LOKI 001: Loki Academy MCU Orientation

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Attention Marvel Blog True Believers! It seems like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier only just arrived, but now that we’re here at the halfway point of the current Disney+ series, it’s TIME for us to start getting hyped up all over again: a brand-new Loki trailer arrived just recently!

Marvel Blog has deemed this Goose’s Flerken cousin. It’s not a cat until proven otherwise.

Can’t quite remember what Loki was up to before he appeared on the small screen? Are you too distracted by the cat Goose’s cousin to look up Loki’s history? Never fear! We’ve got you covered.

LOKI 001: A History of Trickster

Second to Goose’s cousin, it’s no surprise who the scene-stealing showstopper is in the new trailer: it’s Loki (Tom Hiddleston) himself. What can we say? Here at Marvel Blog, we’ve been fans of Asgard’s trickiest son since he made his first appearance way back in the MCU’s Phase One, where he appeared as the antagonist for Thor (2011).

Photo: Marvel

And so it begins, in 2011, one of 50 back-stabbings by the mischievous trickster. In Thor, Loki plots with his biological father, the King of the Frost Giants, to take the Asgardian throne by sabotaging his brother’s coronation. However, when the Frost Giants attempt to retrieve the source of their magic, Loki turns on them as well.

Photo: Marvel Studios

From there, Loki encounters Thanos, who gives him command of the Scepter and Chitauri army to conquer Earth and retrieve the remaining Infinity Stones protected by the Avengers. Thus, Loki next appeared as the antagonist in The Avengers (2012), in which he manages to retrieve the Tesseract for Thanos before the heroes save the day.

Loki 001 Photo: Marvel Studios

After Avengers, Thor returns Loki to Asgard so that he can stand trial for his crimes against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Next, he reappears in the Asgardian Club Fed before Thor breaks him out of the dungeons in Thor: The Dark World (2013).

Photo: Marvel

And in ultimate Loki style, he’s freed so that he can rule over Asgard and the Nine Realms as Odin in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) – you know, before he switches sides and joins Thor and the Revengers for the Jack Kirby climax of the movie.

Vote Loki’s Glory. Photo: Marvel Studios

In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), after trying to take out Thanos before the title credits even rolled, Loki was killed in the first moments of the movie by the Mad Titan.

However, in Avengers: Endgame (2019), when the Avengers traveled back in time to the Battle of New York, a splinter timeline was created when Loki seized the Cosmic Cube – oh wait, it’s the Tesseract in this universe – and used it to teleport away.

Photo: Quora

And here Loki’s troubles began again…

What’s going with Avengers Tower? Photo: Marvel Studios

T. VARIANT A.

Over the course of the trailer, it becomes clear that shortly after fleeing Avengers Tower via the Tesseract, Loki runs afoul of an organization called the TVA – that’s Time Variance Authority.

Photo: Marvel Studios

It seems as though this is some kind of hybrid judicial system/bureaucracy charged with maintaining the integrity of the timeline, and Loki stealing the Space Stone has done some serious damage. Now Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) is conscripting Loki into service in order to fix that, putting him in a jumpsuit labeled VARIANT and sending him off to various splinter timelines.

Photo: Marvel Studios

One of these seems to contain a store called ROXXCART, suggesting Marvel’s evil conglomerate company ROXXON might have an unusually high degree of power in one of these parallel timelines.

Photo: Marvel

We also see what appears to be a destroyed version of the New York City skyline (including Avengers Tower) and what appears to be a scene with a conversation between Loki and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

Photo: Marvel Studios

For more discussion on what some of these Easter eggs might mean, check out this article from Liam Crowley at The Direct!

LOKI: Arriving Before You Know It

Loki 001 may be over, but the first episode of Loki will be arriving for streaming on Disney+ on June 11th, 2021.

Loki 001 Photo: Marvel Studios

Which timeline are you most excited to see when it does? Marvel Blog wants to hear from you!

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