Loki: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 2

As we take a deeper dive at the latest episode from Loki, we also compare another moment of history and what a certain reveal might actually mean.

Leave it to a series about the Norse God of Mischief to cause a little mischief itself in only its second episode. Just as we were starting to settle into a series that seemed a cross between The Blacklist and Doctor Who, Loki pulls the rug out from under us and gives us The Fugitive  instead. And while I’m sure most people watching anticipated the twist about the Loki Variant the TVA have been hunting, I’m not sure if they expected Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to escape so soon.

We also, of course, got our usual share of clues, Easter Eggs, and reveals. Some of them were minor like Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) being an interactive hologram as well as a cartoon character. Or how the file on the destruction of Asgard is under the codename “Revengers,” which is what Thor (Chris Hemsworth) called himself, Loki, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) during Thor: Ragnarok (2017). Or that those recruited by the TVA take multiple choice tests about Thanos and apples (as seen on Loki’s computer).

But as usual, we’ll be talking about the major stuff, one’s which may tie more into what may or may not be really going on in the Disney Plus series. So lets see where these clues from “The Variant” might take us and, as usual, there’s SPOILERS ahead.

Who is the other analyst working with Judge Renslayer?

While the big twists from the “The Variant” occur towards the end of the episode, they weren’t the only revelations. If anything, these reveals were so causally slipped in that one might not give them a second thought afterwards. And all of these minor reveals occur when Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) meets with Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in her office.

For starters, we learn through their conversation two very important details. The first is that Mobius isn’t the only analyst at the TVA who meets with Renslayer on a regular basis. It’s also very much implied that, while Mobius doesn’t know the identity of this other analyst, the other analyst knows about him. Like Mobius, this analyst also brings back mementos from pruned timelines to Renslayer that they’ve picked up from prior cases. One of these happens to be a blue ball point pen with the words “Franklin D. Roosevelt High School” written on the side.

So who could this other analyst be? Well, remember how we said last time that Mobius, in the comics, was a clone of comics creator Mark Gruenwald, and that all of the TVA’s middle-to-upper management were, too? What if the other analyst working with Renslayer is a clone of Mobius? Or, if you prefer, a Variant of Mobius who isn’t quite as unorthodox in his methods and even more of a company devotee. After all, Mobius is certainly willing to bend the rules and show empathy towards Variants like Loki. After another Mobius more willing to follow orders as a contingency makes sense in that regard.

But the second little detail may be even more important than the first: no one at the TVA, except for Renslayer, has ever seen the Time Keepers in person. That should raise all sorts of red flags, especially considering Renslayer’s association with Kang the Conqueror from the original comics. Once again, this very much hints that the official story about the Time Keepers being fed to the TVA is not to be believed.