No matter how many questions Marvel keeps dangling like carrots over our heads, it always always establishes when a certain show or film takes place in the MCU timeline. But so far, Loki (especially season 2), which orbits around the Time Variance Authority and its complicated existence outside space and time, hasn’t really chosen a place in the chronological order of things. Or did it, and you simply haven’t caught on?
Let me get this out of the way first — trying to fit into MCU’s scheme of things in terms of timeline is akin to a wild-goose chase. Not to discourage you or anything, but that is the point of Loki — it does not follow any timeline as it reigns on the pure chaos triggered by the anarchy afforded to it by the absence of time, something that governs the Sacred Timeline, i.e., every other Marvel show and film.
But as someone who likes some facade of order and continuity in life, I totally understand the need to place Loki season 2 in the ongoing MCU timeline. Well, if we take some liberty with how exactly time flows in the TVA, we can pinpoint an almost-accurate (let me have this, will you?) timeline for the upcoming season — because if we chuck the significance of TVA out the window, placing when season one takes place is a piece of cake, it is season 2 that needs some mind-bending logic application.
And for that, let me answer one crucial question first…
Does all the Time-slipping Loki experiences in season 2 affect its place in the MCU timeline?
OK, so, we have seen in all the trailer and promos how Loki, as the side-effect of his existence and the “death” of He Who Remains, is going forward and backward in time. Season 2 is set to feature different timelines and locations, which (for some reason) includes Sylvie in 1982 and working at McDonalds. But no matter the different dates and eras Loki goes to, he will always come back to the point in time where he has managed to re-convince Mobius that he is not the bad guy, revealed that the TVA agent is a variant himself, and got him on his team against Kang and his variants.
Now, back to the elephant in the room….
When does Loki season 2 happen in the MCU timeline?
I know, some wisecracks out there will point out how they have read articles about season 2, picking up somewhat exactly where we left Loki in the last season finale — staring at the large Kang statue at the TVA. But where did we leave Loki — in the Sacred Timeline or a brand timeline?
You see, TVA supposedly existed outside time and space. Again, Time-slipping in the TVA is technically impossible. But while Sylvie obviously sent him Loki back to the OG TVA in the finale (as He Who Remains was alive at this point, so no branch timelines, no glitchy TVA), he ends up in a timeline where no one, not even Mobius recognizes him — because the Sacred Timeline is, well, no longer protected, and evidently, that exposes the TVA as well.
So:
- Do we have multiple TVAs now in different timelines, and Loki is in a different one? This would make pinpointing season 2 on the MCU timeline a bit difficult — while season 1 takes place during the events of The Avengers, Loki switching to a different timeline where he may or may not landed in the past or future bungles up the rapidly slipping semblance of time placement we were holding on to.
- Did Loki land in the past — a point where he was not discovered as a variant? This would mean that season 2 takes place before the variant Loki was brought in by the TVA.
- Or if we consider that there is still only one TVA, did somehow the memories of everyone there have been erased by He Who Must Remain’s death? In this case, we can go with the existing order — season 1 occurs during and/or after the events of The Avengers, and season 2 continues after it.
Now, we can hope Loki season 2 will finally help in clearing this brain fog here, but again, No Way Home happily left how anyone forgetting Peter actually works and then let Multiverse of Darkness add a nice little bow to the confusion with Doctor Strange’s comments about the webbed slinger. But here I am, still eager to watch a Marvel creation after barely surviving Secret Invasion, so clearly, I have hope (or am very good at grasping at straws).
So, here is hoping Loki season 2 serves some answers alongside its very-weird-but-still-somehow-adorable Loki-Sylvie love story when it premieres on Oct. 5.