The god of mischief might have pulled a trick right in front of our eyes in the premiere episode of Loki season 2 and nobody noticed.
Loki season 2 is in full swing! And while we wait to see what challenges the infamous trickster is set to face next in the Disney Plus series, it’s time to look back at a small yet important detail in the premiere episode. Was Loki the one to prune himself right in front of our eyes?
Let’s rewind a little. In the first episode of Season 2, we see that Loki has a little trouble with… well, living in the present. The god of mischief inadvertently jumps between past and present at the most inconvenient times, making it difficult for him (or for anyone around him) to focus on finding Sylvie and unveiling the truth behind the TVA.
Due to that, OB came up with a plan: What if Loki was pruned out of the timeline altogether? But instead of going to The Void, Mobius could help the god of mischief return to the present, liberated of any “time glitches” that were troubling him. However, in order for OB’s plan to work, everything needed to be executed with utmost precision. If either Mobius or Loki performed their part of the plan a little too early, or a bit too late, the outcome could’ve been horrific. That’s why it was extremely disheartening when Loki, out of nowhere, traveled to the future right before he needed to be pruned.
Desperate to find a pruning baton in the future, the god of mischief traverses all of the TVA until he hears the distant ring of a phone. He follows the sound unit he finally finds the source, and it is right there that Sylvie appears behind the doors of an elevator. However, before Loki is able to say anything to her, he’s pruned out of existence by someone whose face is never shown.
Talk about a good mystery to kick things off.
Now that we got the recap out of the way, let’s talk about who was the person responsible for Loki’s pruning. Even if the show hasn’t given us an answer yet, the safest bet is for the god of mischief to have done it himself (or a future version of him, at least). Let us explain:
Did Loki prune himself in Loki season 2?
As we said before, OB’s plan needed extreme time precision in order to be executed to perfection. So whoever pruned Loki in the future needed to know exactly when to do it, and where would the god of mischief be within the TVA. That leaves us with three plausible options: OB, Mobius, and Loki, the only three MCU characters who knew about the plan.
However, neither OB nor Mobius knew where “past Loki” would be in the future. Granted, maybe that’s why a phone rang out of nowhere; to lure the god of Mischief to an exact position where he could meet with Sylvie and be pruned. Either OB or Mobius could’ve made the call that set things into motion, but the most plausible candidate is the god of mischief himself.
A future version of Loki would’ve known at what moment would his past version be transported to his time, and where exactly he would be. How? Well, because he already lived that. It would be a perfect time loop where both the present and future versions of the god of mischief work together to solve the time glitch that haunted him through the first episode. It might sound complicated, but it’s also the most convincing explanation for what happened at that moment.
Only time will tell who truly pruned Loki out of existence in the Loki season 2 premiere, but one thing’s for certain: We can’t wait to find out.
Are you enjoying Loki season 2? Do you think the Trickster pruned himself?