‘Loki’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Will Loki Return In The MCU?

After two seasons, 12 episodes, and six movies, we finally have a fitting close for the story Tom Hiddleston began with Loki way back in 2011’s Thor, with the ending of Loki Season 2. Or… Do we? Will Loki return in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Is Tom Hiddleston done playing Loki? Are we done with the MCU? Is Marvel done? Is life finite and the icy embrace of death comes for us all eventually?

Look, we can only answer some of those questions (the last one is a big ol’ yes), but that’s not the point of this article. The point is to break down the potentially confusing ending of Loki Season 2. And I’ll tell you what brother, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

But first, some recap.

Loki Season 2 Finale Plot Summary:

The big, over-arching plot of Loki Season 2, which was interrupted a few times for some other things, was Loki trying to stop the destruction of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) thanks to an exploding doohickey called The Loom. It wasn’t readily apparent what the Loom did to viewers, which was purposeful because we found out its reason for being in the finale — and we’ll get to that in a second.

But first, it’s important to know that Loki was time-slipping, a power that was initially a detriment but ultimately he got under control. That meant that after a jaunt to various alternate timelines, Loki was now able to Groundhog Day himself around the exploding Loom. It took hundreds of tries and thousands of years (literally), but ultimately he was able to coach Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) into getting to a doohickey at the end of a bridge and shooting another doohickey into the doohickey which is The Loom. They managed to widen the Loom enough so that multiple branching timelines could go through and even got Timely back safely to the TVA.

Only problem: the ad geniuses who came up with this one didn’t count on the fact that there are an infinite amount of timelines in a multiverse. And it is very hard to stuff an infinite amount of something through one thing (aka, The Loom). So it explodes again.

To give you the short version here, Loki ends up jumping back to the Loki Season 1 finale to stop Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) from killing He Who Remains (also Majors) in an attempt to stop the chain of events that brought them to the multiverse expanding and the exploding Loom. That’s where Loki discovers He Who Remains was pulling the strings the whole time. The time-slipping, the exploding Loom, all of it was a failsafe that if someone killed him, they would quickly realize they needed him alive. The choice He Who Remains gives Loki is: kill him and multiversal war destroys all timelines; or keep him alive and together they can keep one, Sacred Timeline going.

Loki also realizes he’s never going to stop Sylvie from killing He Who Remains — which means killing her, instead. After a conversation with Mobius (Owen Wilson) from back in the premiere episode of Loki Season 1, and another conversation with Sylvie from Loki Season 2, Episode 5, he knows he can’t do that, either. That’s when Loki realizes He Who Remains isn’t just about “he’s the only one left” but also the remainder in an actual equation. Loki decides on a third path.

Loki Season 2 Ending Explained:

Loki heads back to the TVA, immediately before the Loom explodes and before Victor Timely heads outside to heroically turn into spaghetti. Instead, Loki heads out onto the bridge himself, sans time-suit. As the waves of wild time buffet him, his clothes change into green robes. A horned crown grows on his head. And he uses his power to blow up the Loom.

He’s not done yet, as the force of exploding the Loom kills the branches of the timeline. Gathering them in his hands he begins to reignite the multiverse with his own sheer power. He walks the bridge, climbs stairs of his own making, and sits in the chair left from He Who Remains’ citadel at the End of Time, now a golden throne. Loki is powering the multiverse, sitting on a throne, and wearing a crown. He is now God Loki, lord of the Multiverse, the power he always wanted… And he’s completely alone, something he never wanted.

Oh, also the timelines all look like a tree, or Yggdrasil the World Tree from Norse mythology if you prefer.

We then cut to “After” and find out exactly what happened to everyone else. Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) is now running the TVA, which is tasked with keeping the multiverse tree healthy (the opposite of pruning branches that they did before) and tracking down rogue variants of He Who Remains. Mobius briefly mentions one variant who went wild on a “616 adjacent realm” which is a reference to Kang (once again, Majors) in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) and Casey (Eugene Cordero) are working on bringing back Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) in hopefully less murder-y form.

That’s when Mobius decides to leave the TVA, at least for the time being (he’ll be back in Deadpool 3). He instead finally looks at what his life could have been on the branched timeline where he’s a jet ski salesman with two kids he kind of hates. As he watches wistfully, Sylvie approaches. She has no idea what’s next for her, but she’s pretty excited about it. All the while, Loki sits alone on his throne, holding the more limited version of the multiverse together.

So is that it for Loki? Is Tom Hiddleston done with the MCU? Given the whole story — if they decide to move forward with it — is about the multiverse getting destroyed and whittled down to one patchwork planet in Avengers: Secret Wars, presumably God Loki who is holding the multiverse together could have something to say about that. And in a recent interview, Hiddleston said it was “unwise” to consider his time as Loki over. It may be a while until we see him again, but yeah, we’re thinking he’ll be back.

All episodes of Loki are now streaming on Disney+.