Avengers: Endgame Setting Up Loki Disney+ Series Happened on Accident

With a three-hour runtime and half of the universe to save, Avengers: Endgame certainly covered a lot of ground in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the process, the film brought quite a lot of Easter eggs and plot threads into the fray, many of which are expected to be explored in the franchise’s future. One of the most-speculated-about ones has been the “return” of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who was able to steal the Tesseract during the film’s time travel to 2012. The fact that Loki most likely created a new timeline in the process is set to be explored in the upcoming Loki Disney+ series — but it sounds like that wasn’t initially part of the plan. During ComicBook.com’s Quarantine Watch Party of Avengers: Endgame, co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely revealed that they had only added that Loki plotline as a way to shake up the events of the “time heist”.

It’s safe to say that they succeeded in that regard, as the limited series is expected to follow Loki in a new and uncertain timeline, which was created by himself stealing the Tesseract in 2012. An Easter egg in Marvel’s Super Bowl teaser earlier this year, hinted that this will put Loki in the crosshairs of the Time Variance Authority, a Marvel Comics group which is tasked with fixing alterations to history.

“The intent was that he was going to correct the past timelines at the point that the stones left,” Endgame co-director Joe Russo explained last year. “Loki, when he teleports away with the Time Stone, would create his own timeline. It gets very complicated, but it would be impossible for [Cap] to rectify the timeline unless he found Loki. The minute that Loki does something as dramatic as take the Space Stone, he creates a branched reality.”

“We’re dealing with this idea of multiverses and branched realities, so there are many realities,” co-director Anthony Russo added.

The cast for Loki also includes Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant, and Sophia Di Martino.

Loki will tentatively debut in 2021 exclusively on Disney+. Avengers: Endgame is currently available to stream on Disney+.