MCU Theory Explains How Loki Might’ve Survived Avengers: Endgame

If the opening minutes of Avengers: Infinity War last year did anything, they established Thanos as a force to be reckoned with. The Mad Titan bombarded the fleeing Asgardians mercilessly, proceeding to beat the Hulk to a pulp. And then, in a dark, tone-setting act, he killed Loki, the mischievous son of Odin.

Fans who’ve known and loved the character since his early days as the Avengers’ first antagonist were heartbroken. But despite his gruesome death, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is set to star in his own Disney Plus show, and apparently some more content after that. Given what we know about the concepts of life and death, “how?” has been the question on a lot of peoples’ minds.

Well, the YouTube channel Eman’s Movie Reviews decided to take a stab at it using the events from Avengers: Endgame.

As anyone who saw Endgame knows, the Avengers spend the bulk of the movie trying to retrieve the Infinity Stones from the past. And one of the times and places they go to is New York City during the climactic battle of the original 2012 film.

While they do accomplish their initial mission, once they get their hands on the Tesseract, it’s dropped and Loki – who’s in custody at this point – picks it up and teleports away.

In the film, we learn that removing an Infinity Stone from a universe will cause irreparable harm, changing its reality. This is the primary reason Captain America goes back in time at the end of Endgame to return them to the exact moment they were taken. With that logic, Loki created an alternate timeline when he ran off with the Tesseract, leaving the timeline he abandoned in awful bad shape.

Eman, however, thinks that a character as ancient and clever as Loki’d see the danger in that, and would’ve done exactly what the Avengers did: used the stones to accomplish a specific goal, and returned them to where he found them. The theory says that he would’ve used a clone of himself to send back with the Tesseract so that he could go about his life unbothered while everyone thought he was in custody. So, it would’ve been his double who died at the hands of the Dark Elves, and the real one who would take on Odin’s visage and rule Asgard.

The theory continues to explain Loki used a similar tactic in Infinity War, faking his death to avoid the consequences of failing Thanos. He wanted everybody to think he’d die, and now that Thanos is gone, it’s likely he’ll emerge again.

But what do you think of Eman’s ideas? Do they fall in place within the MCU’s decade-spanning timeline? Let us know your thoughts about this and the upcoming Loki show in the comments section below!