Transcript

Taylor: Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Sisters Assembled. I think it goes without saying that this is going to be the start of a very interesting era for us. I guess that is the best way to put it. 

Katie: We’re in our chaotic era starting today.

Taylor: Or are we in our mischief era starting today?

Katie: I see what you’re trying to do, but I do think it’s just going to be chaotic. So I think I said the right thing.

Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, the entire first season was just chaos. Anyway, if you have any context for what we’re talking about or you just looked at the title, you know that we are talking all things Loki predictions today. And I just want to start off by saying you may have also noticed that this is on a Monday, which is a weird day. We’ve never released an episode on a Monday, I don’t think.

Katie: Unless it was late.

Taylor: Yeah, we’ve done that once or twice, but we’ve never intentionally released an episode on a Monday. But from here on out we will be releasing episodes on a Monday to give us some time based on when the Loki show is premiering to record, edit, and do all the things that we need to do to give you guys a great show. So Mondays from now on until the end of Loki, really, we will be releasing our episodes. So just a heads up that starting this week for the next six following, Mondays are the day, so don’t look for us on Friday or Saturday, which have been our traditional days. Check us out on a Monday. And without further ado, we’re going to get into these Loki predictions. But I do just want to quickly say this is an interesting one because this is the first show we ever covered as a show.

Katie: It is. 

Taylor: So this gives us a good opportunity to say, go check out our Loki Season One coverage. Hopefully, you’ll see a large improvement in quality in both how we run the show and the audio. But I still think a lot of it is valid in terms of helping you as a guide. We’re both going to be rewatching the show or sorry, the first season before the show premieres, so our episodes might be a fun little companion if you are doing the same. Now, I feel like I’ve introed this a million times, so we’re actually going to dive into these Loki predictions. Katie, as always, you are the first one on tap, so get us started.

Katie: Well, so I am nervous. First off, I was going to say avoid our first few seasons or our first season of Loki. Mainly because as somebody who has had the ability to go back in some of the work I’ve been doing on the back end of the podcast and listen to, I think our predictions and one of the episodes, it’s a lot, it’s hard and you know, we were all over the place. Some of the things were right, and some of them were not. But you know, if you want to if you want to take a leap in the past, almost two and a half years later, go ahead. Don’t expect a lot. If you’re listening to us and have found us now, it’s not good and I want to say that now. But we’re so much further.

Taylor: Let’s just, you know, give ourselves a little credit. They were literally our first seven episodes.

Katie: I know. I’m just saying, if you’ve listened to us from that point, you have known we’ve come a long way. But if you have found as much later, it is a rough period to listen to. Our first few episodes are definitely all across-the-board rough. The other reason I’m nervous is because anybody who listens to the show knows the first season of Loki did not do it for me at all.

Taylor: That’s an understatement.

Katie: Yeah, I know. And so I’m so nervous about this show in general. I don’t even know if I fully understood the first season and I’m scared with the lack of knowledge I feel I have to go into Season Two and pretend to understand things I already don’t know. That being said, this looks chaotic and I think I have a couple of concerns because Loki Season One opened up things like No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, and what we expect for Secret Wars. Well, and I should say Quantumania too, just in a different type of way.

Taylor: Yeah.

Katie: What I’m seeing set up so far for Season Two makes me feel like if our heroes are successful heroes, being Loki, Sylvie and I’ll add Mobius into that, that the Multiverse could end up not existing or something weird happens. So I guess right now I want to start from the big opening of the funnel before we get down to the details and think about how could this at the end of the show affect what we know in the MCU with the Multiverse we currently have.

Taylor: I think that is such a good point because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about as well, because I think to boil down what you just said into one sentence, the scale of Loki is too grand for the rest of the MCU.

Katie: Right.

Taylor: What we saw in Loki Season One was essentially the first step or frankly, the most important step to opening the Multiverse. We had no opportunity to do that until Sylvie killed He Who Remains in the finale of Season One. 

Katie: Correct. 

