WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season two finale of Marvel’s “Loki”
The “Loki” Season 2 finale went into some weird places. Only this time around, there’s a new He Who Remains sitting at the throne — and he’s not a Kang variant. So, is the god of Mischief now just… God?
Well, no. Technically, he’s the God of Stories. More on that in a minute, because it does have a huge, possible tie to a future Marvel project, but first, a quick recap. Episode 6, now streaming on Disney+, certainly made a meal out of trying to fix everything but in the end, there was only one option for Loki, and it essentially means Tom Hiddleston will exist in the MCU forever.
We just may not see him again, because he’s now apparently the keeper of the entire MCU, multiverse and all.
The finale almost immediately let fans know that a lot was about to happen, as it included Loki’s first appearance in the MCU, way back in 2012’s “Avengers” in the “previously on” segment, and was titled “Glorious Purpose.” From there, the typical Marvel intro ran in reverse, signaling that time was, as it always does in this show, going to get a little wonky.
To kick off the actual plot, Loki tried everything he possibly could to stop the time loom from exploding. And we do mean everything, as Loki utilized his new control of his time slipping to go back to different moments, changing how things were done in an effort to win.
Eventually realizing he needed to go back further, he returned to the season one finale, and the moment Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors). There, Loki learns that the time loom is actually a fail safe, and he and his friends are doomed anyway, unless he kills Sylvie.
But, Loki being Loki, he finds a way around that. It’s a lot to succinctly explain, but in short, Loki opts to destroy the loom himself, grab the remaining branches, and create a new timeline. Complete with a superhero transition into a new outfit, Loki struts into a different dimension, weaves the timelines together, and creates what appears to be a giant glowing tree made up of literally everything in existence.
That tree is, of course, is unmistakably Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse mythology that gives structure to the universe and supports the 9 realms of existence.
In short, not only did Loki save the TVA and the branched timelines, but he basically organized the multiverse on Asgardian terms. The catch is, he’s also now effectively the new He Who Remains, sitting at the center of the tree, watching over and caring for everything — and presumably, there forevermore.
But he’s also something else new: The God of Stories. It’s never said outright, but last week’s episode of “Loki” featured several characters talking at length about the need for people to write their own stories. That line of thinking pointed Loki in the direction he needed to learn to control his time skipping.
In the comics, it’s a little more complicated, but the bullet points are that in the 2013 Marvel series “Loki: Agent of Asgard,” much like on “Loki” our god of mischief encounters various alternative versions of himself. After some adventures that force him to reconsider his life, he’s told that he can’t change his story.
But Loki concludes that lies are just another kind of story and rebrands himself the God of Stories. This ends up tying directly to the 2015 Marvel crossover event, “Secret Wars,” which among other things involved ending the Ultimate line of comics and importing some of its characters — notably Miles Morales — into the main Marvel continuity.
Will any of that happen? For now, the climax of the current incarnation of the MCU is still a “Secret Wars” movie. How we’ll get there remains to be seen however. The so-called “Multiverse Saga” has been closely tied to Jonathan Majors, whose legal troubles may result in his being removed from the MCU. In fact, it feels like that might be just what happened in the “Loki” season (series?) finale. We’ll see.
And now it’s obvious that earlier Thursday, “Loki” co-star (and fan favorite) Ke Huy Quan, who plays Ouroboros/Doug, teased that insanity in a video posted on the show’s official account on the site formerly called Twitter.
The episode aired on the same day Marvel’s new superhero team-up Movie “The Marvels” landed in theaters.
