LoKi: Journey into The Self (Part 2)

How Loki Laufeyson's heart was renewed and set free

“I knew now, that it is by loving, and not be being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another, yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being beloved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. […] Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.” | Phantastes

Sylvie, Goddess of Mischief. She is the embodiment of the universe wanting to break free, manifesting chaos through her very existence. The TVA had deemed her a threat to the established order, kidnapping her from her own Asgard and family, pruning her timeline, all that she had known and loved. Yet she escaped from the TVA’s clutches and has been hiding within various apocalyptic events, her life spent on the run and growing up at the end of a thousand worlds. Her entire life has been bent on taking down the TVA and getting to the Time-Keepers in order to destroy them. She is a woman with a mission, and nothing has deterred her from this goal, until now. 

Now she has met a Variant of herself, Loki Laufeyson, and he has put a huge wrench in her plans. She sees in him a reflection of her own aching loneliness, the both of them orphans of Time. She is frustrated by his apparent foolishness, but beguiled by his unexpected gentleness and his wise affirmations. He sees her. He sees through her rage and pain, to the sad, brilliant woman underneath. “You ran rings around them. You're amazing!” Loki declares ardently as the both of them sit underneath a crumbling sky, waiting for death to take them on Lamentis. Within a space of a few hours all her years long planning had come to naught, but she has met this broken boy and for the first time in her life she sees home in his eyes. She touches his arm, and they both clasp hands. If the both of them are to die, they will die in the sweetest memory she has ever had in her life.

Yet the universe, it seems, is not done manifesting chaos, and in this moment where two Lokis hold hands, finding sanctuary in one another, the most unexpected and mysterious Nexus Event is created, the likes of which has never been seen before by the TVA. This is what enables them to be found and rescued, but it is also a grand symbolic event that reflects the whole crux of Loki’s journey. He is physically saved by this event, but even more importantly, he is spiritually saved by it too. As I have mentioned in part one, the focal point of all of Loki’s issues has been his self-loathing. It is what drives all his motivations and has shaped his identity for so long. It is the broken part of him that keeps him making choices towards his own destruction. Yet now, despite himself, he has been given a new identity through this fantastical journey, and because of this, when he meets Sylvie something unexpected is able to awaken inside of him. He sees beauty within her, and through that revelation is now able to see beauty within himself. They are a reflection of one another, and through that reflection they are able to see themselves the most clearly. Loki falling in love with Sylvie, and Sylvie falling in love with Loki is an allegory for self-acceptance. Loki is able to love himself by the loving of another. This is Loki’s ‘Nexus Event,’ a literal reality shattering transformation for Loki’s narrative where that internalized self-hatred is washed away through the loving of another. 

Of course, his journey is not near to completion yet, as Loki continues to be stripped down, to his essence, to the marrow of his bones. For it is through Sylvie that Loki learns the horrible truth that all employees of the TVA are not “holy” servants created by the Time-Keepers for their noble work, but are all variants themselves, having been taken from their own times, memories wiped, timelines pruned. The TVA and Time—Keepers are not what they seem. Up until this point, Loki has had no purpose or aim, but he now has made two important connections, Mobius and Sylvie, and per usual in this kind of narrative, the whole universe is at stake. Loki now must decide what kind of man he is going to be, he can no longer fool around and play games.  

Having been recaptured by the TVA, Mobius and Loki end up having another explosive confrontation, with Mobius pushing hard into Loki’s weaknesses and Loki, desperate, trying to explain to Mobius what he has learned about the TVA, trying to make Mobius understand he is being lied to. For the moment, Mobius doesn’t want to believe his whole life he has been serving a false cause, and decides that Loki needs a little bit more disciplining. Loki is thrown into a time-loop memory prison, where he is forced to relive just one memory over and over again. 

