Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Loki Season 2.

In the first season of Loki, viewers were introduced to the Sacred Timeline and the Time Variance Authority. TVA Agents were tasked with maintaining this singular timeline to prevent a catastrophic multiversal war. By preventing the existence of any other timeline, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) can ensure that he would be the only variant of Kang that could exist. If other timelines were allowed to exist, other variants of Kang would be brought to life and the multiversal war would start all over again. He Who Remains was so terrified of his variants that he created the Temporal Loom, the engine at the heart of the TVA that uses raw temporal energy to weave together the sacred timeline. Preventing every other timeline from existing, though, raises the bigger debate of free will versus fate, and He Who Remains shows how nuanced both sides of the argument are.

Fate Is a Contradiction to Free Will in ‘Loki’ Season 2

Fate is a concept woven into many cultural mythologies. Ancient Egyptians believed the god Shai was responsible for their fate, showing up at the moment of their birth and declaring what would happen to that person for the rest of their life. Hindus believe in the concept of Karma, that one’s deeds in all their past lives determine what kind of life they will lead. In Greek mythology, Fate is represented by three women, one who spun the golden threads that represented each life, one who connected these threads to the life they’re meant for, and one who cut each thread at the end of their lives. Any viewers of The Sandman would recognize these three characters that Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) questioned to find his stolen items. The thread they spin contains each person’s destiny, and the length of the thread determines that person’s lifespan. The Greek myth of the Fates is a perfect metaphor for the Temporal Loom. The raw temporal energy feeding into each timeline branch is like the golden threads the Fates spin. The Loom makes sure the proper timeline events are woven into the Sacred Timeline. The TVA acts as the cutters, removing any timeline that isn’t part of the Sacred Timeline.

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Loki (Tom Hiddleston) along Mobius (Owen Wilson) and the other TVA agents recently discovered that pruning branches isn’t just resetting the timeline back to what it’s supposed to be, but it’s taking innocent lives and condemning them to die in the void. Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) is entirely motivated for her revenge based on the belief that the TVA destroyed her life by taking her free will. Before achieving her revenge, though, He Who Remains explained to both Lokis how the choice they’re making is far more significant than having free will or being confined to an existence determined by one interdimensional madman. As Kang put it, their decision was between “stifling order or cataclysmic chaos,” and there was no easy solution. They could either destroy the TVA and bring free will and chaos to the multiverse, or they could continue upholding the oppressive system that ripped them out of their lives to preserve one comparatively peaceful universe. While Loki believed that He Who Remains was telling them the truth, Sylvie believed Loki was all about achieving the throne. Because she can’t trust anyone, she doesn’t believe Loki when he tries to convince her that He Who Remains is right about the dictatorship being better than the chaos.

It All Comes Down to Fixing the Loom in ‘Loki’ Season 2

Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), a.k.a. O.B., has a deep understanding of all the mechanics that keep the TVA running. After all, he wrote the TVA Official Handbook, which is “a detailed index of every mechanical classification and maintenance routine in each sector, on each device, and inside of every computer program at the TVA.” He helps Loki try to solve his time-slipping problem and, while doing so, discovers that the Temporal Loom is malfunctioning. The TVA stopped all pruning after discovering that they were all variants that had their own timeline destroyed. With all the branched timelines now absorbing more temporal energy than ever before, the Temporal Loom is being overloaded. The temporal energy the loom was processing while they were still pruning was regulated to handle only what the Sacred Timeline needed, but all the branches added in exponentially increased the amount of energy being written into existence.

This is not a problem for O.B., though. When Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) tells him that pruning the extra branches kills millions of innocent lives, he immediately responds with a way to expand the loom to help it process that much more energy. O.B.’s modification of the loom will only feed into Loki’s fears as it will make the Temporal Loom able to weave all the new timelines into existence, bringing with it all of Kang’s variants. If his plan doesn’t work and the loom is incapable of managing the flow of time, the timelines will be set completely free of one another and incursions, collisions between two universes, will begin.

‘Loki’s Season 1 Finale May Not Have Fixed Everything

Setting the timeline free at the end of Season 1 still is not going to have the lasting effect Sylvie was hoping for. She hasn’t been through enough to know the devastating effects of incursions. In the Multiverse of Madness, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is pushed into a universe where his variant had been unable to prevent an incursion, even while empowered by the Darkhold. Loki began to believe He Who Remains after learning how the Kang variants would destroy entire universes in pursuit of power. As He Who Remains reminded them, once all of his variants start fighting across the multiverse again, one of them will seem like a reincarnation that will discover a way to destroy any other timeline besides the one he considers sacred. Loki believed He Who Remains, but Sylvie didn’t trust either of them. She has lived an entire life well beyond what was afforded her in the sacred timeline this variant of Kang put together. If anyone can prove that there’s more than one way to solve this problem than restricting existence to one timeline, it’s going to be Sylvie.