‘Loki’ Season 2: What Is Time Slipping?
The ending of season 1 of ‘Loki’ confused many fans because Loki seemingly found himself in an altered timeline, as Mobius couldn’t recognize him. However, the first episode of season 2 shed some light on what happened as it was made clear that Loki was slipping between the past and the present in the TVA due to time slipping. So, what exactly is time slipping?
Time slipping explained
Many people were wondering what happened to Loki at the end of the first season of the ‘Loki’ series, especially because he landed back in the TVA after Sylvie pushed him into a time door before she killed He Who Remains. Of course, Loki met with Mobius but realized his friend didn’t recognize him. What was worse was that there was a statue of He Who Remains in the TVA, as Loki was just as confused as everyone else.
The common belief is that Loki ended up in a different universe or an altered one caused by He Who Remains’s death. But it was revealed in the middle of the first episode of season 2 that this was the same TVA and that he was simply in a different version of the TVA in the Sacred Timeline.
When Loki escaped his pursuers and managed to crash into one of the TVA offices, where he saw Casey, there was a crack on the floor. Loki suddenly disappeared and reappeared out of nowhere in the same room. The room wasn’t damaged this time, and Casey was familiar with him. But the same crack on the floor was there, and Loki asked Casey how that got there, only for the TVA employee to tell him that this was always there for as long as he could remember.
That was when Loki realized that what had been happening was that he was uncontrollably slipping between the present and the past. This went on throughout most of the entire episode as he went back in time numerous times, only for him to return to the present once more. And when he showed this to Mobius, he took him to Ouroboros, who noticed that this was time skipping.
Of course, time skipping doesn’t look very glamorous because Loki’s body is disassembled and then reassembled wherever he ends up. Although he told Mobius that it didn’t feel that bad, it was clear that Mobius thought that what was happening was painful. And it was the grotesque nature of what was happening to Loki that made him want to help his friend immediately.
Ouroboros, nicknamed OB, told Mobius that this was impossible because time skipping shouldn’t be happening in the TVA, which was supposedly a space outside of time and space. Nevertheless, it was happening. The good part was that OB had a solution to this problem as he had a Temporal Aura Extractor, which needed to be used on the Temporal Loom to stop Loki’s condition. But Loki needed to prune himself using a timestick for this to work.
Eventually, Mobius successfully used the Temporal Aura Extractor to anchor Loki, who got himself pruned by an unknown person. This allowed Loki to rid himself of the time-skipping condition that bothered him throughout the entire episode.
How and why did Loki start time slipping?
Of course, it was only in episode 1 of season 2 that Loki started time slipping. This wasn’t something that happened in season 1. Both OB and Mobius were also aware that time slipping in the TVA should be impossible. So, how and why did Loki start time slipping?
It is yet to be revealed how this condition started. But it started after Sylvie pushed Loki through a time door back when they were in the chamber of He Who Remains. As such, there’s a possibility that he started slipping through time because Sylvie pushed him back into the past, even though they were in a location that was beyond time itself.
The second possibility is that it had something to do with the fact that the Temporal Loom was overloaded and that different timelines were branching off from the Sacred Timeline. Since Loki was pushed through a time door right at the same time as Sylvie killed He Who Remains, this must have affected his body’s relationship with time itself as he ended up getting lost in time.
Whatever the case may be, the important part is that Loki has fixed this problem. But we’re not sure if the problem has been fixed permanently. But there’s a good chance that this will be explained better in the next episodes of ‘Loki.’
How is time slipping different from glitching in ‘Spider-Verse’?
When Loki started time slipping, the first thing that Marvel fans were quick to notice was that Loki’s condition was very similar to the glitching in the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies of Sony. Of course, in the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies, glitching happens whenever a person from a different universe ends up in another universe.
The glitch seemingly affects the person’s entire body as they glitch in and out of existence momentarily. But this isn’t the same as time skipping in ‘Loki’ because the conditions are very different.
First of all, time skipping forces the person to travel to different points in time uncontrollably. On the other hand, glitching simply forces the person to glitch in and out of existence. Second, glitching happens whenever a person from a different universe is in another universe, whereas time skipping involves a person traveling through time in the same timeline or universe.
Whatever the case may be, they are very similar to one another in terms of their effects, as they are both uncontrollable. However, the good thing about time skipping is that there seems to be a permanent fix. On the other hand, there is no permanent fix in glitching as only those who wear special devices can prevent glitching in the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies.
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