferris wheel, Ferris wheels and round writing, entertainment, things like that have been around. I think since Roman times, they went pretty far back. They had some circular things with chairs on them.

[00:57:57] So I don't know what our human fascination with that is, but it wasn't a new concept. The engineering, I think was what was new. And George Washington, Gale Ferris Jr. is the guy who built it.

[00:58:10] And obviously from his modern designs have spawned all the different things that we see now. Apparently there were on this particular one in Chicago, which was demolished and rebuilt, I think three different times and then dismantled.

[00:58:28] And I shouldn't say demolished, but dismantled and rebuilt like two more times. And at some point all of the materials and metals got handed off and out and around, but there's still some remnants, original remnants of it around.

[00:58:44] So there were 36 cars and they each had 40 revolving chairs that could accommodate up to 60 people total in the car. So about 2,160 people could be writing at any given one time. And it carried some 38,000 passengers on a daily basis.

[00:59:04] So I don't know how long the fare ran, but I think it was a huge, huge deal. Six months. Six months. Yeah. Wow. And I didn't understand this part in the Wiki article. It said it took 20 minutes to complete two revolutions.

[00:59:16] So apparently there was like, you could go around and then get off and then get back on again and then go around another time. Or maybe just the whole ride was it took you around twice. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. And then they would switch people. Yeah.

[00:59:29] But yeah, it was very cool and it was a very, very big deal. So interesting that it becomes a very center part of this episode as well. Yeah. Yeah. The World's Fair was like a lot of firsts.

[00:59:40] First introduction of brownies, juicy fruit gum, cream of wheat, shredded wheat, Cracker Jacks, which was referenced in the episode, of course, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, which every college student will love. Wow. And yeah, they had like the craziest entertainment.

[00:59:58] Obviously the Ferris wheel, but also Houdini, American artists, famous musicians from around the world. And there was, they had several balloons in the episode, but actually there was one balloon and it wasn't really a hot air balloon.

[01:00:09] It was hydrogen filled balloon, which is yeah, hot air or lighter gas either way makes balloons rise still used today. And that was called the Airship Chicago. That was the most expensive thing, the attraction at the fair. So the ticket price was $2, which is like $68 today. Wow.

[01:00:28] The Ferris wheel is 50 cents. Whoa. Yeah. And it costs 50 cents to enter the overall fair. So, but the hot air balloon or sorry, the hydrogen balloon lasted only a month because a powerful windstorm came in July and ripped the balloon apart.

[01:00:41] So, but there are a lot of iconic photos of it, which is why they had to include it in this episode. Very cool. Yeah. I'm sure the Chicago residents, our Chicago listeners could attest to the high winds that affect the area. It is known for it.

[01:00:57] And yeah, the fair indeed ran six months and 27 million people attended. Yeah. It was showing off that Chicago had recovered from the fire in 71 and it also helped build the US reputation around the world. This was in the US called the Gilded Age.

[01:01:14] And so this is the era of robber barons, which is remember that term, it'll come back this episode. Do you have a note about this? Do you have a note about this later? About a character called the robber baron? Robber baron, about the gilded age. Yeah. Okay.

[01:01:27] So the robber barons are basically in our real world, they were the big famous names we see on buildings now like Gould, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, JP Morgan.

[01:01:37] These are the people who started the railroads and really made the money off of the backs of everyone else and built American reputation and industry abroad. Right.

[01:01:50] But one other famous name that they mentioned twice in this episode is Edison and how dare they mentioned him twice and Tesla, not at all. Because this fair is also the centerpiece of what was called the current war where Edison and his General Electric were pushing-

[01:02:09] The current war as in electrical current? Yes. So Edison and General Electric were pushing direct current and Westinghouse was pushing alternating current, which was licensed from Nikola Tesla.

[01:02:23] And they were at odds with each other, these two companies, and Edison was hawkishly protective of his own copyrights, even though he was known to infringe upon others as we talked about.

[01:02:36] But the Westinghouse with Tesla, they underbid Edison for the World's Fair and so they won and they powered the entire fair.

[01:02:45] But of course Edison was going to be petty about it, so they're not allowed to use Edison light bulbs there, so they had to invent new ones that didn't use his technology and his patent.

[01:02:54] But they burned out too quickly, so they had an army of people ready to constantly replace the light bulbs, but they won. And there was an electricity building with commercial exhibitors, including both Edison and Tesla. There were no time looms present, but Tesla did demo- So we know.

[01:03:10] Yeah, as far as we know. But Tesla did demo wireless lighting system. And so it makes me wonder, is timely literally replacing Tesla on this timeline? Good question.

[01:03:23] He was, quote unquote, pulling electricity out of air, but with a time twist. Although he was using more of the charlatan techniques of Edison. But yeah, if you're interested in more in the current war, I also have to recommend The Prestige, which stars Wolverine, Black Widow and Gore the God Butcher.

[01:03:42] Okay. It's the forgotten Marvel property by Christopher Nolan. Okay. Sean's laughing. Is that a good one? That's a good one.

[01:03:54] I think, isn't it true that all those little USB power blocks that we have that we plug into the wall, that you then plug into your phone to get charged? That's a DC AC converter, I believe.

[01:04:06] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, basically Edison kind of ended up winning the current war in the short term, but then people realized that actually maybe the other system was better later.

[01:04:18] Right. So much of our electronics that we have, all those power bricks and all that you have, those are all AC DC converters as I understand it. I'm no electrician.

[01:04:27] But yeah, Edison was just, he was such a good businessman. He wasn't really the inventor himself, but he was good at talking to people. Putting his name on things? Yes. He was good at putting his name on things and selling them. Right. Which is what Victor Timely, well...

[01:04:42] Yeah. There's aspects of... Flim flammy. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Aspects of both of them in Victor Timely. Yeah. Nice. He slapped my name on some buildings here. Yeah, exactly.

[01:04:53] Well, good deep dive. I guess we're coming up now from the deep dive. Thanks for doing that. So lore houndy to go off on a complete tangent like that. That's awesome.

[01:05:05] But I think it's really fascinating because the show is using the fair as a playground for these characters to run out. And it gives the historical import, the importance, the gravity, if you will, for the inflection point that's happening here.

[01:05:25] And again, good writing pays off because it means that this scene has greater importance because of how they've placed it and where they've placed it. Super interesting. Right. Agree. Agree. All right. Shall we get into the Timely demo? Sure.

[01:05:44] So after Locbius explores the grounds, including the Norway pavilion where Loki has been snubbed, they see a sign for Victor Timely's temporal marvels and everyone converges in the tent. We've got Locbius, we've got Renslayer, Miss Minutes in a Bag, and a prototype Time Loon operated by the maybe once in future He Who Remains and or Kang, Jonathan Majors, and a douchey white dude credited only as Robber Baron, Richard Dixon, who keeps calling him boy.

[01:06:13] I was watching, I noticed that in the closed captioning, when his lines came up, it just said Robber Baron. Yeah. I was like, very funny. Very good. Well played with the history.

[01:06:25] That's right. So Baldur the Brave, that was a snub and I loved that. So they've done this a couple of times now, right? Where we're getting more deeper, interesting retrospectives and points of view on Loki's background. And he stood there for a moment after Mobius walks away and there's a little pang of emotion on his face and then he sort of dismisses it with a joking reference to Odin's stature.

[01:06:54] And I just felt that that was a nice little soulful moment for Loki and gave us an opening for something that's happening and will happen with Loki's character. Did you guys-

[01:07:07] I just thought it was cool that they finally put Baldur in an MCU show. That's what I was saying. I was going to talk about it in the comments quarter, but I might as well talk about it now. Yeah, please.

[01:07:19] I mean, for anybody who's a reader of Thor comic books, like myself, like scores of other folks, we have always asked where is Baldur in the MCU? Because he's an important part of the Thor pantheon, right? Of those stories.

[01:07:39] Especially in the modern age, because he took up a lot of real estate over the last 10, 15, 20 years when they rebooted Thor in the comics and Ragnarok happened. And he basically became the de facto king of Asgard on Earth in New Asgard and Broxton, Oklahoma.

[01:08:03] So there's a whole lot of storytelling that intertwines with Loki in the last 20 years with Baldur. And I've always said to myself, I thought he's a cool character to have included in the Asgardian side of the MCU. And I'm hoping that this is a door that opens and then we get to see him walk through it.

[01:08:30] Do you, so the rumor, I mean more than a rumor, we know that Daniel Craig was cast to play him in Multiverse of Madness, but then it ended up not working out for COVID reasons. Do you hope we keep that casting?

[01:08:43] I like Daniel Craig. I think he'll do fine. Yeah, I'm just not, you know, the thing for me is that with the casting of characters, I always like to see how folks do in the role. You know what I mean? I don't want to prejudge anything. So yeah, I'll be cool with him being in it. But again, it's just like, you know, I've wanted to see Baldur in the MCU.

[01:09:13] I've wanted to see Baldur included in the Asgardian stories of the MCU. And I really do hope that it opens up because he's a cool foil to Loki in ways that Thor isn't. Because Loki really likes to play Baldur and Thor off of each other in the comics, in their stories.

