Glorious Purpose

"Glorious Purpose" is the series premiere of the Disney+ streaming television series Loki. It was released on June 9, 2021.
==Synopsis==
After stealing the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, Loki lands before the Time Variance Authority.
==Plot==
Following his escape from the Avengers after stealing the Tesseract, Loki winds up in the Gobi Desert, where he attempts to talk with the people there. However, he is suddenly faced by the Time Variance Authority, as they arrive through Time Doors. Hunter B-15 leads a Minutemen unit and identifies that Loki is the Variant causing the timeline to branch. B-15 asks Loki to come with them without resistance and when he confronts her, she hits him with her Time Stick to slow him down and puts a Time Collar around his neck. She then orders the Minutemen to reset Loki's timeline and takes him back to their headquarters. At the TVA, she uses a device called Time Twister to loop him back to his previous position when he tries to run away. After giving the Tesseract to Casey, a worker at the front desk, she lefts him with a processing droid to go under procedures.
After going through the TVA's bureaucratic processing, Loki learns watching an animated video narrated by a friendly cartoon called Miss Minutes the reason why he was arrested. A long time ago there was a Multiversal War that almost led to the destruction of everything, with each timeline fighting for supremacy. However, the Time Keepers, three powerful beings, appeared and restored peace by reorganizing the Multiverse into a single timeline, the "Sacred Timeline". Since then, Time Keepers protect the proper flow of time and if anything or anyone steps out of the Sacred Timeline, they are called "Variants". Deviating from the predicted path creates a "nexus event", which can cause the timeline to branch off into countless threads and lead to another Multiversal War. To avoid this, the Time Keepers founded the TVA and all its workers to fix the timeline, so they send their Minutemen to come and restrain the Variants and set time back on its predetermined path. Now, after becoming a Variant and thus losing his place on the timeline, Loki hears from Miss Minutes that he will be judged for his crimes soon.
Meanwhile, a TVA analyst, Agent Mobius, visits a cathedral on a branched timeline in the Aix-En-Provence in France, 1549, to investigate the place after a Hunter and his Minutemen were slain by a rogue Time Criminal who took their reset charges. He finds a boy who witnessed the crime and questions him. The boy is carrying a blue candy, "Kablooie blooberrie", that was given him by the criminal. Another analyst from the TVA then approaches Mobius and gives him the file of the Loki Variant that Hunter B-15 just captured, so Mobius returns to the TVA just in time to watch the trial. During the trial, Loki is judged by Ravonna Renslayer, who accuses him of from deviating from his path, branching the timeline. Loki tells Ravonna that the Avengers are the real criminals as he only got the Tesseract because they traveled in time. But Ravonna explains that the Avengers' time traveling is allowed because it was "supposed to happen" according to the Time Keepers, as opposed to his escape with the Tesseract. Loki then attempts to use his magic powers and fails, so Ravonna informs him that magic doesn't work inside the TVA. He is sentenced to be "reset" and tries to resist his captors, stating them this they won't decide his end in his story. Ravonna tells Loki that this is not his story and never was. Mobius then intervenes and talks to Ravonna, offering to find some use for Loki in the investigation of the Time Criminal.
Mobius takes Loki to a Time Theater and explains that he is specialized in the pursuit of dangerous Variants, but he doesn't consider Loki to be a threat, calling him a "little pussycat". Rather than interrogate him, Mobius wants to get to the bottom of Loki's issues. Mobius asks Loki what he will do if the TVA frees him. Loki replies that he was born to rule and be king, so he will claim his throne of Midgard, then Asgard and the Nine Realms. When Mobius asks what Loki will do in case he succeeds, Loki replies that he will make it easier for people by eliminating their options of choices because he believes that freedom is a lie since almost every living being is doomed to make wrong choices. Mobius shows a recording, reviewing some of Loki's misdeeds, including some events during his confrontation against the Avengers and the time he hijacked a plane as D.B. Cooper after losing a bet to his brother Thor. Mobius points out that despite his want to rule, he is always losing and does not actually do anything "mischievous" rather, he inflicts harm, pain and death on people, so he wonders if Loki does enjoy to cause harm to others.
Mobius then continues by showing Loki what would be his future if he was arrested and taken to Asgard as predetermined on the timeline, telling him that his actions would result in the death of his mother Frigga after accidentally revealing her location to the Dark Elves. Seeing his mother dead, Loki is disturbed and believes that the recording is fake. Mobius states that Loki was not born to rule, instead his part on the timeline is to cause death and destruction, to allow others, as the Avengers, achieve their ascension. B-15 interrupts their session to inform about another Minutemen unit lost to the Time Criminal and tells Mobius that Loki should be reset as Mobius explains that he is trying to get to the bottom of Loki's behavior. Mobius returns to the Time Theater, only to discover that he has escaped the room after stealing his Time Twister. 
