New ‘Loki’ season 2 promo raises concerns about Marvel’s originality in a post-‘Endgame’ world

The Marvel Cinematic Universe could genuinely be in the endgame now, if the mid-season trailer for Loki season 2 is any indication of where the Disney Plus series is heading. 

Look, we don’t want to be the ones to poo-poo on the Loki love-bombing — that episode 4 cliffhanger was truly magnificent, if not unpredictable — but I fear the state of Marvel’s originality could be dying a slow and painful death if the God of Mischief proceeds to resurrect a plot we’re all too familiar with from Avengers: Endgame. 

According to the trailer, Loki still retains his memory of the TVA, but his fellow TVA members don’t. They appear to be living the variant version of their lives outside of the TVA, including Mobius, who we see jovially selling Jet Skis and TVs. Somehow, Loki manages to recruit Mobius and his fellow TVA members back to the TVA where the Temporal Loom is, once again, being crushed under the weight of too many branched timelines. 

Now, this next bit is speculation so take it with a grain of salt, but only a minor grain of salt since it feels pretty obvious where the show is going. Loki is clearly time-slipping again, so once he recruits his friends back to the TVA, fixing that predicament will be the first order at hand. Because the Temporal Radiation outside the blast doors was less severe when Mobius first traversed to the Temporal Loom in the season premiere, the gang will try to kill two birds with one stone: fix Loki’s time-slipping and install the Throughput Multiplier and expand the Temporal Loom’s diameter to accommodate for the increased numbers of branched timelines and prevent it from exploding again.

All that to say — Loki is essentially reenacting the same plot from Avengers: Endgame where Captain America, Iron Man, and the rest of the Avengers split up to travel back in time and find the Infinity Stones in order to bring them back to the present where they could then reverse Thanos’ snap and destroy the Mad Titan for good. 

If our predictions are correct, it means Loki season 2 is just a condensed regurgitation of Avengers: Endgame and that the MCU has seriously run out of ideas. We ended episode 4 in uncharted territory. For a moment there, the existence of the entire multiverse was a question mark. There were — and still are — so many opportunities for Marvel to fix the errors of Phase 4 and take the story in new directions, namely fix its Jonathan Majors problem. Instead, it looks as though it plans to do a Harry Potter/Endgame-style back-to-the-future fixaroo and we’ll all live happily ever after in the end. 

I guess this is the ongoing price we pay for the entire MCU being mapped out years in advance. Now that we know Loki seasons 1 and 2 take place at the start of Phase 4, any massive impact on the multiverse can’t come with any dire consequences since the multiverse is alive and well in the MCU’s present day.

We’ll hold out hope that a show that has, for the most part, kept us excited, intrigued, and second-guessing ourselves, continues to do so. If anyone can trick us, it’s the God of Mischief.