Last week’s Loki finale has the potential to change the MCU forever. After five episodes spent exploring the cosmology of the MCU, things came to a head when Loki and Sylvie finally reached their goal of confronting the TVA’s boss.
In a widely predicted twist, this turned out to be Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror, who explained that his variant selves inevitably kick off a multiversal war. But this Kang triumphed by becoming ‘He Who Remains’ and established the TVA in order to prevent any branching timelines appearing in which more power-hungry variants of himself would spawn. Then Sylvie stuck a sword through him and all hell broke loose.
With this Kang gone the TVA has no direction and the timeline descended into chaos. We got our first glimpse at the consequences when Loki returned to the TVA to find it already under the control of a Kang variant and its staff having no clue who he was. Where we go from here in season 2 is anyone’s guess, though fans are still buzzing about the possibilities. Here’s a selection from social media:
So what’s next? Loki‘s second season won’t air until 2022 at the earliest, but both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness deal with alternate universes and timelines. Those characters probably won’t know the exact reasons why the multiverse has gone bananas, though it seems they’ll certainly be grappling with the fallout of Sylvie’s revenge.
Remaining questions are what happened to Sylvie after killing Kang at the end of time, where Judge Renslayer disappeared to, and what the fates of the Lokis still trapped in the Void were. I suspect there are going to be some interesting fan theories to come…
