Does Loki Season 2 Debunk a Major Fantastic Four Theory?
Loki Season 2 has debunked a major Marvel theory about the origin of Kang the Conqueror and his connection to the Fantastic Four.
Has Loki Season 2 just debunked a major theory about Kang the Conqueror's connection to the Fantastic Four? It certainly seems that way after Loki Season 2 Episode 3.
(SPOILERS) In "1893" Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) track Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) to the turn of the 20th century, and eccentric inventor Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors).
In Marvel Comics lore, Victor Timely is one of Kang's variants who went back to the 20th Century to influence industry and build up a base of power and technology in the 20th-21st centuries, in order to battle Marvel Heroes. However, Loki Episode 3 completely flips around that origin by revealing how Miss Minutes instructs Ravonna to visit Victor as a young boy, and deliver a copy of the TVA guidebook to him. That temporal intervention inspired Victor with his earliest conceptual ideas for the Time Loom and other time travel theories and technologies – but it also directly undercuts the part of Kang the Conqueror's backstory that ties him to the Fantastic Four!
Kang's true identity in Marvel Comics is that of "Nathaniel Richards," a 31st-century scholar and distant descendant of Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, leader of the Fantastic Four. Nathaniel discovered Dr. Doom time-travel technology preserved in the future and used to start going back in time and take on new identities – including Eygptian pharaoh Rama-Tut, and armored villain Scarlet Centurion, who could pull variant Avengers from alternate timelines. When that didn't work, Nathaniel tried to go back to the future – only to end up in a more distant future than his own, where advanced weaponry resulted in a war-torn Earth. That dystopian universe became the first Nathaniel would "conquer," re-inventing himself as "Kang the Conqueror" and starting an entire campaign of conquering different time periods and alternate universes of the Marvel Multiverse. One of his variant Kang personas became Victor Timely, traveling to 1900s Winconson to make himself a beachhead in that time.
How Loki Changes Kang's Origin
Loki has now clearly flipped the script on Kang the Conqueror and Victor Timely's connection. Marvel fans speculated that Victor would be revealed to be Kang hiding out in the 19th century – but Loki Season 2 Episode 3 makes it clear that this is genuinely the Victor Timely of that era, who knows nothing about Kang or actual time travel. The events of the episode also hint that time loop mechanics are actually working in a way where Victor's studies create both his future "Kang" persona and the TVA – with the latter in turn being responsible for inspiring Victor to become Kang and start the Multiverse War.
That's a very big divergence from Marvel Comics history – but arguably a more intriguing one.
Loki Season 2 is streaming new episodes Thursday nights on Disney+.