Taylor: Then everything as we all know, that happened in No Way Home and what happened in Multiverse of Madness helped kind of create the chaos or really stoke the chaos, stoke the flames of the Multiverse but this was the first opportunity. Again, a humungous scale, especially when you’re considering where we were in the MCU in terms of the Multiverse at the time. The only real hint we’d gotten up until that point was Pietro, the wrong Pietro, in Wandavision, which is still a sore spot and unclear, and I want them to walk it back. But we’re not going to get into that right now. 

Katie: When we get to that replay, we can go off the way that we went off when we first reacted to it.

Taylor: There was a lot of anger and sadness, I will say.

Katie: Yeah, so we will handle that at a much later time. 

Taylor: Yes, but going back to Loki, I think where I am looking at that for Season Two is exactly what you’re saying. If they succeed, what are the ramifications to the larger Multiverse? We need the Multiverse to be a vehicle for Secret Wars, for, you know, any other Multiverse-related things. Things like Deadpool are obviously going to be a Multiversal movie based on what we’ve heard and seen thus far. And so how are we going to have those types of films if Loki is closing the Multiverse or Loki and team, I should say, are closing the Multiverse? And I think what you’re saying is they’re fighting at the very source. So much of what’s going on right now is peripheral, right? Ant-Man is peripheral stuff. What’s going on in the Quantum realm is not at the center of the issue. But what Loki is dealing with is he actually understands exactly what the heck happened and they know exactly what the issue is and nobody in the entire MCU even has a clue yet. Ant-Man maybe has a little hint, but he’s so far off from truly understanding the scale of what’s happening that it’s really Loki and the team who are the only ones who get it. Maybe some of the mystical people as well but they’re not fighting it, right? The mystical people are not in the battle day to day. It’s Loki and the TVA or potentially against the TVA, that’s confusing again, you know, fighting this battle. And if you’re fighting at the center of the battle and he wins or doesn’t win either way, there’s going to be a consequence to the entire rest of this saga that we’re in. And it’s weird to me that we are at the center of the nut to crack this early in Phase Five. It’s almost like people getting the gauntlet with three stones in Phase Two and a half. Like, it just seems too premature to be where we are. We don’t have anybody else brought in on this yet. And I just don’t know how this is going to play out considering the ramifications that we saw from Season One.

Katie: Right and I think that’s what I’m struggling with the most. And I almost want to zoom out even further if there’s an ability to do that. I don’t want to spend too much time on this because I think this is a wormhole that you and I end up in constantly between the Multiverse and time and everything else that we always have to discuss with it. But quite frankly, the Multiverse and time are two separate things.

Taylor: Yeah, here’s the thing. I don’t know that time and Multiverse are different and here’s why. There are a couple of reasons, but one, the Multiverse is created, or one of the ways that the Multiverse is created is through time travel, so they’re connected in that way. The Avengers had the opportunity to create another Multiverse or another universe, sorry, if they had gone back in time and not returned the Infinity stones to the exact moment that they had taken them like the Ancient One mentioned. The other thing and I’m taking this from Agents of SHIELD, so take this with a grain of salt, but the seventh season is all about time travel, which is tough. And yes, I would like to say I am in the seventh season. I have motored my way through the back half of the show, I’m almost done, actually. But the whole seventh season is about time travel and their theory is less butterfly effect and more what they say make ripples, not waves. There’s a certain threshold to which they can change things that don’t create, they don’t use the word branch, but essentially what they’re saying is there’s a certain threshold of things that they can change up until they’re fine. But if they cross that, which they’re calling a wave, then they’ve now created another universe and they’re doing this all through time traveling and jumping through time. So to me, time and Multiverse go hand in hand because there are, I’m sure, other ways to create a Multiverse that doesn’t involve time travel, but pretty much everything that we’ve seen to date, even outside of Agents of SHIELD, has been time-related, with the exception maybe of the Quantum realm.

Katie: Okay, so I don’t want to completely make you feel like you said all that for no reason. But what I was mainly trying to say is for my understanding I see them as an X-Y axis. One’s X, one’s Y, and you need that both to get somewhere.

Taylor: Right.

Katie: But from my understanding, they’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say. Time is still one entity and part of this while the Multiverse is still another part of this, in the sense of say I did something that causes the said wave and I create a branch and that is going different from that could be like time-related as well. Because remember what we were talking about when we were saying even a couple of episodes ago, and I’m trying to remember for the life of me what episode it was that I can’t remember, but it was a couple ago and it was the sense of 838, what if that’s a different universe but they were in the future of it from where we are in 616, you know what I mean?

