Throughout the course of the last decade, Marvel has seen many fantastic writers pen the stories told across the MCU’s first three phases. However, Loki turned that idea upside down as series director Kate Herron has confirmed it was indeed He Who Remains all along.
All things considered, Loki's encounter with the Time Variance Authority and Kang the Conqueror truly raised the stakes as the MCU enters a new era where the Infinity Stone are mere trinkets kept in a desk drawer. As shown in WandaVision and Loki's respective finales, there’s a lot more to uncover in the entire universe beyond the grandiose quest pursued by Thanos for so many years.
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In fact, during an interview with The Direct, Herron confirmed this was the approach they’re were going for with Loki, to establish that “Everything has been predetermined by this one character […] Which I think is kind of the fun rug-pull of our show, right?” Herron herself even remembers being taken aback when reading the script for the first time and finding out the Infinity Stones were just sitting in an old drawer. At the same time, she considers it a pivotal moment for the show because “it shows the TVA is this whole new power.”
Regardless of Herron not staying for Loki's second season, the director still expressed her own theories about the series’ future, saying she does believe He Who Remains -or Kang- is as clueless as the audience with regards to what will happen after Sylvie took his life because “We’re in completely unforeseen time now.” With Loki rumored to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there’s obviously a lot of interest in how season 2 will affect the MCU’s Multiverse.
Perhaps even more interesting is what kind of role Marvel Studios has in line for Jonathan Majors, besides his confirmed appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, since the MCU’s Kang is now Phase Four’s main antagonist after ensuring no Marvel icon had real free will. That, coupled with Doctor Strange all but confirmed to join Spider-Man in No Way Home, could really signal lots of smaller guest appearances instead of big crossover films like the four Avengers movies in the coming years.
Marvel's upcoming What If…? is a mystery in itself since it's not known if the alternate timeline animated series will be made part of the mainline MCU or if those events will just be treated as miscellaneous occurrences from another reality that are indirectly acknowledged by Multiverse mechanics as a whole. To think that Hawkeye now has to compete with Loki all because of Kang.
Loki season 1 is now available on Disney Plus.
MORE: Loki Season 1 Ended One Episode Too Late
Source: The Direct
