Hello!
This time I’m writing about Loki episode 6, which dropped on Wednesday 14 July — the points I want to highlight, the analysis, and on top of that my predictions for what comes next.
This post runs briefly through the things that caught my eye on a first viewing and the Easter eggs, and then gets into the analysis.
Spoilers ahead
The episode-by-episode reviews of WandaVision, which aired earlier, are here!
For The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode-by-episode reviews, click the image below!
For the Loki episode-by-episode reviews, check the image below!
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun lately. The camera is a ZV-1 — shoot in RAW, edit in Lightroom, that kind of thing.
This time I shot around Ueno and a few other places.
The opening was electric!
Packed with the great lines of the MCU so far!
The music playing over it is Captain America’s beloved “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.”
Just as I’ve been saying since around the episode 4 analysis, Miss Minutes really was one of the people behind it all
She never even got destroyed in the end, though — will she be lending a hand with something in season 2 or somewhere
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAH!!!!! Kang the Conqueror is FINALLY HEEEEEEEERE!!!!!!!!!!
In the show he was only ever called He Who Remains, but out of his own mouth came a ruler, a conqueror, He Who Remains, and that he’s been called a jackass too, so this is obviously Kang the Conqueror. He has plenty of other names in the comics as well, by the way: Kang the Conqueror / Nathaniel Richards / Iron Lad / Rama-Tut / Scarlet Centurion / Immortus and more.
Well now — I’ve been saying on this blog since around Infinity War that my post-Thanos prediction was Kang the Conqueror, so it’s finally come true!! Massively happy about this. In the post below in particular I’ve written out a fairly detailed prediction, so if there’s time to spare, do read it and see how far off it is from where we are now lol
Right, first up: who is Kang the Conqueror?
Kang the Conqueror is a figure from the future in the comics, a famous villain who clashes with the Avengers again and again, much like Thanos. He’s also a descendant of Reed Richards, the stretchy man of the Fantastic Four.
His strong suit is calling in versions of himself from all sorts of points in time to fight alongside him lol
On top of that, he’s deeply tied up in the birth of the X-Men. In the comics Kang time-travels to ancient Egypt, and there he creates a monster called Apocalypse. Apocalypse is in fact the forefather of the mutants, which is to say Kang can be called the root cause of mutants existing at all. But Endgame established that changing the past has no effect on the future, so who knows how that goes… For more detail on Kang, have a look at this Wikipedia page lol
Apparently the even-further-future version of Kang the Conqueror is called Immortus, by the way.
And it looks like this Kang the Conqueror is the main villain of Ant-Man 3, of all things. He’s a Thanos-tier villain and yet it’s an Ant-Man film, so how he gets handled there has me quite excited. Wonder if Iron Lad shows up. More on that in the second half of this post!
https://theriver.jp/antman3-villain-kang/
In this show he’s set up as an ordinary human of the 31st century, but a super-genius who discovered the multiverse. What he fears is his own variants. Which is to say they must surely turn out to be Kang the Conqueror / Nathaniel Richards / Iron Lad / Rama-Tut / Scarlet Centurion / Immortus and the rest
In the show he’s lived thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of millions of years, so he’s grown bored of life, and he set a trial for the Lokis — who could become his successors, or his destroyers — and let them decide the fate of the multiverse.
When Sylvie killed him he said “see you soon.” Well, that’s probably a give-my-regards-to-the-other-variants sort of meaning
As for how he pulled all the other timelines together — he just fed spacetime to Alioth, the creature born out of a rift in reality, and that was that lol
Thanks (?) to Sylvie, the multiverse is finally unlocked in the MCU!!!
It now seems very much on the cards that a film released from here on looks like a Sacred Timeline story and turns out to have been a different timeline all along
Unlocking the multiverse here is going to have a huge effect on the next show, What If…?, and on Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness! Man, so excited!!
The first Marvel show to get a season 2 renewal! And on a cliffhanger, no less lol
There are loads and loads of things left unresolved, so plenty to look forward to!!
As I wrote above, the effect the multiverse has on the MCU is pretty enormous! Characters who have died can now have an identical version summoned in without much trouble. But that does make the weight of a character living or dying much lighter, so the question is what they do about that.
