Loki season 1 has finally come to a close, and the finale leaves some big questions hanging about the multiverse and the future of the MCU. At the end of episode 5, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) successfully managed to enchant Alioth, the beast guarding the Void, and stepped through an opened portal to a strange and foreboding castle. Finally, their quest for answers about the TVA and the Time-Keepers was nearly at an end.
In Loki episode 6, the pair of variants enter the castle, revealed to be the Citadel at the End of Time from the comics, and meet the man responsible for the Sacred Timeline. He Who Remains, the creator of the TVA, turns out to be none other than a variant of Kang the Conqueror. He Who Remains explains that the multiverse war was caused by different Kang variants all bent on domination and that he channeled the power of Alioth to stop the chaos before offering them a choice: Take over the running of the TVA or kill him, warning that if they choose the latter, chaos will be unleashed in the form of other, worse Kang variants. Loki considers the wisdom of He Who Remains' words, but Sylvie is unfazed, pushing Loki through a time door after kissing him and killing He Who Remains in an act of vengeance. Elsewhere, Mobius and Hunter B-15 reveal the TVA’s true nature to its members, and Ravonna Renslayer leaves the agency through a portal. Loki comes through the time door into the TVA, only to discover that things have changed dramatically and that he’s now in a timeline where the organization is directly run by another version of Kang–and no one remembers him.
The MCU has been alluding to big multiverse stories for a while, and the Loki season 1 finale has finally kicked off the madness. The show’s plotlines may be continued in some form in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Disney has confirmed that a second season of Loki is on the way. In the meantime, however, Loki episode 6 has left some big unanswered questions hanging.
Sylvie ends up restoring the multiverse at the end of the Loki finale by killing He Who Remains, but she isn’t seen again afterward. She pushes Loki through the time door to an altered timeline where Mobius and B-15 don’t know him, and where the TVA is littered with statues of Kang the Conqueror. But where did Loki's Sylvie go? Did she stay in the Citadel at the End of Time, learning more about He Who Remains and all that he did? Or did she walk through her own time door to some other, new timeline? Most of Sylvie’s life has been spent seeking revenge against He Who Remains, and now that she’s finally accomplished that task, it should be interesting to see what she does next in Loki season 2. She may find, just as Loki did before, that vengeance is hollow.
After Loki appears in the new TVA, it's particularly strange that Mobius and B-15 don’t even seem to recognize him as a Loki, despite the fact that, previously, Lokis were just about the most common variants the TVA had to deal with. There’s also a giant statue of Kang the Conqueror standing in the middle of the TVA, suggesting that a new variant of the conqueror is now running the agency directly. However, the statue could also simply be a memorial, possibly built after He Who Remains was killed. Is this a new timeline branch for the TVA? Or were the agents simply reprogrammed? For now, it remains a mystery.
Kang the Conqueror is still set to be the main villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which will now be his second role as big bad in a major MCU story. Since the end of Phase 3, Marvel hasn’t yet put a new, overarching villain forward to fill the narrative void left by Thanos. But with the multiverse restored and multiple upcoming MCU projects focusing largely on it, it looks like Kang may serve that function. The fact that there are so many different versions of him means there are lots of opportunities for new and unique plotlines with him as the villain, and Jonathan Majors is the kind of talent who can certainly carry that load. It’s unclear just how big Kang’s role in the overall MCU story will become, but he’s now the clear frontrunner to be the MCU's Thanos replacement in Phase 4.
He Who Remains gives a lot of exposition for the multiverse and the TVA when he meets with Loki and Sylvie, but was he telling the whole truth? Since the Kang variant was killed at the end of time, his death shouldn’t have caused a Nexus event, and it shouldn’t have caused any immediate changes to the TVA. However, he was the one who was untangling all the timelines and sorting them out, so it seems that with his death, the timelines are all getting mixed up again. It’s possible that it was actually the kiss between Sylvie and Loki that caused the timeline to splinter, but that isn’t really confirmed, and He Who Remains was the one who pointed out the sound of them approaching the redline and that he had no idea what happened beyond a specific moment in their conversation. But how does that work, exactly? In short, there’s a lot about what He Who Remains said that doesn’t quite make sense, and until Loki season 2, or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it won’t be clear whether or not he was actually telling the truth.
Confronted by Mobius in the Loki finale, Ravonna Renslayer has something of an identity crisis. She understands that she’s a variant and that her work has largely been a lie, but she refuses to accept that it was all for nothing. In the end, she walks through a time door out of the TVA, saying that she’s going in search of free will. In the comics, Renslayer becomes romantically involved with Kang the Conqueror, and it seems like the Loki finale has set up that plotline. However, until Ravonna Renslayer returns to the MCU, it’s hard to say for sure where she went or what she’ll do next.
One of the sadder moments of Loki episode 6 is when it’s revealed that the new version of Mobius in the TVA timeline Loki winds up in doesn’t recognize his friend at all and neither does Hunter B-15. That begs the question, what happened to the original Mobius? Is Loki in a different timeline with a different variant of Mobius, or is it the same Mobius with different memories? Because the new TVA isn’t really explained, it’s hard to say. But hopefully, the real Mobius will return in Loki season 2, possibly riding on a jet ski.
Now that the multiverse has been restored, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up for the MCU. Old characters could be recast and return in different versions. Past film franchises like X-Men and the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies can come into play. Alternate timelines could show new takes on old storylines. There’s a nearly infinite level of freedom the franchise now has to push new and unique narratives. After the events of Loki episode 6, there are countless possibilities for the future of the MCU.
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July 16, 2021 at 12:44AM