What is so interesting about this chosen memory is that on the surface it seems like an almost insignificant footnote in Loki’s history, a moment where he ends up cutting and stealing some of Lady Sif’s hair. If anyone is familiar with Norse Mythology, this will have great significance for Loki, but here and now, what it reveals is the ugliness within Loki’s soul. The bizarre nature of the offense makes the base sins of Loki’s heart very clear. It was such a petty and mean-spirited action, and Loki had completely forgotten about it. Once he did it, he had no shame, no remorse, it never even entered in consciousness again – until this moment of his reliving it. It shows the extent of his selfishness and self-preoccupation, where he could hurt someone and then have it merely be a passing moment, easily brushed aside from his mind and heart. It even becomes more grievous of an act when you realize that they were probably together as a couple at the time, and this is something he did to her when she was the most vulnerable with him and he with her - another one of his relationships sabotaged.

“She held fast the fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, “You have broken my globe, my globe is broken - my globe is broken!” | Phantastes (pg. 62) 

Through this memory, Loki is finally able to confront the weaknesses of his character, and the reason why he is “the God of Self-Sabotage.” What is so important about this soul test now is that Loki has been given the right tools to overcome. He befriended Mobius, been given a new identity, and has fallen in love with a woman who has shown him that there is goodness in himself. Back on Lamentis he had still been trapped within his hellish cycle of self-destruction, not willing to face his demons head on, but here and now, Loki is made strong enough to finally humble himself – as the narrative is demanding it of him. He must face himself, or be utterly useless to Mobius and Sylvie who were in immediate and terrible danger. So, kneeling before this manifestation of Lady Sif, Loki apologizes and confesses his sins, admitting to his narcissism and how he does these things for attention. He becomes truly vulnerable and contrite, admitting that, ultimately, what he fears is being alone. The cycle has been broken.

“Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my Shadow.” | Phantastes (pg. 184) 

Yet the rabbit hole goes deeper and deeper still, and Loki’s trials are far from over. For Loki’s truth did reach Mobius, and Mobius ends up freeing Loki and joining forces with him so that they can find a way to take down the TVA together. However, nothing goes according to plan, and Loki must watch in horror as this man he has learned to love so dearly, as close as a father and a brother, is pruned before his very eyes. Not willing to give up the fight, however, Loki and Sylvie end up being able to free themselves from TVA’s clutches and begin fighting their way to the Time-Keeper’s chambers. Of course, nothing goes according to plan there either, for although they fight bravely, the Time-Keepers end up not being real. They were merely placeholder figureheads for the institution. The real “man behind the curtain” is still yet to be revealed. However, it seems that Loki Laufeyson is meant to face death yet again, for before either of them are able to do anything further, he is pruned right before Sylvie’s eyes, and is gone. 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice would say, and we find our Loki still alive and well, but now he finds himself within The Void, a limbo of sorts and a dumping ground where all pruned realities and beings find themselves before they are then consumed by the great monster Alioth, a Lovecraftian horror if there ever was one. Here he ends up meeting even more variants of himself: a version of himself who seems to have obtained Thor’s hammer, a child version of himself who had murdered Thor, and an older version of himself who survived his encounter with Thanos and had been living in a self-made exile. There is even an alligator version of himself, and things only get more absurd from there. Loki is driven to the very brink of his sanity as he faces this impossible, chaotic world where a whole bunch of Lokis seem to be running around and causing all sorts of mischief as they each and every one vy for survival and dominance in this unforgiving realm. 

What I thought was so fascinating about this was that Loki’s experiences with his variants in the Void represent what his inner world has been like for most of his life. The world he falls into is utter chaos, nightmarish, even cartoonish, showing the utter vanity of his most base desires and characteristics. It shows how unstable and lacking in moral character he has been, having no foundation in his identity. It reminds me of Bruce Banner’s assessment of Loki in the first Avengers film, “That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him.” How accurate was that character study, as we have Lokis betraying each other right and left in a mad frenzy of pathetic power struggles, the hellish self-destructive cycle of Loki’s life playing out before his very eyes in all its buffoonery. Everywhere he turns he is facing himself, and it wearies him to his bones. He has finally come to the end of himself. “Monsters,” Loki mutters underneath his breath as he is laughed at by his fellow Lokis for wanting to even try and defeat the great Alioth in order to get back to Sylvie and finish this quest. Through this ludicrous encounter with himself, he finally reaches self-awareness without the corruption of self-loathing, and actively is choosing now to live out what he has learned. He is mindfully choosing the path of the hero.   