Taylor: Yeah. 

Katie: So that’s your X-Y axis. Okay, say, you know, you’re X is the Multiverse, but your Y is what part of time.

Taylor: So if you move straight horizontally up, you can move across universes, but to the exact same date in another universe, if you move exactly horizontally, you’re just straight time traveling.

Katie: Precisely.

Taylor: If you move at a diagonal, you’re moving to another Multiverse at a different date in time or a different universe at a different date and time.

Katie: Yes, if you have an X-Y number, a number for both of them, you would move to a different universe at a different time. That is my understanding.

Taylor: I can get behind that. I don’t think what I said was completely useless because I do think it’s important to understand the relationship between Multiverse and time. But I like your nuance of saying yes related, but not the same thing. I think that’s important to know.

Katie: Right because that’s what I was trying to, I think get to, is that they are still two separate entities because I think you can time travel because think about Loki before they open the Multiverse. They are time-traveling.

Taylor: Yes, correct.

Katie: Multiple times. We see it in Endgame too, you brought up Endgame. They time travel but the Multiverse is not open. 

Taylor: Correct. 

Katie: Because they make sure to do it correctly. So you could still time travel without the Multiverse being open, so they are separate entities. And so I want to start by saying that because I think that helps be a common understanding. But at the same time, I think it muddles where we were understanding things properly because now you have these two points and I’m not really sure looking at Season Two’s trailer, I mean, I see the Sacred Circle, the Sacred Timeline. We see it multiple times and we can get into the details of that soon. I don’t want to start there yet, though.

Taylor: Yeah. 

Katie: We see it, but we also see time travel taking place. We see that happening. So I feel, it’s like one of those things where you logically understand it, but when you try to apply it to a word problem, you’re like, that is not going to happen.

Taylor: Yeah, like my whole experience in math.

Katie: No, literally.

Taylor: Give me the straight equation I’m like, yes, 100% math. But then you give me a word problem and I immediately am like, but what is math.

Katie: Dude I pulled out X Y axis over here.

Taylor: I wasn’t going to point it out, but I was so proud of you. 

Katie: I was flabbergasted at myself that I pulled that out of my butt from like fifth grade when we learned it initially, but I’ll take it.

Taylor: Honestly, I was so proud. It was a good big sister moment, not that I really helped you with any of your homework, but I was like, look at her facing her demons.

Katie: I know. Literally. But that’s how I feel is I feel like it’s even just okay, here is how you find the area of a triangle, but then you got to actually do it. And I’m like, I understand it’s one-half base times height, I get it, but I can’t do it. 

Taylor: But I can’t determine which variable is base and which is high and it’s important in that formula.

Katie: Exactly.

Taylor: No, I totally hear what you’re saying I think, you know, it is interesting because then you bring in the whole idea of Victor Timely, because when you immediately said time travel, my first thought was okay, well, they’re time traveling back into the 18 something or another’s to go see, I don’t know if they intentionally went to go see Victor Timely, because if you think about that very first teaser trailer, or maybe it was an end credits scene?

Katie: It was the end credit in Quantumania.

Taylor: And you see Loki and he’s shocked to see him a little bit because he’s almost in awe and he says, you know, that’s him. And you see the fear in his eyes. So I don’t know if they were intentionally going to see Victor Timely or maybe they were going to see Victor Timely, but he wasn’t expecting it to be a variant of He Who Remains, I’m not sure, but that clearly is time travel. Now, I want to understand and this is opening a whole can of worms, so we don’t have to totally answer this, and we probably can’t. But I guess my question is, when He Who Remains was killed, if he’s holding back all these other timelines, does every timeline or sorry, every branch, I guess is the more accurate word, does every branch automatically get a variant of himself? If so, are we just time traveling at that moment or are we also, to your analogy with the X-Y axis, are we doing a diagonal where we’re not only moving backward in time, but we’re also moving to a different universe? If we are, what’s the point? If he’s in every universe, why that specific universe? Or is there only one of him? Like, I don’t know that we ever answered that question even when we did our deep dive on Kang, if he exists across multiple, he’s not like Wanda, who’s a Nexus being, there’s one of her across the multiverse, right? And we don’t know that. We don’t know.

