Loki Season 2: Everything to Remember From the MCU So Far

The sophomore season of Loki is on the horizon, and it is promising to deliver some exciting story beats in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Loki will once again star Tom Hiddleston as the titular trickster, culminating a decade-plus amount of time that he has played the character within the saga. Given that, as well as the show's looming threat of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), there's definitely a lot that needs to be unpacked before we tune into Loki's newest episodes. Let's break down the long and complicated road it has taken to get to Loki Season 2. 

The Past

Loki has been a staple of the MCU nearly since its inception — he was on the periphery of his brother Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) fall to Earth in the first Thor movie, before becoming the principal antagonist of 2012's The Avengers. In that film, Loki's desire to attack Earth became the glue that brought Earth's Mightiest Heroes together, ultimately culminating in Loki being captured and brought back to Asgard. 

Across Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok, Loki's dynamic with his family began to be put to the test, with him ultimately forming a stronger alliance with his brother. This was all thrown out the window with the arrival of Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his ship of hostile warriors, who decimated a number of the remaining survivors of Asgard and brutally killed Loki with his bare hands in the opening minutes of Avengers: Infinity War. But in Avengers: Endgame, Loki's story became even more complicated, as the Avengers' time traveling brought them back to 2012 — and led to Loki accidentally escaping with the Tesseract. That brings us to...

The Present

Loki was subsequently found and apprehended by the Time Variance Authority, who accused him of betraying the "Sacred Timeline" by engaging in unauthorized time travel. Loki's clemency came in the form of helping the TVA search for one of his "variants" from another time, who ended up being none other than Sylvie (Sophia di Martino). Loki and Sylvie then peeled off on their own mission to find the Time Keepers, the ancient beings supposedly in charge of the entire TVA. In the ensuing fight, multiple characters learned that the TVA kidnapped and brainwashed real people into becoming their agents.

Ultimately, Loki and Sylvie ended up in a void outside of space and time, guarded by a smoke monster known as Alioth. While crossing paths with multiple other versions of Loki, the pair escaped, ending up in the office of a Kang variant dubbed He Who Remains. In the eyes of He Who Remains, his forming of the Sacred Timeline and the TVA is the last thing preventing a multiversal war, which will kick into motion in the event of his death. Motivated by revenge, Sylvie stabbed He Who Remains and sent Loki back to the TVA — but to an alternate version, where his new friends did not remember he existed and He Who Remains was ruling more publicly.

Decades before (but also after) those events, another version of Kang was banished by his fellow Kangs to the Quantum Realm, where he formed a friendship with Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfieffer). After Janet realized Kang's true intentions and attempted to fight him, they both remained on opposite sides of a war among the Quantum Realm society, as Kang remade the domain into his own personal Chronopolis. Janet was rescued by her family during the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the entire Ant-Man family was then thrown back into the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Eventually, Kang learned of Janet and her family's arrival, blackmailed Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) into retrieving a piece of technology for him from a subatomic level, and revealed his plans to destroy the entire multiverse. A fight ensued, enlisting the freedom fighters of the Quantum Realm, and ultimately culminating in Kang getting shredded by the very quantum engine that was supposed to bring him home. But as the film's post-credits scenes revealed, there are plenty more Kangs to spare, as the Council of Kangs can fill up an entire stadium, and a 19th-century version named Victor Timely is already a popular scientist and inventor.

The Future

While there's no telling how the events of Season 2 of Loki will shake out, it sounds like the events of the series will carry on elsewhere. There are rumors — and even some set photos — from Marvel Studios' forthcoming Deadpool 3 that hint at a crossover with the TVA. 

Kang, meanwhile, is currently poised to be one of the biggest threats the MCU has ever seen, ultimately leading to the highly-anticipated Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. (It is unknown at this point if Majors will continue to reprise his role in those films, amid the actor's ongoing court case and alllegations of abuse.) When the dust ultimately settles on Loki's second season, we'll have to wait and see how much further Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars are teed up.

Loki Season 2 is set to premiere on Thursday, October 5th at 9/8c exclusively on Disney+.