Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 6.
At long last, the Loki finale is here. Even though the first season of the Marvel Disney+ show only consisted of six episodes, we’ve been through a lot together. We began way back at the Battle of New York, as that version of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki was plucked from the timeline and arrested by the TVA, only to then aid the TVA in hunting down a murderous Loki variant, only to then team up with and kinda fall in love with said murderous Loki variant, only to then discover the TVA is bunk and everything they’ve been told is a lie. We ran through a lot of story in six hours, but it’s a testament to the filmmaking team, writers, and performers that it all felt completely character-focused, right up through the end.
Speaking of, that Loki Episode 6 ending is a bit of a humdinger, not only concluding the first season of the show in thrilling fashion, but also completely changing the game in a way that sets up future MCU movies and shows.
If you’re a bit confused as to what, exactly, happened, who Jonathan Majors is playing, and how this sets up films like Doctor Strange 2, let’s dig in.
The Loki finale found Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) finally making it to the end of the timeline, coming face to face with the person who’s been running the TVA all along. And it turns out that person is Kang the Conqueror – or a variant of Kang. Played by Lovecraft Country and Da 5 Bloods actor Jonathan Majors, “He Who Remains” tells Loki and Sylvie he’s been expecting them, and in fact knows everything that’s going to happen – up to a point.
“Eons ago,” he says, a variant of himself lived on Earth in the 31st century. This was before the TVA existed, and that variant discovered the existence of multiple alternate universes – a multiverse, if you will. At the same time, other variants of Kang also discovered the existence of the multiverse, and began interacting with one another. All was harmonious until it wasn’t – “Naturally they made contact, and for a while there was peace. Narcissistic, self-congratulatory peace.” These variants shared technology and knowledge to make each universe better, “however not every version of me was so pure of heart.” He Who Remains continued, revealing that “to some of us, new worlds meant only one thing, new lands to be conquered.” And thus the peace between realities was demolished by a bunch of Kang variants.
What happened next is where the true story deviates from the dogma. The Timekeepers didn’t step in and create the Sacred Timeline. “That first variant encountered a creature created from all the tears in reality, capable of consuming time and space itself.” This is Alioth, the beast that Loki and Sylvie encountered in The Void and enchanted. But here’s where it gets interesting – at this point, He Who Remains stops speaking about a variant of himself and switches to first person: “I harnessed the beast’s power and began experimenting on it. I weaponized Alioth, and I ended the multiversal war.” This suggests that either the Kang sitting in front of Loki and Sylvie is in fact that first variant who discovered the multiverse in the first place, eons ago, or he’s another variant who happened upon Alioth after the creature was discovered by “that first variant.”
Either way, Kang has been in control of the Sacred Timeline and the TVA for a very long time, and he offers Loki and Sylvie a choice. They can either kill him and allow the timeline to branch, which he says would result in thousands of variants of himself vying for power and simply taking his place, wreaking havoc on the timeline in the process. Or they can take over for him, running the TVA as they see fit and continuing to prune “variants” so as not to open up the multiverse.
Loki and Sylvie are at odds on this – Loki believes Kang, and probably kinda-sorta also wants power and maybe to live in a world he can run alongside Sylvie. But for Sylvie, this is personal, and she wants revenge against the person who robbed her of her life. Loki and Sylvie fight, but Sylvie gets the upper hand and transports Loki back to the TVA using Kang’s Tempad-like device.
Sylvie then proceeds to kill Kang, but with his dying breath he says, “See you soon,” hinting at the variants to come. We look out the window at the end of time to see the timeline branching like never before, irreparably severed from the “Sacred Timeline” and now allowing free will to run rampant.
As for Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), she admits to Mobius (Owen Wilson) she knows the Timekeepers aren't real, but hangs onto the idea that this all can't be for naught. That someone is in control, and she wants to do their bidding. Kang anonymously sends her some kind of documents via Miss Minutes, and the last we see of her she's stepping into a portal "in search of free will," alluding to her acknowledgment earlier that the only person who has free will is whoever is controlling this timeline. That's the last we see of Ravonna this season, but in the comics she and Kang are romantically involved, so this hints at some kind of relationship to follow in Loki Season 2 (which Marvel has now confirmed is happening).
But Loki saves the biggest twist for last. Back at the TVA where Loki has been sent, everything is in disarray. Agents are preparing for war and everyone just lets Loki run right past them. Loki finally finds Mobius and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and tells them that he and Sylvie screwed up. The timeline is branching and “countless different versions of a very dangerous person” are coming “and they’re all set on war.” But Mobius is unphased. He tells Loki to calm down. “Take it easy. You’re an analyst right? What division are you from?”
The camera then shifts to show that near the elevators, where there used to be statues of the three Timekeepers, there is now just one statue, and it’s of Kang. A full-on Planet of the Apes twist. The Tempad that Sylvie used to send Loki back to the TVA didn’t send him back to his reality, it send him to one of those alternate universes, one in which Kang openly controls the TVA. One in which Mobius and Loki don’t know each other.
And that’s where the finale ends.
So what does this mean? Well for one, the multiverse is wide open. As the title suggests, the feature film sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will find Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange dealing with the Multiverse alongside a fully evolved Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). And this December’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is already rumored to include Spider-Men from different franchises, also bringing the multiverse into view.
So who’s to blame? While we thought Spider-Man might explain how the multiverse gets opened, it turns out it’s all Loki and Sylvie’s fault. The Loki finale suggests their actions are why the timeline is branching, and why Loki now finds himself in a different universe run by a different (and likely alive) Kang.
Speaking of, Majors was first announced as playing Kang for the feature film sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. That movie is due to start filming this year, and we mostly assumed that film would first introduce Kang. Not so. The question then is which Kang variant is in Ant-Man 3 – is it the one from Loki’s new timeline, or yet another variant? Kang did caution Loki and Sylvie that there were “thousands” of him, so Jonathan Majors may be getting a pretty big MCU workout in these next few movies.
And then there’s also Loki Season 2 to deal with. We have no idea when Loki Season 2 will start filming or be released, as Marvel has its own self-contained plan where specific pieces fall into place at specific times. So given all that might happen in Doctor Strange 2 and the Spider-Man sequel, Loki Season 2 could find Hiddelston’s character in a very different place than when we leave off in this finale.
Whatever the case, Loki has been one of the most pleasantly surprising and emotional MCU journeys so far, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.