Caution: spoilers ahead for Loki‘s season 1 finale
How does the Loki season 1 finale pave the way for Tom Hiddleston’s gloriously purposeful return in season 2? Though all three Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings on Disney+ can be considered a success, Loki‘s blend of time-travel, personal drama and groundbreaking revelations has captured fan imagination in a serious way. The God of Mischief began his journey as a prisoner of the Time Variance Authority, detained on charges of diverging from the Sacred Timeline by stealing the Tesseract and escaping the Avengers. Across six episodes, he managed to fall in love, find the MCU’s next big villain, and bring down the organization who wronged him… and make a new best friend along the way.
Loki does, however, differ from other Marvel shows on Disney+ in one vital area – there’s going to be more of it. WandaVision season 2 apparently isn’t happening, with Scarlet Witch continuing her story on the big screen via Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The same goes for Falcon & The Winter Soldier, with Sam Wilson reportedly set for Captain America 4 rather than a second season of streaming. Ever the trendsetter, Loki breaks that pattern, using a brief post-credits to confirm a return in Loki season 2.
Sure enough, the final episode expertly lays the foundations for Loki‘s future. There’s plenty of setup for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and Spider-Man: No Way Home, but other plot threads are evidently being saved for Loki season 2. Here’s how “For All Time. Always” leads into a new Asgardian adventure.
Loki Season 2 Is In A New Timeline
Though confirmation of Loki season 2 is still extremely fresh, one key detail is already in place – the story will continue in a radically altered timeline. Loki‘s season 1 finale saw Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief and Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie finally meet the man behind the TVA’s curtain. Unfortunately, the duo are split between killing him – thereby allowing Kang the Conqueror to rise – or sparing him because the TVA is the lesser of two evils. Unable to agree, Sylvie gets her way and stabs He Who Remains after sending Loki back to TVA headquarters. As a frantic Hiddleston searches for his mustachioed ally, he finds the organization has been rewritten as a consequence of Sylvie’s choice. Mobius and B-15 have no idea who Loki is, and the TVA now works for Kang rather than the Time-Keepers.
This mechanic affords Loki season 2 a fresh slate, not entirely dissimilar to DC hitting the “Crisis” button whenever a continuity reset is required. As (seemingly) the only person who knows the truth, Loki will be forced to save the TVA in season 2, flipping the script on his season 1 mission. He’ll need to jog Mobius’ memory and earn his trust (another mirror to the first season), then undo whatever damage is currently being done to the MCU.
A fresh timeline also means Loki season 2 won’t be beholden to past events, and this becomes clear when Mobius mistakes Loki for a standard TVA analyst. The one man who once knew Loki (all of them) like the back of his gentle, caring hand, Mobius now doesn’t recognize one right in front of his nose. This proves Loki will no longer be pursued in season 2 (the TVA doesn’t appear concerned by him at all), and without an adopted Asgardian prince to obsess over, Owen Wilson’s Mobius might even adopt a different personality. A new timeline brings infinite new possibilities.
Loki & Sylvie’s Relationship
Temporal turmoil aside, undoubtedly the biggest unresolved issue of Loki season 1 is the status of Loki and Sylvie’s star-crossed romance. After finding each other in Earth’s future and bonding over the threat of impending doom on Lamentis-1, Loki and Sylvie quickly developed feelings for each other. Both struggled to love in the past, but the pair’s shared trauma bred an understanding and empathy neither had before experienced. Though their relationship spent the best part of 4 episodes simmering intensely without payoff, the deal was sealed in Loki‘s season 1 finale – a passionate kiss before Sylvie kicked Loki back to the TVA.
Fans can now be assured that both characters harbor genuine love, and if his puppy-dog actions in season 1 are anything to go by, Loki will be desperate to find Sylvie and rekindle the flame in season 2. She is, after all, one of the few real connections this version of Loki has made. Whether Sylvie feels the same is a completely different matter. Lady Loki sounded upset that her dark-haired counterpart didn’t “see the same way” when it came to stabbing Kang, setting up a season 2 storyline where Sylvie loses faith, and Loki must thaw that cold heart all over again.
One major obstacle to love conquering all in Loki season 2 will be Sylvie’s current whereabouts. She’s last spotted in the Citadel at the End of Time, and could potentially use He Who Remains’ TemPad to travel anywhere in time and space now the TVA isn’t on her tail. But with the timeline splitting like a cheap pair of headphones, could Sylvie be trapped in the Void? Wherever she is, Sylvie must still face the catastrophic ramifications of her quest for revenge in Loki season 2.
