A quick 'Loki' finale crackpot theory
Did the Season Two finale get the MCU out of a major(s) jam?
Since tomorrow’s weekly newsletter has already been written, and since the Loki finale just dropped and is extremely fresh in my mind, let's take a crack at discussing it in this separate thread, just to protect everybody who hasn't see it quite yet from spoilers. My thoughts coming up just as soon as I learn everything you know about physics and temporal mechanics...
Did not love this season. If they wanted to make a Doctor Who season starring Tom Hiddleston, just do that. Whereas this season all but completely stripped Loki himself of everything that made him a fun and distinctive character, in service of lots and lots of technobabble. There were nice moments at various points — and Ke Huy Quan may, in fact, be the Olivier of delivering technobabble — but a substantial step down from Season One for me.
But what I want to briefly talk about here is the season’s ending — which, whether it was intended this way or not, certainly felt like the MCU creating a workaround for the whole Jonathan Majors mess. By ascending to the throne at the end of time and becoming the new lord of the multiverse — and by letting He Who Remains stay dead — it seems as if Loki has usurped He Who Remains’ position within the MCU. Why does the Multiverse Saga need any Kang anymore — even one played by an actor who is not Jonathan Majors — when Loki is literally sitting right there? Even the epilogue at the TVA had Mobius and Hunter B-15 talking about the other HWR variants (including the one from Quantumania) as if they were minor nuisances who would eventually be dealt with.
It’s entirely possible, maybe even probable, that all of this was written and shot before everyone involved knew the full extent of the accusations against Majors. But even if that was the case, this now gives Marvel a new path through Phases 5 and 6, which could be built around a character the audience already has a deep investment in, played by an actor with a squeaky-clean reputation. Kang Dynasty would need a name change, and such a route would also wind up undoing all the character growth Loki went through over these two seasons. (Well, that, or “our” Loki will wind up having to deal with evil variants of his own.)
I am almost certainly seeing things that weren’t intended, and theorizing in ways I generally do not have patience for in others. (Hi. It’s me. I’m the hypocrite. It’s me.) But as I watched the last 15 minutes or so of “Glorious Purpose,” it was all I could think about. So now I have to put it out into the world to see if anyone wants to swallow the crazy pills along with me.
What does everybody else think?
I don’t think they set Loki up to be the villain, at least not this version. Once he gathered all of the branches (telling choice of wording for that), they clearly coalesced into the Norse World Tree, Yggdrasil. So Loki became the god he was meant to be: preserving reality against disintegration.
I didn't think pivot at the time, but it certainly seems to position away from Kang more than anything else. It doesn't seem like Loki has been set as a new antagonist, but much more of a table clearing. If I had to guess between the writer's and actor's strikes this could be giving Marvel a chance to reset things, perhaps have a little less build up for the next few properties and focus on good stories and developing additional characters that people care about before building towards something else big. (One can hope)