Why the Loki Finale Doesn’t End With a Traditional Marvel Post-Credits Scene

Loki will return in Season 2. That reveal ending Episode 6 of the Marvel Studios series, “For All Time. Always,” is a twist on a tradition: a text title card trailing the credits of a Marvel feature film, typically declaring characters like Thor (Chris Hemsworth) or Spider-Man (Tom Holland) will return elsewhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unlike preceding Disney+ series WandaVision or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which end their respective blockbuster finales with post-credits scenes teeing up forthcoming projects like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Armor Wars, Episode 6 of Loki forgoes a traditional tag scene for a stamped Season 2 announcement.

According to Kate Herron, director of all six episodes of Loki, the creative team never planned to end the first season finale with a stinger. Loki aired only one mid-credits scene — in Episode 4, “The Nexus Event” — when the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) is pruned and wakes up in The Void, where he meets other variant Lokis like Kid Loki (Jack Veal) and a Classic version (Richard E. Grant).

“Weirdly, we never went after the kind of mid-credit sequences. I think we always just were thinking just of the story and where we knew we wanted it to end,” Herron told Esquire. “For example, Episode Four, originally Loki was deleted, and then we went straight to him waking up. And it was only in the edit I was like, ‘I think it’d be really cool actually. We should move that scene to mid-credits because then we’ll really feel like Loki has died.’ Because if I watched that moment and then it went to the credits, I’d be like, ‘What?!’”

“For All Time. Always” ends with a frantic Loki warning versions of Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) about the coming of the time-traveling warlord Kang (Jonathan Majors), a variant of He Who Remains (also played by Majors). In a brief credits scene, an opened file in the Time Variance Authority offices is stamped with “Loki will return in Season 2.”

“When we were talking about the best way to talk about Season Two, we were like, ‘Okay, well, let’s do that like a little mid-credits at the end because that is exciting to confirm it in that way,’” Herron said. “I’d say we found both of those in the edit just because we wanted to kind of do it right and have a fun nod to something that Marvel does so well.”

Marvel has not announced a release date for Loki Season 2. All six episodes of Loki Season 1 are now streaming on Disney+.

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