Loki’s Season 2 Ending, Explained

Loki Season 2 ended with a lot of questions, to the point where explanations are needed, even for people more or less familiar with the MCU.

What exactly did Loki do? Is he still alive? Will he get to see his friends again? Will we get a Season 3 of Loki? And was that… a tree? Here’s our attempt at explaining the Season 2 ending of Loki, to the best of our ability.

Loki’s Season 2 Ending Has a Simple Explanation

As complicated as the finale seems, in the end, the explanation is simpler than it seems. Loki spends most of the Season 2 finale, titled “Glorious Purpose,” trying to fix the TVA’s Temporal Loom, only to learn that this is an impossible task. The Loom was always a failsafe, only the Sacred Timeline is meant to live.

No matter what he does, the Loom always explodes. Finally, Loki figures out that the answer isn’t in fixing the Loom – it’s in himself. After the Loom explodes, he gathers the dying branches and infuses them with magic, effectively bringing them back to life. Then he gathers them in his hands and walks forward towards a conveniently placed throne that awaits him.

Just in case we aren’t getting what’s happening, the camera pulls out to reveal Loki in the middle of a time stream with a very familiar shape – Yggdrasil, the World’s Tree, aka the center of reality and the home of the nine realms. In fact, Thor’s exact words to Jane Foster in 2011’s Thor are: “Your world is one of the Nine Realms of the cosmos, linked to each other by the branches of Yggdrasil, the World’s Tree.”

The God of Stories

Loki has always been a God, but his place in the middle of the Yggdrasil would seem to position him as not the God of Mischief of the MCU or the God of Lies of the comics, but instead the God of Stories. This particular incantation of Loki comes from the comic book series Loki: Agent of Asgard, written by Al Ewing and drawn by Lee Garbett.

What this means for Loki’s future in the MCU remains unclear. What we do know is that the timelines visually shift from white to green and that Loki now stands in the middle of Yggdrasil, literally and figuratively at the center of the MCU. Kang might still be around and he might still be a formidable villain, but Loki is now, for all intents and purposes, He Who Remains and the one holding the MCU together.