Loki: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 2
By Mike McNulty
RoxxCart
When Loki and the TVA travel to Alabama in the year 2050 to look for the Loki variant, they end up going to a superstore called “RoxxCart” where residents have sought refuge from a “Category Eight” hurricane. It’s pretty evident that RoxxCart is a future MCU version, and gentle parody, of real-life mega shopping centers like Wal-Mart and Costco. Of course, RoxxCart is also a very clear reference to another fictional megacorporation: Roxxon.
In case you don’t know, the Roxxon Energy Corporation is one of the world’s major producers of oil and gas in the Marvel Universe, clearly patterned off the real-life Exxon-Mobil. And because they’re a multibillion-dollar corporation in a comic book, that all but guarantees that Roxxon has a history of doing some shady, no-good business practices, not the least of which includes hiring super villains as “independent contractors” on it’s company payroll. Oh, and in the comics, they also bankrolled S.H.I.E.L.D. while also secretly bankrolling Hydra, too.
While the company wasn’t nearly as prominent in the Marvel Studios movies, they did have a much bigger role in Agent Carter. In that series, Roxxon was instrumental in helping fund the atomic bomb, stole research from Howard Stark and Stark Industries to create chemical weapons, and produced a Captain America radio show. There were also the occasional Roxxon appearances in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Iron Man movies. With Iron Man 3 (2013) in particular, there was a minor subplot involving Roxxon in the midst of potential scandal involving an oil tanker spill.
In any case, it appears that at some point in the MCU’s future, Roxxon moves beyond investing in energy production and sets its sights on the retail industry. It would also suggest there’s a growing need for alternative energy sources just like in the real world, which would also suggest less demand for fossil fuels strictly as a source of energy. Roxxon rebranding itself and investing in other industries would make practical business sense in that regard. It also suggests that, if an energy company also owns retail chains, that megacorporations and conglomerates become even more commonplace.