On the other hand, it also makes crossovers possible with things unconnected to the MCU so far — the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, The Amazing Spider-Man, Deadpool and the like — so that’s something to look forward to
Beyond that, since Kang is the one who created the first mutants in the comics, he looks likely to be the way the X-Men get brought into the MCU, and since he’s a descendant of the Fantastic Four’s hero and has history with Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four’s main villain, it all hints that the X-Men and the Fantastic Four who came over from 20th Century Fox are going to join the MCU properly!!
There are reports that Loki turns up in Doctor Strange 2! But then they did say Loki will be back in season 2… Still, it might just be possible!
The main villain of Phases 4 and 5 looks like it’ll be Kang the Conqueror! And it’d be great if Doctor Doom showed up as well! Because of that history with Kang the Conqueror mentioned above.
The stone statue that turned up at the very end of the season was wearing the comics version of Kang the Conqueror’s outfit! Want to see that purple spacesuit soon————
Can’t wait to see what form the attack takes! What do I do if an Avengers from another dimension with evil in their hearts shows up!!!
If a long gap opens up between seasons and something big happens in the MCU in the meantime (Thanos snapping his fingers, say), that event has to be reflected in the show as well, which is hard on the production side — so season 2 will probably air about a year from now.
Whether the TVA Loki returned to is a different timeline, or whether Kang the Conqueror changed time and conquered it, isn’t clear. But even going back and changing the past only branches things off, and the original Sacred Timeline feels like it takes no damage, so I’m not sure
Personally I’d like the show to clear up the following lol
I wrote about number 5 in detail here
It’d be lovely if he could patch things up with his brother Thor at the end of season 2 too. And will Sylvie become a being who goes around killing Kang variants from here on? Can’t take my eyes off it
Inside He Who Remains’ citadel there were four Time-Keeper statues counting the broken one, which niggled at me a bit. Why go to the trouble of including that shot… Hmm, feels loaded with meaning
The Young Avengers are an Avengers team made up of young heroes. In the comics, one of the alternate versions of Kang the Conqueror is a young man called Iron Lad — and there’s a story where he is the one who founded the Young Avengers.
Let me go into Iron Lad in detail.
The very person who formed the Young Avengers. He is in truth a man of the future from the 30th century, the one who is supposed to become Kang the Conqueror. Visited in the 30th century by his own future self, he travelled through time to the present day to defy that fate, and formed the Young Avengers. But once he understood that changing the future would rewrite history and cost many lives, he accepted his fate and returned to the future.
https://w.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/372.html
Next, let me introduce Cassie Lang, the daughter of Ant-Man’s hero Scott Lang.
She had grown up in Endgame. For Ant-Man 3 the actress is changing from the Endgame one, with Kathryn Newton apparently taking the role.
Cassie Lang’s setup in the comics is as follows.
Apparently in the comics Cassie Lang and Iron Lad are even a couple.
So, given that Kang the Conqueror appearing in Ant-Man 3 is confirmed by the article below, it looks set to be a hugely important film — one that comes with Iron Lad showing up on the way to forming the Young Avengers, the romance with Cassie Lang, and all of that!
https://theriver.jp/antman3-villain-kang/
Elsewhere in the MCU, the groundwork for the Young Avengers is being laid steadily — has anyone else noticed? The members confirmed at this point are as follows
From the left in the image above
• Billy Maximoff / Wiccan (appeared in WandaVision)
• Tommy Maximoff / Speed (appeared in WandaVision)
• Miss America / America Chavez (appears in Doctor Strange 2)
• Kate Bishop (the lead of the Hawkeye show)
• Cassie Lang (Ant-Man’s daughter)
• Elijah (Eli) Bradley (the grandson of Isaiah from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier)
• Young Loki (appeared in the Loki show)
That’s the lot. Elijah is the super-soldier slot, which is to say the Captain America position. I think a lot of people aren’t all that familiar with America Chavez, so let me introduce her setup in the comics
America Chavez (also known as Miss America) is a hero from another dimension called the Utopian Parallel, who first appeared in the 2011 comic Vengeance #1. On top of superhuman power she can fly, but the notable thing is her ability to travel from one dimension to another.
https://cinema-tronix.com/marvel-has-plan-america-chavez-debut-in-doctor-strange-2/
The way it all keeps connecting up is the best. Knowing the comics setup makes it well worth looking forward to how the live-action differs and how they cook it all up!
Seeing Kang the Conqueror’s apple reminded me of the apple in Doctor Strange lol
On July 24, 202…