After last week’s intense and busy episode, how can Loki possibly turn up the heat for episode four, “Heart of the TVA?” It does. Trust me. It does…
Protocol 42 | Picking up exactly where last week left off, Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) uses holograms to show Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) a recording of her talking with Kang (Jonathan Majors) at his citadel centuries ago. He tasks her with going to the TVA, but as soon as she leaves, he orders Miss Minutes to wipe her memories. Renslayer is rightly pissed off, but Miss Minutes says that they don’t need him.
At the TVA, Timely arrives through the time portal and is met by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Mobius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) who bring him to OB (Ke Huy Quan) and Casey (Eugene Cordero) to help fix the time loom, as OB realizes that his handbook was based on Timely’s work- which was based on OB’s writings. Brain baking, right? They cook up a machine that they can fire into the loom to expand the rings that funnel the branching timelines, which Timely’s prototype machine happens to be the key to.
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Join or Die | Meanwhile, B-15 imprisons Dox (Kate Dickie), the general who ordered the pruning of timelines, as well as her men who helped her, but Brad (Rafael Casal) tries to convince them to revolt against B-15, but her words get through to Dox. This is perfectly timed with Renslayer and Miss Minutes arriving in their cell to offer them a chance to join them, which Brad accepts, but Dox and her team refuse- so Miss Minutes hacks into the machine that creates boxes and not only traps them in a box, but shrinks it, crushing them into nothing.
Everything Goes to Hell | As Timely goes to get a cup of cocoa, Brad kills his bodyguard and takes him to Renslayer, who demands to know where his machine is. B-15 figures out that Renslayer is back after seeing Dox and her crew’s bodies, just as Loki and Sylvie find out that Timely is missing. They get separated after Miss Minutes hacks into the system and traps Sylvie in an elevator, but she emerges to see the Loki from the first episode just as he is pruned by the Loki from the present day. OB then calls them to inform them that they’re being locked out of the system and that they can reboot it to lock Miss Minutes out, but it would lose the magic dampeners in the TVA.
At Loki and Sylvie’s urging, they do just that, allowing Sylvie to use her magic to possess Brad and make him prune Renslayer. Loki and Sylvie grab Timely and take him to the loom and have him suit up to go outside and launch the device to fix it- but he is immediately disintegrated by the loom’s radiation. The loom then explodes as a massive wave of energy hits the group with them trapped and helpless, and then-
Loki streams new episodes Thursdays on Disney+.