Marvel’s third original series to premiere on Disney+ is quite possibly the most anticipated MCU TV show coming to the streaming service this year. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has been such a massive success for Marvel right from the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so Marvel kept adding the character to more Thor and Avengers stories. This allowed Marvel to explore both the villainous and heroic sides of Loki, with the hero reaching the end of his story in Avengers: Infinity War. Many people thought Loki might have faked his death yet again, but we learned in Endgame that wasn’t the case. Loki from the main MCU timeline died for good when he was killed by Thanos. We also learned in Endgame that a different version of Loki escaped during the Avengers’ fumbled time heist in New York. That’s the Loki whose arc is just getting started. It’s the character who we last saw at the end of the first Avengers film when he was ready to obliterate our planet and conquer it on behalf of Thanos. This is the Loki who will be the protagonist of Marvel’s new TV show.
It’s not just the main character that makes Loki so exciting. The TV series will tell a multiverse story that is quite possibly the most important multiverse story told so far. It could have massive implications for everything that’s about to follow in the MCU. That’s why fans are dying to see what Loki is all about — and you don’t have to wait until Wednesday to see more action from the show. A full 4-minute scene from the first episode of Loki is already available online. Before you read any further though, we’ll warn you that some spoilers for episode 1 follow below.
Marvel has started building up the multiverse with the Ant-Man and Doctor Strange movies, and it all culminated with Endgame, where we saw glimpses of the alternate timelines. We learned of other realities where similar versions of the same characters reside, and those characters can interact with the main timeline. It’s the multiverse that will allow Marvel to resurrect any dead character in future films, just like we saw with multiple characters in Endgame. The film brought us new versions of Thanos, Gamora, and Loki, characters that had already died in the primary reality. We also met two Nebulas in the movie.
The MCU Phase 4 will go even deeper than that, with this year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and next year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness expected to be interconnected multiverse stories.
But this is where Loki will play a vital role in explaining the rules that govern these timelines. Marvel hasn’t made it a secret that Loki will be arrested by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a bureaucratic authority that governs the flow of time. The TVA will conscript the God of Mischief and make him restore order to the impacted timeline, which Loki himself disturbed when he stole the Tesseract in Endgame.
The 4-minute Loki clip that Entertainment Access uploaded to YouTube tackles Loki’s escape in Endgame. This is the scene we’ve been dying to see since Loki vanished from New York in the film. We had no idea where he went or what he’d be up to. It was the kind of loose end that didn’t seem to matter at the time. But we knew Marvel would address it as soon as the Loki TV show was announced several months after Endgame was released.
As you’ll see below, we’ll be treated to Loki’s arrest early in episode 1, and it’s all going to be glorious. The clip also shows the various stages of prisoner processing at the TVA, introducing Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) along the way. As expected, some of these scenes were featured in the many trailers and TV ads we saw so far, so they’re not huge surprises.
Four minutes of mischievous Loki is hardly enough, but you’ll have to make do with this clip until early morning on Wednesday, June 9th, when Loki premieres on Disney+.
