Turns out Loki’s season 2 finale did in fact set up Kang and his variants for the next few movies to come. How? Let’s find out.
Before I even begin, I’d like to slap a friendly neighborhood SPOILER WARNING FOR LOKI’S SECOND SEASON’S FINALE on this beauty as we’re about to talk about that lovely ending and what it means for the Kang villain phase.
After talking to a dear friend about the finale, something hit me hard, and I’d love to share it with you.
As we all watched Loki go from God of Mischief to God of Marvel, we witnessed not just what I consider to be the best character arc ever written, but also the actual setup for Kang Dynasty. We watched Loki relentlessly go back and forth in time, trying literally everything and anything to prevent the Temporal Loom from exploding and all timelines (except for the Sacred Timeline) from being pruned.
We saw him spend centuries learning physics and building complicated gadgets to try and fix the Loom, we saw him trying to talk Sylvie out of killing He Who Remains so none of this happens, and we saw him have a pretty solid conversation with He Who Remains about what’s truly going on: the Temporal Loom is a failsafe, and it prunes all timelines except for the Sacred Timeline, resetting everyone’s variants and basically taking away free will from everyone.
Literally, the God of Marvel, holding everyone in place. We don’t deserve Loki.
The perfect setup for Kang
Here’s where it all gets set up: when Loki decides he will destroy the Loom and replace it with himself, he returns to the point in time in which the Loom would explode, breaks it, and becomes all entangled in a beautiful tree resembling the Norse Life Tree Yggdrasil, keeping all the timelines alive and making sure free will is still a thing. Well, the moment in time in which Loki decided to go back to and destroy the Loom is a moment in which He Who Remains has already been killed by Sylvie. So, when the Loom is destroyed and Loki takes its place in keeping the timelines alive, He Who Remains is no longer in the picture.
That means it’s the perfect time for his variants, who are still very much alive thanks to Loki’s sacrifice, to show up and cause some chaos.
According to He Who Remains, the only thing keeping his variants from invading the Sacred Timeline and making it their own was the fact he was alive and keeping an eye on them all from his Citadel at the End of Time. The fact that Mobius mentions a Kang variant causing trouble on Earth-616 adjacent also raises a huge flag – that could very well be Rama Tut causing problems for the Fantastic 4 crew. The fact that a Fantastic 4 movie is still supposedly in progress and on track for a 2025 release also points towards Rama Tut making an appearance soon.
While nothing has been confirmed regarding Kang’s involvement in the upcoming and future MCU installments or any chance of recasting Jonathan Major, it’s not rocket science and it makes perfect sense. Otherwise, depending on what angle Marvel decides to take, we could be looking at new faces for Kang variants or a whole different villain instead.
It all remains to be seen or confirmed.