He Who Remains’ fate in ‘Loki’ may lie in the hands of an unexpected Avenger

Warning: the article contains spoilers for Loki season 2 episode 3

In Loki season 2 episode 3, we finally get a look inside the Citadel at the End of Time to see the aftermath of the season 1 finale, in which Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie has to make an unthinkable choice.

That’s right, the decaying corpse of Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, who was murdered by Sylvie last season, could be seen by Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes. But something I noticed is that this represents the second time we’ve seen a plot about the multiverse that involves the dead body of the variant of a main character. It made me wonder, will Loki take a similar turn in its plot as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?

In the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring sequel, the Sorcerer Supreme uses the Darkhold to dreamwalk into a deceased version of himself in another dimension. This effectively created a memorable Doctor Strange zombie. So will a zombie of He Who Remains be next?

The zombie cinematic universe

Since Strange has been the only character to dreamwalk a dead body in the MCU so far, it would seem he would be a necessary ingredient to making it happen again if, say, Majors’ Victor Timely from 1893 were to somehow reanimate his variant. Why would such a plot point be necessary? Perhaps there is some secret vault holding the key to running a clean and effective Sacred Timeline that they must retrieve and it requires He Who Remains’ biometric authentication, like a fingerprint.

After all, it seemed as if Tara Strong’s Miss Minutes and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Ravonna Renslayer were on the same team trying to court Victor into becoming the new He Who Remains in the latest episode. If that’s the case, Victor dreamwalking into He Who Remains’ body in another dimension might just be the perfect training.

Whatever the case, I sure would love to see some kind of call back to a previous multiverse Marvel title in Loki so that the various shows and movies feel like they follow the same rules. Right now, Multiverse of Madness feels weirdly disconnected from Loki, as do they both from Spider-Man: No Way Home.

We’ll have to see if Loki picks up the pieces of these breadcrumbs that seemingly lead to a Doctor Strange cameo when the next episode airs Thursday, Oct. 26 on Disney Plus.