[01:09:39] And this revolving trio of brothers vying for, you know, the love of Odin and the love of Frigga. And just to see who can be on top between the three of them is really interesting play. So I would love to see Baldur come into the MCU.

[01:10:03] Yeah, no, it's interesting because he's Thor's quote unquote real half brother like blood sharing other than Loki being adopted. And not in the comics, but in Norse mythology, Loki is responsible for killing Baldur. He kills him directly actually. Yeah, with mistletoe. So yeah, it is an interesting tension they set up. Although I wonder, I do think they'll bring them in. I wonder if they'll cast younger like they did with Wonder Man where they were going to have Nathan Fillion and then a few years went by and they're like, no, no, no.

[01:10:33] We're gonna go for someone younger and hotter. That would be, I mean, they are gearing to have a younger MCU. That would make sense, right? It would definitely make sense if they did that. So we'll see. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.

[01:10:51] Can I just point to again, this is called good writing.

[01:10:55] And then even with the MCU sort of, you know, yet red yarn leading out to other future properties or whatever it was dropped in. It gave us a character beat. It built the world. It built potential future things. So judiciously employed employed MCU device used really well. Good job.

[01:11:17] And like you said, it paid homage to the stories in the comics because you saw Loki's reaction to seeing Baldur. Right. So his reaction was like, OK, I'm not up there. How come?

[01:11:33] Which ties in to 2012 Loki saying, you know, in the previous episode that he did those things because he was mad at his father. And then he's looking at his dad going, I miss my dad.

[01:11:49] Right. He's looking at his dad. He's looking at Thor and he's looking at Baldur. And it's just like this is bringing up all of that stuff. All that. All that. And it's subtle, right? It's not doesn't hit you over the head with it. It's very subtle. Very subtle.

[01:12:06] Also, just as an aside, I think we might have to watch Mobius is drinking. This is his second reference in as many episodes to liking a good drink. That is true. That is true. TVA will do that to you.

[01:12:20] Yeah. And I like how they also when Victor timely is giving his explanation, he calls what the time loom does. We already talked about that earlier. We won't rehash it, but he calls it a chaos of particles transformed into order.

[01:12:32] Now there seems to be a through line in especially this episode of chaos versus order. It seems to keep coming back in the dialogue. Yeah. Well, I think we should save that for Sylvie when we talk about Sylvie later. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:45] But that's I didn't notice it actually in this, but that's a good call. And I have to say one thing that I maybe loved a little less. It doesn't really bother me, but I liked his chemistry with Renslayer was fantastic as I would expect.

[01:12:57] But I don't love two women, quote unquote, women fighting over quote unquote Kang or whatever. Right. Right. So I do hope that the way. Three really. One who wants to kill him and two that one.

[01:13:12] Yeah. But you know what I mean? The two who are fighting in a romantic way. Sure. But then it's three women circling around him. Right. So that's like, I mean, Sylvie just wants to kill him. Yeah, exactly.

[01:13:23] We will accept that, you know, but I watching that scene with, you know, if it's a timely. Trying to sell this product that he has like and he doesn't even know if it works right. You know, like I'm just trying to sell this thing.

[01:13:45] He's like he's he's like a creepy salesman. You know what I mean? He's like he's not caring at this moment. No, no, no. He's not. He's a human being who's who's trying to get over on the rubes. Like I'm trying to, you know, I'm here as well.

[01:14:04] His other material. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. He has a he has a goal in mind and we get and we understand that when he you know, I don't know if I'm jumping. I might be jumping ahead a little bit, but what he was slipping into.

[01:14:17] When he, you know, tells Ravonna, you know, I only sell my things here. It's not where I live. Right. Yeah. I only come here to. The taxes are lower in Wisconsin. Yeah. I only come here to, you know, get get some money off of these.

[01:14:35] Because you can't keep hustling in the same spot because you're going to get no. Right. Right. I don't live here. I come make my money here. He's a hustler, you know, and I've known a lot of people like that.

[01:14:46] You know, you don't you don't you don't shit where you eat. You know, it's like burn your rep after a while. And then I'm out to cross streams here a little bit in Andor. That's the problem that Cassian has at the beginning. And so one is his games.

[01:15:03] Everybody's getting tired of his games and you can only run that for so long. So, yeah. So by the way, people are wondering what kind of bank Victor's making that one thousand dollars that he got for his prototype.

[01:15:16] Time Loom is worth about 34K today, but it seems like he's making a lot of these sales. You also noticed the stooge he has planted in the crowd where you see him get paid later. You saw at the beginning, too. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:29] So when Mobius and Loki walk in, I had to remember the name of the main character as they walk in, they pass by. And so we see the hornswoggler sitting there having a drink, which is funny because the robber baron calls him a hornswoggler. Yes.

[01:15:47] Which means to trick or to deceive. So again, historically accurate reference. So Loki is a trickster and a deceiver himself. Right. So extra extra is carrying. I wonder how much they're going to see. Yeah. Understand each other. See eye to eye a bit.

[01:16:04] Loki's a lot more like Kang than Thanos. Absolutely. Well, a lot more like Victor Timely. Right. Okay. This is Victor Timely. So this is great. Like they're playing with characters, they're inverting them, they're waving them around each other, giving us different points of view at them.

[01:16:22] And if a character has dimensionality, we can spin around them and see these different facets. So that's what I was saying before about the show not being empty calories. There's actually nutrition here. There's actually interesting stuff going on.

[01:16:37] I got to call out the camera work again in this episode.

[01:16:41] So when they come into this room, we get this great, a couple of these great wide shots where, and they do this too also out on the fairgrounds where Loki and Mobius are in the back and they're small and they're mixed in with a huge crowd. Of people.

[01:16:58] I don't know how they did it on the fairgrounds. I think it might've been a CGI composite, but in here this felt like a room full of people. So we, we, we hear their voices clearly though.

[01:17:09] So we maintain the intimacy, but we understand the scope and the scale of the room that they're in, but then they bring us in close as they're moving through and then they pop us back out again.

[01:17:21] So they keep bringing us in at these different depths, if you will, from the wide to the medium, to the closeups. And it really serves the storytelling in letting us know how many people are in this room. What's going on? This is a show, right?

[01:17:37] This isn't a performance. There's an audience here, but yet we're still connected to our characters and we can understand the immediate action with the intermediate shots. So really well done. And then the scene transition when the room goes dark on and it's Loki and Mobius.

[01:17:53] I went, what did you call it? Locbius? Locbius are there. And they go, it goes dark on their faces. And then suddenly we have an arched, a lit arch, right? That's over the stage. And then we bring in the, the stage.

[01:18:12] So that's a scene cut going from, you know, our primary characters to what's about to happen here. But they did it in the effect of the room, of the room going dark, spinning the camera around and then showing us the stage. So expertly bringing this across.

[01:18:28] And it's just really chef's kiss. It's just really well done scene transition. So the energy and motivation and all of this stuff carries from one thing to the other. And I feel transported along with it.

[01:18:42] I feel like I'm in that room going dark and suddenly the stage lights up and you know, that's where my focus is. So again, really, really phenomenal stuff.

[01:18:52] And before we go, the thing that struck me in this scene as well was again, I always, you know, I can't help but go back to the time periods that we're in. When Loki says, oh, that's him. He who remains. And Mobius is saying, this guy? This guy?

[01:19:14] But I was watching him on stage and I was thinking, like, how much of this act that he's putting on is him? And how much is it of an act for white folk? Because of the time period that we're in. Right.

[01:19:33] So there's this, there was this, this knowing feeling that I had was that I'm watching somebody who is knowingly aware of his station in life at this particular moment and how he's playing within those themes. Right.

[01:19:56] So it just makes me wonder how much of a Victor Timely, this Victor Timely that we're seeing is actually Victor Timely. And how much is it, is an act for, to not seem as smart as he is. To not seem as knowledgeable and as capable as he is.

[01:20:23] Because that itself is a danger in this time period to his well-being. Is it something? Right. Yeah. When he corrected the robber baron? Exactly. And that puts us on that danger moment too. We're thinking, okay, how are they going to go there? Right.

[01:20:43] Just give us a little bit of it. That's, you know, that's also part of my reaction to the portrayal of the character. Because it felt like this would be something that one could do. Mm-hmm.

[01:21:02] In order to be unassuming, you know, a large black man in a room full of white folk who at any moment could take your life. You know, you walk through those doors, you have to put on an effect that is not threatening.

[01:21:23] That is not, I know more than you. You know what I mean? So, yeah, there were a lot of things at play with his portrayal for me as I was watching the scene unfold. Yeah.

[01:21:41] Yeah. And the tension that they built around that, once that guy said, you know, challenged him and he retorted, I was, ooh, my energy levels ramped up and like, what is this and how is this going to go down? Yeah.

[01:21:55] And then it rolls into a, you know, a whole flim flam thing. And then they play it off comically later with the mechanical pants. Yes. Yeah. And then when he says, I don't do partners, you guys like that first tinge of is that really who he is?

[01:22:14] Mm-hmm. Right. And is everything else, you know, fake? Right. Yeah. I'm wondering the same thing. That little hint of, hmm, something's not, what really is going on here?

