Loki Season 2 Episode 4 Makes A Perfectly Obscure Back To The Future Reference
This article contains spoilers for episode 4 of the second season of "Loki."
The fourth episode of "Loki" season 2 sends the Marvel Studios series into chaos as all the temporal exposition and doohickey chatter comes to a head in an epic disaster. While we're left wondering exactly what the shocking ending of this episode will bring to the final two episodes of "Loki" this season — especially after the death of Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and maybe the Time Variance Authority itself — there is a little bit of movie trivia fun to be had, thanks to an obscure reference to the greatest time travel movie of all time: "Back to the Future."
There isn't a time travel movie out there that's more influential than "Back to the Future." Whether it's the iconic imagery of the DeLorean time machine or its rules of time travel, Robert Zemeckis' classic sci-fi adventure is a staple in the subgenre. Since "Loki" is dealing with time in every single episode, it only makes sense that the most recent episode of season 2 features a nod to the original "Back to the Future." However, unless you're a hardcore fan who remembers pretty much every single line, like me, you might have missed it.
In this episode of "Loki," O.B. (Ke Huy Quan) brings out a model of the loom that takes raw temporal energy and refines it into a physical timeline, as well as the control room that oversees it. The loom is on the verge of collapsing because the death of He Who Remains has resulted in so many new timelines that the loom can't handle them all, and it's starting to overload. So O.B., Mobius (Owen Wilson), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and Casey (Eugene Cordero) have been trying to figure out how to fix it, and Victor Timely has just arrived at the TVA to assist them.
'Please excuse the crudity of this model...'
When O.B. brings the model out to talk everyone through their plan to fix the loom, he says:
"Forgive the shoddy and slapdash work. It's not to scale, I only got one coat of paint on there. I haven't been able to carve out figures to represent all of us. I'm honestly embarrassed that Victor is here to see it."
Immediately, I was reminded of the scene below from "Back to the Future," where Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) explains to Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) exactly how they're going to use a lightning strike to power the DeLorean time machine's flux capacitor in order to send Marty back to 1985. Here's the clip in question:
As you can see, when Doc introduces Marty to the model, he says:
"Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it."
In both instances, what's hilarious is that the models are of exceptional quality, and on any other day, at any other time, the creation of these models would be seen as more than impressive. Both O.B. and Doc Brown, each geniuses in their own right, are so particular and meticulous about their work that they see an incomplete model, no matter how unnecessary the extreme detail may be, as a failure on their part. In the "Loki" scene, you can even see a sign hanging off the loom that says "NOT TO SCALE."
You gotta love quirky nerds like this. Without them, where would the universe be?