This text comprises mid-level spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 6.
There are such a lot of issues which are puzzling about the last episode of Loki season 2, from the inner logic of Loki time-slipping all through the occasions of the previous season in order to avoid wasting the multiverse to that surprising, mind-bending ending. For a second, although, let’s zero in on a curious trade between Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief and Jonathan Majors’ He Who Stays.
When time-slipping again to the deadly conflict at the Citadel at the Finish of Time, as initially seen in the Loki season 1 finale, Loki discovers that He Who Stays gave him his time-slipping powers as a form of insurance coverage to guard himself from demise, as he knew Sylvie was about to kill him. This causes Loki to utter the phrase, “We die with the dying… We’re born with the useless.” However what’s he speaking about right here?
(*2*)Loki‘s “we die with the dying” quote, defined
Loki is definitely quoting from Little Gidding, a poem by English poet T.S. Elliot that was first revealed in September 1942. As you’d count on from the time interval of its creation, Elliot meant for the piece to be a critique on humanity’s incapability to flee from a “cycle of warfare.” Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of start and demise and its cyclical themes make it the good poem for Loki to reference, given season 2’s obsession with all issues round.
Take Ouroboros, for instance, whose identify refers to the historical image of the snake consuming its personal story, a illustration of the wheel of time and rebirth. In the season 2 finale, it turns into clear why Loki has employed these operating motif all through its episodes — as a result of the whole season folds again in on itself when the God of Mischief revisits the occasions of the season 1 finale. To cite He Who Stays, “reincarnation, child.”
Funnily sufficient, that is the second time T.S. Elliot has popped up in a Marvel context, as Alfred Molina’s Otto Octavius admitted to Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker that he discovered Elliot’s poetry more durable to know than superior science in Spider-Man 2. Apparently, Loki is one thing of a secret lover of Earth poetry, nonetheless. Clearly, he’s spent a piece of his lengthy, lengthy lifespan in a library.