Loki finds Casey and attempts to wrangle him to have Tesseract back. However, after looking inside the drawer of his cart, Loki discovers that Casey, as well as several other office workers, carry time displaced versions of the Infinity Stones, which they use as paper weights as their power is completely useless in the TVA. As Loki realizes how much power the TVA holds, B-15 appears and tries to prune him with her Time Stick, but Loki uses the Time Twister to flee back to the Time Theater, where he decides to continue to watch his future after his mother's demise. Loki tearfully witnesses the death of Odin, watches himself reuniting with Thor and making amends, only to die at the hands of Thanos. B-15 arrives again and fights him, but Loki manages to free himself from his Time Collar and put it on her, before using the Time Twister to get rid of her. 
Mobius returns to see a defeated Loki admit that he does not like to kill people; he just feels that he had no other choice in what he does to keep the illusion that he is in control. Loki admits that he is, in fact, a villain. Mobius tells him that he does not see him that way and offers that he work for them on the Time Criminal case as he cannot return to his timeline anymore. Mobius explains that the fugitive Variant that has been killing the Minutemen is also a Loki. In Oklahoma 1859, more Minutemen are ambushed, killed and have their reset charge stolen by a hooded figure, the other Variant of Loki.
==Cast==
===Starring===
*Tom Hiddleston as Loki
*Owen Wilson as Mobius
*Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer
* as Hunter B-15
*Eugene Cordero as Casey
*Tara Strong as Miss Minutes (voice)
===Guest starring===
*Derek Russo as Hunter U-92
*Erika Coleman as Flight Attendant
*Mumkhshur Bolbaatar as Gobi Villager
*Josh Fadem as Martin
*Raphael Luce as French Boy
*Jon Levine as Paperwork Clerk
*Aaron Beelner as Scanner Clerk
*Philip Fornah as Minuteman #1
*Dave MacDonald as Minuteman #2
*Michelle Rose as Minuteman #3
*Eric Jepson as Minuteman #4
*Hannah Aslesen as Minuteman #5
*Daniel Newman as Minuteman #18
*Ravi Naidu as Analyst #3
*Lauren Revard as Miss Minutes On-Set Reader
===Uncredited===
*Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man (archive footage)
*Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America (archive footage)
*Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk (archive footage)
*Chris Hemsworth as Thor (archive footage)
*Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (archive footage)
*Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye (archive footage)
*Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow (archive footage)
*Maximiliano Hernández as Jasper Sitwell (archive footage)
*Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce (archive footage)
*Matthew Berry as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent (archive footage)
*Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man (archive footage)
*Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Algrim/Kurse (archive footage)
*Dieter Riesle as Heinrich Schäfer (archive footage)
*Ashley Johnson as Beth (archive footage)
*Anthony Hopkins as Odin (archive footage)
*Rene Russo as Frigga (archive footage)
*Josh Brolin as Thanos (archive footage)
*Tessa Thompson as Brunnhilde/Valkyrie (archive footage)
*Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson (archive footage)
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*Loki's falling in the desert is similar to Iron Man's crash landing in the desert, in the first Iron Man film.
*Miss Minutes is a reference to 80's cartoons characters, because she and the entire Time Variance Authority had their design based on the 80s, including their technology. The director of the series, Kate Herron, explained that this shows they are neither in the past nor in the future, and she also likes the idea of the people at the top of the hierarchy not using the most futuristic-looking technology.
*Loki's gender is revealed to be fluid by a file of the TVA handed to Agent Mobius, as also seen previously in a promotional video for the series. The director of the series and Tom Hiddleston later also confirmed this information.
*When Loki says that people could get the scent of "two Tony Stark's", it could be a reference to Endgame when Ant-Man made fun of Tony's body spray.
*The episode reveals that Loki was the infamous D.B. Cooper, a notorious criminal who in 1971 ransomed an airport for $200,000. He leapt from the plane over Washington, where he was never found or heard from again.
*There is footage in the trailers showing Loki as king of Asgard that doesn't appear in any of the episodes. This would be part of a sequence showing another event of Loki's past in episode one, like the D. B. Cooper scene. It would show Loki taking over the crown in Asgard while Thor is seen as a frog.
**This is an event that was mentioned in the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok, when the actor portraying Thor during a play says that Loki once turned his brother into a frog.
**Despite this sequence being cut, Throg still makes a brief appearance in the Void, seen in the fifth episode.
**According to cast members of the series, the sequence was very funny, but there was already other light-hearted moments in the episode and they felt that it was too much because this scene would be shown right before the one Loki sees his mother's death. So, to avoid taking over from what was to come, the scene was cut.
*When Loki teleports to one part of the TVA facility, a Minuteman accompanies a woman that strongly resembles Peggy Carter teleports through one of the doors behind him. This strongly implies that it is Peggy from another timeline.
*Concept art for the episode revealed that not only was the number line scene supposed to feature more characters but that one of them was going to be a Variant of Rocket Raccoon.
*The title references Loki's line in the first Avengers film.
==Refereces==
==External Links==
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Category:Series premieres
Category:Loki episodes