Yet there is also another purpose for Loki to meet his variants, most especially, his older variant, who is given the name “Classic Loki.” Classic Loki is very different from the Loki who know now or even the one who we followed throughout the films. He has reached a level of self-confidence and awareness that makes him wiser and more sober. Though, he too is still broken inside, for his path was a deeply sorrowful one. If we remember at the beginning of the Infinity War film, Thanos attacks Thor and the fleeing Asgardian refugees. He does this because Loki – who could not resist the lure of power – had in his possession the tesseract/infinity stone. So, after Loki fakes his own death with Thanos and flees from the carnage that Thanos had wrought on their people, he ends up doing a little soul searching. Realizing that everywhere he went he caused pain to those he loved, he decided to exile himself on a remote planet. He lived this way for years and was only pruned by the TVA when, after becoming so lonely, decided to seek his brother out once more. The Sacred Timeline, it seems, has deemed that Loki always remain alone, unchanged, and unfulfilled. “The God of Outcasts,” Classic Loki declares about them in bitter irony. 

However, when both Mobius and Sylvie finally meet up with an overjoyed Loki again within the Void, hopes for a real plan to take shape is formed. Sylvie, who just had a close encounter with Alioth, saw a glimpse through her magic a mysterious and foreboding fortress where she believes the person who is behind the TVA resides. She believes if she can enchant and defeat the monster, she could get it to lead them to this place. Loki, of course, chooses to continue the quest at her side and help defeat Alioth. Mobius, with the TemPad Sylvie was able to acquire, will go back to the TVA and destroy it from within. At first Classic Loki declines to help them in this endeavor, having gone with them this far, but ultimately believing it is pointless to continue trying. He has resigned himself to his fate. Only the loyal and noble Mobius speaks into the Loki heart once more, when he tells Classic Loki, “Well, it's never too late to change.”

So, when both Sylvie and Loki confront the great and terrible Alioth, it is Classic Loki who comes to their aid. With a brilliant and grand display of his powers, Classic Loki conjures before their very eyes the entire city of Asgard as a means of distracting Alioth from his prey. Remembering Classic Loki’s words to him earlier, “Take no offense, my friends, but blades are worthless in the face of a Loki sorcery,” Loki is able to realize something truly profound about himself. He not only has been given a new identity, he has not only come to the realization of his own self-worth and inner beauty, he has not only achieved humble self-awareness of his failings, but he realizes that he is so much stronger, so much nobler, so much grander of a person than he had ever thought possible. What he is capable of, what heroic deeds he could accomplish, is so much more than what he had originally believed of himself. Loki, through the eyes of Classic Loki, who laughs and cries in the face of death as he sacrifices himself for a cause greater than his own, sees truly and completely now his glorious purpose.

“I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal.” | Phantastes (pg. 158)

Having witnessed his variant’s beautiful sacrifice, Loki must now rise to the same task. Sylvie is unable to enchant Alioth on her own, and needs help from Loki. Loki, still uncertain in his own abilities, doesn’t believe he can do it. Sylvie clasps his hand and tells him that he can, because they are the same. Again, the narrative presents Loki with his mirrored image through Sylvie and he is able to see himself the more clearly for it. Steeling himself, he joins Sylvie in the enchantment and the both of them together are able to succeed in the endeavor – the monster showing them the way to “the end of Time”. The full test of the moment complete and our Loki is victorious! 

