Spoiler Warning: Loki Season One
The first season of Loki has come to an end with ramifications sure to alter the course of the MCU. After using the tesseract to escape from the Avengers’ custody in Endgame, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds himself a free man for a moment but is eventually apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA). Loki is put on trial for his crimes against the sacred timeline, being brought before judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) with a guilty verdict meaning Loki’s pruning from existence and banishment to the void.
Before the guilty verdict is rendered, Loki is saved by Mobius (Owen Wilson), a TVA agent who thinks Loki is more than the violent miser his loop suggests he is. Mobius puts Loki to work for the TVA in the hopes of using his expertise to capture another Loki variant causing problems in the timeline. Loki finds the variant, known as Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and asks her to join him in overthrowing the Time-Keepers. However, she rejects his typical Loki ploy for power and sets off reset charges across the sacred timeline in the hopes of destroying the TVA on her own.
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Loki and Sylvie return to the TVA, but Loki uses a TemPad to transport them to Lamentis-1. Once on the planet, Sylvie tells Loki that the TVA are all variants and not the creations of divine beings. Upon being captured and interrogated by the TVA, Loki and Sylvie convince Mobius and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) that the Time-Keepers have been lying to them, but before breaking them free, Mobius is pruned by Renslayer. Sylvie and Loki are brought before the Time-Keepers, and after being freed by Hunter B-15, they kill the Time-Keepers, discovering they were puppeteered androids all along. Sylvie steals a TemPad from Renslayer and prunes herself into the void.
Loki finds protection amongst a group of Loki variants, and Mobius rescues Sylvie from Alioth, the beast that consumes all that enters the void. Loki and Sylvie enchant Alioth in the hopes of the beast leading them back to its master, the founder of the TVA. Through a heroic sacrifice from Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant), the two succeed and walk toward the home of the TVA’s founder at the citadel at the end of time. What Loki and Sylvie find at the citadel turns out to be the truth behind what is the most dangerous threat to the sanctity of their universe and all others.
Kang: He Who Remains
Marvel Studios
In the show’s finale, Loki and Sylvie arrive at the citadel at the end of time, where they meet with Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). The founder’s A.I., who functions similarly to Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) Jarvis (Paul Bettany), tells the two that they can be reinserted back into the timeline together with Sylvie having a lifetime of happy memories and Loki winning the battle of New York and achieving all the glory he ever wanted. Sylvie and Loki reject Miss Minutes’ last attempt to save He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), choosing to pave their own destiny.
After meeting with He Who Remains, he tells Loki and Sylvie that he planned for them to come to the citadel, having “paved” the road for their journey. It turns out that He Who Remains is a benevolent Kang variant who created the TVA to protect the multiverse from other variants of himself. The benevolent Kang had used Alioth to destroy the alternate timelines where the Kang variants waged war on one another’s universes in hopes of power and conquest. If He Who Remains dies, the universes will converge again, releasing the dangerous Kang variants and causing a multiversal war.
There are numerous variants of Kang in the comics, from Rama-Tut to Scarlet Centurion to Iron Lad and many others. All of these Kangs are thought to stem from Nathaniel Richards, a scholar who recreated Dr. Doom’s time machine to traverse time and space. This origin is similar to He Who Remains, except the human name of He Who Remains is unknown, or whether he knows Dr. Doom. Kang generally manipulates timelines, conquers planets, and steals technology.
The future tech is important to Kang as he has no powers, relying on futuristic weaponry and armor to maintain his edge. He Who Remains is thought to be based on the Kang variant known as Immortus. Like He Who Remains, Immortus, originally Rama-Tut, had grown tired of ruling and was given a chance to change things up, ruling over Limbo on behalf of the Time-Keepers. Immortus was given the gift of immortality in exchange for ruling over the sacred timeline.
In Loki, He Who Remains differs in that he created the Time-Keepers to protect himself and the multiverse from other more destructive versions of himself. He Who Remains seems to have no further desire for immortality anymore. He gives Sylvie and Loki the choice to kill him if they choose to, even seeming giddy at the concept of no longer holding power or being alive.
Sylvie’s Sends Loki Away
Loki and Sylvie are given a difficult choice. If Kang dies, there will be countless versions of himself that converge, “infinite devils over one,” so, in that sense, Kang stands as the lesser of many evils. What the choice boils down to is anarchy/free will or a benevolent dictator who keeps order, preventing society or the multiverse from tearing itself apart as a result of no central power keeping it in line. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes proposed this idea in Leviathan, suggesting humans are naturally beasts. Thus giving them freedom promotes chaos and self-destruction. Like Kang, Hobbes proposed that an Absolute Monarchy or a benevolent dictator was the answer to protecting society from itself. In theory, Kang’s argument is logical, but the problem is that Loki and Sylvie would have to rule the same as him.
