'Loki' Season 2 Finally Gives Us Mobius and Renslayer's Backstory

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the Loki Season 2 finale.

The Big Picture

Mobius reveals his past relationship with Ravonna Renslayer, showing how they were once partners as Hunters for the TVA.
Renslayer's character is explored, highlighting her values of leadership and obedience and her frustration at being deceived by the Time Keepers.
In the end, Renslayer is seemingly eaten by Alioth in the Void, but with the multiverse changed, there may be variants of her that could pose a threat in the future.

The finale of Loki came with lots of answers, including one that had been set up all the way back in Season 1 — the history between Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)? In "Glorious Purpose," Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is going through basically all existence and time looking for a way to stop the major temporal spaghettification, even revisiting key moments of his own history, like his debriefing with Mobius when he first arrived at the TVA for trial. In this conversation, Mobius finally spills the beans, telling a story that not only speaks of his past relationship with Renslayer but also leaves some hints about how the former TVA Judge may return in the future of the MCU.

Loki

TV-14Superhero

Loki, the God of Mischief, steps out of his brother's shadow to embark on an adventure that takes place after the events of "Avengers: Endgame."

Release Date June 9, 2021 Cast Tom Hiddleston , Owen Wilson , Gugu Mbatha-Raw , Richard E. Grant Main Genre Superhero Seasons 2 Studio Disney+ Franchise Marvel

Mobius and Renslayer Were Once Partners as Hunters for the TVA

When Loki returns to the debriefing to talk to Mobius, he's going through some stuff. First, he finally learned how to control his time-slipping in the previous episode, "Science/Fiction," so now he can access any moment in time he wants. Second, he's slowly coming to understand that he can't stop the implosion of the Temporal Loom at the TVA, especially after his fateful conversation with He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) back at the Citadel at the End of Time. Loki returns to when he met Mobius for two reasons: Mobius can definitely provide him with useful insight, and going back to his earliest moments at the TVA means gaining time to come up with a solution.

But Loki ended up getting way more insight than he bargained for. As soon as the debriefing starts, he takes over and starts asking Mobius (who, by that point in the story, had just met Loki) about how the TVA decides who gets to live or be pruned. He thinks he needs to come to terms with the possibility of having to kill Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) to keep He Who Remains from being killed by her. This is why, when Mobius explains that pruning people means having the proper flow of time in mind, Loki asks him what comfort that is for the ones doing it. That's when Mobius explains that working for the TVA means having no comfort, and tells the story of him and Renslayer.

A couple of TVA Hunters are dispatched to the Black Sea to find a variant that will be responsible for 5,000 deaths that are not supposed to happen in the Sacred Timeline. When they get there, though, one of the Hunters hesitates when he finds out this variant is an eight-year-old boy at the time. Mobius is this Hunter, who, after never having trouble pruning before, pauses because he "lost sight of the big picture." The timeline starts to branch, more variants appear, and a few Hunters die because of his hesitation. Then, his partner takes over, and she doesn't hesitate, pruning the boy on the spot. That's Ravonna Renslayer, following her orders to the letter and even teaching Mobius a lesson about his commitment to the Sacred Timeline.

Mobius then explains that things worked out fine for Renslayer after that and that she even went on to become a TVA Judge. By then, Renslayer still hadn't walked away from the TVA, and she was the one who allowed Mobius to take Loki as a prisoner in the series premiere, also titled "Glorious Purpose." Going back to that episode, it's already implied that Mobius and Renslayer have a deeper relationship than just being coworkers, shown in Season 1 when we see them talking in her office about Loki. Mobius talks to her in an almost flirty way, while she dodges it every time by keeping things as professional as possible without being cold to him. In Season 2, Episode 3, "1893," Mobius even calls her "Von" in an attempt to keep her from pruning Victor Timely (also Majors), and even then, not being a TVA Judge anymore, she doesn't respond to his approach.

Mobius’ Story Reveals a Lot About Ravonna Renslayer's Character

Renslayer may not be around in Loki Season 2 as much as she was in Season 1, but her part remains a crucial one. After leaving the TVA at the end of Season 1, she teams up with Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) to carry out the plans of He Who Remains and start the time loop that will eventually lead to a multiversal war and take him all the way back to his throne in the Citadel at the End of Time. Together, the two of them kidnap Victor Timely and wreak havoc at the TVA when they return.

All this, along with Mobius' story, reveals a lot about Renslayer, and not just about who she is, but also about how she may eventually return. As a TVA Judge, we know her to be someone who dislikes having her order disobeyed and deals out harsh punishment to variants for their crimes — let's remember that before Mobius intervenes in Loki's initial trial, she was going to have the god of mischief pruned. She only allows Mobius to have Loki because she trusts him, which speaks a lot about their relationship — she keeps it professional but values his devotion to his job. Still, when it's revealed that the Time Keepers, who she thought were the ones dealing out the orders, were actually robots acting on someone else's behalf, she walks away. She is someone who follows orders as they are given and likes her orders followed the same way, so it breaks her to see that she's the only one who has been playing this game.

In Episode 4, "Heart of the TVA," Miss Minutes shows Renslayer a recording of her with He Who Remains after the Multiversal War and the creation of the TVA in which he praises her leadership as what really won the war for their side. Those are her two most important (and valuable) traits: leadership and obedience. That's why she didn't hesitate to prune the child when Mobius did on their mission in the Black Sea — taking charge when he failed. That's why she walked away from the TVA in search of who's actually behind everything that's going on. And that's why she's outraged at He Who Remains when she learns that she did all the hard work during the war only to have her memory wiped afterward.

What Happens With Renslayer at the End of ‘Loki’ Season 2?

At the end of Episode 4, a huge fight breaks out inside the TVA as the Temporal Loom is about to implode. Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes partner with Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal) to try and take over the whole thing with Victor Timely as a hostage, while Loki and his team are trying to rescue Timely in order to prevent the Loom from imploding. The whole sequence is crazy, with O.B. (Ke Huy Quan) rebooting the whole TVA system in order to disable Miss Minutes, enabling magic to be used on the premises. Thanks to that, Sylvie is able to enchant X-5 and have him prune Renslayer.

We don't see her again until the end of the finale, when she appears on an open field under a dark sky. When people are pruned, they are sent to the Void at the End of Time, where Loki variants run amok trying to rule the place and a being called Alioth eats everything it can find, finally ending its existence. When we see Renslayer wake up in the Void, she is assumably eaten by Alioth, meeting a fitting end in the middle of the TVA ruins in the void.

But now the multiverse works differently after Loki took over it and turned it into Yggdrasil. While the TVA is now keeping watch for variants of He Who Remains to make sure they never grow into Kang the Conqueror (also Majors), there's apparently no protocol dictating they should look for variants of Renslayer, too, and there are as many variants of her as there are branched timelines — all with the same spirit of leadership. It takes just one of them to come into herself and endanger everything again.

Loki is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.

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