Loki's New Super Power Might Make Him The MCU's Most Powerful God
Contains spoilers for "Loki" Season 2, Episode 5 — "Science/Fiction"
After "Loki" Season 2, Episode 4 blows everything open with the shocking way in which Kang variant Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) fails to stabilize the Temporal Loom, Episode 5 marks the time to pay the piper. Once again unstuck in time, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds himself eerily alone at the crisis-struck Time Variance Authority premises, and time-slips through various timelines where other characters who were present when the loom broke the lives they presumably had before the TVA came calling.
Casey (Eugene Cordero) is now an escaped convict, Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) is a pediatrician, Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) is hilariously a jet ski salesman named Don, and Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) is a scientist who aspires to be a sci-fi writer — and, fortunately, believes Loki's time-hopping story with no issue and even manages to build a new TemPad with the help of the TVA manual. Only Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) remains unaffected. She continues to chill out in her McDonald's timeline, completely resisting Loki's mission to bring the band back together to tune their auras with the moment the Temporal Loom was destroyed. Still, she eventually decides to help after her safe space is spaghettified and she realizes that the whole multiverse is at risk.
Unfortunately, the aura alignment idea works roughly as well as every other plan has during this season, and Loki's friends soon meet the same fate that befell Timely and Sophie's timeline. However, witnessing this helps Loki gain control of his time-slipping — which effectively gives him free rein over time and space.
Time-slipping is a serious power, and controlling it fully makes Loki an unprecedented powerhouse
Loki's gruesome time-slipping was a major fixture of the Season 2 premiere, and in "Science/Fiction," it finally finds its glorious purpose when he figures out how to control it instead of being randomly hurled into various alternate times and places. After uncovering the method behind the mayhem, the trickster god can effectively teleport into different timelines and locations without the use of a TemPad. The "Loki" Season 1 finale shows that He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) can dodge attacks with a time manipulation method that seems a lot like a more controlled version of time-slipping, which gives a rough idea of what Loki may be able to do now. Only, unlike He Who Remains — who confined himself to the Sacred Timeline to keep his variants out — Loki's time-slipping has no such limitations.
This uncannily powerful ability arguably puts Loki above and beyond any other Marvel Cinematic Universe god we've seen so far. Zeus (Russell Crowe) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) might be as powerful as they come, but thunder and brawn can't exactly beat the ability to move freely in time and space. Hela (Cate Blanchett) is an absolute menace, but powerless when the opponent can just time-slip into an era where she was only a baby, or perhaps change events in a way that she's not even born. But what about Thanos (Josh Brolin), who's not technically a god but has wielded similar powers? Couldn't touch this Loki, with or without his Infinity Stones.
It's also good to remember that the time-slipping is merely the latest thing in Loki's power set. With his physical and magical abilities, he's already a tough nut to crack before he acquires his new timeline-hopping trick.
This may be the only Loki who can wield such power
Of course, Loki probably still isn't the most powerful entity in the MCU multiverse. After all, there are still entities like Eternity or "What If...?" characters like the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), Doctor Strange Supreme (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Infinity Stones Ultron (Ross Marquand) to consider. There's also the possibility that Loki's time-slipping has certain in-built limitations. After all, we've only seen him time-slip into locations that have an obvious connection with either Kang or the Temporal Aura gang, and there might be a reason for that besides the demands of the plot.
Still, even if the ability turns out to be as versatile as it seems to be, there's no denying that this Loki variant is just about the only one who can be entrusted with it. "Loki" has shown us many, many variants of the titular trickster, and it's pretty clear that with the possible exception of Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant), they'd all just use the time-slipping power for one conqueror scheme or another. Even Sylvie is unpredictable enough to potentially abuse the power if she feels threatened.
Meanwhile, the Loki who winds up with the time-slipping power does this in the same episode where he admits to Sylvie that his main motivation in life is to help out his TVA friends so he doesn't have to be alone. Loki or not, a guy with the dual motivations of friendship and saving all reality is the perfect person to wield this kind of power.