How Loki Season 1's Steamy Love Scenes Could Have Changed The MCU For The Better

One critique that's materialized surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe is how everyone in these movies and shows is extremely attractive, but hardly anyone ever has sex. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gets it on in his first movie, but that happened before Disney purchased Marvel Studios. Since then, many heroes have been relatively chaste, with their sexuality confined to passionate kisses.

Things have changed somewhat in the past few years. "Eternals" has a steamy sex scene between Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden). Plus, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) have some fun under the sheets in one episode of "WandaVision." While no one's expecting anything that would warrant an R rating, it wouldn't be out of the question for there to be some implied funny business going on.

As it turns out, "Loki" could've helped shift this discourse. The god of mischief (Tom Hiddleston) develops feelings for his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and the two share a kiss. Loki also reveals how he's had male and female partners in the past. If some behind-the-scenes footage is any indication, the writers had grander plans to make Loki a far more sexual being, at least in the early stages. While the creatives behind the show dropped these plot points, adding them could've helped make "Loki" a more serious show, opening up discussions that don't normally occur with superhero properties. Instead of barely addressing such a prominent character's sexuality, the Disney+ series could've really honed in on it and perhaps could've made some viewers more comfortable with their own identities.

The YouTube channel New Rockstars has a video breaking down some behind-the-scenes featurettes of the first season of "Loki" featured on the "Marvel Studios: Assembled" docuseries. There are many fascinating tidbits to glean, including the fact that, at one point, they planned on sending the characters to a planet filled with capybaras. However, there are also some notes about the character arc Loki was going to take, such as one plot point described as "doing crazy mischief aka sex." This wouldn't have been a one-off occurrence either — further down, the whiteboard reads, "Has the [Infinity] gauntlet, takes power, more sex. Bi, alien, etc."

It sounds like the writers wanted to explore Loki's sexuality in the series, and it definitely makes sense that Loki would refer to sex as "doing crazy mischief." However, as anyone who's seen the series can attest, aside from confirmation that Loki is attracted to multiple genders, his sexuality isn't explored too deeply. And there's certainly nothing where he acts on such urges aside from kissing Sylvie. But taking "Loki" in a more adult direction, even if it stayed in PG-13 territory, could've helped give the MCU some gravitas so that it's not all just blue beams going into the sky. Viewers would've seen that Marvel shows can tackle deeper subjects instead of merely paying lip service.

It's also unclear how far along these theoretical Loki sex scenes got. In early writing stages, many ideas get thrown out there, so there's a chance this was an inkling of an idea at one point but never went any further than that. After all, there wasn't a capybara planet either, so a lot of good ideas went down the tube.