[01:22:27] So this is, yeah. And I don't want to relitigate Major's performance here in totality. One thing that I noticed though, that I was expecting was when he comes off stage, does he dial it back by 20% so that he's a little bit more fluid and less, a little bit in his head so that we know it's an affect, it's a public affectation?

[01:22:50] He does. But he carried it all the way through. He was pretty consistent with it. Yeah, he carried, he was. He does have more of a stammer in private conversations. So maybe he's speaking purposefully like this to avoid.

[01:23:02] Sure. With more intentionality, right? Because he's in a performance. Interesting. Yeah. Sorry, my flerk is acting up. Flerk, flerk alert. Okay. It's a feature of our podcast. Yes, it is. Ghost cannot be ignored on the podcast. No.

[01:23:18] Mine was here earlier, wanted to go outside, but it's pouring rain. Yeah, same here. Sorry. Cool. By the way, yeah, I also have to shout out, there's a cool cameo in this whole World's Fair sequence. There's a jazz quartet on stage at one point and in the center.

[01:23:35] Right when they walk in, it's the first thing. Yeah. And on stage in the center playing trumpet is the composer herself, Natalie Cutt. Oh, man, that's so cool. That's cool. So cool.

[01:23:45] Fun. Fun when, you know, it does carry too into a production when it feels like the team is having fun and pulling together and everybody's- Yeah, definitely.

[01:23:58] We felt that in Foundation. We felt that, I think it parts in Ahsoka regardless of the problem. The warmth that Rosario Dawson actually has with Christian Haydenson, right? Yeah. When they're on screen together. Yeah. Maybe I'm making that up, but it just felt like there was-

[01:24:14] You felt it. I felt it. Yeah, I felt it. So a little thing like that where Natalie Holt gets to be in there, that's cool. It gives me vibes, you know?

[01:24:24] Yeah. Well, now the Midway action is ramping up and Lopeus wants to take Victor back to the TVA to help unlock the blast doors so OB can retrofit the temporal loom to handle all the new branching timelines.

[01:24:38] But Ravonna and Miss Minutes want to team up with him to put things back the way they were before with the three of them, or maybe just the two of them on top.

[01:24:46] And then enter Agent of Chaos Sylvie who has vowed to whack-a-mole every variant of this dude that pops up. Loki's already started recklessly using magic to get someone who wanted to fight him out of his way. And there's a kaiju Miss Minutes on the loose.

[01:25:01] This Colombian exposition is way better than anyone in our universe got. I love your takes in your descriptions, Alicia. These are great. Yeah, so you guys team Kill All Kangs, team Save the TVA or team Total Reset?

[01:25:21] I'm team. I love that, you know, what was there in Ghostbusters? The Stay Puft Marshmallow giant ghost? Miss Minutes? As soon as I saw her, I was transported back to that movie. Oh really?

[01:25:39] Yeah. And when she was walking through the street, oh, I'm coming to get you. I nearly fell out of my seat. You know what I got was Miss Pac-Man vibes. Oh yeah. That's a good one too.

[01:25:51] Because she had that ghost shape. She had the little sort of, you know, fringy thing underneath. And she was having fun, scared all the time. She was. Did she win a praise afterward? Yes. She did, right? She did! She's like, I did good, right?

[01:26:08] Yeah, like, team Kang dies or Kang lives? You guys know where I stand on this. I need Kang to, let's go Kang. I'm team Kang all the way, baby. Are you seriously? Absolutely. Are you kidding me? I'm team Kang all the way.

[01:26:28] I'm the thief of all free will? Yes, yes, yes. I'm definitely not team Total Reset. I'm not on board with Renslayer and Miss Minute's plan as of this moment. But I also don't know if I can do like team Save the TVA either.

[01:26:47] If, I mean, I understand if like Loc Bias, if they think that this is what they need to do to save everything, that's one thing.

[01:26:54] But you know, we've already been talking through maybe this is all kind of bullshit and the TVA doesn't actually need to exist at all. So it's hard to be on any of these teams right now for me.

[01:27:03] I don't care about the TVA. I want Kang to exist. That's it. I'm team Kang. Whatever that means, that's the team that I'm on. I want to see the Conqueror come through, boy. I'm team OB at this point, I think.

[01:27:24] I want to see the Conqueror come through. I'm here for that. That's what I'm intending on. You know, I'm like an evil scientist. I'm just rubbing my hands together. I want to twirl my mustache. I want to do all of that stuff.

[01:27:40] So yeah, I'm team Kang all the way. I need Kang to live. The TVA can go... Kick rocks. Yeah, they can kick rocks. Well, everybody, you know, they've all been plucked out of timelines.

[01:27:54] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's an artificial thing that we've already established, at least for us. And if you've been plucked out of your timeline... Do you go back to it? Yeah, do you go back to it and or what do you... Is there residual... Remembrance?

[01:28:14] Remembering, and we talked about, you know, in which they hinted at with X5 and Mobius with the jet ski magazine thing. And what was Mobius's previous life? And is he into that or not?

[01:28:29] And is that some sort of echo of a memory of a distant time vibration somewhere or something? So, yeah. What do you call David? Me? I can't... I'm indecided at this point because I get it all.

[01:28:51] I can see the angles on all sides and I'm... Total reset? What would total reset mean? Going back to the way it was before with he who remains in the sacred timeline. Yeah, I don't think I'm there because that again centralizes power into the conqueror.

[01:29:10] And we see that it doesn't... But what happens to he who remains? He goes crazy. So is it worth it? That's an interesting character is, yeah, I've got all the power. I am sitting at the center of it.

[01:29:25] I own everything. I've done it. And what has it done to him? Chicken or the egg. Did that happen because he is a power maniac or the other way around? The power corrupt him.

[01:29:39] But he still went cuckoo at the end of it all, right? Is that living? Is that growth? Is that living your life? And he's achieved something remarkable in just the sense of wonders of... That he was able to do it.

[01:29:56] That's an achievement, good or bad, whatever. But then at what cost and what does it get him? It got him alone at the end of time. Right. But the thing is, you know, again, I'm slipping through time here.

[01:30:11] You know, is that the goal of Ravonna and Ms. Minutes now? So when they say, is that their goal now to have him, he who remains? You mean at the end of the episode? Yes. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's what happens after this.

[01:30:31] Well, Ravonna says that. She says, I'm on a mission for that dude, not you. Right. But maybe that's about to change depending on... But anyway, where?

[01:30:46] Yeah. So speaking of the Midway, so Ms. Minutes was called the monster of the Midway, but that might be a reference to the...

[01:30:53] So the University of Chicago was being built during the fair and right, like bordering the Midway and the university's football team, the Maroons, they were the original monsters of the Midway. So that might be a fun Easter egg for our sportsy peoples.

[01:31:09] Can I, I'm just going to really, I'm going to veer and then we can off the timeline here and I'm going to veer right back. Okay. Monarch Legacy of Monsters is about to kick off. Are either of you down for that? I am.

[01:31:23] Okay. Maybe there's a one. I don't know if we can do a weekly, but maybe there's a one shot. Speaking of Kaijus. Maybe a one shot, yeah. Speaking of Kaijus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I hope it's good. Apple throws cash at its shows. I mean, Invasion.

[01:31:37] Yeah, they do. Script wasn't great, but the visuals were amazing. Were amazing, yeah. So I didn't watch all of it. I kind of dropped out season one, about Midway season one, but it was a beautiful, beautiful show.

[01:31:47] I don't know. There was this other show that they canceled with the robots. Man. Oh, Hello Tomorrow. Oh gosh, no, not Hello Tomorrow. Yeah, Jean, I think you're thinking of Raised by Wolves, which I think was on- Okay, yeah, yeah. That's the name of it. Yeah.

[01:32:04] That's the name of it. So it wasn't Apple. It wasn't Apple, okay. No, and they didn't throw money at season two. They definitely did not throw money. No, they didn't throw any money at that. I fell off Raised by Wolves after season one because of the writing, so.

[01:32:19] Yeah, I gave season two a shot, but it was- I didn't get through season two, actually. No, neither did I. Still. Okay, I'm steering us back into the secret podcast timeline here. Let's go. So where were we? Oh, we were talking about monsters in Ms. Minutes.

[01:32:37] Yeah, and so I saw in the notes you were excited and I agree that Loki gets to do more Loki stuff. Yes, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Always a good thing. Yeah. I even like the green of the Marvel Studios at the opening. I love the green that

[01:32:51] they use in this. Green is such a cool color. It has such a vibe to it when you use it in VFX. Yeah, it also reminds me of Night Witches, but yeah. Exactly. Night Sisters. Totally, 100% with that as well. Star Wars reference if you don't know.

[01:33:05] I did notice though that a couple of times where there's an effect or where he does something where Loki, like maybe in the chase scene, they don't show certain parts of the

[01:33:16] VFX. They show the after of it. So I think it's like a little money saving thing. So they use edits and cuts to probably save a little cash and that's fine. But if you notice that

[01:33:26] kind of stuff, you can see where they're pulling a few of their shots, which is fine. Yeah. And somewhere I have to compliment Jonathan Major's performance in this is when he gets confronted by the guy he sold mechanical pants to and he starts to squat as he's talking

[01:33:45] to him to try to convince him that he's actually going to... I think it worked. I think it worked. I think it worked. I think it worked. The subtlety in this. How we can fool these white folks.

