We Now Know The Massive Stakes For Loki In His Disney+ Series
Marvel Studios' "Loki" series is shaping up to be an adventure unlike any other. The Disney+ show will follow the Loki (Tom Hiddleston) variant who escaped with the Tesseract during the time heist in 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," as he works with Owen Wilson's Mobius M. Mobius and the rest of the TVA (Time Variance Authority) to fix the very damage to the timestream that he created by escaping. The series promises to pick up immediately where "Avengers: Endgame" left off, which means the transition from "Endgame" to "Loki" should be fairly seamless.
The latest "Loki" trailer did a lot to establish what the TVA is and what its members want with the God of Mischief, but what the trailer did not do is explain why he agrees to work with the TVA in the first place. Loki wasn't much of a team player in the MCU up until that point, so Marvel fans were understandably surprised to learn that the character will be working with the TVA for at least part of the Disney+ series. Fortunately, it looks like the explanation for that specific "Loki" plot point has finally been revealed today.
Why Loki has to work with the TVA in his Disney+ series
Marvel Comics is already gearing up to release "Marvel's Loki: The Art of the Series" — a companion book filled with "exclusive concept art and behind the scenes interviews” for the upcoming Disney+ series — and included with the book is a new synopsis for "Loki." It reveals that Loki is forced to choose between assisting the TVA in catching "an even greater threat" than him, or "face deletion from reality" for his "crimes against the timeline." In other words, if Loki doesn't help the TVA in the Disney+ series, then he will be erased from existence.
The ultimatum is a pretty great bit of storytelling on Marvel's part because not only does it give the series some pretty major dramatic stakes — what more could Loki have to lose than his very existence? — but it also explains why the god of mischief agrees to work with the TVA. It doesn't look like the character is particularly happy about the partnership either, which is fully in keeping with his established personality. Meanwhile, it's possible that the "greater threat" hinted at in the synopsis could be none other than Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), the dangerous time-traveling villain who is set to make his MCU debut in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." If that turns out to be the case, then it's possible "Loki" may play an even bigger role in the MCU's Phase Four plans than fans realize. But even if Kang isn't in "Loki," it still doesn't look like the title character is going to have a particularly easy time in his eponymous Disney+ series.