The first season of Loki (96%) premiered on Disney+ on June 9, 2021 to continue the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe following the arrival of Marvel Studios’ first two series, WandaVision (95%) and Falcon and the Winter Soldier (97%). The reception of the series starring Tom Hiddleston was so good that it easily managed to outperform other prominent titles in the franchise, and just one month after its premiere, Loki managed to be renewed for a second season.
Now, Kang is shaping up to be the main threat in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga, but it looks like that’s not how things would originally play out. According to Joanna Robinson (via Comic Book), author of the upcoming MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, top studio brass revealed to her that Kang wasn’t initially going to take such a prominent place in the story of the popular superhero universe, but that plans changed after seeing Jonathan Majors’ performance in the first season of Loki.
It was during a recent appearance on The Ringer’s The Big Picture podcast (via Comic Book) where Robinson explained how it was Majors’ performance as the One Who Remains in the first season of Loki, as well as his performance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (60%) that prompted a shake-up in plans for the next Phases of the MCU. Robinson said the following:
Someone who works for Marvel told me that it wasn’t the plan to make Kang the center of everything until they saw the early footage of Quantumania and after his performance in Loki, which was so strong that they said, ‘This is it. This is our way forward. We’ve lost our core team of heroes, but let’s get around this guy, Kang, and this performer that so many people are reacting to.
But in the end, was the decision to make Jonathan Majors’ character the center of the MCU the right one? In the podcast, Robinson also said that because of these changes, the studio now finds itself in a complicated position following Majors’ recent legal troubles. The Creed III (90%) star was arrested in early March on domestic violence charges and is already preparing to appear in court on June 13. Robinson had this to say:
We know this is a big issue for them that they’re facing and dealing with right now. And what’s unprecedented about this for Marvel is that, I would say they’ve never given as much franchise to one actor as they tried to do with Jonathan Majors after his performance of Loki and his performance of Ant-Man: Quantumania. I would say more than Downey as Iron Man, more than Brolin as Thanos, that hanging everything on this guy is going to show up in all of their properties leading up to something called The Kang Dynasty has put them in a very unusual position. They don’t usually rely as much on one person as they did here. And there’s a limit to that. We don’t know what they’re going to do. I’ve heard conflicting stories that they’re going to to to replace him, they’re not even considering replacing him, etc. etc. etc. But it’s just one more thing.
Loki, created by Michael Waldron, writer of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (88%), is set after the events of Avengers: Endgame (95%) and the story follows the alternate version of Loki who managed to escape The Avengers with the help of the Tesseract. The second season, coming to Disney+ on October 6 this year, will take place after the disastrous events of the last episode and we will see what happens to Loki and Sylvie after they changed the course of the timeline.
So far, Loki is the only Marvel Studios series to get a second season and fans are already looking forward to it. This new season will see the return of Hiddleston as the beloved god of deception, alongside Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius and Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie. In addition, Ke Huy Quan, the Oscar winner for his brilliant performance in Everything Everywhere at Once (91%), also joins the franchise in the new batch of episodes.
While at the end of the first season, Sylvie, the audacious Loki variant who seeks revenge against the TVA (Time Variance Authority) at any cost, succeeds and assassinates He Who Remains, her actions cause serious damage to the timelines and even fracture the multiverse. Although He Who Remains explains to Sylvie that killing him would only bring about an even worse version of himself, referring to Kang the Conqueror, she did it anyway and ends up unleashing a disaster of incalculable magnitude.