Katie: Well, Scarlet Witch, specifically.

Taylor: Yes, the Scarlet Witch is a Nexus being there’s only one of her across the Multiverse. I don’t know that we ever definitively said whether or not Kang was a Nexus being, because if you think about it, there’s Victor Timely, who probably exists at the same time as Kang the Conqueror, who probably exists at the same time as the version of him whose name escapes me, who is the most wise version of him, Immortus. They’re all kind of existing at the same time, messing around with the timeline, making sure that each other can either exist or die. So that to me says he’s not a Nexus being, which means there are multiples of him. So why that timeline, why that time, why that version of Victor Timely? We obviously won’t know until the show gets there. But I kind of say all this to say, you know, there’s just going to be a lot. I understand what the ramifications were of the finale, but I don’t understand what the mission is now, right?

Katie: Right. 

Taylor: Because it’s already happened. They can’t put the cat back in the box. That’s not the right analogy but you know what I’m saying.

Katie: I gotcha. So I kind of have some thoughts here that kind of mary I think a lot of what we’re seeing in the trailer. So I want to start with the get-go. We start by seeing Loki timeslipping. We learn what that is and we learn that it’s not supposed to be possible in the TVA, which makes sense, the TVA sits outside of time. That doesn’t make sense to me, but we know that’s a fact. And whether you can wrap your brain around it or not, it is what it is. That is a fact. That is what Marvel has told me. So and I actually think we talked about this when we did our Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse episode, how timeslipping kind of looks like what is happening to the different Spider-Men when they’re in a different universe for too long.

Taylor: Right. 

Katie: And I think we brought that up. I don’t know if we brought it up in that episode because I’m not sure if we had a Loki trailer by then, but I think we got one not long after, and I think it might have been mentioned in one of the episodes just as an offshoot thing. Either that or it happened on a side conversation you and I had, and I’m making this up for the listeners who have no clue what they’re talking about.

Taylor: They all run together. I have no idea.

Katie: Well, that’s what I mean so I’m not entirely sure. Either way, starting from that point, if I were to be like, okay, putting aside what seems to be the bigger problem, which is the fact that the Sacred Timeline is literally falling apart, which will probably be a back burner conversation. But we are going to need to talk about that for like the whole last half of the episode because that seems like a problem that we all are going to have to come to terms with. So putting that on the back burner for the time being, if we focus on his timeslipping and we say, hey, that’s a big issue because it shouldn’t be possible in the TVA and so why is that happening? If they are trying to get to the root of it, I wonder if they go back to Victor Timely as maybe he is the reason something like the TVA came into being. He’s super smart, right? He’s like a scientist. And we see Ravonna who’s in a period piece, who to me, I’m like, okay, cool so she’s there too. Probably as a variant of herself, a different version. So I’m wondering if all of this kind of comes together into, hey, you can help me stop timeslipping, but also you might have been the person who started some of the TVA stuff. He seems smart.

Taylor: Okay, a couple of things, because when you were talking about the timeslipping and you related it to Spider-Man, I think we actually have to take a step back. I don’t think the problem is that he’s timeslipping in the TVA. I think the problem is that he’s timeslipping, period. What does that mean if we’re applying the Spiderverse rules? It means he’s not in his universe, which would then mean-

Katie: The TVA is a universe now.

Taylor: Not necessarily because where I was going is, you know, at the end of Loki Season One, after Loki kills, He Who Remains what happens? Loki gets pushed back, I think, through a door, and he ends up at the TVA and he’s looking for Mobius, and the Mobius he finds does not even know him. So the implication there was that he was actually in a different universe.

Katie: Which is what I got right.

Taylor: Right, which would then kind of make sense with the whole timeslipping. Now the wrinkle there is, there is a producer, a writer, somebody who worked on the show who is talking in a featurette about Season Two, saying, yes, it’s our Mobius and it’s our Loki. So the question then becomes, you know, is he timeslipping for only a little bit? I think the thing we have to think about when we’re referencing any of the trailers is what are the odds that these trailers are showing footage beyond episode three? Probably slim to none. 

