Loki Season 2 Explores Dark Romance With Victor & Ravonna

In Loki Season 2, the main focus has been on saving the Sacred Timeline. As the timestream frays, Tim Hiddleston’s God of Mischief wants to protect the fabric of space and time by fixing the Time Variance Authority. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s way of speaking more about variants, branched timelines and alternative realities in the build to Avengers movies such as The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.

However, there’s something more subtle, yet more nuanced that’s being mapped out as the show’s main theme. It’s not temporal shenanigans, but the concept of dark romance. As the new episodes unfold, Loki is making this part of the narrative quite impactful and teasing major ripple effects down the line.

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Loki Loves Using Forbidden Romance

Loki Season 1 worked in a taboo romance with Sylvie and Loki. It was quaint at first, knowing they were variants falling for each other, but they were essentially very different people. Still, the TVA fought against it, with He Who Remains wanting to ensure he could keep this forbidden bond in check to preserve the timeline.

It became a story of sacrifice and how emotions influence people, even at the End of Time. Loki was willing to risk everything for Sylvie. But Sylvie couldn’t get over the Kang variant took everything from her, pushing her to kill him. She not only saw it as revenge, but as a necessary sacrifice to give reality that sense of free will and agency. She didn’t care if control was an illusion, or if this liberation and raging against the machine would cost her Loki.

Loki, on the hand, kept believing in her and their connection. Even though she was initially hiding out in Broxton, Oklahoma, working at McDonald’s, he still wanted her back. She could help fix the TVA, but Loki just wanted the person he felt was his true soulmate beside him. Of course, the dynamics have now shifted as branched timelines have overloaded the TVA, teasing maybe their relationship could be feasible again upon reality shifting. In that sense, there may well be a payoff looming for viewers’ investment.

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Loki Resumes Taboo Love With Ravonna Renslayer

Loki Season 2 also dives deeper into this idea of taboo love when Ravonna Renslayer sneaks off to find Victor Timely in Chicago in 1893. She wants him to become the successor of He Who Remains, who was someone Ravonna had feelings for. As they discuss space, time, and the Multiverse, her wistful glances and the way she pines is definitely well done. It’s emotive, sentimental and some of the most endearing lines in the series. She affirms that love is indeed finite and not timeless as she would like it to be.

Victor is a reminder of what she lost, but maybe, what could still be as she tries to mold him. Even when Miss Minutes chimes in with her crush and obsession, there’s a seductive, soap opera feel to Loki. While it feels like the plot is being convoluted with temporal hijinks, everyone is actually being human, and wanting love, even if the rules are being broken. It’s a major callback to the philosophy that Loki and Sylvie embody: the heart wants what the heart wants.

The show even has another betrayal occurring, reminiscent of when Sylvie backstabbed Loki. Here, a lustful Miss Minutes goads an ambitious Victor to abandon a Ravonna, who can’t process why he’d pick the sentient AI over her. It’s a lot of drama, but all these secrets and feelings fit so well in a show filled with bending timelines and bombshells. Such curveballs made Season 1 memorable, so it’s welcomed to see Season 2 using love to create similar twists and questionable character motives.

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Loki Makes Vulnerability a Key Part of the MCU

The MCU has more or less focused on straightforward romances. The only wildcard came with Steve Rogers staying back in time to be with Peggy Carter. But Season 2 of Loki opts for the route of bravery. These sorts of bonds don’t feel multidimensional as what existed before. It’s mature filmmaking with an indie flair that nods to movies like The One I Love, Predestination, Upside Down, Out of Time, and so many other properties that have that Romeo & Juliet feel of star-crossed lovers from different timelines or worlds trying to find each other.

It’s an auteur way of crafting a narrative, but even something the mainstream Terminator worked into a paradox and closed time loop with Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. The anchor for all these stories is vulnerability. It helps create relatable characters, which is why it’s easy to root for Ravonna — as sinister as she is — wanting a realm of order with a copy of her beloved. It doesn’t matter if it’s a doppelgänger as her feelings make it so that it’s as real as can be, just like the good old days. It speaks to how fragile these individuals are, and how they need support by any means necessary for a frail reality.

Season 1 had Loki finding something to feel whole, and in Season 2, Ravonna wants a cure for the pain she endured. Bold arcs like this help differentiate the MCU from the run-of-the-mill tales that contribute to a loss of identity. New films like Eternals, and shows like Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law, just don’t have that depth when it comes to romance, and that’s okay. As popcorn stories, they’re not meant to provoke such deep, soulful thinking.

Ultimately, However, the more direction is taken from Loki, and the more it weaves this kind of tangled web, the MCU will feel richer and packed with mystique. Most of all is that Loki is now giving fans characters in the Multiverse Saga who have a lot more importance than first assumed. In the end, it shapes something more engaging and unpredictable than any other superhero universe out there currently.

Loki Season 2 debuts new episodes Thursdays on Disney+.