[01:33:55] Do you guys, either of you guys like Wallace and Gromit and the whole, what is it? Aardman Studios, I think? Out of... Yeah, I liked their vision short, but in general I'm not a huge fan. Yeah, I didn't really follow them.

[01:34:06] There's a whole mechanical pants episode with Wallace. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. The mechanical pants. That was hilarious. That was good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Just quickly back to the Kang of it all and not to necessarily litigate who we are, which

[01:34:24] teams we're on or whatever, but with Sylvie and Loki in the car and they're having this argument, I think this is to me the heart of the story here. There's a lot going on

[01:34:42] in the story. I think there's two or three different B plots, if you will. But I think the A plot is this idea of Loki and Sylvie on either side of this argument, TVA or no

[01:34:57] TVA. And then we can get into the chaos versus order of it all and different character motivations and stuff. But what it made me think about was, because they're arguing, should the TVA be destroyed

[01:35:11] or preserved? And obviously Sylvie's wants to destroy it. Aren't Loki and Sylvie a variant of the same person, right? And so if that's the case, then this is just a variation of, and this is for our John, my podcast, lorehound John, the human heart in conflict with itself.

[01:35:37] The ultimate of all themes, of all drama. The only primary story is the human heart in conflict with itself. And so I thought, hey, Loki and Sylvie, and they're having a conflict. There you go. It is what it is. Yeah. Good point. Good point.

[01:35:52] I think, yeah, I kind of agree with that because they are, Loki is the character, right? And they're both, allegedly versions of this one thing. So yes, I would say that they all

[01:36:09] have an argument with themselves, but you can see it in the show as well because what Sylvie is going through is also what Loki has gone through. Loki 2012, right? So are they at the same place currently? No. Are they trying to get to the same place? Yes.

[01:36:34] And I think Loki 2012 kind of recognizes that. Right. Sylvie doesn't, I don't believe so, but I think Loki recognizes that she's going through the same things that I have already kind of, sort of tried to deal with. Right? This anger and all of this rage that I have,

[01:37:02] it may have been for different reasons, but I've dealt with those feelings, those emotions. I've had those feelings, those emotions. I've acted out on those feelings and emotions, and I kind of don't want her to do the same thing.

[01:37:17] And she gets there in the end of this episode. Right. Yeah. To a certain degree. A little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She gets somewhere. She gets somewhere along those lines. She gets somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[01:37:27] She's like on the path. You can see her take a step forward. Instead of taking a step backward or a step laterally, she's actually taking a step forward by the end. Cool. Fun way to end this whole sequence on a comedy note with Mobius and the tandem bicycle.

[01:37:47] Yeah. I'm a god for Christ's sake. Right. What am I doing? You want me to jump on this stupid tandem bike? And this is where I see Ouroboros everywhere, right? In that chase scene.

[01:38:00] They start at one point, run around, and they end up right back at the same point again. You know what I mean? It was like, I'm like, ah! Yeah. It's the snake eating his tail. Ah! You know what I mean?

[01:38:14] I was just like, oh my God. I have to stop seeing this thing. It sums up humanity. There you go. You start at one point, end up right back where you started from. And something I've been noticing people pointing out online that people are reading into is

[01:38:28] that the Chicago World's Fair famously ended with the assassination of the mayor. So people are wondering, is that going to play out somewhere? But I'm wondering if they'll even... Now they've done the World's Fair thing and they're moving on. Yeah. I wonder if we're done with that. Yeah.

[01:38:41] But maybe it's foreshadowing. I kind of feel like they're done with that. Yeah. I think so. Cool. Well, yeah. Our characters are also done with the World's Fair. So Minuteslayer escapes with Kang? And Victor takes Red Slayer- You love your ship names. I do.

[01:38:57] Victor takes them to see his refrigerator chair and to flirt. And Red Slayer recaps the TVA situation for him. And he's like, oh yeah, me being in charge of everything sounds really good. And he calls Locubius that wizard and his butler, which is hilarious.

[01:39:15] But the tone changes when Red Slayer uses the word partners. As Victor told the robber baron dude at the fair, he doesn't do partners. He didn't like that at all. He's not into it. Miss Minutes is also ready to ditch her competition.

[01:39:28] So after they board a boat, which happens to be named the SS Heron after last year's de facto showrunner, Kate Heron. Oh, that's a nice little tug. Yeah. They're bound for Victor's lab across the lake because, yeah, taxes are lower in Wisconsin.

[01:39:42] And Red Slayer ends up waking up on a rowboat all by herself. But Miss Minutes is now also starting to freak Victor out. So just as she's declaring her love for him, he locks her into the temp pad.

[01:39:55] And when Ravonna catches up with them, she's wielding a proto pruning stick. All hell breaks loose, especially when Locubius and Sylvie all show up too. I like she says Miss Minutes says to Victor, you're pretty singular yourself. At least you will be.

[01:40:14] Yeah, I think this is where this whole thing is interesting because it gives us the insight into Kang's character flaw, if you will. The reason and it illuminates it, I think, really nicely.

[01:40:30] It sets it up in the in the presentation, in the in the hall there where he doesn't do it. And then she drops the word partner again. And we see it play out ultimately with Miss Minutes as well.

[01:40:44] But I think this is why all the Kang variants, none of them can cooperate because this is central to this character's makeup that he can't share power. They can't whatever. I don't know how do you describe it?

[01:41:01] You know, multiple infinite exponents of the same character, but he doesn't want to share. They are singular in in nature and in their perception of themselves is, yeah, I don't do partnerships. So what does that say about the recording that we hear? So I said no.

[01:41:20] And also it plays into he who remains saying he's only doing this because these guys are worse. Right. Really? Really? Are you only doing it because they're worse than you? Mm hmm. You telling yourself that? Yeah. You know, you maybe just want it all for yourself, bro.

[01:41:40] So again, great. That's what you want. Good job on the episode because now we have motivation for it. We have a we have a relatable motivation embodied in a human way of.

[01:41:51] Yeah, I don't I have whatever relationship issues and I can't be in relationship with other people in that way. I have to control. I have to dominate the scene. So, yeah.

[01:42:01] And both in this scene, this this part of the episode ties into comics in a way that's really cool and it separates itself from those comics as well. At the same time. At this entire episode. Nice.

[01:42:21] There are calls and, you know, once he once he said, yeah, I'm going to, you know, I live in Wisconsin. I was like, is that a comic thing? And yeah. All right. Okay. Victor, time. Yeah. All right. We're getting somewhere here. We're getting somewhere here.

[01:42:40] But it's again, it's it's different. Right. And it's it's interesting because it's different. Right. It's interesting because it's different. So I'm I'm really I really want to see where this goes, because the question now I have is, you know, who is this Victor timely?

[01:43:02] You asked where his parents were earlier. Right. Where did they go? Like, OK, Victor timely in the comics. You know, he's here. We don't ask that question. You know what I mean? We know who he is. We don't ask that question.

[01:43:19] Now I'm asking myself, who is this guy? Hmm. Because it doesn't fit. Hmm. And that's cool. Right. And now I'm also seeing that Rovona has her own motivation, just like in the comics. But it's a for a different reason. Mm hmm. For a totally different reason.

[01:43:39] But the motivation is still the same. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you think about Miss Minutes motivation? So she makes it clear. Yeah, Mobius might be a butler, but she is not Rovona's helper.

[01:43:52] She is a fully conscious and sentient AI created by he who remains, which, by the way, seems quite similar to Lila Miguel O'Hara's AI in Spider-Verse films. So keeping an eye on that. Has that she streaming yet? No. No. OK.

[01:44:08] I mean, it's still on video on demand because you're making money. OK. But Miss Minutes wants a real body. Do you guys feel sorry for her? You know, an AI that has the ability to program itself? I don't know.

[01:44:19] I don't know if I want that to have a body or I like it having a off switch somehow. Mm hmm. Even though it's sentient. I don't know. It's a little it gets a little Terminator for me. So a little Ultrony.

[01:44:35] She didn't sell it with a creepy glitchy face on the mannequin. She did. No. Yeah. Especially the glitchy face. I'm like, yeah, I'm good. Thank you. That's a nice subtle nod to right? Because. Yeah. Yeah. She did have a body.

[01:44:53] Would that actually be good for her or that might be a glitch? Yeah, exactly. But also, yeah, the mannequins might be Victor. Didn't Victor Timely have mannequins in the comics that he would like to turn into robots? Yes. So that might be why. That's just yeah.

[01:45:09] Shows respect for the source material. Right. That's good. It's a nice. It's a nice way to set up. And when she said that, I thought about it and I said to myself, you know, he who remains knows everything that happened through time.

[01:45:25] So when I said Ultrony is like maybe he recognizes like, yo, if I do this, there's a possibility that this could be the outcome. So I can't give you the ability to have a physical form because I've already seen what happens

[01:45:40] when AI that's self-aware has a physical form, you know, and that could be a threat to me. Interesting. You can turn out to be a threat to me. Interesting. He says too, he says it's not something I know how to do when she wants a physical form. Right.

