Read also: the best live TV streaming services with free trial>

Our God of Mischief tries to rebuild the TVA as the catastrophe expands.

Eric Martin returns to solo writing duties with Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead helming for Loki Season 2 Episode 5 “Science/Fiction,” and they bring the oddness with them. While not as off the wall as, say, Benson and Moorehead’s Synchronic, this episode feels like the first of the season that indulges in time travel and alternate timelines at something higher than a 101 level of complexity.

Loki Season 2 Episode 5 kicks off with a bright flash of white that fades to reveal Loki (Tom Hiddleston) standing alone. Whatever the fallout of the Temporal Loom’s failure, it appears to have spared the God of Mischief so far. The episode implies it has something to do with his time slipping earlier in the season, but given what we learn from Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) later, it’s likely being a god helped as well.

In any case, Loki scrambles around the TVA, empty except for a pre-recorded voice over the PA system and computerized messages that feel like Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) mocking our protagonist even in her still rebooting state. He’s also back to time slipping, but this time, he’s jumping between minutes. For example, he blinks from the hallway into another room, where he glimpses himself reading before slipping back to where he was in the hall. Then he walks into that room, picks up a TVA manual, and flips through it as we see in the background the other Loki slip in and out of the scene.

Like I said above, this feels like a weirder, more interesting take on the time traveling we’ve seen all season. It’s not mind-bending, admittedly. Still, the way Loki piles up on himself at least gives Loki Season 2 Episode 5 a higher level of surreality. It also heightens the sense that time isn’t just acting a little funny but is genuinely breaking down now.

Before Loki can dig too far into the manual, the room begins to spaghettify around him. Unlike Victor’s (Jonathan Majors) rapid unraveling last episode, here it is slow and feels almost gravity-less. It makes the whole thing more unnerving. Thankfully, before we can find out if even an Asgardian would succumb to the power of a black hole, Loki slips right out of the TVA.

He ends up landing on the island prison of Alcatraz in 1962, where Casey (Eugene Cordero) appears to be in the midst of a bold prison break. Unfortunately for Loki, this isn’t TVA Casey. He’s the splintered timeline “Frank,” a convicted bank robber. Frank/Casey doesn’t recognize Loki, freaking out him and his escape buddies. Before the God of Mischief can even attempt to explain things, another slip derails him.

In rapid succession, Loki slips to the parking lot of an 80s McDonald’s—Sylvie’s timeline—the parking lot of a modern Piranha Power Sports—unsurprisingly later revealed as Mobius’ (Owen Wilson) timeline—and a room with a “25” on the wall and a red orb on a table. Unless I missed it (sadly possible), we never find out the location or significance of the room. 

[T]his episode feels like the first..that indulges in time travel and alternate timelines at something higher than a 101 level of complexity.

This could reference the MCU being 25 years old as Iron Man came out in 2008. Regardless of if that’s true, I’m guessing it also speaks to this being Loki Season 2 Episode 5. Anyway, given the episode never returns here, I’d look for this room to have some importance to the finale next week.

He finally stops his rapid slip in the 2012 New York office of B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), a pediatrician in this splinter timeline. She’s also the first person to witness his slipping as he stretch-blinks into view in front of her and dissipates again before they exchange any words.

Loki makes another stop at Piranha Powersports in what we learn is Ohio, 2022. There he briefly interacts with the splinter timeline Mobius, a recreational vehicle salesman and single parent to (at least) two kids. Once again, Loki slips away before he can launch into his spiel.

Finally, we arrive in 1994 Pasadena, where OB, a science fiction writer and Cal Tech professor in this splinter timeline, attempts to sneak his books onto the shelves at his local independent bookstore. When Loki shows up at OB’s apartment—which looks very much like a significantly less busy version of his workshop at the TVA—the episode finally takes shape. OB suggests that Loki can control his time slipping. He reasons that what Loki is doing is already impossible. Therefore, doing the further impossible by consciously controlling it with purpose makes a kind of sense. In turn, Loki gives OB the TVA manual he wrote and asks him to try and build the stuff in it, starting with a tempad.

The subsequent sequence of scenes reminds me of a comic book from the Distinguished Competition, in which the Justice League “wake” each other up from a series of Doctor Destiny-created alternate worlds. If you dig comics, please seek out Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare. Loki goes timeline to timeline and recruits Casey, B-15, and Mobius to join him. Despite the wildness of the suggestion, all eventually follow him through the gold door of OB’s extra large tempad prototype.

