So for the last few months, I noticed the little hood release plastic lever was a bit loose on the left side of the dash. So today I go to open the hood, and it makes the pop sound but won't open. The plastic was a bit more loose, and the lever can almost come out.

What can be wrong here? Did something let go? Any other way to manually open the hood?

 

Sounds like your hood release cable is being pinched or something. It is very difficult to get open without going to a shop. When I had the same problem they took a wire rod and bent it and stuck it through the grill until they eventually hooked it to the latch and freed it open. GL.

 

BTW, were you at all in the past messing with the latches or maneuvering the sensor to get it to make contact and remove a code in the dash of "hood open?"

 

I never messed with it, but I did notice the hood release lever was becoming loose over time.

I will bring it to a shop soon, something must be wrong with either the lever or most likely cable.

 

This happenned to me a couple years ago. Its a major pain to get in there to release, and yep it takes a wire rod to get up under there from below. The problem was a little capture bracket for the cable sheath that broke, and therefore the cable sheath was no longer held in place. That's why your handle is slack now. Also sprayed the cable and latch mechanism with dry film to keep it loose since the fix. I now do this to all my cars hood latches since i think the bracket broke due to overly high pull force needed to release hood.

 

Just a side note: on rare occasions I've seen the circular plate holding the latch come lose and rotate out of position although this doesn't seem the case here. Seemed to happen more on the older MLs.

 

This may help :