Loki may have just introduced the MCU’s Next Big Bad

[ad_1]

Photo: Marvel Studios

Disclaimer: The full season-ending spoilers from Loki are below.

Going to Loki, I honestly thought it would be a fun time-traveling trip that would focus more on developing the titular character, rather than expanding the meta-narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. WandaVision is more than civil war.

So, I was very wrong.

It ended with a surprisingly dim ending on Wednesday that had even bigger implications for the MCU as a whole. When we last left Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), they had just defeated the cloud monster Albion and opened a portal to the castle at the end of time. (Can I just say I liked how this damn comic show was?) After entering the castle and having a short chat with Miss Minutes, who appears to be little more than a fancy AI wielded by the time-varying power, he is welcomed by the one who remains (Jonathan Majors).

Man is just trying to eat his apple and make up the course of time. Photo: Marvel Studios

Although he was never named, it was made clear that whoever remained was actually Kang the Conqueror. Also, there’s a fact that we learned last year that Majors will play the character in Ant-Man: Quantumania.

G/O Media may get commission

The episode was surprising, as it remains to explain his role in shaping the multiverse and protecting it from one of the most dangerous threats: himself. It shows that many of its variants found out that there are many facts stacked on top of each other. Some variants only wanted to learn and share knowledge with each other, while others were decidedly less noble endeavours. (Given the word “conquer” is in his name, it doesn’t take much to imagine what those pursuits are.)

He Who Remains gives them an ultimatum: let him live and stay where he is, protecting the timeline from all its variables, or they can kill him and possibly start another multiverse war.

sigh. If only I could go back to 2008 and tell my 16-year-old that there would be a multiverse war. Pretty sure the teen’s response would be “Wait, Marvel has a multiverse? I thought that was the DC thing.”

Anyway, Sylvie and Loki quarrel because Loki is like “Yo, this guy says if we kill him we might unleash a new level of hell on reality.” On the other hand, Sylvie was like, “All my life I’ve had to fight, Loki. You don’t know what this guy took from me, Loki. Now you’d better get out of the way, before I get you out of the way.”

Spoiler: She got it out of the way and then pushed her blade through the core of it that stays. This sends the multiverse into disarray, with the timeline surrounding the castle divided into different paths.

Unfortunately, given how things are announced beforehand these days, we know a lot about the direction of the MCU. We already know that Doctor Strange, the Multiverse of Madness, and Spider-Man: No Way Home will be explicitly dealing with the multiverse. We already know the Majors are set to return as Kang in the upcoming Ant-Man. Based on all of this information, it looks a lot like Kang is being positioned as the next big bad guy in the MCU. Next Thanos, if you will.

I’m very curious to know what the end game is here. Will we see Kang run roughshod over the Avengers through their spin-off films? Will Loki’s Season 2 be a prelude to the multiverse war? Does Marvel’s What If…? More relevance to the bigger story than we originally thought?

I don’t know, but I’m excited to see how it all goes. Personally, I find the idea of ​​Majors potentially embodying multiple versions of Kang incredibly cool. It was his performance as a character that remains charismatic, tragic, crazy, and at times charming. It’s always a pleasure to see Blacks win, and I’d love for an actor of Majors caliber to be given what feels like an incredibly pivotal role in one of the world’s most popular franchises.

.

[ad_2]