Katie: Very true.

Taylor: It’s entirely possible that we will start the show worrying about this timeslipping, the actual solution there is he just has to get back to 616, our universe, the universe he came from, and that you know, that Mobius helps him do it. Then he finds our Mobius, which would answer that question and then we go in this whole search for Kang variants, Victor timely. And then we have to get into the end game, which I know we’re going to save for a minute, but you have your thinking face on so react to what I just said.

Katie: Okay, I don’t want to get us on a tangent with this, so I’m going to ask it, but I don’t want to let us go off on it because we will. Is he technically from 616 because once he didn’t follow the timeline, he technically would have created a branch, which is why he got taken by the TVA? So would that not have eventually become a different universe? Because our 616 Loki is technically dead. And I say technically because I absolutely refuse to say that he is for sure dead.

Taylor: Oh for sure. But can I answer what I think is quickly and then we can close the loop and move on to the other six questions we can’t answer?

Katie: Yeah.

Taylor: I think that because they caught him so quickly, he never had the opportunity to create another branch, right?

Katie: Right, but he was on his way too.

Taylor: Right but because he never did that universe was never created. It was pruned. So he is still technically, even though our Loki 616 Loki is dead in my mind, I think that he is still, I know question mark dead. Katie made a face so dead question mark. I think that this Loki is still 616 Loki because that’s where he’s from and he never had the opportunity to create another timeline and has since other than when they jump across times and now potentially across universes, has lived in the TVA in the time outside of time or the place outside of time. So he’s not mucking up any other universes. So that to me means I’m just going to call him from what universe he came from because he still has all of the memories up until that point of our Loki.

Katie: Yeah, but I feel like we need to clarify because if I thought 616 Loki I think ours, the one who made it into Infinity War for 5 seconds (of Summer). Sorry, had to. But yeah, I just, we need to call it something else then, because even if we say his origin was 616, I just don’t feel, I don’t feel he belongs there anymore.

Taylor: That’s fair. Do we just want to call him Season One Loki?

Katie: Sure. 

Taylor: Okay. 

Katie: He could be Season 1 Loki.

Taylor: S1 Loki.

Katie: I like S1, Loki. I like that.

Taylor: Patent pending or what’s the word? Copyright pending. Can we say that because they own the copyright?

Katie: Trademark?

Taylor: I don’t know. 

Katie: Well, patents aren’t for this. Patents are for inventions and books and stuff, right?

Taylor: Yeah, you’re right. It’s just that-

Katie: It’s trademark.

Taylor: Yeah, it is. It’s just the patent pending is an alliteration and it sounds better.

Katie: Okay, well, trademark trending. I don’t know.

Taylor: And on that note, we’re going to go back to Loki.

Katie: Sorry. Okay, so I just wanted to say that because I just wanted to clarify. So get back to what you were saying as we went off for a little bit. I agree I think. First off, my impression, as I said, was the same. I think he went to a different universe when he was pushed through one of the TVA door things. I don’t think it was a different time. I think he ended up in a different universe. Don’t ask me how, because up until that point, the TVA door things could only move through time to our knowledge.

Taylor: And now that kind of goes back to a comment I said a little flippantly is that you know, they seem to be going across universes, the tempads. So that’s a completely new function. 

Katie: I mean, I guess that makes sense, though, if you really think about it, because in their little pad thingies, they put in coordinates or they put in whatever. So I guess maybe there’s your X-Y axis and now they just are like, okay, well move me to this time and move me to this universe and that’s where I got to go. So I don’t know, let’s just say they recalibrated as soon as the Multiverse was open and they now were allowed to travel to the Multiverse. Let’s just say that for the time being, because I’m not getting into the technological part of that right now. But yes, I was under the same impression that he was pushed to a different universe. That being said, that does explain the timeslipping. However, I am still confused because the TVA is supposed to be sitting at a time. That being said, should I now assume that either the universe he’s in that TVA is somehow not out of time or it didn’t take into account the different universes? Secondly, I need to ask, how did another TVA form in another universe if He Who Remains is the one who built it? Unless the universe he remains in, that he is in right now is Victor Timelys, and they travel back in time. I’m losing Taylor here, but I’m going to keep going. 