[01:45:59] But you have Victor Timely saying that? Yeah, but it's also interesting because he also doesn't know how to be in relationship because she wants to lead with him together. Give me a body and we can lead together. I don't know how to do that.

[01:46:10] I don't know how to be in a partnership with somebody like that. So it was a nice line that did double duty there. Okay, so one question. So yeah, we see first of all, Victor Timely mentions that he's developed this throughput

[01:46:23] multiplier that could help with the TVA issue. And so this is a first indication to people who don't know, you know, the kindness of it all that he's maybe not a total hack like he seemed.

[01:46:32] They do have questions about we're going to we don't have answers yet, but we'll be keeping an eye on it. Whether there's a bootstrap paradox going on in one of two ways or both of two ways.

[01:46:43] And the bootstrap paradox is a time travel story thing where you have the TVA manual and if you have someone give the TVA manual to Victor Timely, but then he's the one who ends up quote unquote writing it, that would be a bootstrap paradox.

[01:46:57] Now we have OB in there as a wrinkle. So we have to see if that actually is going to play out that way. But maybe Miss Minutes like did he get the idea from Miss Minutes?

[01:47:06] From meeting Miss Minutes and then went on to create her or is that a different variant? And the wrinkle there is she was created as a chess device not to be like fully automated. But yeah, I'm interested to see how that plays out.

[01:47:20] And also noticing that Ren Slayer is very happy to take credit for things that were not her idea. So maybe she's the origin of this whole thing. Oh, and move over Casey because there's a new leader of the OB fan club.

[01:47:32] Which I thought was interesting because he can look up to somebody, but he can't look horizontally at somebody, I guess you could say. Right? Somehow he sees OB as being his, I don't want to say better,

[01:47:46] but has some sort of upward appreciation of him if that's the right way to explain that. Yeah. This little doodad he picks up at the end, he calls a culmination of my life's work. Is that part of the temporal loom? It's like this little globe that with sparkles.

[01:48:03] That was the throughput multiplier thing. Oh, is it? Okay. Okay. Yeah. And it was in his sketches in the TVA handbook. Okay. So he must have already, he saw on the TVA handbook and he was like, this is a flaw of this system. I was already designing it.

[01:48:22] That's what I thought. So he's, yeah, he's able to think beyond the TVA manual and see the bigger, uh, the bigger issues with the loom, the limitations of the loom. So, okay. Yeah. Good slapstick comedy chase scene here, which fits into the old timey wimey, um,

[01:48:39] vibe of the show and they use the music and it's sort of a slapstick. So again, just fitting into the historical historicity of this episode, because slapstick and slapstick chases were pretty common in old black and white silent films. So good, good homage to that.

[01:48:56] So I guess we kind of have to talk about Renslayer and Sylvie here a bit because Ravonna says that she's on a mission for he who remains right. And not the variant. So we, we kind of talked about that before,

[01:49:11] but then we get this great exposition by Ravonna of her interior sense that she put all of herself into the TVA, including her happiness, including her humanity, which gives me another and or call back to Luthen, right? Like, you know,

[01:49:27] I've sacrificed myself for this greater idea and this idea of order versus chaos. So she's the only one who can bring order, but you know, uh, Sylvie and Loki are agents of chaos, right? They're, they are embodiments of chaos, of mischief,

[01:49:45] of destabilizing order for good or ill motives. So I, and again, we see the interiors of our character in this conflict, in this dramatic conflict between the two. So really great to see that she has this epiphany that she's like,

[01:50:06] Oh, I've been down this road before. Uh, I've, I've thought about your death a million times and it's unsatisfied every time it's unsatisfying. It's leaving me empty. So maybe that's not the thing to do. And in that moment of sort of authenticity of her own self-reflection,

[01:50:22] she can see Sylvie's not sorry. She can see Ravonna's, her own self-reflection and her own self-reflection and her own self-reflection not sorry. So you can see a Ravonna's core character, which is the hunger for power, right? And, and wanting to be at the center to matter, to,

[01:50:43] to bring order to, to have power and control, uh, over, you know, the environment and everything around her. So, and I don't know, you were saying Jean that that's the same, but different in the comics. Yeah. So there's, there's a, in, in, in the comics, right. Um,

[01:51:02] this is, I was going to say this in the, in the comics corner, but we might as well get it out there now. I think we're slipping too. Cause some of the slips we have next scene. Yeah. So let's talk about this now. Um, so Ravonna,

[01:51:14] um, dies, is brought back. Um, and when she comes back, uh, she comes back as she takes on the moniker of the Terminatrix. Um, and she's upset with Kang for letting her die. So her whole raison d'etre in this, um,

[01:51:37] arc of her story was to take over, replace Kang. Right. Because you let me perish. So I'm going to do the things that you wanted to do. And I'm going to take over time. I'm going to be you a better you.

[01:51:57] Right. So she goes down this arc and she has, um, an assistant, AI assistant, you know, at her side in this journey to, um, rule it all. Brideshead, right? Brideshead. Yes. Thank you. So now we have this Ravonna and we have Miss Minutes at the end of time.

[01:52:23] And they're standing there together saying, we're gonna, we're gonna do this thing together. Right? We're going to do what, they're looking at the corpse of he who remains, right? They're looking at his corpse and they're saying, we're going to get this thing right. Right.

[01:52:41] So I thought it was a great call to this comic book character who also said, we're going to do this thing my way, but for very different reasons. She's not doing it because she's a spurned, a spurned love interest.

[01:52:59] Right. In the comics, she's like, they were in love. They're, they're, they're, you know, the North stars to each other. You let me die. How could you do that? She's just staying here. I, okay. You're gone. I'm still here. I'm going to do it.

[01:53:18] I'm going to do it. I'm taking this agency, not because of you, but because of me, I'm going to do this my way. And it has nothing to do with where you left me. That's what, that's where I was like, okay, Bravo. You know, like Bravo.

[01:53:37] I saw, I appreciated her in the show, taking on this, you know, persona that she's going to be potentially maybe Rovonna is the big bad. Yeah. In our current, for our current theme players right now. Yeah. Right. Right. Maybe she is,

[01:54:00] maybe this Victor timely isn't that guy that they're looking at who's dead. And this guy who says I can make my own choices. You don't know what's in my heart when he begs for mercy from Sylvie.

[01:54:12] And then that puts Sylvie on her path of like, Ooh, maybe I don't, I'm not going to kill timely. And so I'm not going to kill Rovonna, even though Ravonna is ending up being a bigger potential threat.

[01:54:25] Then which, Oh, so right now I'm seeing what you're seeing here. Even though I haven't read the comics, I get it now that she's taking over. So they're, they're playing with the comic in that they're making Ravonna. Yes. Yes.

[01:54:40] Yes. Yes. The comic made her the threat and they're doing that. They took off the board. Right. And made her the threat. The Avengers had to come together to fight Ravonna. There were variants. Yes. There were variants of Ravonna through time who came together to fight

[01:55:06] Terminator, who is Ravonna marker. Right. So I might leave that one in cause that's like a, right? So they, she became in the, in the arc of the story. She was the threat. She was the main big bad that was threatening the existence of,

[01:55:30] come on MCU bring this, bring it, bring it, bring it, bring it, bring it. Right. Give us the, Oh, Hey, we're going to have a, he who remains is the big bad, but then slip and then bring in Ravonna.

[01:55:41] True to the source material. And, but it, Oh yeah, go ahead. Alicia. Can I bring in the Mobius name into this? So Mobius is like, sorry, this is also one, I'm just going to do a shout out to dark fans, but so Mobius is about to have,

[01:55:56] it's this shape where there's two sides and each is twisted so that each side is infinite. But there are two sides that twist around each other and come back. And so I wonder, could that be like something like they're setting up like a dark situation

[01:56:10] with this timeline where there's two different realities that kind of loop through each other to get back to, you know, so there's the Ravonna ascendancy and the Kang ascendancy. The apexes of the Mobius on either end. Right.

[01:56:28] Well, yeah. This, these parallel things that are going through each other. But when we think of a Mobius loop, we think it in that sideways figure eight. Right. Right. There's an apex on each end of that, that shape.

[01:56:41] There's an ascendance and then a reduction and then a crossing back. So yeah, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And there's, there's a lot of dualities are setting up like, so when Ravonna says this thing about being like the agent of chaos,

[01:56:54] just at that moment, Sylvie comes like flying in. So just announcing herself as a, sorry, Ravonna called herself the agent of order and Sylvie flies in as the agent of chaos. Yeah. But then, so does that like, is Loki becoming the more ordered one in that pair now?

[01:57:11] Right. Right. Yeah. And he is because he's, he's arguing for the continuation of the TVA, which is a an execution of order. Yeah. Of a particular order, a particular order, but a way to try to apply order. And yet he's being a proponent for that.

