Ke Huy Quan’s character, OB, might be the key to untangling the TVA. Season 2 ofLokiintroduced a new employee to the Time Variance Authority: Ouroboros, the plucky tech expert who seemingly lives in the basement of the time-traveling bureaucracy. Butwho is he? Aside from adding some more fun to the series, he might end up being the most important character in all ofLoki.
Ouroboros is an extremely important character, perhaps more so than some other clichéd equivalent that just builds fancy gadgets for the hero. Yes, he’s the one person in the building who might actually understand how the timeline works, but there’s one important fact about him that a lot of fans might have missed.
OB was definitely key in helping to get Loki out of his time-slipping problem. He constructed the temporal aura extractor that pulled Loki back into the present. He also wrote the TVA Guidebook, a critical bit of information that, so far, only one person has read the whole of. But aside from being the one person who could keep the sacred timeline from unraveling, Ouroboros might have the one bit of information needed to destroy Kang. OB might be the most important character in the whole series.
How OB Helps With His Job
An ouroboros is a mythological symbol that depicts a dragon eating its own tail. It’s often found in stories about time, infinity, life, death, or rebirth. While it mostly appears in Western cultures, it has existed for thousands of years and appeared in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, Jungian psychology, and civilizations as ancient as Greece and Egypt.For Loki and Thor, Old Norse mythology has Jörmungandr, the serpent that circles the world, also eating its own tail.
In the first episode ofLoki’s season 2, we sawKe Huy Quan’s character Ouroborosintroduced at the exact halfway point in the episode – a fun fact for anyone who wants to know. But he quickly became central to the episode’s plot and perhaps the plot of the entire season. OB constructed a temporal aura extractor that managed to get Loki out of his time-slipping problem and back into the present. It was important at the time, but it may be an even bigger deal than anyone realized. A little problem that surfaced in episode 2 was that OB didn’t have the correct temporal aura necessary to access the temporal loom.
Loki knew that they would need the temporal aura of He Who Remains if they wanted to get through the door. But OB said they could get Miss Minutes to override the system. But what if Judge Renslayer decides todestroy Miss Minutesrather than let the TVA capture her? They would need to find a way to get Kang’s temporal aura, and it sounds like a temporal aura extractor is just the machine they would need for the job.
OB also wrote the TVA guidebook, a list of rules and instructions for running the TVA. There’s one in every desk, but apparently, Casey is the only person who’s ever bothered to read it. When Casey went down to OB’s research department, he was so excited to meet its author that he had OB sign his book. Throughout the season, we’ve seen physical changes in reality be an important way to ground yourself in time, like the crack in the control room floor or Mobius writing “Skin?” in the dust on a computer. OB signing a book now might be significant later. But what might be more important is that OB remembers these changes.
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The Real Reason OB is Important
The thing that might make OB more important than any other worker at the TVA is that he remembers changes in the timeline. In the first episode of this season, Mobius took Loki down to OB’s research department, but he couldn’t remember if he had everbeen there before. But OB knew. Ouroboros remembered exactly when Mobius had been there and knew all the details of their encounter. In a world where everyone is constantly getting their memory wiped, having someone who remembers long stretches of time might be pretty essential.
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Last season, we discovered that everyone working in the TVA was just a variant from some other timeline. And what’s happened on that timeline heavily influences a defining character choice for anyone who decides to work for or against the TVA. The fact that no one can remember and that everyone seems to have their memory wiped every few hundred years will definitely be a big plot point in the season. We already know Loki has been to a point inthe TVA’s pastbefore the Timekeepers. If OB can remember Kang controlling the TVA, maybe he can remember all the way back to the TVA’s creation and find some crucial detail that will help Loki and the others keep their free will.
