Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Loki Season 2, Episode 3.
The Big Picture
- Loki Season 2 introduced audiences to Ouroboros, or O.B., the quirkiest technician in the TVA, who may be a future obstacle for the series.
- O.B., the author of the TVA Handbook, is a mysterious character who is idolized by those who have read the Handbook.
- O.B.’s designs for the devices at the TVA will likely play a crucial role in fixing the Temporal Loom and possibly repeating the cycle endlessly.
This week’s episode of Loki, “1893” takes place mostly in Chicago at the end of the 19th century and finally introduces us to Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), a variant of Kang, the Conqueror whom we had previously seen in the Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania post-credits scene, but while all eyes may have been on him, the series might be setting up someone who barely appears in this episode as a future obstacle for the remainder of the season — the quirkiest technician in the Time Variance Authority (TVA), Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan). The reason? The tiny orange notebook that has been making the rounds throughout Season 2 so far: the TVA Handbook.
The episode itself starts with former TVA Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) arriving in Chicago in 1868 in the Sacred Timeline. Her mission, according to Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), is to deliver a package containing a TVA Handbook through a window, so a young Victor Timely can get it, grow up obsessed with controlling time, and become an inventor. Everything he designs apparently comes from the little orange book, which, in turn, was written by O.B. himself. Victor even displays an interest in meeting O.B., which is set up to happen, but can’t mean anything good.
Who Is O.B. at the TVA?
It hasn’t been all that long since we first met Ouroboros, but he has already won our hearts. He’s the spirited and quirky technician who works at the Repairs and Advancements department, the person whom Mobius (Owen Wilson) asks for help to stop Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) time-slipping in Episode 1, “Ouroboros”. It’s immediately established that he’s a character with an arc spread through past, present, and future, as we see Mobius calling him “O.B.” in the present, Loki time-slipping to the past and calling him the same thing which inadvertently creates his nickname.
An Ouroboros, according to mythological concepts, is represented by a snake eating its own tail. This expresses the notion of cycles and repetition, alluding to the idea that things have a way of repeating themselves. In Loki Season 2, this has been hinted at many times already, starting with Loki being pruned after seeing Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) in Episode 1. This will probably happen at the end of the season with Loki pruning his past self so the events of the season can take place and eventually save (or destroy?) the TVA. O.B. himself is stuck in a never-ending work loop, as he says that his “work orders really pile up” if he ever takes a break, so he just keeps working non-stop. Forever. No sleep. That’s exactly what someone who’s always running after their own tail looks like, if you ask us!
The most important thing O.B. has ever done at the TVA, though, is writing the TVA Handbook. That’s the orange notebook that every TVA employee has to read as part of their training. It contains “a detailed index of every mechanical classification and maintenance routine, in each sector, on every device, and inside every computer program at the TVA”; pretty much the blueprint for every machine and device someone may ever handle working there. It’s extremely important then, but not everyone seems to have read it. In fact, no one seems to know O.B. even exists — only those who have read the Handbook, like Casey (Eugene Cordero), one of the countless TVA analysts and desk workers, for example.
Why Is the TVA Handbook So Important?
Ouroboros and Casey meet in Episode 2, “Breaking Brad” when the analyst recognizes O.B. as the author of the TVA Handbook. Everyone who actually reads the handbook seems to idolize O.B., and that’s probably due to how comprehensive this guide really seems to be. How to operate every kind of machinery at the TVA? That’s the work of a lifetime. Or many, depending on how much time one has to work on it, which leads us to another discovery of Loki Season 2: time does work at the TVA, meaning it has a past, present, and future, too. Before that, Mobius always mentioned that “time worked differently,” but thanks to Loki’s time-slipping in Episode 1 we know that’s not the case.
Victor Timely had 25 years between 1868 and 1893 to learn what the TVA Handbook had to offer and reproduce many of its designs, including a prototype of the Temporal Loom. Meanwhile, the Loom at the TVA is currently in danger of collapsing, not being able to support all the branching timelines created by the killing of He Who Remains by Sylvie back in the Season 1 finale. Timely may hold the key to fix it, though, as he refuses to follow Renslayer to the TVA without his latest prototype, which he calls “the culmination of his life’s work.” When he gets it, it looks like a miniaturized version of the same Probability Drive Kang used to power his ship in Quantumania, and that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) had to get in that weird scene with all his variants helping him. It would make sense that Timely would create this device at first as a way to fix the Loom at the TVA – after all, what are the branched timelines if not multiple possibilities of reality that contemplate different decisions made by people?
The episode ends with Victor Timely following Loki and Mobius back to the TVA, probably to work on fixing the Temporal Loom. If so, he’s bound to meet O.B. very soon, and if there’s one thing that makes O.B. happy, it’s meeting people who recognize and admire his work. He deserves all the recognition not just because he’s a drop of golden sunshine (as are the characters Ke Huy Quan usually portrays), but because he designed everything at the TVA, and no one seems to care. He and Timely meeting is definitely going to make some time-ripping waves, but not necessarily the good kind…
We Still Don’t Know Where O.B. Comes From or How Long He’s Been at the TVA
We don’t know much about Victor Timely yet, only that, as a true Kang variant, he is extremely ambitious and selfish, he doesn’t like to work with partners and enjoys it very much when the spotlights are on him. Ouroboros, in turn, is hard-working and loves company. They may work together at first and learn a lot from each other, but, ultimately, it doesn’t seem like they are going to become that much of a dynamic duo.
What we know is that O.B. is a very mysterious character, and it’s not clear where he comes from or even how long he’s been at the TVA, for example. We know everyone who works at the TVA is a variant of someone in the Sacred Timeline who was taken and had their minds wiped, but O.B. is one of the few employees we’ve met so far who doesn’t display any feelings towards the idea of variants or branching timelines. He’s focused on work, and that may tell us a lot about who he actually is.
It’s been hinted already that the season may take us to the past and the future of TVA, probably meaning that, in the end, the Temporal Loom won’t be able to hold. With this imminent danger, the TVA will either have to be “rebooted” or even entirely destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. This is where O.B.’s designs for the devices at the TVA are probably going to come from, working together with Victor Timely (or maybe even another Kang variant) to make everything work again, and registering them in what will become the TVA Handbook. In turn, these designs will eventually have to be put in Timely’s window in 1868 by Renslayer, in a perfect time loop. O.B.’s designs will inspire Timely, who, in turn, will help the TVA and enable the cycle to repeat itself endlessly — like the archetypal ouroboros.
Denial of responsibility! TechCodex is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
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.
