Unused Loki Concept Art Gave Season 2's Ending A Different Look
The ending of "Loki" Season 2 is a CGI-heavy yet emotional affair where the show's central Loki Laufeyson variant (Tom Hiddleston) takes the place of the malfunctioning Temporal Loom and saves the Marvel Cinematic Universe from destruction by spaghettification, thus finding his glorious purpose as the God of Stories who watches over every timeline. The scene that depicts him gathering the ragged timeline strands and reviving them until they form a green-tinted World's Tree is powerful and leaves the villain turned protagonist finally sitting on a throne ... though in far more selfless conditions than he could ever have foreseen.
Loki's ascension is one of the best MCU moments of 2023, but on some other timeline, it may very well look radically different. Artist Karla Ortiz has shared her concept art of the scene, and the colorful images are a whole new take on Loki fixing the Multiverse. "Here's an unused version of the end sequence where #Loki saves literally all of MCU," she wrote on Instagram. "I thought it would be cool if the timelines had crazy colors and a weird more organic texture! Had a BLAST making these!"
Color is an increasingly important element in superhero media
Superhero shows and movies haven't been afraid to be colorful for quite a while now. Gone are the days when Bryan Singer's "X-Men" poured the titular mutant team into tight black leather rather than comics-accurate costumes. Instead, Karla Ortiz's "Loki" concept art is far closer to the vibrant artistic stylings of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse."
"Loki" is one of the wilder Disney+ MCU shows, and it often uses color to code its assorted weirdness, from He Who Remains' (Jonathan Majors) signature purple to the eerie green of the Time Variance Authority's take on a slice of key lime pie — although the colors in the TVA tend to be fairly muted due to its timelessly bureaucratic nature.
Would the bright colors and organic timeline designs of this unused concept art have clashed with the rest of the show's tone, or would they have made Loki's big moment even more impactful? That's hard to say, but Ortiz's vision of the scene is nevertheless extremely impressive.