Is Loki Now Stuck at the End of Time? Season 2 Ending Explained

In what was one of the most bittersweet endings to an MCU series, Loki now has two of the things that he always wanted to have: a throne and a glorious purpose. However, while it may be true that he wanted to have those things, he did so at the cost of the one thing that he wanted above everything else: friends. That’s because he had to stay at the end of time to serve as the one regulating the timelines. So, is Loki now stuck at the end of time?

Loki has to hold the timelines together

After Loki acquired the ability to control his time slipping, the first thing that came into his mind was the fact that he could now rewrite the story instead of simply following the story that had already been written. But he learned the hard way that it was never going to be easy to rewrite the story because He Who Remains (HWR) had seemingly written a backup story to the story.

Loki finds out that everything he did turned out to be pointless because the Temporal Loom always destroys the TVA and the other timelines. He learned that HWR did this on purpose, as the Loom was never there to regulate multiple timelines but was merely created to regulate the Sacred Timeline. An overloaded Temporal Loom was the failsafe to the multiverse as it would destroy all of the timelines except for the Sacred Timeline, thus allowing HWR to eventually return.

But Loki discovered that he could do something that only he was able to do, and that was to act as the replacement of both the Temporal Loom and HWR. He destroyed the Temporal Loom and became the new HWR by overseeing all of the timelines. At the same time, it wasn’t that simple because, unlike He Who Remains, who only had to look after the Sacred Timeline, Loki now has to serve the purpose of the Temporal Loom, which was supposed to regulate all of the timelines.

Loki went to the end of time, where he could be seen grabbing hold of all of the timelines and putting all of the different branches together to form a tree, as he now sits on a throne. In short, he now has two of the things that he thought he always wanted: a throne and a glorious purpose. Loki is basically holding all of the different timelines together and is the very foundation of the MCU’s Yggdrasil, which is the tree of life that holds together all of the different realms in Asgardian mythos.

However, in this case, Yggdrasil is holding all of the universes together while Loki serves as the foundation of this metaphorical tree. In short, without Loki, the multiverse would fall apart, leaving only the Sacred Timeline, which will guarantee the return of He Who Remains.

Loki can leave at a cost

When Loki made the decision to be the one to replace the Temporal Loom, he knew that this decision came at a cost. He understood that he would have to carry a burden that no one else could carry, and this made him understand that this was the glorious purpose he always wanted in life. In short, he knows that he cannot and shouldn’t leave the end of time.

Plainly speaking, Loki can actually leave the end of time because he has the power to skip from one timeline to another at will. But he knows that this shouldn’t be an option for him because he understands what is at stake here. 

Loki is now the one holding all of the timelines together. Without him doing so, the timelines would only fall apart. It is his power over time and space that allows him to hold all of the timelines together, and this is the reason why Loki knows that he is the only one who can do this job. That is why the conversation with Mobius about the nature of burden is so important to the ‘Loki’ storyline, as that was one of the things that allowed Loki to understand what carrying a burden means.

So, while Loki can hypothetically leave the end of time to go wherever he wants to go, the consequences of doing so are too dire because this would mean that there would no longer be anyone or anything holding the timelines together. That was what the Temporal Loom used to do when it regulated the Sacred Timeline. And in Loki’s case, he has to regulate an infinite number of timelines while holding all of them together.

This is the reason why Loki knew that this was a tough decision to make. Still, he understood that he had to do it or else he would lose his friends and cause the deaths of countless lives across the different timelines in the multiverse. Such is the nature of burden, and Loki knew that this would be a lonely thankless job that only he was equipped to handle.

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