Over the past decade and a half, Tom Hiddleston has been just as integral to the success of the MCU as any of the original Avengers. It’s hard to imagine the franchise without his presence.
But the latest MCU series, Loki, has forced us to consider a world where Hiddleston’s time as the reformed Marvel villain is over. The Loki season 2 finale ended with the Marvel character locked on the throne of He Who Remains, physically holding all of reality’s timelines together. Not only does it seem to lock Loki in one place for the rest of eternity, but it also acts as an endpoint in his character arc, and Hiddleston himself has said it brings his journey to a natural end.
So that’s it then, right? The show’s over, and Hiddleston’s time as the franchise’s most fascinating character is done, concluding with a mixture of tragedy and triumph. Well… not quite. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, the show’s executive producer, Kevin Wright, clarified what the future holds for Hiddleston and Loki. “In Marvel comics and the history of comics, the end of a comic run doesn’t mean the end of that character or those stories,” he began.
“If there’s another story to be told or further stories to be told with what we’re doing here — and it’s with the right filmmakers and the right writers and the right team — then we would love to continue to see Tom. I also said this in season one, but I honestly think Tom will play Loki until he’s Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki.”
However, don’t get too excited just yet, because Hiddleston himself saw the finale as an end-point. “I think his approach to that performance certainly was [a send-off], and I think we all felt that on set. We wanted this to feel like a proper ending for our show, but that does not mean that there won’t be more Loki or stories within this world.” Wright then added, “We just wanted to give this a proper ending in a way that we often don’t get to do in the MCU.”
Really, that’s all just a lengthy way of saying that Hiddleston is done as Loki for now and that there aren’t any immediate plans to bring him back. However, he and the team behind Loki are open to doing more stories in the future as and when it feels right.
That’s pretty clear and makes a lot of sense. But, honestly? It leaves us feeling conflicted. On the one hand, we firmly believe in preserving the sanctity of good endings, and the finale of Loki season 2 was a very, very good ending. It paid off years of character development and is especially rewarding if you’ve devoted time to rewatching the Marvel movies in order recently. It wasn’t perfect (almost all of the side characters were wasted throughout the season), but it was a neat and graceful conclusion to his story.
… and yet, we want more.
The finale left Loki in an absolutely fascinating position as an all-powerful overseer of the multiverse. It feels like he should be integral to the future of the MCU, both across the Marvel series on TV and the upcoming Marvel movies that are on their way over the next few years across Phase 5 and Phase 6.
Especially with this being the ‘The Multiverse Saga, ‘ Loki now seems more important than ever. We’d love to see him at the heart of events going forward, integral to the whole franchise as one of the final remaining characters who’ve been around since the very start. If he were to be the lead character in Secret Wars mounting the resistance against Kang (or whoever it’ll be), who would argue? Who would say no to more Tom Hiddleston as Loki?
Not us, that’s for sure.
For more Marvel fun, see why the Loki season 2 finale has created more Kang trouble for the franchise. Or, get up to speed on the lore on Yggdrasil. If that’s not enough, see what’s going on with Deadpool 3 and learn about the recent Fantastic Four casting news.