His plan reaches a snag, though, when he finally reaches out to Sylvie. Although she remembers the TVA, the Loom’s destruction, and who she really is, she refuses to join Loki’s new team. Additionally, she argues that he has no right to ask them to help him. The TVA is gone, and they have their intended lives. Loki wanting to “fix” things is a selfish desire not to be alone, not a selfless attempt to be a hero.

Unfortunately, she’s wrong. Soon after dismissing Loki, she heads to her favorite record shop. The clerk makes the most record clerk in the mid-80s recommendation to her by handing her The Velvet Underground’s 1970 album “Loaded” on vinyl. While she listens to it on the store’s couch, the world begins to spaghettify, fittingly, to the tune of “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’.” She realizes before the unraveling reaches her, but the rest of the timeline seems lost.

Even though Mobius’s last thoughts are touching, imagine how much stronger it would hit if the audience got to know 2022 Ohio’s version of the character.

She runs to 1994 Pasadena just as Loki’s about to dismiss his team back to their timelines. However, by the time she warns them what’s happening, Frank/Casey unravels. Everyone else soon follows suit, including Sylvie, leaving Loki to clutch and the ribbons of their disappearing existence. As I’ve noted a couple of times, this season hasn’t wasted time, which is appreciated. That said. I wish they didn’t get to this moment as rapidly. Even though Mobius’s last thoughts are touching, imagine how much stronger it would hit if the audience got to know 2022 Ohio’s version of the character. That goes for Casey/Frank and Doctor B-15 as well.

The visual here is the most unsettling moment of Loki Season 2 Episode 5 for me. It may be the most unsettling of the entire series. Years ago, when I first learned of spaghettification, I remember obsessing over the idea that the black hole would make that process infinite. In other words, you’d be unraveling forever. It wedged into my head like the idea of falling forever in a bottomless pit did before that. Now, of course, in both of those, you would die so quickly that even if you theoretically unravel or fall forever, your awareness of it would conclude very early on. Still, seeing Loki surrounded by the forever dissipating essences of his friends/allies…oof.

For Loki, though, the moment proves enough to help him finally control his slipping. He first slips back to just before the mass spaghettification. Then he realizes what it means, so he pushes himself to just before Victor gets sent out to his death. Then, boom, credits.

Moments From the Sacred Timeline

• I like the way the show tweaks Mobius for his 2022 version. His hair looks more bleached than silver fox-y. He’s still a sensualist, but he’s a coffee and donut man instead of hot cocoa and pie. Finally, he remains a jet ski lover with an affection for troublemakers—his kids.
• In general, the splinter timeline versions of the characters are smart interpretations of their TVA versions without being overly obvious. B-15, as a healer working under oath to do no harm, fits her role this year as the most prominent advocate of not pruning timelines. Casey, a collector at the TVA, appears to be a klepto left to his own devices. A writer with a doctorate in theoretical physics might be the closest to the TVA OB than the others. Still, Quan playing him as more interested in the fiction side of sci-fi than his tactile inventor TVA version, the thinker v. the doer, gives us a juxtaposition that provides insight. His physicality, which reads as both younger and slighter somehow than at the TVA, is another interesting difference.
• While “Loaded” is very much a record clerk recommendation, it is also an incredible album. Listen to it and, preferably, buy it in physical media.
• The record store clerk’s reaction to the literal disintegration of his world being to run and try and save Sylvie got me choked up. He could’ve done anything, but he spends his last moments trying to save someone else. Similarly, Mobius’s attempt to get home before he unravels to see his kids one last time got me in the throat.
• Sylvie’s food foreshadowing the timeline’s unraveling is an intelligent bit of foreshadowing because the show lets you think it has to do with Loki’s arrival. It isn’t until later that it becomes clear what’s happening. Same with the tempad, which leads to a fight about Frank/Casey stealing it, distracting us from it as the first sign of that timeline’s demise.
• Zaniac, the name of Brad/X-5’s (Rafael Casal), as the video game Sylvie and Loki play in the 80s bar is a fun touch.
• The audio post-credits scene felt a touch mean, thank you.

From the Lips of Gods

• “Science fiction is a well-respected and thought-provoking genre.”
• “I think you mean ATV. And, no, you’re in luck.”
• “What I’m about to tell you is going to be hard to believe.”
  “Of course, I believe you. It’s a dream come true.”
• “You can’t. It’s impossible. But don’t let that stop you.”
• “You time traveled in a place that has no time.”
• “Sure. Excellent. Makes total sense.”
• “With science, it’s all what and how. With fiction, it’s why.”
• “Who gave you the matches.”
  “I stole ‘em.”
• “Without them, where do I belong?”
• “I can rewrite the story.”