Let's Discuss That Wild Loki Plot Twist

At the end of Loki's premiere episode, Agent Mobius dropped a bombshell: Loki hadn't been spared by the Time Variance Authority to help track down just anyone. Mobius was desperate for the trickster god's help because he was facing a different version of Loki, one who was far more deadly than the one in the TVA’s custody. Call it Marvel's Mindhunters: To catch a Loki, one must think like a Loki. But when Loki caught up with the variant that kept giving Mobius the slip, fans were stunned to see not another Tom Hiddleston, but a woman standing there. So, who is the woman in Loki Episode 2? Lady Loki, I presume?

Warning: Spoilers for Loki Season 1, Episode 2 follow. As Episode 2 revealed, the TVA has dealt with lots of Lokis during its tenure. If Loki thought himself a unique and mysterious figure for the Minutemen, Mobius disabused him of that notion on his first trip out. Lokis are a dime a dozen, one of the most common variants to pop up out of the timeline in a dissatisfied manner. He's no butterfly, just a standard-issue moth, most of whom are drawn to the TVA like a flame and snuffed out, or pruned, from existence.

But this other Loki the TVA was hunting? This was a different type of issue. Not only has this Loki eluded capture, but they've also kidnapped or killed dozens of TVA Hunters and stolen the reset charges, the devices that eliminate temporal branches from the sacred timeline, as well as the portals that Minute Men use to travel back to TVA headquarters after a mission.

The good news is that by thinking like Loki, it wasn't long until Loki had tracked the variant down — to the 2050s, in a big-box store. This Loki was hiding inside a natural disaster, where the TVA wouldn't think to look since the lack of survivors meant this section of time would be a dead-end.

The bad news is, it was a trap. Loki knew Loki was coming — as Loki suspected they would. But the dangerous Loki didn't want to join with TVA-helper Loki in taking over the TVA. She had other plans.

Now, fans may be asking, is a woman version of Loki an actual thing in the Marvel comics, or did the Marvel Cinematic Universe make her up? It turns out, a Lady Loki does exist — although this is not her story from the comics in the slightest. In the comics, she's a body meant for Sif that Loki uses to reincarnate. Therefore, she looks like Sif — tall, with dark hair, ready to kick butt and take names. Loki's Lady Loki (if that is her real name in this show) is smaller, fairer, and not so much a warrior as a straight-up murderer.

But Lady Loki or not, this variant has made a lot of problems for the current Loki. Taking over Hunter B-15's body and then dropping it left the TVA enforcer convinced Mobius' TVA-helper version of Loki had ambushed her. (Unsurprisingly, Hunter B-15 had no memory of having her body possessed.) And Loki's decision to follow the dangerous variant through time to see what she's up to, and perhaps take over her little scheme for himself, didn't give a good impression on the rest of the TVA either.

In the end, Agent Mobius' plan had some positive results — discovering the huge loophole Lady Loki was exploiting in natural disaster monitoring, for example. But now, two Lokis are on the loose while thousands of uncontrolled nexus branches spiral off the Sacred Timeline, creating multiversal chaos. It's madness... a multiverse of madness, if you will.