Tom Hiddleston’s Loki returns in Avengers: Endgame Encore, and he might have just made everyone’s weekend homework. The first end-credits scene finds the former God of Mischief interrupting Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s dance to warn them about an upcoming threat and offer his help. The second scene shows everyone at the TVA freaking out as the multiverse collapses in real time.
Loki’s Return in the End-Credits
The scene references Loki’s disappearance with the Tesseract in 2012, which occurs during the time heist. All the events in between unfold in the Disney+ series. As the God of Stories, Loki keeps the multiverse whole, even though the limits of his own personal powers are not yet clear.
The Multiverse’s Official Protector
Loki’s role in Avengers: Endgame Encore hints at the TVA’s demise. The TVA’s job is to keep the Sacred Timeline from branching off, but full containment proves impossible. The Multiversal Tree eventually replaces the Sacred Timeline as the TVA’s priority, and they work to prevent branched timelines from colliding and causing incursions.
What Loki Actually Explains
Loki lays out the fundamental rules governing the multiverse. Ideas such as “incursions” and “anchor beings” were first introduced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Deadpool & Wolverine, yet this series builds on those concepts by offering explanations for the hows and whys behind them. The TVA exists to prevent the Sacred Timeline from splitting off into new branches, and when a branch gets pruned, it ends up in the Void at the End of Time, where it waits to be destroyed forever by the transtemporal being Alioth.
The Cast That Built the Story
- Tom Hiddleston as Loki
- Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
- Chris Evans as Steve Rogers
- Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie
- Owen Wilson as Mobius
- Ke Huy Quan as O.B.
- Jonathan Majors as a Kang variant
Why Watching Loki Matters
There is still plenty of time before Avengers: Doomsday arrives for viewers to fully grasp just how important Loki’s role and the TVA really are, you have to watch his series. The good thing is that Loki only has two seasons, is one of the best projects Marvel has ever released, and there’s are.
The Questions Avengers: Doomsday Must Answer
- How does Doctor Doom fit into all this as the main villain?
- What causes the thousands of simultaneous incursions seen in Avengers: Endgame Encore?
- Does the TVA ultimately fail in its job as the multiverse’s official regulatory agency?
The Case for Watching
Marvel’s best series has now been made required viewing by Avengers: Endgame Encore, which sets up the story for Avengers: Doomsday. This marks the MCU’s most science fiction-y turn yet, with a multiverse saga that stands apart from anything else in the franchise.
What Comes Next
Avengers: Doomsday will answer these questions when it arrives. For now, the best preparation is to watch the two seasons of Loki. They’re short, they’re excellent, and they set the stage for the biggest shake-up the MCU has seen yet.
Don’t put off watching; doing so could leave you in the Void at the End of Time instead.
See the video the story is built around at Collider.
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