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Here’s A Loki Recap Before Season 2 — Because It’s Been A While

Including the Spider-Man connection you might have missed.

by Grace Wehniainen
Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston on 'Loki.' Photo via Marvel Studios
Gareth Gatrell/Marvel Studios

More than two years after the game-changing Loki Season 1 finale, the God of Mischief returns for a second round at Disney+.

“We made a weird show [in Season 1], and people responded to how weird it was,” executive producer Kevin Wright told Entertainment Weekly. “So, we wanted to push it further.”

Season 2, which drops on Oct. 6, begins right where the first left off, but it’s been a while in the real world! So, if you need a Loki Season 1 recap to prepare for the latest installment, here’s a refresher on some of the key reveals from Season 1, as well as the greater MCU events likely to impact Season 2.

The Actual Meaning Of The TVA

After his escape in Avengers: Endgame, Loki was brought to the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic agency tasked with protecting the Sacred Timeline and “pruning” any events that diverge from the predestined path. Through the TVA, Loki met a variant of himself (Sylvie) and an agent, Mobius, and allied with them. He eventually learned that the agency was run by unwitting variants of real people back on Earth. Ravonna Renslayer, for example, was a school principal in the real world, and by the end of Season 1, was seen leaving the TVA in search of free will.

Ravonna Renslayer could play a major part in Season 2, given the character’s ties to Kang the Conqueror in the comics.

He Who Remains

During the Season 1 finale, Loki and Sylvie met He Who Remains (aka, a variant of Kang the Conqueror). The mysterious figure explained that his variants had once fought each other for control, causing a Multiversal War to break out. The TVA was a way to keep them in check and protect the universe from catastrophe.

While Loki didn’t want to kill him (“What if by taking him out, we risk unleashing something even worse?”), Sylvie sent Loki back to the TVA and took care of the deed herself — deciding that free will was more important than whatever He Who Remains was worried about. This caused the Sacred Timeline to branch out in countless directions beyond repair.

The Timeline Changed

Loki was right! Returning to the TVA, he learned that Sylvie’s decision a massive ripple effect. For starters, the agency now had a giant statue honoring Kang the Conqueror, suggesting that the dangerous variant was able to, well, conquer. Mobius also didn’t remember Loki at all, suggesting that Kang had made some changes.

And that’s just what we could see in Loki...

Marvel Studios

Meanwhile, In The Multiverse

Several new MCU titles released between Loki’s first two seasons deal with the multiverse. Both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for example, depict variants of their respective heroes. As MCU producer Richie Palmer explained in a Marvel interview, He Who Remain’s death triggered a “reactivation of the multiverse.”

A Direct Kang Connection

In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, viewers got a glimpse of what He Who Remains was worried about: one of his variants, Kang the Conqueror. One of the film’s post-credits scenes showed the variants assembling after Kang’s (apparent) death. They worry that the multiverse is being tampered with and announce plans to stop the Avengers from doing it again.

A second scene showed Loki and Mobius observing one Kang variant, Victor Timely, in an old-fashioned setting, signaling that the multiversal villains were infiltrating different eras.