SPOILER WARNING FOR LOKI EPISODE SIX, “FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS”
No, seriously, there are so, so many spoilers in this article, so if you haven’t seen the season one finale of Loki and plan to, now is the time to skedaddle.
First up, whoa, minds blown. Also blown is what we think we know about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That finale had everything – emotional epiphanies, character growth, heartbreaking rejection, an anticipated mega-villain, that kiss and a double Loki sword fight.
What it didn’t have was the sight of Owen Wilson on a jet ski.
More importantly, there was no closure with a gazillion questions left unanswered, which is maybe OK because it did have the revelation that Loki will be returning for a second season.
Woo, official confirmation! More Tom Hiddleston! More Owen Wilson! More Sophia De Martino! More Wunmi Mosaku! And more Gugu Mbatha-Raw!
Which is the least Marvel could do after those final scenes, and all those plot threads could not possibly be answered in the upcoming Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or the other dozens of Marvel Studios movies and TV shows coming up.
We have questions, we bet you do too. We maybe have some answers – or at least some thoughts in the same neighbourhood as answers.
Um, what just happened at the end?
Loki and Sylvie finally make their way to the big boss in charge and it’s – as many fans have theorised – Kang the Conqueror.
Kang tells them a story about how “eons ago” in the 31st century, a variant of himself discovered parallel universes, just as other versions of him were learning the same thing. There was a multiverse war and the Kang we see before us (let’s call him Kang Prime), used Alioth to gain control and correlate all the timelines into one – the Sacred Timeline.
Kang says that if he is killed, it will disrupt the Sacred Timeline and chaos will reign, plus all those other nastier variant versions of him – if they though he was dangerous, they haven’t seen anything yet.
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Sylvie wants to restore free will, and she’s still pissed, so she tries to kill Kang. Loki believes Kang so he tries to talk her out of it. In the end, her mission overwhelms her connection with him, so she sends him through a portal door and stabs Kang.
We see the timelines branch out in infinite configurations, heralding the start of another multiverse war.
In the meantime, the inscrutable Ravonna Renslayer has given the game up and left the TVA and off to... we know not where.
Loki is back at the TVA, or so he thought. He runs into Mobius and Hunter B-15, and tries to tell them what happened but they look at him blankly, asking him who he is. Ouch.
That’s when Loki realises he’s not even back in the TVA he knows. The timelines have already branched to an extent that there are even multiple TVAs, and this one isn’t his.
He looks up and he sees that rather than the trio of Timekeepers statues rising through the atrium that we’ve seen before, a single statue looms large and it’s that of Kang. Oh dear, we’re not in Kansas now.
OK, I only watch the Marvel movies and TV shows, so I don’t know who Kang is – I’m guessing he’s important?
You betcha. Kang is being set up to be the big Marvel villain in Phase Four and beyond, in the same way that Thanos caused so much grief in Phases One through Three.
In an interview posted to the official Marvel site after the Loki finale dropped, Loki creator Michael Waldron said, “Knowing that Kang was probably going to be the next cross-movie villain, and because he is a time travelling, multiversal adversary, it just always made so much sense”.
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In the comics, Kang’s origin is that of a 31st century scientist (just like our onscreen Kang declared) named Nathaniel Richards who discovered the possibility of time travel through Victor Doom’s technologies.
Using his time travelling platform, he travelled further into the future and gathered their advanced technologies, which he used to conquer other eras. He’s set on world domination.
The comics Kang crosses over with many superhero characters, including the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man and Captain America, which makes him a natural fit as an uber villain in the MCU.
He’s also linked to Renslayer in the comics where they are on-and-off-again cuddle-buddies — which really makes you think about where the TV Renslayer has gone now, setting up interesting possibilities for that character.
So, he’s important, but then why did they introduce a Big Bad in the final episode of a TV show instead of in a movie?
Well, first, it’s pretty clear that Marvel is investing heaps into their streaming shows so it’s not as if they’re tier B.
As to why he was introduced so late in the game – well, that’s a creative decision that could’ve, and might still, backfire because it’s always a risk to roll out a new character at the end. Especially one that the TV and movie audiences, many of them casual, are not already invested in.
What helped was that now-Emmy nominated Jonathan Majors made an immediate impression as the wily and charismatic villain. Majors’ casting as Kang was reported last year but he wasn’t expected to show up until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is currently in production.
Wait, didn’t Sylvie just go full stabby-stabby on Kang? How can he be in Ant-Man?
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Loki’s Kang Prime is dead. But, remember, he promised his death will only unleash his variant versions, who are way worse than him in the villainy stakes.
So, expect the Kang of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to be variant of the Kang we just met.
My head hurts – are there really going to be different versions of everyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe now?
Yeah, probably. They don’t keep talking about multiverses for no reason.
The multiverse was already hinted at the end of WandaVision in the post-credits scene where you see Wanda in a trance with the Darkhold. And you hear the faint voices of her kids – everyone assumed they were calling out to her through the multiverse.
At the time, we thought that Wanda was using dark magic to punch a wall through multiverses but maybe it just coincided with Sylvie’s plunge of the dagger into Kang, enabling the branching of the Sacred Timeline.
After all, it’s not like we know when Loki actually takes place, other than “at the end of time”, whatever that means.
You’re saying Sylvie just set up MCU’s Phase Four?
Yes, we guess she just did. Somewhere in time, Doctor Strange is pissed.
I think I’m caught up, so what next? When’s season two?
OK, so know there’s going to be a Loki season two, but there’s no date on when that’s happening, so we should expect the consequences of the timeline branching will be picked up earlier in other upcoming MCU properties.
The two movies due out are Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals, neither of which suggest there will be timey wimey or multiverse stuff – though with Eternals, you never know.
Before the end of the year will be Spider-Man: No Way Home, and rumours have long persisted characters from Sony’s other two Spider-Man franchises starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield will appear. Fans have been speculating that this can only happen under multiverse conditions.
We’re expecting Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness to do the heavy lifting in terms of kicking this particular ball down the line – after all, it’s in the title. And Waldron, who created Loki, is the screenwriter on Multiverse of Madness.
Multiverse of Madness was also originally slated to be released this year before covid turned everything to sh*t, so if it is directly related, then it was meant to happen much sooner than the almost year-long gap we’re now waiting on.
On the TV/streaming side, what’s coming up is the animated What If…? series, which is an anthology series that explores big moments in MCU history but asking the question what would’ve happened if things had been different.
We’d assumed that What If…? was non-canonical but at this point, it could just as easily be a way to tell some multiverse stories that feed back into the live action properties.
Then after that, there’s the Ms Marvel and Hawkeye shows before the year closes out.
But even if the consequences of the multiverse will be dealt with in those upcoming movies and shows, we wouldn’t expect them to do too much on what happens next to Loki, Sylvie, Mobius and the crew – that’s what season two is for.
Loki is streaming now on Disney+
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2021-07-14 13:41:15Z
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