Lokious is the real gay Loki ship though.
I've been in this fandom for a long time. 10 years to be exact. I've seen Loki getting paired with Thor after the first movie (as much as I wish that wasn't a thing), with Tony Stark after their sassy interactions in Avengers, with the Grandmaster after their weird alliance in Ragnarok, and I get why all those ships were very prominent on the fandom at some point.
Lokious, though? It's on a whole other level. Mobious is the first person ever to accept Loki for who he is. Even back in the first episodes when he thought Loki would never be able to redeem himself and get out of his path of chaos and destruction, Mobious still liked him. Was amazed by him, even. He knows that Loki is full of anger and heartbreak, he knows that he is petty, insecure, jealous and cruel. He's literally seen every major moment of Loki's life. And yet he doesn't hate him. Not even a little bit.
Mobious is amused by Loki. One might even say that he finds him adorable. Much in the same way parents are, he knows Loki too well to be phased by anything he does. And Mobious wants to believe that his interest in Loki is clinical, professional, something that he needs to solve this case and nothing more. Like Loki himself pointed out in this previous episode, Mobious tells himself a lot of lies, thought.
As much as he wants to deny it, all this time studying him made him form an emotional connection with Loki. He wants to see the good in him. He's proud of him when he finds out where the variant is hiding. He gives him the daggers when they go out on the mission because he wants to make him happy. Even when they are captured, Mobious can't bring himself to truly torture Loki in the interrogation room.
I mean, getting revenge on Loki for betraying him by having him kicked on the balls is beyond petty, but it was also such a benign thing to do, given the circumstances. Even if it was unpleasant, you can't convince me that is the worst memory Loki has. If Mobious had really wanted to hurt him, hurt him really, really badly, he would have put him in a memory loop from his time with Thanos. Or all those awful memories with his family. Like that time in the dungeons when Thor told Loki he no longer saw him as a brother and was prepared to kill him if necessary. The time Odin told him his birthright was to die, or man, that confrontation about his heritage in the vault. If Mobious had really wanted to hurt Loki he would have put him in a memory loop of his suicide attempt, or even of his mother's death.
But he didn't. He trapped him in a moment in which someone spat his deepest fears on his face. Which was a majorly dick move, don't get me wrong, but Loki seemed to be mostly just annoyed by the pettiness of it.
Mobious is all alone in the TVA. Besides Renslayer, he doesn't really seem to have any other emotional connections. All he has is his job, his dreams of a jetski and Loki. This guy has spent hours in front of the screen seeing every single moment of Loki's life and privately he began to sympathize with him, to think of him as a friend. Actually, he is probably a little bit obsessed with him. And that was fine when Loki was just a character on the screen with whom he couldn't interact, but then this variant comes crushing down his doorstep and he suddenly has a full fledged emotional relationship with someone who has no fucking idea who Mobious is.
Does Mobious come across as condescending sometimes? Yes, but that is understandable given the circumstances, I think. And being constantly tested by him in this way is actually helping Loki understand himself better, and realize that there are parts of himself that are petty, predictable and ugly, and that he can change them.
Mobious is also the first intellectual equal Loki's faced probably since Black Widow. He's the first person who has ever outsmarted him not one, but many, many times. Not even Sylvie is that to him, since it has been established that despite being smart, her "preferred weapon" is brute force and not scheming.
And yeah Mobious' love for Loki is weird and probably unhealthy. If they were really in a relationship it'd probably be weirder than Sylki, actually, and super problematic. The power imbalance is huge and it'd be basically like having a relationship with your stalker. But it's sure interesting. Very psychological and somehow cute, in a weird way.
This is the strongest, most emotionally complex relationship Loki has had with another male character on screen who he isn't related to. And fuck it, idk, I just think they are really neat.
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