Warning: SPOILERS for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness!
Loki season 2 story details get teased by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness scribe Michael Waldron. Marvel Studios’ third live-action Disney+ series to take place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe catalyzed the multiversal events of Phase 4. Loki fleshed out the concept of alternate timelines/universes and variants by picking up with the version of Tom Hiddleston’s trickster who escaped with the Tesseract during Avengers: Endgame (2019). The pilot saw him arrested by the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and drawn into a hunt for his female counterpart/love interest, Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino).
In the season 1 finale, Loki and Sylvie came face-to-face with the man behind the TVA’s curtain: He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors)—a variant of Kang the Conqueror who gave them two options: kill him, liberate the Sacred Timeline, and unleash multiversal madness; or take over his life’s work and prune anything that deviates from the “proper flow of time.” After Sylvie unilaterally chose the former, the episode ended with Loki in a very different TVA seemingly ruled by Kang as the timeline continued to branch. The credits confirmed there would be a Loki season 2, which will begin filming soon. As the MCU’s latest multiversal romp plays in theaters, Waldron—who wrote Loki season 1— has teased what to expect from season 2.
In a recent interview with Deadline, the MCU’s multiversal maestro, Waldron, talked about Multiverse of Madness and Loki season 2. While Moon Knight’s Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are set to take over as directors and Eric Martin as head writer of Loki season 2, Waldron was able to tease some story details. Read the full quote below:
“In creating the show in the first place, the only way it’s worth doing to me is that we can find a new story to tell with this character. It felt like we had new emotional ground to cover with Loki. That’s the only way into season 2. We absolutely found that. It’s a great continuation of that story that feels different from season one and hopefully will subvert expectations.”
In the wake of Loki’s finale, it felt like Kang and that branching timeline would inform every MCU project on the horizon. Loki, Mobius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie, and Kang were all rumored to appear in Multiverse of Madness, which made sense considering how relevant the series is to the overall multiverse. However, none of those characters cameo’d as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) laid siege to anyone and anything in her way. Speaking on Kang’s absence from Multiverse of Madness, Waldron said, “to me, it felt like we had the biggest, best bullet in Wanda.” He and director Sam Raimi decided to take advantage of that and focus on Wanda as the antagonist.
Majors’ Kang will appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantmania, a film that will further explore the Quantum Realm and, presumably, the multiverse. Given that the TVA exists outside of time, a popular theory is that the bureaucratic organization is located within the Quantum Realm. Therefore, Loki season 2 could very well tie into the events of the Ant-Man sequel. Regardless, Multiverse of Madness has a lot going on—from the corruption of a beloved character to all of those short-lived Illuminati characters. It’s possibly for the best that the film left out Kang and company. Now, there’s plenty of emotional ground to cover as Loki navigates his impossible circumstances in Loki season 2.
Source: Deadline