While the duo might be more humane than He Who Remains, they’d still have to follow the rules of the sacred timeline, pruning all variants, providing the illusion of free will. The carnage is known with a benevolent dictator, and one can tell themselves that a certain amount of death is required to keep a greater amount occurring from the chaos stemming from free will, the known carnage versus the unknown. Sylvie chooses the unknown and attempts to kill He Who Remains, but Loki stops her, and the two fight over the critical decision.
Sylvie believes that, in typical Loki fashion, Loki wants the throne of the TVA for himself. However, in showing how his character has changed over the course of the show, Loki tells her he doesn’t want it, desiring to do the right thing for the universe over any of his own selfish inclinations. With Sylvie, Loki found the love he’d always been chasing. Above all else, Loki wants Sylvie to be okay and not let rage, resentment, and distrust fuel her actions as they had previously. Loki’s plea seems to succeed with the two kissing, but Sylvie tricks Loki and uses the TemPad to send him away, killing He Who Remains and fracturing the sacred timeline. While Sylvie’s choice seems rash, it makes sense for her character. Sylvie was taken from Asgard as a child by the TVA with the root of her variance, although not completely confirmed, having stemmed from being that she was born as the Goddess of Mischief instead of the God of Mischief.
Sylvie was on the run her whole life, jumping from catastrophic event to catastrophic event to hide her variance. Distrust, fear, and resentment were all Sylvie ever knew, whereas Loki had lived a full life before being captured by the TVA. Unlike Loki, Sylvie’s variance wasn’t from a choice she made. It was simply due to her being born. Sylvie’s persecution is rooted differently than Loki’s, as he was born into the right cloth but made the wrong choices, leading to his being at odds with the TVA, whereas Sylvie was an enemy from birth, not due to choices but due to simply existing as she was. Loki could never have understood Sylvie’s perspective because, as she says, he’s not her. She never lived the life of the Loki, never completely growing up in Asgard. Sylvie became a different person, and her chosen name is, in a way, a protest against the way the establishment or TVA sees her. She’s not just another Loki or another variant. She’s her own person.
Loki and the Broader MCU
Disney Platform Distribution
In Loki’s final scene, he arrives back at the TVA headquarters to tell Mobius and Hunter B-15 about the destruction of the sacred timeline and the coming of the Kang variants. Running out of breath, Loki tries to tell Mobius about what happened, but neither he nor Hunter B-15 knows who Loki is. Loki looks up and sees a statue of Kang in place of the Time-Keepers, suggesting that Kang now rules the TVA directly without the illusion of the TVA’s divine origins. This is most likely a different universe than the one Loki met Mobius in because before Loki arrives, the audience sees Mobius and Hunter B-15 witnessing the destruction of the sacred timeline with Mobius stating, “there’s no turning back now,” in reference to their choice to abandon their TVA mission.
It seems that Loki may be captured by Kang at the start of season two due to Mobius calling in backup, but if Loki does escape, perhaps he’ll seek out Thor or other Avengers to help him. Sylvie may have sent Loki back to the universe where he was killed by Thanos, putting him back in his original MCU timeline. Sylvie is still in the good Mobius’ universe, so she may play a role in undoing the damage she did by killing He Who Remains, proving crucial in getting Loki back.
Ravonna Renslayer was last seen taking a TemPad to discover the truth behind the TVA, using the information given to her by He Who Remains. In the comics, Ravonna is a princess and often a love interest of Kang, so perhaps He Who Remains chose her specifically to be a part of the TVA due to his love for her. Ravonna may discover that He Who Remains took her from earth because he loved her in another universe. By giving her that mysterious information at the end of the season, he’s essentially giving her the keys to discovering why she was chosen to work for him. In a more sinister way, if all the Kangs love Ravonna, perhaps he’s gifting her to another Kang who lost her in their own universe. It seems unlikely that this Ravonna will fall in love with Kang, so if she was sent to the same universe as Loki, the two might have to team up to escape their situation. If Ravonna goes a more villainous way, she may see her intertwined fate with Kang as he gives her the purpose and destiny she’s been seeking.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will feature Kang, as an image of a crew member’s shirt showed the famous Conqueror reflected in Ant-Man’s helmet. With Kang as an antagonist, this will serve as the first conflict between him and an Avenger in the MCU. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) must kill this variant of Kang because if he doesn’t, it may launch Kang’s quest of manipulating various timelines to get rid of the Avengers as he does in the comics. The Avengers have been getting away with manipulating the multiverse and timelines. Kang could represent the repercussions of this, doing the same thing to them as they did to Thanos.
If the Kang variants start altering timelines, this will present a threat never before seen in the MCU, as the Avengers only need to defeat one Thanos to save their universe. But to defeat Kang, they’ll have to kill many and hope the variants don’t all wage war on them simultaneously. Chaos is coming to the MCU due to Sylvie choice’s in Loki, and, hopefully, it’ll be Sylvie who is proven right, with the unknown carnage being lesser than the known.
