After Loki season 2 episode 4, what happens to Victor Timely?

Victor Timely’s fingerprints are all over Loki season 2, even when he isn’t. Timely is one of the various versions of Kang the Conqueror. You can also read about the importance of this in to the second season, even before we know it’s his designs that inspired (nay, created?) Time Loom. Sure, that was by He Who Remains’ design, but still! As we see from his workshop of inventions and the way Miss Minutes tries to come on to him: Timely’s got the juice!

[Ed. note: This post will now spoil the end of episode 4 in some detail, with some speculation of what’s to come. Ye be warned.]

So it’s kind of surprising when, after all the teamwork and effort and Marvel CGI that got him to the TVA with O.B. to build the magic machine that saved the day, he just… spaghetti’d. In just an instant, Timely turns into noodles, and Loki is left dumbstruck, just wondering what the hell they’re going to do without him, while the audience wonders what the heck Loki He will be missed.

Even so, the fact that it has been folding back on itself in such a way is instructive. It may have significant implications for space and time. If Timely’s existence, consciousness, matter, and life have been shifted, then his pasta might be a sign that he is still alive. As such, spaghettified Victor Timely might not be gone — or at least, the narrative might not be done with him. What exactly happened to Victor Timely? What are the theories?

Theory 1: Victor Timely’s episode 4 fate creates Kang the Conqueror

Image: Marvel Studios

We know that there are seemingly endless Kangs spread across endless realities, but how did they become… you know, Kang? Many of Kang’s powers can be attributed to his futuristic origin, as well as his high-tech supersuit. And we know he has a genius-level intellect, as shown through Victor Timely’s less-than-timely inventions. What about his ability to manipulate both time and reality. It’s sometimes attributed to his suit, but I think it’s also a little left open to interpretation.

If we only saw the origin of its name Loki? The man was, as many have put it before me, completely and totally spaghetti’d as he approached the Loom and the many different branches of the multiverse. His essence could have spread into the multiverse via the Loom, giving him unexpected power in the process. Did this event, or even something more direct, change the brain chemistry in all the other variations across the time lines due to their proximity? This could have been the moment that turned Nathaniel Richards/Victor Timely into Kang the Conqueror. It seems like the kind of thing the MCU would do — they love a grand reveal, after all, and Loki has been asked to be surprisingly load-bearing when it comes to the universe’s next Big Bad. So showing his “origin” of sorts in the series wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. —Pete Volk

The second theory is that Victor Timely will be going somewhere else within the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Image: Marvel Studios

What little we know about the technobabble of the Time Loom is it’s pulling all the various timelines of the multiverse and getting clogged. The Loom, unlike a sewing machine, is just a huge space that pulls in any strands it can reach. Maybe when Victor becomes strands outside of the TVA’s vast vacuum, the remnants from his body are also sucked into the Loom like a giant machine.

From there, Timely could plop out… anywhere! My guess is it doesn’t even have to be anywhere big (or certainly shouldn’t be), like the Battle of New York or the fight against Thanos. It’ll just be a quick little end-credits gag, like the original Guardians of the Galaxy Tag with Howard the Duck. Hopefully he lands somewhere he can keep making his little inventions; if not, well, there’s always the next Kang. —Zosha Millman

Theorie 3: Victor Timely is dead!

Image: Marvel Studios

I think he’s dead. Which would seemingly present a problem to the timeline: If Victor Timely is really the Kang who invented the TVA, then he’d need to have not died before he invented the TVA. Perhaps we’re about to see the fallout of that — two climactic episodes in which all TVA employees wake up in their normal lives on the timeline, because there was never a TVA to pull them out of it. Mobius may finally ride a Jet Ski. Maybe he’d have to choose between Jet Skis and putting the TVA back into existence somehow.

In truth, causality is only apparent when LokiIf you want it, then who knows? Kangs are plentiful if Timely is no more. —Susana Polo

Theorem 4: Victor Timely has become spaghetti.

Luis Robayo/AFP Via Getty Images

My theory is short, uncomplicated, and best summarized through the words of Polygon executive editor Matthew Patches when he’s in dad mode: pasghetti.

That’s right, Victor Timely is not He Who Remains, necessarily, but he is an equally if not even more important variant of Kang: the one who started spaghetti. Victor Timely was disintegrated in the TVA and, possibly, the European noodle shape. This discovery took place outside of normal time. Through his sacrifice, the bright divinity of his newly noodly form will slip into the loom and be dispersed throughout the multiverse, sliding right into the perfect place in each universe’s history to help someone discover the holiest form of pasta sauce delivery: the spaghetti noodle.

Of course, it’s important to remember that Victor is but one man, and his corporeal form is limited by its size, even when stretched by the unstable Loom. This tragically means that not all timelines will be able to enjoy the wonder of spaghetti. Others missed out because they never got to enjoy the pasta’s perfection. Thank God, we live in a universe where it did. —Austen Goslin