WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EPISODE 4 OF “LOKI”
Once again, Marvel has seemingly killed off most of our heroes with the cliffhanger ending of episode 4 of “Loki.” So, what happens now? Well, in the two episodes that remain this season, the show’s executive producer warns that one promise still holds true: “war is coming.”
In the final moments of this week’s episode, now streaming on Disney+, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his comrades — Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) included — are racing against the clock to keep the time loom from exploding and destroying, well, everything. Knowing that they only have one shot, Timely decides it’s him that should go, considering it was a variant of him that caused these problems in the first place.
Unfortunately, he makes it roughly two whole steps before his body is shredded into spaghetti, as OB (Ke Huy Quan) warned could happen. So, Loki, Sylvie, Mobius and the rest can do nothing but watch as the loom destructs, seemingly killing them all in the process. Of course, Loki has survived an apparent death a few times before, so perhaps he will again.
“Loki” executive producer Kevin Wright won’t say, but notes that Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) remain “a big problem.”
“Look with what happens at the end of four, we don’t know where anybody is, or where they’re going, or if they’re alive,” Wright told TheWrap. “I think the thing that I would say is, if we were able to get back to that TVA, do Renslayer and Miss Minutes know what needs to be done to get time and reality back on track? Is Victor a key element to that? I mean, obviously they felt like he was for the TVA.”
He continued, “I would suggest that maybe reality is in even graver danger now. Because even without Victor Timely, the warning still holds true: war is coming. The TVA, in Loki’s opinion, was the only thing that maybe stood between that war and reality crumbling. If somehow they are able to get reality back after episode four, I would say they still have a very serious problem to deal with. And they maybe have just lost a very valuable tool in Victor Timely, who was essential to getting that mission on track.”
That said, Victor Timely was never long for this world. Wright admitted that he and his team always planned on making him a good guy, subverting what was teased at the end of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
“We always knew that the He Who Remains variant that we use in the season would not be the villain,” Wright said. “When we decided Victor, we were like, ‘The funnest version of Victor is if he’s got to join the team and be a part of it.’ Because that messes with the character dynamics of how Sylvie’s gonna feel, how Loki’s gonna feel.”
Having worked with Tom Hiddleston on the show in season one, Wright added that Miss Minutes was similarly always destined to be a bigger threat, considering the wealth of information she had in her archives. But, he wouldn’t dub her the stereotypical “big bad.” In fact, no one has really earned that title yet — not even Renslayer.
“I don’t think Renslayer is purely bad,” he said. “She’s making some very awful choices, but one of my favorite things is in the beginning of that ep. 4 when you see, like, she was there. She helped build this place and I’m sure it will resonate with many women, of being like, you had a huge part in building something and you’re kind of given a backseat.”
He added, “The pairings felt like they came about naturally, but it wasn’t from ‘Oh, who’s gonna be the big bad?’ Because so much of our show anyway has been everybody’s in the gray area in some way.”
Beyond that, Wright is tight-lipped about what’s to come in the final two episodes of the season. His only tease is that they’re his personal favorites.
“They’re my favorite. Five and six are deeply beautiful,” he said.
New episodes of “Loki” drop every Thursday at 6 p.m. PT on Disney+.