Like a lot of Marvel fans, I’m still reeling from last week’s Loki Season 2 finale. While a lot of questions were answered, others were left open. (For instance, I’m still wondering what exactly Sylvie’s arc was supposed to be this season.) But at least it avoided one particular fate for Mobius.
While Loki’s fear of being alone sadly came true in the end, I do take solace in one of my own fears about the finale being avoided. Season 2 put a heavy emphasis on the TVA workers all having lives on the timeline from before they were taken and brainwashed into serving what was essentially a fascist cult committing multiversal genocide. Season 1 may have been when this truth was exposed to them, but it wasn’t until Season 2 we really got to see them reckon with this revelation.
Some, like Hunter X5 (a.k.a. Brad Wolfe) decided to leave in order to live on the timeline, while others, like Mobius, didn’t even want to see what life was like before being captured by the TVA. But of course, it was obvious Mobius—and us as the audience—who would end up finding out what his old life was like before Season 2 came to a close.
And when we finally found out in Episode 5 that he was a single dad to two chaotic boys, we also got a lot of focus on how much Loki really didn’t want to lose his friends, Mobius (and Sylvie) in particular. He wanted to give them a choice, and seemed pretty convinced Mobius would choose to stay at the TVA, as he said he would earlier in the season.
All of this made it really seem like we were heading toward an ending of Mobius deciding to return to his old life. And I’m not gonna lie, my mind was working overtime to prepare myself for that seemingly inevitable conclusion that I desperately did not want to see come to pass. Of course, part of this was coming from how much I love Mobius and want to see more of him in the MCU, but there were also tons of logistical problems with the idea of him going back. Most notably, it would have been a case of him stealing someone else’s life.
It was previously made pretty clear that under He Who Remains, all timeline branches were being pruned once variants were arrested and taken from them. The show itself seemed to work with this, with every timeline the characters were sent to once everything got spaghettified at the end of episode 4 being a branch, but there was one instance of someone actually returning to the Sacred Timeline itself.
In Episode 2, X5 is seen living his life as Brad Wolfe, the person of which he was a variant. While the logistics of this are never explained, he presumably would have had to either kill the original Brad, or lock him up somewhere. What we know about X5 checks out with this possibility, but what we know about Mobius does not. (I mean, this is the guy who couldn’t think of a meaner comeback than “You’re a silly little man!”)
The problem is that Marvel has pulled this before in a big way. It’s literally how Avengers: Endgame, the studio’s biggest movie ever, ended. Steve Rogers—a character we’re supposed to see as the embodiment of pure goodness (even though he did a few questionable things here and there the franchise likes to ignore)—decides to return to the past and live out a life with Peggy Carter. And while it’s cute on the surface, there are so many things about this plot point that don’t work.
I won’t get into all of them, but the relevant one here is that because the creative team members behind that movie could never seen to agree on whether he went back within the main MCU timeline (which would contradict the film’s own rules about time travel) or to a branch (the more likely scenario), there’s a strong possibility that “our” Steve went back to a time when another version of himself was still under the ice. And instead of saving that Steve, ours presumably decided to act like he didn’t even exist.
That ending has never sat well with me, but it’s gotten a lot of praise from people for some reason. So it would have probably been pretty easy for the Loki team to pull the same thing with Mobius, even if it didn’t make sense with the rules the show had established. But they didn’t. Because Loki doesn’t go for the easy resolutions; they live in the complexities.
So in the end, Mobius decides to go observe his past life. Sylvie is by his side, which is quite poignant since she and Loki were the ones encouraging him to finally look in the first place, and it’s a nice resolution to their conflict on the subject (okay, a scene with Sylvie calling him out while he says nothing) from earlier in the season. She even comments on how strange it is that Loki isn’t present, and when she asks him what he’s going to do next, he doesn’t have an answer.
With Loki gone from the TVA, the place has lost its spark for him, but he can’t go back to what his life was before it, either. So now it appears that Mobius is going to be searching for a new place and purpose. Season 2 showed how he needed to look beyond the TVA for that, which is what he’s doing now. It’s hard to view this as an ending because we don’t get an indication of what that is going to look like, though we at least get some closure on his arc with Loki (which is more than we get from the Loki and Sylvie side of things).
And it’s interesting that he only leaves once Loki is gone, because I was wondering if the way Loki was going to have to reckon with the idea of being alone would be Mobius choosing to leave in the end. (As someone who also struggles with fear of abandonment, this was admittedly another reason I didn’t want that ending to happen!) But I suppose the ambiguity is the point here; after having his world turned upside down a few times over in quick succession, Mobius needs to sit with his emotions and “let the time pass” for a while.
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised with how well-crafted Mobius’s story was in Loki Season 2. I went into this season expecting that he would be somewhat sidelined this time around, but he was very prominent and had a whole arc of his own, which is more than some of the other prominent characters got.
It felt like all my wishes for his character, which I had accepted probably wouldn’t come true, came to be in the end—his storyline of not wanting to know about his past life, his timeline self being a single dad, and now his decision to explore life beyond the TVA, while still having the door open for him to return to the newly-reformed organization (apart from me wanting him to be able to maintain his relationship with Loki, of course).
What’s exciting about all this is that we are now in a scenario that could see Mobius (and Sylvie, for that matter) showing up anywhere, anytime, in any future MCU project. And I really do hope we see Mobius again someday. He and Loki (and Sylvie as well) made each other better, and I hope to see what he’s doing with his life after being influenced so strongly. While I loved getting to know Don, I’m glad Mobius is still Mobius, and my new wish for him is that he uses the empathy and insight that didn’t mesh with the old TVA to help others the way he did with Loki.
It would be so much fun to see him pop up again in the MCU, not only to aid in the multiversal conflict that we all know is coming, but to help the heroes become their best selves in the process.
(featured image: Disney+)
Published: Nov 16, 2023 12:24 pm