‘Loki’ season 2, episode 1 confirms that Marvel and DC are trapped in a time-traveling tennis match

I would love to say we are one step closer to getting that dream MCU-DCU crossover, but even fate itself isn’t ready to let go of their famed animosity anytime soon. At least that would seem like the case if a particular scene from The Flash and a peculiar choice for a phrase from Loki season 2, episode 1 are compared, because the connection is uncanny. 

Given the fact that both Marvel and DC cinematic universes adapt the fictional world of superheroes whose lives are governed by more or less the same concepts — superpowers, supervillains, alternate universes, and of course — time traveling — doesn’t mean the franchises are not doing their damndest to stress that they are miles apart from each other, even if it meant for The Flash to hazard the risk of pointing a mocking finger at the MCU and how it explains the complicated concept of time-traveling.

But MCU is clapping back — even though it is not a planned move, it sure as hell feels like one exceptionally impossible coincidence.

In The Flash, when Barry inadvertently creates a branch reality and ends up meeting Michael Keaton as the retired and disgruntled Batman, the latter explains his “correct” definition of how time works and not just in DC land – across ALL movies. He says that any film saying time travels on a linear path and any alterations made to the past or future create alternate realities branching from the main timeline is incorrect. Which is DCEU technically calling all MCU projects — from Endgame to now Loki season 2 — incorrect. Wow, bold move, right?

So, Batman says the multiverse is instead a mess of tangled timelines that have common points that cross each other (intersectional inevitabilities) and uses his lunch to explain it better – spaghetti.

Well, this jibe at Marvel would have become The Flash’s forgettable attempt at trying to bite the shark in the water if Loki season 2, episode 1 hadn’t brought the alternate Batman’s striving to take a shot at MCU.

In the episode, when Loki, O.B., and Mobius arrive at the door leading to the Temporal Loom, the warning outside says:

“DANGER! TEMPORAL RADIATION LEVELS ESCALATE EXPONENTIALLY BEYOND THIS THRESHOLD – LIKELIHOOD OF SPAGHETTIFICATION INCREASES 7000% – PROCEED WITH CAUTION”

Hmm, interesting choice of words. And then Ke Huy Quan’s O.B. doubles down on the phrase when he warns that if one falls into a black hole of time, “you turn into spaghetti.” Was that a deliberate dig at The Flash and well, its spaghetti of a storyline as well? Sadly, chances of it being intentional are nullified by the respective production schedules of The Flash and Loki season 2 as the former wrapped up filming back in 2021 and released in June 2023, while the Marvel series put a neat bow on its production in October 2022. 

So, are you saying Marvel was petty enough to add the warning and O.B.’s line after The Flash was released? It is fun to think so, but in case that unlikely event didn’t happen, looks like even destiny would like to keep the two rival franchises at each other’s throats, at least metaphorically.