‘Loki’ Finale Set the Scene For 3 Marvel Projects
When Marvel first announced the release of a 6-episode Loki series on Disney+, Tom Hiddleston fans everywhere were filled with anticipation, eager to see their favorite actor portray his rendition of ‘the god of mischief’ on the small-screen. And as anyone who’s watched the series will tell you, he did not disappoint.
But while the preceding MCU Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision had what might be considered to be subtle endings, Loki, as you might expect, took a totally different route. In fact, it ended in what would forever change the MCU as we know it. The finale yanked it into a much larger multiverse, setting the scene for any upcoming movies.
‘Loki’ was a highly anticipated release
The six-episode series would follow Loki after the events of the Avengers: Endgame when he picked up the Tesseract and vanished. We see him get snatched up by the Time Variance Authority (a group of timeline monitors) and charged in court for violating “the sacred timeline.” What follows is a series of adventures in the TVA aside agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson).
It ultimately ends with Loki meeting his female variant Sylvie (Sofia Di Martino) and the two getting ‘pruned’. They then meet the man behind the whole thing, ‘He Who Remains’ (Jonathan MAJORS). who explains that killing him would unleash all his evil variants, including Kang the Conqueror, out into the universe.
Despite the warnings, Sylvie still kills him. And sure enough, the event led to the creation of branching timelines and infinite variants along with it. Thus, bringing the season to its suspenseful end.
Now, following this cataclysmic event, every succeeding Marvel movie will have to contend with this twist of events and assimilate the multiverse concept. But among them, there are three projects that are most likely to do so.
‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness‘
Even before we got word of the Loki series, the title in The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hinted at the prospect of MCU tackling the multiverse concept. The upcoming sequel was even confirmed to correlate with WandaVision, Loki, and Spiderman No Way Home.
While it was initially presumed that WandaVision would be what triggered the multiverse, we came to see that it is actually Loki who would tip the scale over. Now, Doctor Strange, originally tasked with keeping the earth safe from inter-dimensional forces like Dormammu, will have to face other upcoming threats from the many branches of time.
His primary goal now would be to keep the earth safe from the chaos that is sure to come up, more so, from variants of the infamous Kang the conqueror (an evil version of He Who Remains). Also, since Loki was directly involved in causing the event, it would only be natural if he appeared in the Doctor Strange movie.
‘The Eternals‘
Until only recently, after The Eternals trailer was released, most MCU fans knew little to nothing about the comic book characters. According to the trailer, The Eternals are depicted as immensely powerful beings that have been around since time. Despite their incredible power, they choose to remain hidden not even stepping in to stop Thanos from ending half the universe.
But in the trailer, one statement by the narrator stands out, “throughout the years we have never interfered … until now”. It gets you wondering what recent event was so huge as to call the team of god-like immortals to assemble. Well, fans suspect that multi-universe coming into being had a role to play in this.
To back this up, if you take a closer look at the flying spaceship captured in a scene in the trailer, you’ll notice it’s composed of dark material with gold flecking. It almost resembles the gold-veined material making up the inner citadel where ‘He Who Remains’ resided in Loki. Fans, therefore, concluded that The Eternals must have sprung up from a location nearby.
Antman and The Wasp: Quantumania
The actor, Jonathan Majors, playing ‘He Who Remains’, was initially cast as the villain ‘Kang the Conqueror’ in the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But even then, there were hints that the actor would appear in other projects before the Ant-Man release, which we now see in Loki.
However, unlike his character, ‘He Who Remains’, in Loki, the Ant-man and the Wasp would see Majors as a more ruthless variant of the character dubbed Kang the Conqueror. The movie might also delve a bit into the character’s origin story as a scientist in the 31st century, Nathaniel Richards, who is the one who first discovered an alternate universe.
As ‘He Who Remains’ explains in Loki, he met different versions of himself, traded information, and collaborated with them as he explored the multiverse. However, conflict soon kicked in as the more evil versions wanted to take over other universes, thus explaining the origin of Kang the Conqueror. At the moment, not much information has been revealed on how Kang would interact with Ant-Man and his gang. However, we can expect quite a bit of fun action.
According to Inverse, other future films you can expect to have a connection to the Loki multiverse include Spiderman No Way Home, Thor: Love And Thunder, Fantastic Four, Moon Knight, and What If, which in fact, explores how different things would be if the main timeline were different.
