Let's Talk About LOKI Episode 5 - "Journey Into Mystery"

Marvel’s Loki series has gone by pretty fast; we’ve only got one more episode left before the story is wrapped up. Episode 5 is titled “Journey Into Mystery,” and it was loaded with glorious entertainment and some exciting big action.

The whole thing led to Sylvie and Loki facing off with Alioth, a trans-temporal entity existing across divergent timelines as an enormous cloud destroying all it touches, causing massive temporal disturbance, and devastation across entire dimensions. It’s pretty menacing.

The plan for them is to enchant Alioth to gain access to the castle hideout of the mastermind behind the TVA. They are helped in their efforts by Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant), who conjures up an illusion of Asgard to distract the being and in the process sacrifices himself. I was a big fan of Loki! It was sad to see him go, I would have liked to see more of him.

Anyway, Alioth has appeared in several stories that involve Kang the Conqueror, which is even more reason to believe that Kang is going to end up being the big bad villain and puppetmaster of the TVA. Again, Kang is also set to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Thankfully, we learn that Mobius also ended up in the Void after his pruning. He and Loki briefly reunite and Loki gives him the TemPad so he can go back to the TVA and “burn it to the ground.” It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he confronts Ravonna. It’s hard to tell if they will be at odds or team up to figure out what is going on.

Her allegiance to the TVA seems pretty firm, though, regardless of the fact the Time Keepers ended up being animatronic robots. She wants to keep things together until she can figure some things out. Ravonna doesn't really know what is happening, but she apparently is looking to protect whoever is in charge. At one point she tells TVA mascot Miss Minutes to access files on the agency's formation and the beginning of time so she can protect the villain from Sylvie and Loki, but I can’t help but think that she wants to confront them as well.

Ravonna definitely knew about what happens to those that are pruned, though. Before Sylvie self-prunes herself and reunites with Loki in the Void, Ravonna says that TVA prunes aren't destroyed, they're transferred to a Void at the end of time, "Where every instance of existence collides at the same point and simply stops.”

We also get to know a few of the new Loki variants that were introduced and their backstories.

Classic Loki's story goes back to Avengers: Infinity War, when Thanos intercepts the Asgardian ship while hunting for the Tesseract. This is where Loki tries to stab Thanos and he ends up being killed by Thanos. Classic Loki adds a new details to the story, though saying, "I cast a projection of myself so real, even the Mad Titan believed it, then hid as inanimate debris."

With Thor and everyone believing he was dead, Loki lived in solitude on a remote planet "for a long, long time." He eventually got lonely and embarked on a journey to find Thor, when he tried to leave the planet he was captured by the TVA. So, I guess this version of Loki was supposed to live out the rest of his days alone.

Kid Loki is the ruler of The Void, and the reason for that is because his nexus event was killing Thor. There aren’t any details, it’s pretty simple, but I sure would love to know the story of how he pulled that off!

Boastful Loki makes claims he defeated Iron Man and Captain America, and managed to collect all six Infinity Stones. No one believes his story, and in the end, he betrays them and they end up facing off with President Loki and his gang of bandit Lokis.

Then there’s alligator Loki, which is a ridiculous and awesome Loki variant. His nexus event was apparently "eating the wrong neighbor's cat." He eventually ends up biting off President Loki's hand during a fight. Fans are loving alligator Loki, but some are wondering if he really is a Loki.

There’s a moment in the episode set in Loki’s bunker home, and in it we can see a few cool little things in the background including Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and a little Thor-like frog in a jar. This has got to be Throg! In the comics, a character named Simon Walterson was turned into a frog by a witch, and he got his own version of Mjolnir. This turned him into the Frog of Thunder. At one point Kid Loki is also holding a Hi-C Ecto Cooler drink!

I also want to point out that the Navy vessel that falls into Alioth's path is the USS Eldridge. This is a real ship that was used during World War II. The ship was at the center of the Navy's alleged 1943 Philadelphia Experiment, in which it was rendered invisible by a cloaking device and teleported. The story is considered a hoax, but not in the MCU!

One other thing, I was a big fan of that Loki and Mobius hug! That was such a great little moment!

What did you think of the latest episode of Loki? Are there any details that you noticed that you want to point out here that I might have missed?