Loki's TVA Twist Explains Mobius' Tragic Jet Ski Love

Warning: SPOILERS for Loki Episode 3, "Lamentis"

Loki episode 3's bombshell about the Time Variance Authority made Agent Mobius M. Mobius's (Owen Wilson) love of jet skis tragic. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), the Loki Variant Mobius recruited him to catch, found themselves trapped on the doomed moon Lamentis-1 in the year 2077. As they attempted to reach an Ark that could save their lives, Sylvie revealed that the members of the TVA are all Variants as well.

Mobius is the closest thing Loki has to a friend in the TVA, although the time cop is wise not to fully trust the God of Mischief. Still, the duo developed a reluctant buddy-cop vibe as they went to work chasing the Loki Variant who turned out to be a devious female Loki who calls herself Sylvie. But, as a practiced liar, Loki also senses something is severely off about the TVA, which was purportedly created by "three space lizards" called the Time-Keepers to safeguard the Sacred Timeline. The TVA are devoted to the Time-Keepers and wholeheartedly believe in their mission, but there's also an underlying sadness to the people Loki has met at the TVA, from Casey (Eugene Cordero) the receptionist to the Hunters like C-20 (Sasha Lane), who Sylvie abducted, to Mobius himself.

When Loki underwent training as a TVA consultant, he found copies of Wake, a magazine about jet skis, on Mobius' desk. Similarly, Mobius is constantly drinking Josta, a short-lived cola from Earth in the 1990s. Sylvie's revelation in Loki episode 3 that the people in the TVA are also Variants, though they appear to be unaware of it, casts Mobius's jet ski and Josta obsession in a new and dire light. If Mobius doesn't know he's a Variant, it would mean he was abducted by the TVA and brainwashed, but still remembers pieces of his old life on Earth without realizing they're fragments of memories. It's possible Mobius was a human Variant from the 1990s but is now trapped as a TVA analyst, possibly forever, since time works differently at TVA headquarters.

Mobius may not be what he thinks he is: a creation of the Time-Keepers who developed a fondness for 1990s Earth culture. If he is a captured human Variant, Mobius could be constantly missing his former life but unable to fully understand the unidentified longing. Or, if Mobius is aware he's a Variant, allowing him this shred of his past in the form of jet ski magazines and Josta might be a small concession that the Time-Keepers and his friend, Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), allow him to keep Mobius compliant and productive. Either way, it's a terrible fate for Mobius and one that's shared by every worker drone at the TVA if Sylvie is, in fact, telling the truth.

Based on how she mind-controlled C-20, Sylvie's story seems to check out. The Loki Variant mind-controlled the Hunter to coerce her into giving up the Time-Keepers' location and Sylvie used a memory from C-20's past when she was a human on Earth. If Sylvie is right, then most or all of the people in the TVA are harboring secret memories of their past lives and they're all terribly sad deep beneath their sinister TVA programming that prioritizes the Time-Keepers and the Sacred Timeline. Mobius definitely carries himself with an underlying sadness, and there's clearly something off about the other worker drones at the TVA. The whole truth about the TVA is bound to be revealed in the second half of Loki and perhaps Mobius will finally be able to ride a jet ski if he's freed from his servitude to the Time-Keepers.

Next: How Loki Is Changing Sylvie's Comics Story

Loki releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.