Did Loki Episode 2 just open the door for some deceased Marvel villains to return?
The Disney+ series’ latest episode concludes with Sophia Di Martino’s Lady Loki intentionally disrupting the fragile stability of the Sacred Timeline. While the Time Variance Authority is shown struggling to adapt to the unexpected turn of events, the episode’s closing moments also reveal a handful of the locations that Lady Loki sent her stolen reset charges. And some of the planets listed will be very familiar to keen-eyed Marvel fans.
Titans and Egos — A brief shot of Judge Renslayer’s personal timeline monitor near the end of Loki Episode 2 provides a quick list of some of the places where Lady Loki’s reset charges land. Among the listed locations are:
Those places — especially the latter two — all have direct connections to two of the MCU’s most powerful villains. In the case of Ego (Kurt Russell), the human planet, he literally is the location, so a reset charge detonating there feels particularly notable. And, of course, Titan was the home planet of Thanos before its destruction.
Since these detonations are all impactful enough to create Nexus Events and branch realities, one has to wonder what the different realities caused by reset charges on planets like Ego and Titan may look like.
Is it possible that Lady Loki just created alternate realities where villains like Thanos and Ego are still alive?
Marvel Studios
Resurrected Villains — We already know Marvel is planning on diving deep into the multiverse in Phase Four of the MCU. However, what that will ultimately entail is hard to predict at this point.
It certainly doesn’t seem impossible for Marvel to take advantage of the alternate realities presented by the multiverse and bring some past villains back in the MCU. The studio is already planning to do that in this year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (if recent leaks are to be believed), and the ending of Loki Episode 2 implies Marvel may not stop there.
Given the implications of a multiversal war coming to the MCU in the very near future, it’s entirely possible that the studio’s take on a Secret Wars story will involve several versions of different heroes fighting alongside and against multiple versions of familiar MCU villains. In fact, we wouldn’t put it past Marvel to make that the central story of a future crossover film like Avengers 5.
Even if that ends up not being the case, it’s still reasonable to speculate that some dead villains from past MCU films could show up in different realities in a film like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
"It was beautiful.”Marvel Studios
The Inverse Analysis — This is all purely speculation for the time being. Marvel has proven itself more than capable of surprising even its most die-hard of fans, and its ongoing MCU plans have been difficult to predict.
But the fact that Lady Loki has released reset charges on planets like Ego, Sakaar, Titan, and Vormir feels notable and worth speculating about — even if all it does lead to are one-off appearances from alternate reality versions of villains like Thanos and the Red Skull.
Loki is streaming now on Disney+.
