“Do you really believe in this Loki Variant?” “Luckily, he believes in himself enough for the both of us.”
That’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s character speaking to that of Luke Wilson’s Time Variance Authority officer, and yes, those two lines are quite encouraging for the Loki standalone series coming to Disney+. Not only will Loki be made to atone for his time crimes — in particular, the fine mess he’s made by snatching the Tesseract during Endgame — but the God of Mischief have to help fix them, too.
In other words, Loki is still burdened with glorious purpose. The timeline, of course, is a bit confusing here. We know that the show takes place following the events of Avengers: Endgame, but we also know that this show’s entire theme has to do with time, so expect some extra theatrics on that subject. Yet we also witnessed time-travel shenanigans at the end of Endgame, and Steve Rogers presumably fixed some things, but obviously not everything. Hey, Steve was distracted by returning to Peggy, so cut him a break.
With that said, we know that Thanos killed Loki at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War. Yet we saw the Trickster reappear and snatch that Time Stone at the end of Endgame. So, it’s impossible to know Loki’s true essence here — is he the somewhat reformed version, or nah? — and we rarely truly know what’s going on inside of that unlikely Frost Giant exterior. Whatever the case, he’s bound to keep us on his toes.
Loki will debut on Disney+ on June 22.