While the MCU kicked off Phase 4 with some exciting new journeys on Disney+ with WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Solider, Marvel Studios' third series Loki set out to turn the overarching story on its head. After the final episode on Disney+ premiered, that goal was pretty safely accomplished thanks to the events surrounding the God of Mischief.
By the end of Episode 6, Marvel Studios shocked the fandom by revealing that the man behind the chaos and madness was none other than Jonathan Majors in his debut as He Who Remains.
This mysterious individual even teased his eventual rise to power as Kang the Conqueror, which is just one of many of his Variants, before Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie killed him to exact her revenge. His death seemingly led to the entire MCU multiverse beginning to tear apart, with Owen Wilson's Mobius speaking of "63 new branches" forming almost instantaneously.
Possibly the biggest shocker on an emotional level was that Mobius and Hunter B-15 didn't know who Loki was due to the very fabric of reality possibly having changed. This is something the show's director spoke about recently, with potentially massive ramifications coming from the event.
WHAT BECAME OF THE TVA?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Loki Season 1 director Kate Herron spoke on the final scene of Episode 6, giving a tease about what happened within the MCU.
Revisiting how the Time Variance Authority "exists outside of space and time," Herron hinted at how the version of the organization in the final scene of Loki may have been different from the one in the previous episodes. With Season 2 of Loki confirmed to be coming, the director simply leaves this theory as "a big question that will be answered" another time.
Herron also clarified that due to Sylvie killing He Who Remains, Loki ends up being "sent back somewhere very different" when Sylvie pushes him through the time door. With reality having been "shifted" by these events, Loki now finds himself "in this alternate TVA now" as the story ends:
"So the way I see it in my head is that the TVA exists outside of space and time, but reality and everything as we understood it has completely changed in the last few minutes. With the multiverse branching, how do we know the TVA still exists in that way? We don’t know, and I suppose that’s a big question that will be answered as the show goes on. But in my head, the intention is that Sylvie thinks she’s sending him back to the TVA, but because of the way time and branches are crossing each other outside the window, Loki has unfortunately been sent back somewhere very different. So reality has shifted just by the nature of what He Who Remains said, and the idea is that he’s in this alternate TVA now."
ALTERNATE REALITIES BECOMING REAL
It was somewhat expected that the destruction of the multiverse would have its ramifications in a big way, especially with movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness coming within the next year. A surprise in this, however, is that Loki now finds himself in a Time Variance Authority where nobody knows who he is.
Now that the organization seemingly has a new leader in Kang the Conqueror, the God of Mischief will have quite the challenge on his hands when he comes back to fix what Sylvie helped set in motion. With two wild movies coming before Loki's next solo outing, he could have a substantial amount of trouble on his plate on top of Kang's arrival.
While Herron also mentioned really wanting Season 2 to kick off with Mobius on a jet-ski, the possibility of Loki having to integrate into an entirely new reality is a more likely starting point.
Now that the anti-hero has found a new sort of purpose in life after the Time Heist in Avengers: Endgame, he will have quite the task helping this alternate reality TVA figure out how to set things right. Suffice to say, there's nothing like the chances of a new multiversal war to push him down the right path.
All six episodes of Loki Season 1 are available to stream on Disney+. There is no timetable for Season 2.
