The second season of Loki is in the books, seemingly putting an end to the story of Tom Hiddleston’s Norse god of mischief, cheekbones, and very large hats.
In the closing moments of the finale, “Glorious Purpose,” fans are treated to a glimpse of a kinder, gentler Time Variance Authority – one where everyone is valued, regardless of whether or not they’re a horny killer robot. It’s a more relaxed workplace, but it’s still a workplace, and there’s business to attend to. When the subject of He Who Remains variants comes up, we learn that there was some hubbub from one such rabble rouser in an “Earth-616 adjacent realm.”
If that sounds ominous, you don’t know the half of it: The team is referring to Kang the Conqueror – more specifically, the Kang the Conqueror from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. See? Quantumania factors into this. I told you things were going to be rough.
The “Earth-616 adjacent realm” that they’re talking about is the Quantum Realm, a sort of extra-extra-extra-small pocket universe dangling off the side of the world of the MCU, like a skin tag made out of reality and almost-finished CGI. Fans of Quantumania will already be aware that the movie’s main antagonist was another Kang variant. This one had a similar goal to the one that He Who Remains loved so much: Keeping all of the other Kangs minding their own business. He’d been banished to the Quantum Realm by all of his other selves, on account of how he was the best and coolest Kang. The King Kang. They were probably just jealous.
The death of Quantumania’s Kang at the end of the movie sure seemed like it was designed to incite a full-on multiversal Kang uprising – the sort of thing that He Who Remains kept saying would end the whole multiverse. A mid-credits scene even featured a cavalcade of Kang variants like Immortus and Rama Tut filling up a Kang stadium, practicing all of their silliest voices, and champing at the bit for some good, old-fashioned conquering. Based on the end of Loki, though, it seems like everything is chill now. Maybe Loki fixed everything by making time into a tree. Maybe Kang’s gonna Kang, and he’s still out there in the ether, cackling quietly to himself because this was all part of the plan all along. Maybe, in light of recent events, Marvel Studios is nonchalantly whistling and backing away from any plots featuring load-bearing Johnathan Majors. Time will tell.