*O.B.-related spoilers.*
I found season 2 of Loki to be uneven in the truest sense of the word, even if I think they ultimately stuck the landing. I loved episodes 1, 5, and 6, but I had a really hard time keeping my attention on episodes 2, 3, and 4. But I’m still glad that we got a second season of the show, and not just because of the cliffhanger in the season 1 finale! Tom Hiddleston continues to be incredible, Owen Wilson is just so good as Mobius, and without season 2, we wouldn’t have gotten O.B.!
Ouroboros, also known as O.B., is the TVA’s repair guy. He’s a brilliant engineer and relentlessly cheerful. While other TVA workers vibe in the agency’s retro office space or open time doors across history on countless planets, O.B. works alone in a sub-basement, working tirelessly to hold everything together.
When Loki starts time-slipping in the season 2 premiere, it’s both excruciating for him and seemingly a scientific impossibility. Mobius takes him down to O.B.’s department in the hope of finding a solution, where O.B. is positively delighted to have visitors. After all, he points out, no one’s been down to his workshop in hundreds of years. And that was when Mobius wandered in accidentally!
To meet such a sunny, positive person amid that level of isolation is enough to make me love O.B. and want to protect him at all costs, but he’s not just great because of how impervious he seems to his own tragic history. I also really enjoy his obvious love for temporal engineering and solving problems. He embraces paradoxes, calling Loki’s time-slipping impossible in the same breath that he states it clearly is possible because it’s happening. And he rolls casually with the timey-wimiest of circumstances—when Loki time-slips and encounters O.B. in the past, O.B. is unphased as that past conversation with Loki alters his present with Mobius. (Side note: there’s also something so sweet about the time loop wherein Loki is the one to give O.B. his nickname.)
Luckily, once he helps Loki and Mobius figure out the time-slipping, O.B. is no longer alone in the sub-basement. From then on, both Loki and Mobius repeatedly seek him out as the situation at the TVA grows increasingly fraught. They connect him with Casey, who’s smart, eager, and worships the TVA manual that O.B. wrote, and they consistently include him in important moments. O.B., true to form, continues to focus on his work either way and seek technical solutions for their problems, but it makes me so glad that he’s brought into the fold like this.
When the temporal loom explodes and Loki is forced to search for his friends back in their former timelines, O.B. (original name A.D. Doug) is crucial to Loki learning how to harness his relapsing time-slipping. In this timeline, O.B. is a sci-fi writer, and while Loki initially desires his PhD knowledge to find a scientific solution, O.B. realizes the true answer is in fiction. “With science, it’s all what and how,” he tells Loki. “But with fiction, it’s why.” This conversation ultimately helps Loki discover his sad but vital destiny as the God of Stories.
Finally, it’s a little thing, but one of my favorite moments of the season comes in episode 1. O.B. is striding with purpose down the hall toward the temporal loom, and Loki is trailing after him, full of questions. As he walks, O.B. takes the TVA manual out of his pocket and tosses it nonchalantly over his shoulder, where Loki catches it. Just a wonderful little bit of physical humor, perfectly timed and executed. You love to see it!
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