Loki Episode 4 Easter Egg Could Set Up an Unexpected Marvel Villain

The fourth episode of Loki is here and it's a wild one. After a more intimate-feeling, character-driven episode three, this week's "The Nexus Event" turned everything on its head with stunning reveals, surprising moments, and a whole lot of incredible chaos that is going to leave fans questioning everything between now and the next episode. One of those questions involves who is really the villain of the Disney+ series and now the episode's post-credits scene may be the setup for a very unexpected villain - and no, it's not Kang.

WARNING: Spoilers for Episode 4 of Loki, "The Nexus Event", below.

The fourth episode of Loki blows up the entire series. It's definitively revealed that the Time Keepers are not real as they are actually just robots meant to keep the illusion of Time Keepers. It's Hunter B-15 is shown the truth about the TVA and Mobius comes around, too, coming to realize that they were not created by the Time Keepers but are themselves variants. And then, to keep her control of things Renslayer prunes first Mobius and then Loki. It's after Loki's pruning and in the post-credits scene where things get interesting.

You see, Loki isn't dead. He instead finds himself in some strange realm where he is greeted by four other versions of himself - Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Worthy Loki, and Lizard Loki - and the world he is in is one that is in a state of decimation with it being implied that Loki will have to survive whatever this world is he's landed in else he really will be permanently dead.

When you take the grouping of Lokis together along with the decimated world they are in, it doesn't take much to think that maybe Loki has ended up in Battleworld, and with that comes the idea that there could be another villain who is not Kang involved: The Beyonder. As The Hollywood Reporter reminds in their breakdown of the theory that is rapidly gaining some traction among fans, The Beyonder is one of Marvel Comics' most powerful beings as he is the physical manifestation of the multiverse. The Beyonder takes the form of a man and tries to understand human nature, but he's not exactly great at that and instead really just grasps the very black and white concepts of good and evil, which really don't fully encapsulate humanity at all but does work into what he ends up doing. In comics, The Beyond kidnaps many of Earth's heroes and villains and has them fight in an ultimate good versus evil match in, you guessed it, Battleworld. The comic this took place in? Secret Wars from 1984.

While it might be a stretch that The Beyonder is really behind everything, the idea that a version of Secret Wars has already happened in the MCU isn't. The very first episode of Loki, "Glorious Purpose" hinted at it with Miss Minutes' informational video about the TVA explaining the Sacred Timeline and different realities. If a version of Secret Wars has already taken place, the place Loki ended up post-pruning really could be a version of Battleworld left from that war. It doesn't exactly answer the question of if The Beyonder is behind the TVA or if there's more to it, but it certainly makes it at least feasible that The Beyonder could be a factor in this increasingly tangled and wild ride that is Loki, especially as it appears that all of the Lokis don't fit in the black and white boxes of good and evil.

Of course, The Beyonder theory is just one of many. This week's episode also had a pretty great Kang Easter Egg as well with Renslayer's Hunter number being designated as A-23, a sly reference to Avengers #23 which was the character's comic book debut and an issue that also included Kang. Maybe it really will end up being Kang after all, but now there are many more questions and we have to wait until next week for answers.

Loki streams new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+

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