What Really Happened to Loki at the End of ‘Loki’s Season 2 Premiere?

Loki‘s long-awaited second season dropped on Disney+ on October 5 and wasted no time jumping back into the time-traveling action. The episode picks up right where Loki season 1 ended, with the Time Variance Authority in disarray after its agents learned they were all human variants, Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) on the run after killing He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) trying to navigate the alternate timelines unleashed by Sylvie’s actions.

Spoilers for Loki season 2 episode 1, “Ouroboros,” ahead!

In the first episode of season 2, we learn that Loki was in an alternate timeline in the season 1 finale because he is suffering a phenomenon known as “time slipping.” Essentially, he’s randomly being pulled across the multiverse, resulting in him jumping between timelines. Upon visiting TVA agent Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) learn they must undergo a complicated process to cure Loki’s time slipping. This includes Mobius using a Temporal Aura Extractor to extract Loki from the time stream. However, the extraction has a particular requirement: Loki has to prune himself.

Unfortunately, things don’t go quite according to plan. While Mobius is getting into position with the Temporal Aura Extractor, Loki timeslips into the future. It’s unclear how far it is in the future, but it looks pretty harrowing, as the TVA appears to be in disarray. In this timeline, Loki briefly encounters Sylvie in an elevator. However, their reunion is cut short when Loki is pruned just in time for the Temporal Aura Extractor to work. The only problem is that Loki didn’t prune himself.

Who pruned Loki?

While Loki was supposed to prune himself, it’s clear that some unseen assailant does the pruning from behind. In the scene, he appears taken by surprise by the pruning, and both of his hands come into view with no pruner in them. So, who pruned Loki if he didn’t do it himself? Considering that this scene occurs in the future, it’s possible that it wasn’t an enemy but an ally that pruned him. In the future, Mobius, Ouroboros, and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), knowing what happened in the past, may have gone to find Loki and prune him before it was too late, thus saving him from the time slipping. Another possibility is that Loki did prune himself. Perhaps his future self set out to find his past self and pruned him to allow the extraction to be complete.

There’s also a chance that a foe pruned Loki with malicious intentions, not realizing that he needed to be pruned for the extraction. Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) hasn’t been seen in season 2 yet, but Loki did uncover a recording that hinted at a close relationship between Renslayer and He Who Remains. So it’s possible she acted on his orders to prune Loki, unwittingly helping the god in the process. There’s also a tiny chance that the new Kang Variant, Victor Timely (Majors), pruned Loki. It’s known that he’ll appear somewhere in the series, so he could have been present at the scene, though it’s difficult to say what his motive in doing so would’ve been.

Ultimately, the likeliest explanation is that a future version of Loki or one of his allies did him a favor by pruning him in time to be extracted. However, there’s a slight possibility that the pruning was done by someone more malevolent who might pose an obstacle to Loki in the future.

(featured image: Disney+)