Although i see y’all’s point that lokis time slipping is essentially the same thing a temp pad does. However, when we see Loki figure it out at the end of the episode, the way i took it was that he figured out how to choose his destination, and most importantly, he can also now replace his earlier version of himself with his current version while holding onto the knowledge he gained by going down that chosen path. Super confusing haha
Also the episode is very vague at the beginning and doesn’t outright say it, but from what i understand when the loom exploded 2 things happened. The TVA enters an emergency protocol that resets itself to a prior point in time before the loom was destroyed, to prevent spaghettification immediately, and resets all TVA workers to their original timelines they were taken from. It’s not explained but i presume that is done to give extra time to whoever is left (maybe our Loki) to stop everything unraveling. And Sylvie remembers everything bc when that explosion happened, she just used HWR temp pad to dip back to the McDonald’s. Which is kinda messed up if you think about it, she didn’t even care to check on Loki 😭.
I know this is way too long but all this timey-wimey stuff is very interesting but confusing since the creators didn’t hardly explain at the beginning of the episode. Hope this helps someone!