Mobius’ Greatest Flaw Is Also What Makes Him the Best TVA Agent in ‘Loki’ – Armessa Movie News

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 2.

We’re only two episodes in, but Loki Season 2 is already off to a promising start, even delving into the more philosophical aspects of what the TVA really is and what it means to work there. In Episode 2, “Breaking Brad,” we see Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) continue their chase for Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), leading them to X-5 (Rafael Casal), who left his job as a TVA Hunter in the previous episode to enjoy life as a movie star called Brad Wolfe on the Sacred Timeline. Later in the episode, this starts a debate between Loki and Mobius about the idea of going back to see what life was like before being kidnapped by the TVA, which Mobius adamantly refuses.

The reveal that everyone who works there is actually a variant is huge, and each worker faces it in their own way. B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) is doing her best to protect the branched timelines and the variants that live in them, while X-5 decides to live out his life and become a movie star on a timeline that can’t be pruned. Mobius, however, is determined not to know what his original life was like before being kidnapped to work at the TVA. This is something that tempted even former Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), so how come Mobius isn’t curious?

Mobius Sees Being a TVA Analyst As His Purpose

Loki and Mobius discuss this idea while getting pie after their first attempt at interrogating Brad doesn’t work. The former Hunter taunts Mobius by constantly saying that “none of this is real,” referring to the TVA and their work, and that Mobius will be a “nowhere man” until he wakes up. Mobius then snaps and hits Brad, telling Loki in the following scene that it wasn’t “tactical” at all and that he simply lost it. This scene is crucial to the episode for a number of reasons, the most important being about Mobius and his purpose.

In the first episode, we see Loki time slipping through the TVA’s past, present, and future, meaning that even this institution is subject to time. Mobius always talks about how “time works differently” at the TVA and how it exists in a realm outside time and space, but, as it turns out, things aren’t actually like that, and it’s also part of a time loop. When Loki was in the past, Mobius was already there, working as an Agent. He has always been there, and it’s the only life he’s ever known. We also know everyone who works at the TVA has their mind wiped to not be able to remember what their life was like before, so, for Mobius, it’s literally the only life he’s ever known. Being a TVA Agent is what defines his existence, it’s his purpose.

As it should, in part. Working at the TVA is a huge responsibility, as made clear by those two first episodes. The imminent collapse of the Temporal Loom and the recent mass pruning of branched timelines by General Dox (Kate Dickie), killing trillions of beings, are two very different examples of how important this job is, and why it requires centered and sensible people to do it. People like Mobius are what prevent the branching of multiple timelines and help avoid genocides such as Dox’s. But not everyone at the TVA is as aware of their purpose and as reasonable as Mobius, and that has other kinds of moral and philosophical implications.

Mobius Relates to Pluto’s Allegory of the Cave

There’s an important philosophical aspect about Mobius’ character and his future in Loki that’s related to Plato’s allegory of the Cave. This concept speaks of how educated we are about our own reality, describing a group of people who live in a dark cave, the only source of light being a hole through which shadows of the outside world can be seen. For the people inside the cave, the shadows are all that exists, as they are not aware of what really makes these shapes, and finding out means confronting everything they know about reality itself.

Right now, Mobius is one of the people who are sitting tight inside the dark TVA cave, seeing the shadows projected onto the wall going about their lives outside, and thinking this is all there is to reality. Brad, on the other hand, actually left the cave and came back to tell people about what is really outside, but it’s not easy to face this kind of revelation. Mobius’s current reality as a TVA Agent is safe, and living it means he has a purpose and is important. This is something he takes very seriously — doing his job just right — even though he doesn’t fully understand it, and is starting to see what’s behind some of the shadows on the allegorical cave wall.

Some people go through life opting to stay inside the cave and are perfectly fine with this decision. This isn’t really something inherently good or bad, just something to be reflected upon in terms of cause and consequences. But that’s for real life, not for someone like Mobius. Right now, he’s a sort of shatter point, a liability inside the TVA, with the potential to bring everything down with him if he were to find out what his life was like before the TVA. His being the perfect TVA employee is what holds everything together, even if he’s not aware of it; but, at the same time, he has a right to know what’s really happening outside the cave, and there’s no way of knowing what will happen if he ever does. He may be in for a surprise knowing his life at the TVA is better, but there’s also the very real possibility that his life was great too — just look at Brad.

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Will We Ever See Mobius on His Jet Ski in ‘Loki’?

Another relevant reference about Mobius and his arc this season is Brad calling him a “nowhere man.” That’s the name of one of the best songs by The Beatles, in which John Lennon describes a man who “doesn’t have a point of view” and “knows not where he’s going to,” and begs him to “please listen” because he doesn’t know what he’s missing. The world is at his command, but “he’s as blind as he can be and just sees what he wants to see.” This sounds a lot like Loki talking to Mobius about what his life was like before the TVA, and, even though Mobius refuses, it does seem like we’re going to see it.

The possibility of Mobius missing out on an awesome life in the Sacred Timeline is actually very big. In Season 1, it’s established that he has a weird fixation on jet skis. This is funny at first, but, over time, it began to make a lot more sense. The reveal that every TVA employee is actually a variant means all of them had lives before, and Mobius’ love for jet skis is definitely a hint about what he used to do then. In fact, the teasers and trailers for Loki Season 2 all show Loki himself time slipping and reappearing in front of a place called Piranha Powerstore, which has two jet skis at the entrance. It seems that a life of jet skis and water sports is at Mobius’ command should he want it, he just doesn’t know it yet.