“The throne itself was elevated again, on a kind of square pedestal, to the top of which led a flight of steps. On the throne sat a majestic-looking figure, whose posture seemed to indicate a mixture of pride and benignity, as he looked down on the multitude below. […] More convinced than before, that there was evil here, I could not endure that my master should be deceived, that one like him, so pure and noble, should respect what, if my suspicions were true, was worse than the ordinary deceptions of priestcraft.” | Phantastes (pg. 176-177) 

Of course, in the heroic tale there is always that final test, that one last trial of the soul which will try our hero’s heart like never before. Loki and Sylvie finally are able to reach the dark fortress at the end of all Time, and meet the true instigator behind the TVA, the enigmatic and formidable: He Who Remains. Psychotic, unstable, unnerving, and deceptively “benevolent”, He Who Remains disarms them with his nonchalant and glib manner and mocks the seriousness of their mission by boasting that he has known all and seen all. It was he who had paved their way to him the entire time, watching them on every leg of their journey. This was all part of his plan that they would arrive precisely there before him at this moment, all for the purpose of presenting them with an impossible choice.

Beginning with his story, he tells them that he was once an earth scientist of the 31st century, who was the first to discover the Multiverse. At the same time, multiple variants of himself were also making the same discovery. Eventually, they ended up crossing over and for a time there was peace and free trade, all for the betterment of each other’s universes. However, not all his variants were so pure of heart, and eventually what began in the spirit of exploration and discovery ended in dominion and control. It was he and his variants that started the Multiversial War, as each fought one another for supremacy. It was “He Who Remains” that ended up weaponizing Alioth, the monster birthed from the chaos of the realities clashing, and ordained the TVA in order to keep the Multiverse in order, pruning its unwieldly branches, to make it safe from his other more dangerous and terrible selves who would rise up from the myriad of branching realities.

Does this not sound familiar? Variants battling for dominance and control? Loki had just experienced this in the Void with his own variants. In essence, He Who Remains becomes a dark reflection of Loki, the “Shadow” self that Loki has overcome. This insane man who lives in a kind of self-exile, alone at the end of Time, is both terrified and in love with himself – consumed by his own internal madness. “What are you so afraid of?” Loki inquires of him. “Me,” is the simple reply. It is narcissism and self-loathing played out at the largest and grandest scale of them all, over the entire breadth of the Multiverse and throughout all of Time! This is what Loki would have become, what he had been on his way to becoming. This was even symbolically represented in the fact that it was He Who Remains who deemed Loki “a villain” of the narrative and never allowed any version of Loki to live after making a better choice. As Classic Loki had observed, “...whenever one of us dares try to fix themselves, they're sent here [The Void] to die.” He Who Remains is narcissism incarnate, and he has been trying to fashion Loki within his own image.

“You know you can’t get to the end until you’ve been changed by the journey,” He Who Remains taunts our heroes.

So, of course, He Who Remains is going to be the one to present Loki with the temptation to fall back into those same old habits now. The first temptation comes in the form of a bribe, to relinquish continuing the quest for the promise of being allowed back on the timeline, where he would be given everything he had ever wanted – the throne of Asgard, even the power to defeat the mighty Thanos himself. The second temptation comes in the form of the reason why He Who Remains has been toying with them in the first place. He is tired of his own game, he doesn’t have the stamina to continue playing it, at least not in this current form. So, as part of his cruel gambit - if Loki and Sylvie so choose - they could take over as benevolent rulers of the TVA in his stead, to keep it safe from “an infinite amount of devils.” Power and control, another throne for Loki Laufeyson, and this would the grandest of all thrones – to oversee all of Time and Reality!

Yet in both cases Loki doesn’t bite, and here we come to the crux of the entire journey. Loki has been given a new identity, the tools of discipline to stabilize who he is. He has gained self-worth and a sense of his own inner beauty. He has obtained self-awareness apart from any self-loathing, and he has seen that he is capable of so much more than he could have thought possible, his own, genuine glorious purpose. Yet more than all these wonderful things, Loki has also finally achieved selflessness. Loki has been set free from the self, which becomes a generative act within him. He is free to think of others and to love others. The temptation of the throne, of power, of ambition do not hold value to him anymore because Loki has discovered the greater reward. His heart has been radically widened!

