At this point, it’s to be expected that every tiny detail in the MCU is connected to the bigger picture in some way. It makes sense, then, that fans watching Loki season 2 (us included) thought they had spotted a big teaser for the arrival of the X-Men, but sadly, we were all wrong.
The MCU‘s latest venture has a big job on its hands. Not only does Loki need to tie together all the multiversal ideas floating around in Marvel’s Phase 5, but there is a big expectation that the Marvel series will lay the groundwork for future stories, too. So, when we saw a big X on a door in the TVA headquarters, our imagination ran wild, and we thought the X-Men were about to make a cameo—silly us.
Speaking on the Phase Zero podcast, Loki director and production designer Kasra Farahani put that theory to bed once and for all. “No, I don’t even know the doors people are talking about. We were looking at subterranean missile bunkers… from the Cold War era. There’s some insanely heavy fortified doors in those bunkers, and that’s where the doors come from.”
As you can see from the images below (Loki door on the left, X-Men door on the right), the similarities are pretty strong. The mutants have already been teased in Ms Marvel, and Kevin Feige has confirmed that our favorite X-Men characters will appear in the MCU at some point; we just don’t quite know when. So, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the TVA might have some links to that side of the universe.
Realistically, though, I think we all got a bit carried away, and, had we actually thought about it, we’d realize how unlikely the supposed Easter egg was. The door in Loki season 2 leads to Ouroboros and the Temporal Loom. Yes, this in theory, gives the Marvel characters access to other timelines (the X-Men timeline perhaps being one of them), but that still doesn’t explain why the TVA would use the same interior designer as Professor Charles Xavier.
The TVA was created by Kang the Conqueror, who has no real affiliation with the X-Men. I’m pretty sure that in his quest to rule the multiverse, he had bigger things to worry about than wanting to copy a door he may or may not have seen hidden away in a mutant school.
Speaking of that door, in the X-Men movies that is the high-security entrance to Cerebro, the device which allows Professor X to enhance his telepathic abilities and reach mutants across the world. Aside from the convenience of having the X symbol there, I think the design choice is more out of practicality than anything else.
As Farahani says, the military facilities they took inspiration from for Loki had doors similar to this, purely for the fact they are incredibly secure, and we know that Charles Xavier needed to keep Cerebro as safe as possible.
Said door did appear in Deadpool 2, however, and with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine showing up in Deadpool 3, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another X-shaped lock on a few doors in the upcoming Marvel movie. Just don’t expect the God of Mischief to be behind any of them.
For more from the MCU, check out our guide to Marvel’s Phase 6 to really see into the future, or stay closer to home with everything we know about new movies like The Marvels (which could feature a mutant or two, who knows). And, if you’re digging Loki, you should read our interview with the executive producer, Kevin Wright to learn all the secrets of the TVA.