The Loki Season 2 finale shook things up across the MCU in a big way, and Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief might have just landed himself a new job title to boot.
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for Loki Season 2, Episode 6.
When the credits rolled on Episode 6, Loki had found himself in a totally new position, at least as far as the MCU is concerned. Fans of the comics, however, might have noticed an interesting parallel between Loki's new role as a replacement for He Who Remains and one of the character's most iconic comic arcs.
Loki Has Become the "God of Stories"
Loki Season 2's finale saw the titular hero come full circle with a perfect ending, once again becoming burdened with glorious purpose.
The MCU's resident trickster has become something more, and the storyline has come to follow the broader strokes of the iconic "God of Stories" arcs from the comics.
In the season finale, Loki destroyed the Sacred Timeline to invalidate He Who Remains' failsafe. This allowed the branches to all coexist in a conjoined multiverse, with Loki at the center and binding everything together in a new Yggdrassil-style tree of time.
Comic fans could note the similarities to the comic book storyline. There, Loki found himself outside of the Multiverse entirely, and—following its destruction and rebirth—became the God of Stories to preserve the tales of those who'd lived before.
One could see the end of the Sacred Timeline as a similar rebirth, and the TVA has always been regarded as existing outside of normal time. From his new seat at the center of the tree of time, Loki is acting as the MCU's God of Stories; he's preserving the branches so that every choice matters.
All of this ties back to how he is burdened with glorious purpose, something first established way back with The Avengers. Loki believed that he had a glorious purpose with his invasion of New York City, before having that questioned by Mobius in the Loki Season 1 premiere (even that episode is titled "Glorious Purpose).
After Loki reassessed his own glorious purpose over the course of that season and revisited that premiere moment again in the Season 2 finale, the circular nature of Loki finding a new glorious purpose in protecting the Multiverse is a fitting end for the Asgardian God.
Will The God of Stories Return?
A major theme in Loki has been the pursuit of free will. While the finale saw Loki make a sacrifice to take up his new role, it was a sacrifice he chose to make rather than one he was written into by the Timekeepers or He Who Remains.
In many ways, that choice can be seen as Loki's ultimate gift to Sylvie. She's no longer defined by her relation to what the "main" Loki would do. Her choices, as well as everyone else's, will have equal weight and equal ability to blossom into an infinite array of possibilities.
Loki's selfless act has given the entire Multiverse more choice and consequence than they'd ever known in the previous age and, so long as the God of Stories is there to protect them, their legacies will be theirs to decide.
But will Loki ever get that free will himself? Sylvie and Loki's relationship from Season 1 was scarcely touched upon in the show's sophomore run (other than the self-referential allusion that it is a bit strange), so there's a chance that the two could start again at some point down the road.
Either way, being a major part of keeping the Multiverse in check means the God of Stories will undoubtedly be back, possibly to weave the branches of the Multiverse into something even better (perhaps in the form of an MCU reboot?)
All six episodes of Loki Season 2 are now available to stream on Disney+.