“I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!” | Psalm 119:32 

This is something that He Who Remains can’t even fathom about Loki in this moment, as he only sees Loki and Sylvie as part of the game that he is playing with himself. It matters little to him what the outcome is, what Loki and Sylvie have been through up until this point, or whether they will actually continue the TVA or kill him right there in his chair and unleash chaos. He only knows himself, only sees and is enamored with himself and the elaborate system he devised in his arrogance of “protecting” the Multiverse from himself. In contrast, as Loki and Sylvie stand before the brink of possibly unleashing horrors beyond their imagination, Loki’s heart is only for Sylvie. He is only thinking of her. He sees that she is being consumed by her rage, pain, and thoughts of revenge. This sickness of heart is turning Sylvie against him, seeing him as her enemy. For even though she has fallen in love with Loki and has endured thus far with him on this journey, she still cannot bring herself to trust, especially to trust someone as untrustworthy as our Loki has been. She is being eaten up by the mission that has been her entire life’s work, and not even Loki will get in her way this time.

Yet Loki understands this feeling, he has been exactly where she is now, the turmoil of ugly emotions filling her up and spilling over. Her heart is fragile and it is broken, Loki can see this clearly. He tries to keep her from committing an act that she, and they, would possibly regret. He is worried only for her safety and tries to get her to see things beyond their own personal experiences, even to the point of placing his life within her hands - her blade nearly cutting into his throat. He pleads for her to stop fighting, his voice and touch gentle, almost as if she would break by the mere touch of him. His eyes well up in tears and as he says through a cracked voice, “I don’t want a throne. I just want you to be okay.” It is visceral, a confession that comes from the very depths of his heart, and the both of them share a tender kiss. True love overflowing freely from Loki’s soul.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to change Sylvie in this moment. She pushes him away, both figuratively and literally, and sends him flying through the Time doorway, back to the TVA. She breaks Loki’s heart and kills He Who Remains where he sits. The timeline has been set free and the doors of the next phase of the MCU thrown wide open, with a truly terrible threat awaiting everyone in every single shadowy crevice of the Multiverse!

We have come to the final leg of Loki’s journey. Our dear Loki has been through so much and endured so much. As he sits alone back at the TVA, he weeps, his heart hurting from Sylvie’s choice. What will our Loki do now? The old Loki would have turned inward, consumed with the darkness at being “betrayed.” Perhaps setting blame on Sylvie for what she had chosen to do, and that she had shut him out of her heart. However, the journey has truly transformed our Loki, the hero shining like a bright light in his newly forged soul, and instead of self-pity, Loki chooses to get up. He presses on. He is going to fight the good fight because his Sylvie still needs him and the whole Multiverse lies in threat of being consumed by variants of a madman. Loki girds himself and presses forward to go look for Mobius, to tell him what they had done - shouldering that responsibility almost effortlessly - and to find a way of stopping it. 

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control...” | 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 

Of course, becoming the hero doesn’t mean things will get easier for you, but often it means precisely the opposite. Loki makes all the right choices in the end, his heart refined like gold, but unfortunately, he is not rewarded for it yet. In a truly classic science fiction twist done in the style of a Twilight Zone episode, Loki looks into the eyes of Mobius and Mobius, his eyes reflecting no recognition asks in confusion, “Who are you? What’s your name?” Loki stares in utter horror all around him. He is not in his own reality, the TVA he had known, but was lost in the Multiverse – stranded in a reality, one amongst an infinite amount, separated by an ever-widening gulf from anyone he has ever known and loved. Such exquisite dread! 

This was a truly incredible journey to be a part of! I was utterly blown away by it, and needless to say, I am enthusiastically looking forward to the next season of LoKi and this next phase of the MCU, which is proving to be quite compelling indeed. I don’t believe I have seen a franchise, or any story for that matter, redeem its villain so completely, so profoundly, where he is transformed from the inside out, made wholly new; and that the basis for our Loki’s renewal would be such a beautiful and resonate love story and powerful allegory. It follows in the ageless traditions of the hero’s journey, which is why I believe it resonates with such truth. It reminds us of the transcendent nature of story – that we ourselves were meant for so much more, that what awaits us on the other side of our own journeys is truly the beauty of transfiguration. 

“If my passions were dead, the souls of the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had imbodied themselves in the passions, and had given to them all their glory and wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure, undying fire. They rose above their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angels of light.” | Phantastes