Warning: SPOILERS for Defenders: Beyond #3Marvel Comics finally admits that retconning Loki after Secret Wars may have been a mistake. The recent return of “God of Stories” Loki as one of the main characters in Defenders: Beyond was something that the fans had been asking for years, and now Marvel admits that this version of the character is more popular than the one they wanted to keep around instead.
Loki’s character history got a little complicated by the time that Marvel’s huge event of 2016, Secret Wars, came around. The “original” Loki orchestrated his own death during the Siege event, to escape his role as the “God of Evil”. He was reborn as a younger version of himself, “Kid Loki”, who tried to redeem himself from his past evil deeds. Meanwhile, the remnant of the spirit of the old Loki also schemed to be reborn and took over the body of Kid Loki. However, the version that emerges is not old Loki, but a brand new one, who reinvents himself as the “God of Mischief”. Later, this Loki survived the annihilation of the Multiverse in Secret Wars by becoming the God of Stories, and literally escaping from the narrative Marvel Universe in a beautiful meta moment. The Loki that reappeared in the All-New Marvel Multiverse, and is currently featured in Thor, seems very different from the God of Stories fans had grown to love, which sparked negative reactions and demands to bring back the previous version of Loki.
Eight years later, Marvel gave fans what they wanted and brought the God of Stories back for Defenders: Beyond, where a team of heroes is magically assembled by Eternity to defend the Multiverse. In Defenders: Beyond #3, by Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez, the group arrives in the White Hot Room, the home of the pure Phoenix Force, where they are hunted by the cosmic being that represents death and rebirth. The Phoenix has set her sights on Loki in particular because he is “out of time“, a “temporal glitch that risks draining ‘objective reality’ from the ‘Loki Prime’” of his dimension. For this reason, Loki has to either return to his original juncture in time or (considering that juncture was erased by the Incursions along with the entire seventh Multiverse) be burned away like an infection.
Two Lokis Are Too Many, One Has To Go
Keeping in mind that Al Ewing, who is writing Defenders, is also the person responsible for Loki’s transformation into the God of Stories (in Loki: Agent of Asgard), it’s very likely that, with “draining objective reality“, he is referencing how the popularity of “his” Loki has hurt the version of the character that Marvel instead created for the All-New Multiverse. Indeed, Marvel’s decision to erase the character made popular by Ewing and, before him, by Kieron Gillen in Journey into Mystery, was very controversial at the time. However, sometimes editorial decisions take priority over what artists do and what fans want. The All-New Loki still failed to impress, mostly because the complete lack of connection with the previous version of the character threw fans off.
The return of God of Stories Loki in Defenders: Beyond and this direct reference to the negative influence he has on his “Prime” counterpart could mean two opposite things: either this Loki is here to stay, or he will be definitively erased at the end of the series to give his new version a chance to shine. Either way, Marvel has admitted that retconning Loki and getting rid of the God of Stories may have not been the best decision.