[01:57:35] We're still be saying nah, let all timelines just be timelines. Yeah. Not be harnessed. Okay. Well we're getting. All right MCU cook. We're getting into the end of time game. So, so just to wrap up this episode,

[01:57:52] reminded perhaps of the pruning of her own timeline that Ravonna did. Sylvie ultimately spares Victor, but asked to be left alone with Renslayer and team Lokbeis. They get to take Victor back to with his time loom improvement designs and his

[01:58:06] Hebrew who remains like temporal aura to the TVA and hopefully to fix the catastrophe waiting to happen next episode. Meanwhile, Sylvie has granted Ravonna her wish to see he who remains at the end of time shoving her through the door and stranding her only. Yeah.

[01:58:22] Now of course he's a desiccated corpse, but Miss Minutes, who's feeling spurned is ready to spill what she promises is some anger inducing tea to Renslayer and the episode ends. What do you guys think Miss Minutes is going to say? I have no idea.

[01:58:37] I don't know. I don't know. She knows it all right. She, she's been there. She's, she's been to fly on the wall so to speak. So she has a lot of knowledge. I'm just riding in the car of the Ferris wheel or on the, on the,

[01:58:49] there you go. There you go. Roller coaster. Yeah. I mean, I have no idea what she's going to say. So, I mean it's kind of foolish to make enemies with somebody who knows your secrets. Right? Exactly. But he doesn't know that. With that recording that Loki heard.

[01:59:05] I think it does. It has to, it absolutely has to because the in that recording they're setting up a central tension, which is in this episode they're telling us, uh, Victor Timely, AKA Kang's don't trust and can't partner.

[01:59:21] But yet on that recording he's saying the exact opposite, right? He's saying it exactly opposite to the person he dropped in the boat in this episode. So they're creating a dramatic, So it has to do with that recording and that,

[01:59:33] that recording is featured very prominently. Right. It's a, it's a, it's an element of the central tension there. So, yeah. So is Victor Timely Kang? Yeah. That's the question. Is he, is he, is he even he who remains? Is he, yeah. Are they three different people?

[01:59:51] Cause it doesn't look like variance. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Jean, do you think that the, the, the, the, Jean, do you think that this was adequate punishment for Renslayer given the, you know, pruning of Sylvie's timeline and callous? I don't remember and trying to kill Mochbius.

[02:00:10] Only if she had no way to get back, but we know she has a way to escape. I don't think it's a good idea to drop your enemy into the palace of the dude who is controlling all things, right?

[02:00:25] There's going to be stuff there that, and with Miss Minutes, right? No, I don't think, I don't think, uh, Sylvie knew that Miss Minutes was in. No, she didn't know. I don't think she knew. I don't think she knew. But even if she didn't know, like you said,

[02:00:41] dropping her in to the palace where we don't know the sorts of things that have been left behind. Exactly. Might not have been the best idea. Yeah. Although we know Sylvie has the master tempad from He Who Remains. So she's thinking she's locked her away.

[02:01:00] Right. She's thinking that I've locked her away. I hadn't thought about that. Cause Sylvie's able to track and move much more freely. So she's getting data from the master time pad, I guess. That's where my head can and right now. My immediate thought was like,

[02:01:16] I'm just sending you to the end of time by yourself. There's nobody else there. She's been there. Sylvie's been there. She knows there's nobody else there. And um, And I'll know if she bounce because I've got the master coat thing. Right.

[02:01:32] Well, she doesn't even, I don't even think she's thinking about her leaving. Right. Right. Like I'm sticking you in a place in a prison. Yeah, I think she's. Nowhere to go. Yeah. Right. Not knowing that. Do does she know? Yeah.

[02:01:48] They don't know that miss minutes is with her. Right. No, they don't definitely change things. Yeah. That's what changes everything. Yeah. Nice. Cool. Yeah. And then, yeah, the final question is, will the temporal loom get fixed or maybe destroyed? You know,

[02:02:03] this whole episode and some of what we're talking about and which team and you know, what's going to happen. I mean, I love all these questions I'm down for the, the, the thought examination, but like we were saying before, I mean, we just have to see. Yeah,

[02:02:16] I know that's, but I'm enjoying that I'm enjoying not knowing I'm enjoying. I want to be delighted and surprised by what they do. Right. Right. So I it's, it's absolutely the question that's on our, all of our minds and I'm eagerly. Awaiting. Awaiting the, the,

[02:02:31] the resolution of that. So. Awesome. Sean, did we cover all of your comic corner? No. So we're just going to do one more comics corner really quickly. And that revolves around Victor time. Okay. Which is the question. Go, go. No, no, no. Finish what you're saying.

[02:02:50] Which calls into question who is this Victor timely that we're seeing in this show? Cool. Right. All right. So we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, you can wrap us up with that final comic book corner. Okay. And we're back. John,

[02:03:17] you had one final comic corner that you wanted to hit us up on. Yeah. So really quickly, Victor timely in the comics is King, right? There's no deviation. He's carrying the weight. He's carrying the weight. He's carrying the weight. He's carrying the weight. There's no deviation.

[02:03:28] He's carrying who goes back to the early 20th century and found a city called timely Wisconsin. Right. See, he's Edison indeed. So he found timely Wisconsin. He builds up his own industry with his knowledge of the future, right?

[02:03:36] He's because he's traveled back in time and he basically is Kang. He's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a,

[02:03:56] he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a. He's Kang. He's the guy that they're telling us that this Victor timely will become. So. As I'm watching the, the show, I'm like, okay,

[02:04:16] this is Victor Tomley. Who is this guy? Like, I see the kid and I'm like, okay. This is not the victim family that I know. You know what I mean? He's not King at this. unless they throw a really big monkey wrench

[02:04:28] and just in the next episode or two, figure out a way to turning into a previous version that this guy that we're watching is not currently King. He's not Nathaniel Richards. He's not that guy. This is not a different moniker that King has taken on.

[02:04:51] Like this is someone completely different. And I wanna know how, if that's the case, how is that possible? Right? It's making me question where the story is going because again, I know this Victor Timely to be one thing.

[02:05:14] And in the show, this Victor Timely is not that thing. Right? Everything that they're showing us is saying he is not who you think he is. And I'm biting it hook like, right. Are they gonna throw me off because I'm biting it hook line and sinker. Nice.

[02:05:36] So are they gonna pull the rug out from under me and say, aha, gotcha. Fingers crossed, double finger crossed, toes and everything. I hope they do that. Right? And I hope that they can. That they pull the rug out. Yeah, they hope they can mobius us. Right?

[02:05:53] We can flip around and do some things and different perspective here, but it's still the same thing. So it plays into your comic book, but we all get a new experience of it. So again, this is a really cool thing that the show is doing

[02:06:07] and re-imagining the characters from the main stories Let's go. that they've come to be in. Nice. All right, anything else on that or should we jump into some feedback? Just one last thing to Alicia's point, Victor Timely in the comics was a direct competitor of Ford and Edison.

[02:06:30] Like he built a business, Timely Industries. And he was a direct competitor to Ford and Edison at the time. Right, so they're playing. So again, good writing, writers, understanding history, and then they're playing with these robber baron archetypes. So good stuff. Okay, quick feedback. We've got two emails,

[02:06:52] one from Marilyn and one from Abby, our faithful writers in at this stage. Again, dear listeners, if you want to- Our Loki lovers. Our Loki lovers. Yes, yes, they are. If you do want to send us some feedback, if things that we missed

[02:07:04] or things that you want to play on or you want to add to the conversation, send us emails to mcu at thelorehounds.com or head over to our website, thelorehounds.com. And there, there's a contact form as well as a voicemail feature.

[02:07:22] And of course we have the Discord where we've got a channel set up for, dedicated for Loki so you can join the conversation there. All of the links for all of those things are in the show notes. So Marilyn, Marilyn says, I'm a bit late, I'm afraid.

[02:07:33] I've got one comment from the first episode and everything else concerns second episode and your excellent podcast about it. Well, thank you, Marilyn. From the first episode, I think that it was Loki and Mobius working together to bring Loki to the phone as it was ringing.

[02:07:49] One of them made the phone call and the other did the pruning. Oh, Marilyn's got some internet points out on who pruned Loki. So what do you guys think about that theory? I still think Loki pruned, but I could see Mobius being the one making the call too.

[02:08:06] In cahoots. Very timey-wimey. It's a very timey-wimey solution. I like it. So, locks of cereal. And it's good that we remember this because this has got to be coming up soon. It does, right? Yeah, we've got to get some payoff to it. Yeah. All right, Marilyn continues.

[02:08:20] I'm afraid the rest of this is in no particular order, but the first item is interesting to contemplate just generally, I think. In Norse mythology, guess who is the father of Ouroboros, the Midgard serpent? Why? It's Loki! Using Tolkienian applicability rather than allegory,

[02:08:40] could that mean that Sylvie is Obi's mother? Since she is another form of Loki and may have it been, sorry about that. Should she and Loki together or it may have been Sylvie with Mobius. See the next paragraph for why I suggest Mobius.

[02:09:02] Okay, Marilyn's pushing chips out onto the table and she's laying down some chips. Man, man, I got to think about those things right there. Seriously, right? Yeah, it's intriguing, but then yeah, I haven't seen anything to suggest that, but it is an intriguing idea. Yeah, it's very cool.

