Loki EP Breaks Down Episode 4’s Apocalyptic Twist: ‘We Knew It Would Be Fun and Shocking’

It’s the end of the world as Loki knows it — and he does not feel fine.

Actually, we’re not sure he feels much of anything, now that Episode 4 of the Disney+ series’ second season appears to have ended in Loki & Co. getting evaporated by an apocalyptic blast.

During Thursday’s installment, it seemed that Victor Timely — who looks identical to He Who Remains — would at last be able to use his likeness to stop the temporal loom from overloading and annihilating all of time and space. But the moment Victor donned that enormous, puffy spacesuit (the same one Mobius wore in the season premiere) and stepped outside the doors of the TVA to complete his crucial task, he was instantly spaghettified by the abnormally high levels of temporal radiation. Thus, with the temporal loom unable to keep up with all of the raw time flowing in, Loki, Mobius and the others were left to watch helplessly as a massive, bright blast headed their way and consumed them. Roll credits!

“This is a game we would always play in Season 1. If you have a really cool story element that you want to tell, but it happens in the third act or it happens two episodes later, what happens if you cut out that middle stuff and just move it up?” executive producer Kevin Wright tells TVLine of the decision to end Loki‘s world with two episodes remaining. “This was never something that was going to happen at the end of the show, but it feels like it naturally would… What happens if you put it earlier? Well, one, it’s going to be shocking, which is always fun and a great thing for a TV show. But two, it then gives you this whole back half where you get to really push the characters and have more time to explore.”

Indeed, Wright strongly hints that Loki, Sylvie, et al. will make it out of Episode 4’s catastrophic conclusion alive, even though there’s no mid-credits or post-credits scene to indicate anyone’s survival (as there was in Season 1, when Loki got pruned and sent to The Void).

“Everything has gone wrong, and now we have two episodes to push these characters to their absolute limits of who they are and how they’re going to overcome this,” Wright divulges. “It lets us go to some really profound and beautiful places. It gave us story kindling, and we knew it would be fun and shocking.”

And though Wright is expectedly tight-lipped about the specifics of Episodes 5 and 6, he reveals that they’ll include “a real exploration of what is holding reality together,” as well as a once-and-for-all answer to the show’s central question: “Can Loki become the best version of himself? What does that mean? What does that look like?”

Loki fans, did you see that Episode 4 ending coming? Give us your thoughts below!