Loki Season 2’s New TVA & Villain
As mentioned above, Loki season 2 will include a new-look TVA, with Kang the Conqueror now the man in charge. The dying moments of Loki season 1 also tease the TVA’s altered purpose now that the Sacred Timeline isn’t so sacred. In the final scene of episode 6, Mobius and B-15 are overheard discussing the deluge of splinter timelines sprouting like weeds, and the no-nonsense Minutewoman complains, “does he want us to just let them all branch?!” The “he” is almost certainly Kang, and the line itself suggests the TVA’s new head honcho has no interest in keeping the timeline neat and tidy.
If Kang has gone to the trouble of building a statue of himself, but isn’t bothering to prune any diverging realities, the Conqueror must have a different purpose in mind for the organization. Unlike He Who Remains, Kang might use the TVA to trim only those realities that threaten his rule, or contain an especially troublesome enemy. Loki season 2’s TVA could be even more dystopian and violent than before, as the employees toil for a proper supervillain, rather than an ethically ambiguous showman with a love of apples.
Loki‘s season 1 finale lays the foundations for Kang as the main villain of season 2, but his role depends heavily on theatrical projects. For example, if Jonathan Majors has a starring part in Ant-Man 3, Kang is unlikely to feature prominently on Disney+. Marvel are also yet to confirm whether Loki season 2 will happen before or after Scott Lang’s next outing, which will surely have a considerable bearing on Kang’s future. Tom Hiddleston’s solo series might instead use Kang similar to how early MCU movies used Thanos – an overarching background threat with limited screen-time.
Ravonna Renslayer Is Looking For Answers
Ravonna Renslayer handled news of the Time-Keepers’ deception far better than Mobius and the other TVA employees, but that doesn’t mean she’s taking it lying down. Determined to prove her work with the agency wasn’t in vain, Ravonna sought information about the TVA’s creation from Miss Minutes. Instead, Miss Minutes gave the infamously prickly judge some specially-chosen reading material. Whatever she found within seems to have sent Renslayer on a brand new mission, as she takes off to parts unknown with TemPad in hand. Although it’s not yet clear where Ravonna is headed, the smart money is on visiting a Kang variant. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s character wanted answers, and only through him will the truth become clear.
If Miss Minutes pointed Ravonna in a specific direction, and Miss Minutes was working for He Who Remains all along, the TVA judge could be HWR’s post-death contingency plan against Kang – perhaps gathering “good” variants to rally against the bad. If so, Ravonna could prove an unlikely ally to Tom Hiddleston’s Loki in his quest to restore the TVA to its former… glory? At the very least, Renslayer will be one of very few characters who remembers life before the timeline change, and this alone will force she and Loki together. The makings of a brand new MCU double-act?
The Multiverse Is In Chaos
Loki season 1 had plenty of fun with the show’s conflicting timelines, introducing over a dozen different Loki variants and teasing alternate worlds where Thor died, Kang owned Stark Tower, and Thanos piloted a garish yellow helicopter. Ultimately, however, the Disney+ series has been restricted in how far it could explore, since the TVA’s very purpose was to prune these renegade timelines before they become rampant. Aside from the Void-set episode 5, Loki could never truly let the multiverse madness loose in its debut season. Thankfully, season 2 has license to dive wholeheartedly into the madness Loki‘s premise promised from the start.
Thanks to the death of He Who Remains, Loki now has more splinter timelines than the TVA does retro soft drinks. Even better, Kang isn’t pruning them, leaving a near-infinite array of worlds for the God of Mischief and his friends to explore in Loki season 2 – without the frustration of knowing a pruning is imminent. Not only does this mean exciting new locales are in Loki’s Disney+ future, but also mind-bending “What If” scenarios, alternate histories, and potentially even evil versions of existing heroes. Sylvie’s restoration of the multiverse also means season 2 could reintroduce the likes of Kid Loki and Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki in their natural habitats. Perhaps Loki season 2 will show how the young prince killed Thor, maybe Hiddle-Loki will seek the aid of his unfortunately-costumed elder, and could we even discover the truth about whether Alligator Loki is a Loki or just a normal alligator?
Loki season 2 is confirmed for Disney+.