[02:09:20] And if they're digging deep into Norse mythology, that could be good. So all right, Marilyn continues. I'm enamored with the suggestion that Mobius is actually the Jack we first meet in 1982 at McDonald's. This could explain why he had such an affinity with Loki from the get-go.

[02:09:37] Ah, I like that angle. That's good. Since Sylvie is a variant of Loki, right? So, you know, this sort of property of whatever, of something, you know, anyway, just the affinities there. This might also, transitive property, right? Is that what it is? Maybe I'm using that too broadly.

[02:09:54] This might also explain the fathering of Ouroboros as I mentioned above. I also think that Loki quote unquote loves Sylvie because he's loving himself in a different form. Sure, yeah, I mean that's- He's loving himself. That's it, gotta have a, gotta love yourself, right?

[02:10:10] That's what they say in this world, right? In McDonald's advertising. Yeah, oh right, yes, I'm loving it. Oh, very good. Marilyn continues. Yes, it's complicated. And just for the record, I adored McDonald's cherry pie. Oh man. The apple was fine.

[02:10:26] Yeah, I think if I was gonna go with one or the other, I would go with cherry pie. Where are you guys at, cherry or apple on McDonald's? Apple. Apple, all right, all right. It's me and Marilyn against you guys.

[02:10:39] I mean, I'm not gonna say no to it, right? As long as it's not- No, I won't say no to cherry pie either. Oh, I'll say no to cherry pie. No! Oh yeah? Yeah. What about chocolate covered cherries? Do you like those? Nope. Nope?

[02:10:51] Don't put any fruit on my chocolate. All right. That's fine, more for me. He's not having it. And for the record, oh let's see, the apple was fine too, but it always had a special day when they had cherry pie. As a possible note of interest,

[02:11:06] I remember the McDonald's from the mid 1960s, though only vaguely because I was about nine or 10 and there was no pie of either short way back then. Darius suggests that Sylvie had the one pad to rule them all, meaning he who remains Tempad,

[02:11:26] which as a name, it always made me think of high feminine hygiene products. Okay. Yeah, no, I definitely had that thought too. Did you? Okay, all right, well, I'll leave that in. Keep it in. All right, all right.

[02:11:41] But yeah, I did think she has the master Tempad, definitely. Yeah, she does. The one pad to rule them all. So. Right. Loki's insight that it's harder to stay makes me think of Mobius' claim that he did not want to visit his past

[02:11:57] because if it was a good one and he'd lost it, he didn't want to know again. Would it be interesting if he was in fact Jack and he had an affair with Sylvie? Yes. I like where all of this is going.

[02:12:11] I don't know how it's gonna play out. I do wonder about that. Yeah. Finishing up here, I just can't think of Loki as quote unquote evil. I see him using his trickster side for the sake of good at this point.

[02:12:25] I think we're kind of agreed on that, right? He's more order than chaos and he's not angry. He's not lashing out like he was in Avengers. But chaos isn't evil either. You could be chaotic good. Exactly. If you were gonna be into D&D parlance, yes.

[02:12:39] And he really seems to care for Sylvie, indeed. As mentioned above, that could be because she is him but I still see his ultimate motives as being helpful and not harmful. Perhaps the comic books spin it differently but of course it could just be one big Loki con.

[02:12:57] We know how good he is at deception. It just goes back to the human heart in conflict with itself, right? That's what we got going on here. Did we have a Sylvie in comic books, Joel? No. Okay, so this is a show we mentioned. We have a female.

[02:13:12] They merged two characters, yeah. Sure, okay, cool. But then they're giving us a new- But there's also Sylvie the Enchantress so they merged them together. They merged two characters. But I don't see the Enchantress in Sylvie. Okay. That's why I said no. Well, except she's literally-

[02:13:26] But she has enchanting power. Enchants, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, but I don't see that character in this character. Okay, okay. Yeah, okay, right. That's what I mean. Just a power. Not the power set but I don't see that character in her. Cool, right. Yeah.

[02:13:43] Wrapping up, I did catch on to the breaking bad origin of Breaking Brad but then a bit later I found myself of thinking of Breaking Bread. There is the key lime pie scene, not to mention that Sylvia is now serving people food.

[02:13:58] So there you go, Alicia, more food reference, right? Maybe it's just me as I do tend to look rather deeply for hidden meanings of things. That's not just you, Marilyn. That's this whole podcast industry but I do like the residents indeed. See my Markley comments about Foundation

[02:14:16] for where that sometimes ends up. But anyway, that's it for now. Looking forward to your next excellent insights and observations. All the best, Marilyn. Any thoughts on Marilyn's email? Insightful as always. Yeah, I have to get some thought about this, you know, who created Ouroboros,

[02:14:36] whether he's creative or not. Indeed. And I don't wonder, Ouroboros seems to me more, like he doesn't, he's very much boxed within himself. Right? He has an area that he works within and he sort of is not outside of that. He doesn't feel like he has agency outside

[02:14:58] or interest outside of what his job is and only within his job. So the hacking thing, like, oh, that's outside the box. Oh, we could hack. Oh, I didn't thought about that. Or was he saying, cause sometimes he phrases things as a way to like say it kindly,

[02:15:13] but to like, instead of saying you're a dumbass, he's like, oh, can we do that? And then they're like, well, no, can we? Like, no, I don't think so. Moving on, you know? Right. But I don't think he's not, I don't think that.

[02:15:25] Well, like for example, last week when he was like, when they were asking him to look at X5's TempPad and he's like, oh, is this really important instead of me trying to save the entire world? That was them playing with us.

[02:15:39] I think that was an honest question. The way I read it was that was Ovi's honest question. I read it differently. I read it as him kindly saying like, don't be a dumbass. Fair enough. All right, we've got another email in from Abby.

[02:15:54] Thank you, Abby for writing in again. She says first impressions about last week's episode. I'd like to express my appreciation for the comics background Jean filled us in on. The Zeniak stuff is fascinating and really interesting whether or not it has a part to play

[02:16:12] in present or future MCU comics. Very cool. Sim Quibbles, I noticed how easy it is to fall back onto the hero equals good, villain equals evil designation. It seems so extremely simplistic. I'll just leave this quote here from Norse mythology, a book by Neil Gaiman.

[02:16:32] Loki wasn't evil, Loki was complicated. Or just go with Loki season one, episode two, no one good is ever truly good and no one bad is ever truly bad. It's good that some of these shows explore some of these shades of gray. What do you guys think? Absolutely.

[02:16:52] Yeah, I think, and the thing when I said that she was evil and Loki's evil, I think in the comics, they until recently, I would say maybe the last 20 years Loki has not been portrayed as a character that has this,

[02:17:16] it's all purely because I'm an agent of mischief and chaos. He's been portrayed as one of the top tier villains in the MCU. So, in the show itself, he's not what that is right now. But I could argue that when we first meet Loki in the MCU,

[02:17:39] he's way more villainous in the way that he is in the comic books than he is in what is traditional Norse mythology. So there's the source material that the character in writing comes from and what they've done with that character

[02:17:59] and also how the character has progressed throughout time to become what we see on screen in this show. But I would say that from when he first came on the scene being written, he wasn't being written as a complex character that had this father complex.

[02:18:20] No, he was a villain and he's been a villain in comics for much longer than he has been a creature of duality. Right. And I think we have to also draw a distinction between villains and antagonists, whereas in the MCU, he's been a villain in the MCU,

[02:18:45] like that's how he started in Avengers, but he's shifted into more often and now Sylvie's taking this role being an antagonist. Someone who's getting in the way, but not for evil intentions or anything. Right, right, right. And I like that they're playing with good evil villain hero thing

[02:19:05] because I think that's one of the things that I'm ready to move, explore more in the superhero genre of is grayness. We talk about this in some Star Wars stuff, gray force users, morality, and so let's weave. We've done a lot of storytelling

[02:19:24] and let's keep weaving into these questions of what does it mean to be a whole person who's a little bit of a lot of things? And I think in the beginning of these comics, these characters, they were written in a very Abrahamic Judeo-Christian sort of theme

[02:19:44] of good versus evil. And I think that's one of the things that's in the beginning of this comic is that they're writing in a very Abrahamic Judeo-Christian sort of theme of good versus evil. Right, right. Like this is the good guy, this is the bad guy

[02:19:55] and the bad guy does really bad, terrible things. And the good guys try to watch in the end. These heroes, these good guys try to stop those bad, terrible things from happening. So that's where the character, and when I say these things about the characters,

[02:20:12] I'm drawing on the entire history of that character. And also what has been written previous for us to view on screen. Right. All right, continuing Abby's email. On Sylvie and her plotting, she isn't evil either. Robbed of her childhood, she spent her life on the run.

[02:20:33] Revenge, her main motivator. She did some terrible things, all those Minutemen she killed. It was part self-defense, part rage. Now she's doing the bury your head in the sand thing. She has yet to face up to what she did. There are consequences to her actions

[02:20:49] beyond the Rosie giving free will to everyone, but her short-term coping mechanism is the broken record. TVA bad. This is a, I really like this analysis. It's really placing Sylvie, again, not as a simplistic antagonist, but somebody who has a complexity of motivation here.

