Loki producer breaks down season 2 episode 4's big cliffhanger: "We go to some profound places"

gamesradar.com:

Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Loki season 2 episode 4. If you've yet to catch up, and don't want to know anything that happens, turn back now!

So far, the titular God of Mischief's mission throughout Loki season 2 has been simple: stop the timeline-refining Temporal Loom, which has been malfunctioning ever since Sylvie killed He Who Remains, from blowing up and destroying, well, everything. At the end of episode four, though, he and his pals... failed.

While Loki has never been a hero in the conventional sense, seeing him not manage to save the day is kind of shocking... and it's even more so when you remind yourself that there are two more episodes to go before the Marvel show's second chapter has concluded. 

"It was something we started learning in season 1," executive producer Kevin Wright tells GamesRadar+, when we ask why they felt it important to pull the rug out from the audience so early on. "This idea of story acceleration. If the season seems like it's going to be about fixing that Temporal Loom, what if that just... breaks right in the middle of the season and everything goes wrong? 

"Not only did it allow us a really great cliffhanger, but where you go after that is totally new territory then," he says. "If the first four episodes of season 2 are about things falling apart or not working; choices being made that maybe aren't the right choices, then the back half can really allow us to go to some, hopefully, profound places." 

Wright goes on to say that to "earn" the crazy moment, head writer Eric Martin and his team felt a sense of duty to drag the character drama into "dire straits" territory beforehand. "It's gonna be new ground," he promises us, going forward.

Our Loki season 2