Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Loki Season 2 Episode 3.
The Big Picture
- O.B., the loyal TVA technician played by Ke Huy Quan, plays a significant role in the TVA and has extensive knowledge of how it works.
- He Who Remains, the one running the TVA, created the Sacred Timeline, but the origins of the TVA are brought into question by O.B.’s handbook.
- Ravonna Renslayer dropped a copy of the handbook in the house of Victor Timely, one of Kang’s variants who would go on to build the TVA, creating a paradox about the true origins of the organization.
The second season of Loki has been busy with expanding the world of the Time Variance Authority and the people who work on it, as the protagonist played by Tom Hiddleston tries to fix a condition that threatens with erasing him from existence. Throughout the course of the series, the TVA has been established to be a powerful organization in charge of making sure a single timeline keeps the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in place. And while its origins were briefly explored during the previous installment of the show, the question remains. Who created the Time Variance Authority?
O.B. Plays a Significant Part in the TVA
One of the new additions the second installment has brought to the cast has been O.B., the loyal TVA technician played by Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan. Since he has been designing technological devices used in the organization for centuries, O.B. has plenty of knowledge when it comes to how the Time Variance Authority works and the right protocol its agents have to follow. The new character knows so much about the world he inhabits that he wrote it all down in handbook all TVA employees are forced to read as part of their training.
But without O.B. knowing anything about it, a copy of the handbook is one of the things Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) needs to complete her plans. After discovering that everyone working on the TVA was a variant who was kidnapped from some point of the Sacred Timeline, the former judge had decided to escape her office to look for answers. When Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) heard about what she was going to do, she decided to help the only person who looked like she could bring order and balance back to the TVA.
But staying away from the fact that Ravonna’s plans are some of Loki’s biggest concerns during the first half of the second season, O.B. needed to be recruited by the main character of the series due to his extensive knowledge of TVA technology. After being thrown into a different timeline by Sylvie (Sophia DiMartino) during the previous installment of the show, Loki was time-slipping to the past. O.B. helped him figure out how to stop time slipping after both Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) nearly died in the process.
He Who Remains Runs the Place, But Did He Create It?
The mystery behind the first season of Loki was directly related to who was actually behind the TVA and why that person had decided to isolate the MCU to a single timeline. When Loki and Sylvie finally managed to arrive at the end of time, they ran into He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), who warned them that killing him would provoke the rest of his variants to get to the main timeline and put everyone in danger. But after running away from the agency throughout her entire life, Sylvie decided to kill anyway, completing the mission she had set for herself centuries before.
The dangers of what Sylvie did by thinking she was saving everyone else from the terrors of Kang is already being explored in other corners of the franchise. Earlier this year, a variant of Kang fought against Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Even if Scott had plenty of experience battling against unknown threats thanks to his time with the Avengers, the Conqueror proved to be a difficult challenge to get rid of. Earth’s mightiest heroes will need to take care of themselves once the variants make their way to their location.
But before this gentle variant of Kang was eliminated permanently by Sylvie, he had revealed how he was the one who created the Sacred Timeline, trapping every major character from the franchise in the same place. That would make it extremely easy to name He Who Remains as the creator and person responsible for running the Time Variance Agency, but things are never simple when it comes to Loki and his world. One detail revealed in the second season of the series brings the entire foundation of the TVA into question, and it all comes down to O.B.’s handbook.
The Handbook Paradox Involves Victor Timely and O.B.
When Loki and Mobius approach O.B. with Loki’s unfortunate case of time-slipping, the handbook he uses as a guide comes up immediately, with the technician complaining about how no one reads it. Since the small book contains knowledge about the technological devices and physical events that take place within the Time Variance Authority, it could turn out to be a useful source of information for anyone who would like to begin a quick time travel crash course. And that place of need is where Ravonna’s mission comes into the bigger picture.
He Who Remains left clear instructions for Renslayer before he died, indicating that the former judge had to travel back in time to drop a copy of the handbook in a seemingly random house in Chicago. Since the coordinates delivered to Ravonna didn’t mention anything special, she simply followed orders and dropped the book through the window she was supposed to. She left an entire guide to the TVA in the house of Victor Timely, one of Kang’s variants who would grow up to build the TVA.
By the time the main cast of characters from Loki are all standing together in one place, O.B. is fascinated to meet a variant of the man who trained him, while Timely is happy to know the man who wrote the handbook that led to his success. But if Kang’s knowledge came from O.B.’s handbook, and the technician’s knowledge came from the Conqueror himself after receiving the copy of the book, where did the original concept for the TVA come from? And who created it? It appears that Loki has decided to trap the answer in a paradox involving two of the main characters of this season.
New episodes of Loki Season 2 premiere Thursdays on Disney+.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
