With the newest Marvel Disney+ show, Loki has essentially become the MCU's Deadpool–at least for now. After stealing the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame and poofing out of the story and into a new timeline, the God of Mischief was quickly apprehended by the Time Variance Authority for his troubles. At first firmly in possession of his usual arrogance and self-confidence, by the end of the first episode, Loki was, if not defeated, then certainly temporarily humbled after learning the truth of the multiverse.

More accurately, he was humbled after discovering his place in the multiverse and how insignificant he really was in the grand scheme of things. Ever since learning he'd been lied to all his life by Odin, Loki has been obsessed with the concept of having autonomy, determined that he should be the one to choose his own path and write his own story. Seeing his life and death on the Sacred Timeline played out in front of him and learning that the Time-Keepers of the TVA had planned it all upended his understanding of literally everything he thought he knew. More than that, it means he's the only character in the entire MCU outside of the TVA who has the knowledge that everyone's lives are controlled by another entity. He's the only one who knows he and everyone else in the multiverse are merely characters in the story the Time-Keepers are writing.

Related: Why Seeing The Infinity Stones At The TVA Breaks Loki

It's that meta-awareness that he shares with Wade Wilson that makes him the MCU's equivalent of Deadpool. In the comics, Deadpool is the only character who is aware he's a comic book character, that they're all comic book characters. It's normally been played for laughs and meta-jokes, but there have occasionally been times the existential horror of his awareness has been played straight, with Wade Wilson raging against the unseen comic book writer for always making him the butt of the joke. Now, just like Deadpool, Loki has to grapple with the life-altering existential crisis of knowing that he's not the one who has been writing his story and never has been.

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But Loki has an advantage Deadpool does not: he can do something with that awareness. Though Wade Wilson has caused an untold amount of chaos throughout the Marvel comic book universe, it's always at the discretion of whatever writer is penning his story. Likewise, Loki's chaos has, as he now knows, always been sanctioned by the TVA's Time-Keepers and was never really of his own making. However, while Deadpool has that existential awareness, he's impotent against it; there's literally nothing he can do to fight back against a comic book writer he can't see or reach. Loki, on the other hand, is right in the heart of the TVA. He has the potential to do what Deadpool can not and bring it all down.

In the story the Time-Keepers wrote for him, Loki exists beyond the page now, in the white space the Time-Keepers don't control. A Loki with an awareness that his story is not his own and the desire to reclaim it is a nightmare scenario for the TVA. At some point, Deadpool can and likely will be introduced into the MCU, and when he is, it will be interesting to see how he adapts and responds to being in this brand-new movie universe. With far greater cosmic threats and an entire multiverse to explore, Deadpool will certainly upend things in the MCU. Until then, Loki is more than capable of regaining control of the narrative, whether his own or the story of the entire multiverse.

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

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