Warning: The article contains spoilers for Loki season 2, episode 6 that have the power to reduce you to tears and wish Tony was here so you can Blip him this time.
Of all the things I hoped for the variant Loki — after losing the OG God of Mischief — was him to be happy, even if it was as a villain. After his heartbreaking admission that all he wants is to stay with his friends and never be alone, his forever fate as the completely isolated Keeper of Time keeping every single branch timeline alive is beyond harsh. And we will never forgive Tony Stark for it all.
Up until Loki’s season 2 finale, Tony Stark was the ultimate hero who sacrificed his life to save the universe and shed his pretentious selfish suit to be a true savior. He was kind, heroic, clever, insanely hilarious, and every positive adjective available… but Loki just did all that and his fate is even worse than Iron Man’s as he will have to live with it forever, never able to find the happiness he desperately sought all his life. And why is he stuck with his fate?
Because Tony-annoying-Stark suggested Hulk take the stairs instead of joining them in the elevator in The Avengers.
We remember how the variant Loki escaped, right? In Endgame, in a bid to reverse what Thanos did, Tony and the team traveled back in time, hoping to secure the Space Stone. Future Tony almost got it, but the enraged past-Hulk smashed through the stairs, grumbling about being not allowed to take the elevator, and sucker-punched him out of the way. The Tesseract landed right on Loki’s feet, making a branch timeline and allowing him to slip the noose.
Yes, many Loki variants have met their end at the hands of the TVA. But nothing has been as particularly painful as the fate that awaited this particular variant. If only, that day all those years ago, Tony hadn’t let his hobby of picking on people, especially the Hulk, take over, not only would his future version have secured the Space Stone in one go, but this variant Loki sitting all alone in a gilded throne would have also never existed. The fact that he chose this curse and embraced it as his fate to save his friends and every living soul he once plotted to crush makes it even more heartbreaking.
I know, it’s too soon to crack jokes, but looks like Tony finally took his revenge on Loki for throwing him off the Avengers tower in 2012.