[02:21:10] She's gotta be carrying a lot of weight for all the shit that she did. A lot, a lot of baggage. And was it evil? Well, and this is also fun because was Thanos evil? He was trying to think of a greater good, right?

[02:21:27] But it had evil results in the sense of, you know, disappearing a whole bunch of people without their consent, right? But at the same time, he's like, no, there's a greater good here. So I love them playing with this idea of- Thanos pruned 50% of the universe.

[02:21:46] That's what I'm saying, right? But he thought he was doing good. He was trying, he was saying that I've got a, I see resource shortages here. And if we reduce then, right? So he's trying to apply a morality to it, even though it doesn't involve consent

[02:22:02] of all the people who were disappeared. So bad guys having good motivations or bad guys who have motivations who then see, like, I just like to see them playing with this stuff. Yeah, it's really cool things that they're doing with these characters. All right, Abby continues,

[02:22:19] my first watch impressions of episode three. First off, the intro music getting a retro vibe was a nice touch, as we talked about before. All in all, not my favorite episode. We're going to have some issues with pacing. The middle episode, curse. Hopefully we've changed your mind.

[02:22:38] We've changed your mind, hopefully, fingers crossed. Loki and his butler look dapper, indeed. He isn't impressed with the depiction of the Norse gods, although the music and his expression cues us into that he is feeling a little homesick, I agree.

[02:22:57] And there's some regret and some missing and some sadness. The Loki and Mobius banter is always fun, 100%. The magic is fun too, love how there's more of it in this season, agreed. Loki needs to communicate better, but gosh, Sylvie needs to finally listen.

[02:23:12] By the end of this episode, she makes a couple of non-lethal choices. So a change in tactics, some growth might be on the horizon. I would say that that's evidence of her growth. She did admit to Ravonna that the obsession with revenge is not the healthiest,

[02:23:29] agreed, and she gives, you know, Victor a pass. The Victor Timely guy is an earlier version of he who remains question mark. He sure isn't Kang. It looks like Victor straight out of plagiarized Obi's entire work. She called him Vicky, I want to point out. Okay. Yes.

[02:23:50] Wonder how this will affect the loom crisis if Obi turns a villainous, Jean. I will still support him and his crimes. I got to do a board of evil for this. That's right. I'll do a board of evil. So Abby is definitely team Obi.

[02:24:07] I mean, all work, no sleep, no friends, nobody visiting him for hundreds of years, and then even your work gets stolen, right? Right. We got to show some love for Obi here. Miss Minutes is creepier than ever. She is he who remains Stan of the worst kind,

[02:24:24] reminds me of the dead bird, Abby. Oh my gosh. That's great. Abby. That's great. She's throwing, she's throwing hands here. She doesn't sound like some of Loki's wives. Oh, she does sound like some of Loki's wives. She has beef though, and she was ready to throw him away

[02:24:44] once he wasn't cooperating. This power hungry AI is the true villain of the show, seems to me. Is there a connection, is there conflict bluing between her and Ravonna? I wonder. Absolutely. Because I think Miss Minutes is using the secret

[02:25:01] that she knows to goad Ravonna into taking action for which Miss Minutes is going to take advantage of. I think, right? What do you guys think about that? Is Minutes manipulating Ravonna by telling her to? Is Ravonna manipulating Minutes? Yeah, they're all playing for themselves. Yeah. Sure, yeah.

[02:25:20] Yeah, everybody's, they're definitely playing for themselves. I think the Lokis though actually have more altruistic, they just disagree on what is the, yeah, what is the- Agree, agree. Right way to be altruistic, yeah. Going back to the control center, and they're talking about getting Miss Minutes back

[02:25:39] to unlock the thing. And I forget who said the line about like, well, how are we supposed to find this rogue AI who's gone absence? There's no way even if you got Miss Minutes that back there, would she, she's going to do what she wants to do.

[02:25:56] She's going to calculate all of the various things and she's going to out chess match your ass in a heartbeat. Right? So you may think that she's doing what you want her to do, but I think- Yeah, she's got her own motivations.

[02:26:09] So Abby, thanks so much for writing in great email and hopefully we've captured you back into the fold that this was a better, this was not a saggy middle episode. To be fair, she didn't say saggy middle. No, she didn't. She didn't. So I was paraphrasing that.

[02:26:26] All right, so that ends the episode. That ends the feedback again, mcu at the lorehounds.com. Let's quickly wrap this up. We won't spend too much time. A couple of notes I want to lead off first. We have a new joint project

[02:26:42] with the Properly Howard film review, movie review guys, Anthony and Steve. They were super excited. Anthony loves episode or season one of Severance. So he and Steve recorded a whole rewatch of season one. And when season two does come back sometime in early 2024,

[02:27:04] all four of us, John, myself, Anthony and Steve, we're going to be covering episodes weekly. So what we did is we recorded a little preview podcast and episode one of season one of the season one recap is out now. Here's the thing. It's going to be honest.

[02:27:24] We've severed the feed as we've been doing this as SubZero on the discord said, ah, severed feed for Severance, how appropriate. To make things logistically easier and to make sure that there's fair revenue sharing and all of that kind of stuff,

[02:27:39] we created a separate feed so that Anthony and Steve and John and I have a simple thing to track. And that link is going to be in the show notes as well. We're going to preview. We're going to drop a preview

[02:27:53] in our made feed to advertise for that. And we'll make sure that we're advertising it and letting folks know. We've got a channel set up on the discord as well. So right now the recap of season one is running and we'll drop Fridays on the Severance feed.

[02:28:11] And then when season two starts up, we'll do some cross promo of the episodes, but then we're going to cover weekly, all four of us cover the show going forward week to week with all four of us. And I think Alicia, you might drop a cross promo

[02:28:28] on your feed as well. Yes, yes. I'm going to drop that in a couple of days. Okay, cool. So that's exciting. Properly Howard movie review have wrapped up their season. Their last episode for the Sorcerer just finished up. You can still find Anthony over on Electric Boogaloo.

[02:28:44] He's still running through Clash of Kings. So go check out all those pods. That brings us around to you, Alicia, because you've got some exciting news. We've got a new trailer out, go. Right, right. Well, we have the new trailer out for this Loki. So listen for that.

[02:29:00] That was fun. Yes. And yeah, on Wolshief Dust, there's- Well, I meant the new trailer for, yes, your show. That's the YouTube. We've got a trailer for your new... There is a YouTube trailer out for the show you're going to be covering. Oh, oh. Is what I'm saying.

[02:29:16] Okay. Oh, for Beacon 23. Yes, we actually have something to react to. Oh, I was going to mention Poe first. Yeah, because around the time that this episode drops, you'll see Poe episodes in the book club feed and the public feed. Okay. And then-

[02:29:32] That's right, following Hash of Usher is a big thing. Right, so yeah, it was still Halloween zone. Yeah, and then after that, we're going to be watching Beacon... Sorry, we're going to be covering Beacon 23, starting with Abby and I will be covering the book in the book club.

[02:29:46] Let's go. Yeah, and then November 12th, the new season starts on MGM Plus, which for the 10 of us countries that have it, yay. So sorry to those who don't, you know there's other ways to get it. Anyway, and- Not that we're advocating anything.

[02:30:06] No, not that we're advocating anything. We're just stating facts. We're just stating facts. Just the facts, just the facts over here. But yeah, the trailer looks different from the book, but it seems to be, they're putting a vote of confidence in it.

[02:30:19] They're making it their first international launch. So I have high hopes this could be good in a different way from Silo. Look, the trailer tricked me because it looks good. The trailer looks really good. Yeah, no, it's just different from the books,

[02:30:32] but that doesn't mean, that's not a bad thing per se. Right, but Hugh Howey's involved, right? Not as involved as with Silo, but yeah. Okay. I think Hugh Howey has a thing for enclosed spaces. Yes, yeah, I was saying on Discord

[02:30:46] that he wrote these books after years spent traveling, sailing the world solo as part of his job. So I think, yeah, he thought a lot about isolation. Yeah, he did. Fair enough. Awesome. All right, and for the lore hounds, we're just gonna be doing some regular coverage.

[02:31:04] We're catching back up with our Star Wars Film Fest and our Silmarillion stories. We've got a second breakfast coming up pretty soon. Otherwise, we've got Loki on the regular. As to our Patreon, if you're interested in joining us to support this great content

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[02:33:10] and everyone who gives a listen. So, all right, episode four next week. This was a good one, great episode today, guys. Thank you so much for everything that you both do. And I'm so glad that we have a strength to come to coming out of the previous

[02:33:28] on the show that shall not be named show. Feels good. Yes, it does feel good. Cool, see you guys next week. Thanks so much. See y'all. The Lore Hounds Podcast is produced and published by the Lore Hounds. You can send questions and feedback

[02:33:43] and voicemails at thelorehounds.com slash contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lore Hounds podcasts at patreon.com slash thelorehounds. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed

[02:34:10] to choose a side, green or black. John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty

[02:34:29] to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made for the Lore Hounds. And since we just finished recapping season one,

[02:34:41] we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons. And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections.

[02:34:56] See you in the Lore Hounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes. The Lore Hounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself,

[02:35:09] and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.