Loki episode 6 ending explained: What finale’s last scene means for future of MCU
“I paved the road – you just stepped down it.”
The finale of Loki, which was released on Disney Plus on Wednesday (14 July), has lined up a scary new chapter for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
*Spoilers follow – you have been warned*
Episode six, which fans are excitedly sharing their verdicts on, saw Loki and Sylvie come face to face with He Who Remains, the puppet master behind the Time Variance Authority (TVA).
The introduction has been teased for weeks, and Marvel fans were excited to see Jonathan Majors make his debut as Kang the Conqueror – here called He Who Remains.
From his domain at the end of time, He Who Remains tells a bemused Loki and Sylvie: “Without me, without the TVA – everything burns.”
In his own words: “I’ve been dubbed many names by many people – a ruler, a conqueror, He Who Remains, a jerk. But it’s... it’s not as simple as a name. Eons ago, before the TVA, a variant of myself lived on Earth in the 31st century. He was a scientist and he discovered there were universes stacked on top of his own.”
He Who Remains explains that other versions of himself discovered the same thing, and “shared technology and knowledge” in an attempt to help each other improve their own universes.
However, some versions were evil and yearned to conquer these lands, disintegrating the “peace between realities”, which caused an “all out war”.
He reveals that he harnessed the power of Alioth, the cloud creature Loki and Sylvie enchanted in episode five, weaponising it to end the Multiversal war.
As Kang puts it, he’s a better bet than his evil counterparts. However, he’s now “tired” and wants Loki and Sylvie to take his space as the rulers of the TVA. He suggests anything less would cause Multiversal warfare.
After a tussle with Loki about how to deal with He Who Remains (Loki believes him and thinks he should live), Sylvie kills him, sending Loki back to the TVA. When he gets there, he finds Mobius (Owen Wilson) and warns him that multiple versions of He Who Remains who are about to cause Multiversal war.
But – and it’s a big “but” – Mobius has no idea who Loki is.
As Loki looks around, he sees a giant statue of the timekeeper and realises he’s slap bang in the middle of the wrong timeline. He Who Remains was right; the universe has course corrected and sent one of his evil counterparts directly to the top.
Say hello to Kang the Conqueror.
The destruction of the timeline as we know it (which was ominously teased by Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame) will be explored in Spider-Man: No Way Home as well as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which will be released in December 2021 and March 2022 respectively.
Meanwhile, later in 2022, Kang will make his MCU film debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Speaking about Kang’s introduction, Loki writer Michael Waldron told Marvel.com: “Knowing that Kang was probably going to be the next big cross-movie villain, and because he is a time-traveling, multiversal adversary, it just always made so much sense.”
He added: “You had to leave a lot of meat on the bone in terms of how evil he could be, because that’s He Who Remains’ whole thing, that it’s not me who you should be afraid of. It’s the other versions of me that are going to come. It was trying to really hint at that terrifying evil within without going all the way there.”
If this surprise wasn’t enough for viewers, they were stunned by a mid-credits announcement that big fans of Loki in particular will undoubtedly be extremely happy about.
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Loki is available to stream on Disney Plus. Find a list of how to watch every MCU title in chronological order here.
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