Just when you thought this show couldn’t get more timey-wimey, we were confronted with a humungous unstable machine named the Temporal Loom that does… stuff.
We’re here to cut through the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s word soup to get to the bottom of what exactly this new feature in the Marvel series is, and why it’s such a problem within Loki season 2. Prepare your brains: things are about to get more than a little confusing.
The Temporal Loom in Loki explained
The Temporal Loom in Loki season 2 is described as the “heart of the TVA”. In it, raw time is refined into a physical timeline, according to O.B.
Created alongside the TVA, its objective, in layman’s terms, is to take in raw energy from the cosmos and refine it into dimensions. It weaves those universes together to form the Sacred Timeline, the cluster of realities that He Who Remains was protecting against Kang the Conqueror variants.
In season 2 episode 1, the Temporal Loom, which generally is looked after by Miss Minutes (ruh-roh), is overloaded after the events of Loki’s season 1 finale, when Sylvie unleashed timeline chaos. The Loom is not built to weave together as many new timeline branches as it’s being forced to do now. Ke Huy Quan’s O.B. described it as a “disaster”.
In an attempt to fix the overloading Temporal Loom, Loki and co. recruited the Kang Variant Victor Timely. He was all set to make everything right, but on his way to restore stability to the Temporal Loom he was destroyed by the force of temporal radiation. Ouch.
In the resulting cliffhanger that ended Loki season 2 episode 4, after Timely’s failed attempt to fix the machine, it exploded and seemed to kill our heroes in a blast of temporal energy. That can’t be permanent, though, and now we wait to see what’s in store for the future of the Temporal Loom.
Until then, you can rewatch the Marvel movies in order, check out our Loki season 2 review, or find out who the best Marvel villains are.