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During the final episode of Loki Season 1, after Loki and Sylvie enter the Citadel, He Who Remains sends Miss Minutes to frighten the crap out of the audience negotiate with the pair of them. She tells them that He Who Remains is willing to reinsert them into the timeline, and even rewrite future events to their benefit, such as allowing Loki to kill Thanos and claim the Infinity Gauntlet.

But the more I think about the offer, the less it makes sense. The whole reason He Who Remains invited them there was because he was tired of dictating the timeline and wanted them to either kill him or take over from him. If Loki and Sylvie had accepted the offer, it would have meant continuing with the role instead, and he would have had even more work to do in order to write them and their wishes into reality.

Furthermore, it's made clear during their eventual confrontation that — up until the threshold - He Who Remains has planned out all their actions in advance. So he already knew that they'd reject the offer, because he himself had dictated so.

The offer doesn't even work as a demonstration of his power, because in the light of the above points, it's completely hollow. He knows they won't accept it, and even if they did, it wouldn't make sense for him to actually fulfil it.

So why even make the offer in the first place?

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    I think the expectation was always that they'd kill him and after that they'd either take over or things would go to hell again until another of his variants showed up instead
    – IG_42
    Jul 16, 2021 at 15:31
  • He only knows they don't accept it after he makes the offer and they reject it. The very fact of him making the offer is important in the determination. He just happens to have the ability to look past the time that the offer was made, that's why he knew.
    – Möoz
    Aug 10, 2021 at 23:14

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A big theme, perhaps the biggest, of the show is whether or not anyone actually has free will or the capacity to make their own decisions. Given the direction the show went in then it would appear to be the case that you do. It's just that should you make a decision against the Sacred Timeline, what He Who Remains deems to be the proper flow of time, you'll be arrested, your timeline branch reset and eventually pruned yourself.

Moving this forward to the offer it would appear that Miss Minutes, at the direction of He Who Remains, is putting the offer forward as a test. Should they accept the offer he knows they aren't the Lokis he's looking for to take over from him and so he can kill/prune/etc. them and wait for another option to show up. He even hints that this is the case:

He Who Remains: I've gone through a lot of scenarios... trying to find the right person to take this spot. It turns out that person came in two.

Loki, Season 1 Episode 6, "For All Time, Always"

Also note that he needs everything to happen how it does to get the two of them in the appropriate frame to be able to accept the offer. He needs to make sure they've both gotten over their grievances. Loki needs to have lost his lust for power and Sylvie needs to have gotten over her need for family and friends. Sure she'll still have Loki at the Citadel should they accept the final offer but that'd still be relatively lonely.

He Who Remains: You know you can't get to the end until you've been changed by the journey. This stuff, it needs to happen. To get us all in the right mindset to finish the quest.

Loki, Season 1 Episode 6, "For All Time, Always"

For an out of universe reasoning to back this up somewhat Miss Minutes was seen as the devil on the shoulder tempting them both. She's testing their character, making sure they are ready. In the same sense that He Who Remains is acting more as the angel on the other shoulder tempting them to do bad for the greater good.

Eventually, it was decided that Miss Minutes should be “that devil on the shoulder and trying to tempt both Loki and Sylvie,” Herron adds. “It was fun that you got a sense of there's something a bit more sinister going on here with her. We always had a version where [Loki and Sylvie] kept meeting her at the Citadel. At one point, we had a fight scene with Miss Minutes in the Citadel; we had all kinds of stuff [for her].”

Marvel, ‘Loki’: The Truth About Judge Renslayer and Miss Minutes

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Everything that happened to the Lokis can be explained with a single, very convenient, quote:

You can't get to the end until you've been changed by the journey. This stuff, it needs to happen. To get us all in the right mindset to finish the quest.

-- He Who Remains, Loki, S1E6

He Who Remains set everything up so that Loki and Sylvie would be in the state he wanted, in order to make the choice he gave them.

It's like Strange's fourteen million possibilities, only even more powerful.

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    Agreed. There's no solid reason to assume that the offer isn't valid, so the importance here is to demonstrate to Loki himself, that he's managed to overcome his fatal flaw, a persistent lust for power
    – Valorum
    Jul 16, 2021 at 15:38
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    Further, that offer forces them to think and understand what they actually want, simplifying the choice they are about to make inside He Who Remains' chamber. Ironically... it saves time.
    – AnalysisStudent0414
    Jul 17, 2021 at 15:08

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