Warning: This article contains spoilers for Loki Seasons 1 and 2. Read at your own risk!
Loki Season 2 Episode 4, titled Heart of the TVA, witnessed one of the most cataclysmic event in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe as the timelines exploded right before everyone's eyes at the Time Variance Authority. It was huge and the fear right before Loki's eyes exactly as the explosion sure made everyone feel anxious before the episode ended. It is one of the biggest cliffhangers of all the MCU shows, possibly the most shocking one, too. Now, a theory goes that they are just stuck in a time loop.
Since Season 1, Loki has been all around the Time Variance Authority and their job to "weave" together the timelines into one Sacred timeline. The so-called "Time Keepers" ordered this and the TVA continuously prune every Nexus event that happens to preserve the oneness of the timeline. However, as Loki and Sylvie went on a quest to find who was behind all the fiasco of pruning timelines, they discovered the man behind the curtains of the TVA: He Who Remains at the Citadel at the End of Time.
He Who Remains is played by Jonathan Majors and is one of the variants of Kang the Conqueror who aims to be the only one in existence and prevents the branching of other timelines to stop his other variants for coming as they pose a huge threat to the multiverse. True enough, Kang the Conqueror and his variants like Rama Tut, Immortus, Scarlet Centurion, are to be feared. However, with what is currently happening in Loki Season 2, something odd seems to be in place which could suggest that the characters in the series are stuck in a time loop and here's why it is possible.
Are the characters in Loki Season 2 stuck in a time loop?
A time-loop is defined as a time paradox which is a logical contradiction of the idea of time itself with the events happens more than once in repeat and it becomes a cycle. This is what seems to be happening in Loki throughout the two seasons and this theory is strengthened with what just happened in Loki Season 2 Episode 4. After the timeline exploded right before everyone's eyes, the cliffhanger reveals more questions than answers but the time loop theory may actually be true.
In Heart of the TVA, there's that part where Victor Timely finally met O.B. a.k.a. Ouroboros which quite made everyone's brain hurt. Victor Timely was in awe meeting O.B., telling everyone that everything he learned was from O.B. who made the TVA Handbook. As per O.B., he learned everything from a brilliant 19th century inventor whose name was Victor Timely. Ouroboros was in so much shock that he described it like, "It's like a snake eating its own tail!" What makes this even more interesting is that the name of O.B., Ouroboros, is a snake or a dragon swallowing its own tail as a symbol for infinity. This could also be a symbolism for the existence of a time loop.
Connecting the dots, Loki Season 1 finale also hinted to the existence of a time loop which came out of the mouth of He Who Remains himself. He Who Remains was so confident that he would return to the Citadel at the End of Time once more even after Sylvie kills him and called that "Reincarnation." Even before Sylvie killed him, he said "see you soon," as if pertaining to a time loop where things happen in a cycle over and over again.
Following the explosion of the timelines and the loom, a restart could be on everyone's way which could prove that they are in a time-loop. With Ouroboros in the mix, he may be the key to revealing that the time-loop is possible to happen. If so, Loki's time-slip from the past, present, and the future may reveal a glitch in the time loop matrix.
Loki Season 2 new episodes drop on Disney Plus every Friday.
