Loki head writer Michael Waldron has opened up how a key aspect of He Who Remains was changed from the comics for the Disney Plus series.
Speaking to The Direct, Waldron confirmed that it was originally his idea and how he foresaw how important the moment would be.
“No, that was not in there. I brought to them the idea of Sylvie Lushton, a version of The Enchantress, which we kind of fused into an idea of a variant Loki. And then it became clear early on because one of the first things we had to do in the writer’s room was define the actual rules and nature of time travel in this show.
“And what does the TVA do and why do they do it? And it became clear to us that according to kind of the rules of time travel, they’d been laid out in Endgame and according to the rules of time travel that made sense to me and that we wanted to run within the show, really, time travel was kind of the multiverse as … It’s like time travel. We were like, ‘We’re really making a multiverse show, more than we’re making a time travel show.'”
In Loki, the titular trickster and his variant Sophie finally make it to the Citadel at the End of Time to find out who’s really controlling the Time Variance Authority. They discover that it’s He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) a man keeping the Sacred Timeline intact to keep his evil variant Kang from entering. Sophie, hellbent on revenge, kills him which splinters the Sacred Timeline, and now Kang is on his way.
The comic book version of He Who Remains is very different than what was seen on Loki. He’s an old man with a story that’s more straightforward than the MCU’s. He’s the director left to guard time for all eternity and creates beings to do his bidding, but things have a habit of going awry.
Waldron went with something that made more sense for the MCU. Kang will be showing up in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania, and it’s been reported that the conqueror will appear in six other MCU projects. He’s likely going to be the Big Bad when the new Avengers team meets up. Only time will tell.
Loki season 1 is available to stream on Disney Plus.