Julian Recaps: Another Game of Whack-A-Kang in Loki Episode S02 Episode Three

A new episode of Loki Season Two is still streaming on Disney +. This time, it features Johnathan Majors as Kang/He Who Remains. This one will be interesting given how much negative publicity surrounds the actor. It’s still up in the air whether Kevin Feige and Co. will fire him or keep him regardless of the allegations and court dates or if Majors is deemed innocent of his affair. Honesty, the MCU should have just ended with Avengers: Endgame and we would all go our separate ways. No, too much time, energy, creativity, and money have been spent and earned on both Disney and global audiences alike to stop. So we have to go forward with the Multiverse shtick that we all are getting irritated with at this point. Anyhow, let’s talk about the misadventures of 1893. 

Episode Three 1893 starts with a prologue in Chicago 1868 of the Sacred Timeline. Renova Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) deliver a young version of Victor Timely, another He Who Remains/Kang variant of a TVA Guidebook. While on this mission, she learns that He Who Remains is dead and plans to carry out his contingency plan to deliver the guidebook in case he ever dies.  

Back in the present-day TVA, O.B. (Key Huy Quan) tells Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) that the branching timelines that General Dox (Katie Dickie) tried to bomb are cropping up again. Their last resort is to find Miss Minutes without He Who Remains’ temporal aura to prevent the ongoing Temporal Loom. They tracked Renslayer’s Tempad to a different 1893 in one of the branching timelines at the World’s Columbian Exposition. 

Surveying the land, the duo spotted an ominous presentation called “Victor Timely’s Temporal Marvels” and entered it, not knowing that Renslayer and Miss Minutes were there as well. Timely, now all grown up was presenting a much older prototype version of the TVA’s Temporal Loom. Finally catching up with the familiar post-credit scene from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the God of Mischief stares in horror that he has found another dangerous variant of He Who Remains/Kang. Mobius and Renslayer find Timely less threatening and more charitable and stutters a lot in his speech.

They all collide with each other with different goals regarding capturing Timely. Timely tries to escape Robber Baron (Richard Dixon) who calls him a fraud after being cheated on his purchase of the prototype. During the chase, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) contacts Mobius and they detect another anonymous Tempad signal in the area. That anonymous person turns out to be Sylvie Laufeydottir who is back on her campaign to kill every He Who Remains variant starting with Timely. 

Mobius tries to get Renslayer to come back to the TVA but refuses. She ends up getting Timely out of harm’s way of Loki, Sylvie, and Robber Barron with Miss Minutes’ distraction as a giant ghost version of herself.

After avoiding Loki, Mobius, and Robber Baron, Renslayer and Miss Minutes tell Timely of the importance of his existence regarding the TVA and the Multiverse. Timely obliges Renslayer to come to his lab in Wisconsin on board a cruiser. However, Timely with the suggestion of Miss Minutes leaves Renslayer on a lifeboat after a conversation regarding a partnership that he doesn’t necessarily agree on. 

At Timely’s lab in Wisconsin, he prepares to gather everything before leaving for the TVA. Miss Minutes recounts her time in the TVA and her relationship with He Who Remains. She tells him that she means more to him than he thinks, and he turns her off out of fear. Renslayer with the Time Stick prototype shows up to prune Timely. Loki and Mobius arrive just in time to stop her, only for all three of them to get knocked away by Sylvie who is also still trying to kill Timely. Timely was able to coax Sylvie out of killing stating that he’s not like He Who Remains and is his person. 

Loki and Sylvie take Timely back to the TVA, while Sylvie kicks Renslayer back to the Citadel at the End of Time after comparing her and He Who Remains’ lust for power. Renslayer reactivates Miss Minutes, only for her to say that she knows her secret and is not going to like it all. 

A lot has happened in this episode, and it still feels like we are rushing. This season’s plot is urgent because of the TVA’s potential destruction but it’s not focused. Jonathan Major’s performance as Victor Timely was fun yet still a bit overacting like Kang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It will be interesting to see how he fits into this plot going forward. 

Loki Season Two Episode Five 1893 is good. But it still feels clunky and rushed and we still need time to process what is happening.