WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 2, "The Variant," streaming now on Disney+.
The TVA has a pragmatic approach to the sacred timeline they serve, pruning off unwanted branches without considering the deaths involved. But the primary timeline seems to be examined with that same clinical distance. Marvel Cinematic Universe fans had their hearts broken by the apocalyptic events of Thor: Ragnarok, watching as refugees poured into a Sakaaran spaceship. But while that movie failed to tally up the horrifying death toll, it's listed on a TVA document as a cold datapoint, and Loki's emotional reaction to it is real.
After a botched TVA raid results in a pruned timeline and no trace of their Loki suspect, Mobius, irritable after a dressing down from Judge Renslayer, fobs Loki off onto a paperwork job. The newly-hired Variant Loki is supposed to be scouring casefiles for clues to their suspect's whereabouts, but he quickly attempts to dart off course and gain access to classified secrets -- the origins of time, the roots of the TVA, really anything he can get his hands on. But the librarian loops him back around to his own caseload, with the implacable facts of Asgard's fated destruction dropped near the top of the newly added stack.
It's a boilerplate event inquiry form but stamped in bold red are the words "Destruction Of Asgard." The true cost of that day and the number of survivors that made it to New Asgard has been a point of fan speculation since the release of Thor: Ragnarok and the TVA gives up a chilly answer. Filed as a Class Seven Apocalypse, 9,719 Asgardians died when Surtur obliterated their home. The words "total planetary destruction" are clinical but accurate, though it's the parenthesized declaration that the entire civilization is essentially lost that hits harder yet. It's a mathematic challenge to Odin's reminder that Asgard isn't a place, it's a people.
The TVA paperwork doesn't list an accounting of the refugees, nor does it follow up on what happens when Thanos' vessel, Sanctuary, attacks their ship in the opening minutes of Avengers: Infinity War. Presumably, that's part of a different file, but what fans have seen of the village of New Asgard reminds them that it's exactly that; a village. The new community is focused on trade goods, and their silken wraps and gold detailing have been given up for fishermen's sweaters and small, wooden cottages. It's not much, but it's been home for those who needed one. The formal death toll, however, makes that small village feel a lot tinier.
This new Loki doesn't know much about Asgard's survival post-Endgame, and he's still struggling with the orderly constraints on his fresh TVA career. Seeing the death toll of his homeworld rendered as dispassionately as possible has a visible impact on him. Left alone at a library desk, he can safely afford to show what he feels. It's not as brutal as what he went through in the premiere when faced with his own death, but it's just as poignant. Tears well in his eyes for the people he still tells others were brutish and stupid, but who raised him and loved him as one of their own.
Those tears are gone a few minutes later, with Loki casually brushing off the ruination of Asgard. But whether Mobius notes it or not, it's almost certainly another lie from the God of Mischief. While this isn't the same Loki that tried to tell Frigga that she wasn't his mother in Thor: The Dark World, he has the same spirit. But the brutal fate of Asgard has value beyond the emotional, and Loki is calculating enough to focus on the task at hand. It's sure to haunt him, no matter where he finds himself in the timeline.
Loki stars Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant, Sasha Lane, and Eugene Cordero. New episodes air Wednesdays on Disney+.
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