Taylor: You had a large question to start but now you’re shoving another large question. You’re expecting me to answer both of them.

Katie: Hold on, I’m going somewhere. What if the universe he’s in is Victor Timelys and Victor Timely becomes He Who Remains and he goes back in time in this universe and Victor Timely all along is the one who becomes He Who Remains and builds that TVA? So he’s in the OG.

Taylor: Okay, I’m going to start with one and break it up into manageable chunks.

Katie: It felt like I got struck through lightning or struck with lightning in the middle of that. And I was like, whoa, a theory is coming or something of that nature. I just have to say it. I think I blacked out. I don’t know what I said.

Taylor: Yeah, I don’t really know what you said either, because I just. I like rage quit in the middle of it so.

Katie: It’s gonna make sense on the recording, though. We just don’t know what I said now.

Taylor: Sure. I’m going to try my best. So to answer your first question about the time slipping in the TVA and how there even is a TVA in other universes, I think you have to take into account at what point that branch comes off, right. Every branch is coming off a different point in time. But that means that up until that branch point everything else was the same, or at least enough the same, that it did not majorly cause a new universe, right?

Kaite: Right. I just want to say that, though, because I don’t want you to go deep into it and then I rebut it. So if we are going off of the fact that everything branches off the Sacred Timeline, the TVA shouldn’t be on the Sacred Timeline. I’m thinking of the TVA as this annoying pimple. Nobody wants it, right? My analogies are going great tonight guys. Your face is supposed to be clear, that is our Sacred Timeline. But then you have this blemish that’s not supposed to be there. That is how I feel. Is like it’s not supposed it’s not directly supposed to be there all the time. 

Taylor: I think that analogy is at its very core, incorrect because the pimple would actually be the branch. If you’re saying the Sacred Timeline is a clear face then the branch is the pimple and the TVA is the face cream.

Kaite: Okay, well, then hold on then let’s talk about it this way. Water and oil don’t mix, right?

Taylor: Correct. 

Katie: So water is the Sacred Timeline and we don’t have branches right now whatever. And you put a dot of oil, the oil’s just going to sit on top of the water. It’s not going to mix in there. That is how I look at the TVA. It does not mix with the Sacred Timeline, it does not belong there because it sits outside of it no matter what you do with it. 

Taylor: Okay. 

Katie: So if things branched, why would the TVA come with it if it doesn’t actually sit on a timeline?

Taylor: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. It’s it’s a good question. If it sits outside of time, I guess the only thing I can think of in terms of an answer is that with the Multiverse, all rules that we were told are off the table. So the idea that the TVA sits out of time is maybe only valid if there is only one timeline. You start integrating other timelines and now timeline is synonymous in this case with universe, you integrate other universes and other timelines, and now the TVA no longer sits separately. I don’t know. That’s that’s my best guess. I know it’s shallow and I don’t have any real evidence for it, but it is a good point. It’s kind of a hole in what we’ve been taught thus far, that they sit outside of time, but that then, you know, we’re expected to believe based on the season finale of one, that, you know, he is in a different timeline. Not only is he in a different timeline, he’s at a different TVA.

Katie: Unless we’re overthinking it.

Taylor: It’s entirely possible.

Katie: And we go back to our OG question, which is the fact that I was like, how does one of the TVA door things suddenly push you to a different universe? What if it just didn’t? What if he is just in a different part of time in the TVA? Remember that all those people working in the TVA have been pruned and pretty much brainwashed. They could exist at any point at this point. And remember, I’ve said it multiple times in multiple episodes about multiple projects, is that Loki, we don’t actually know where it is on the MCU timeline. We could be in 2050 in Loki right now. We could be, you know, in the 1900s, we could be anywhere with this taking place. It’s not running in for sure parallel. The only thing that’s helping us a little is the Multiverse being opened and now maybe closed, which we’ll get to in a second because I think we’re nearing that part of the episode. But maybe he just went back in time to the TVA, like way back in time.

Taylor: Like before Mobius met him. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Taylor: Yeah, I think that’s entirely possible. I like what you’re saying. Like, if, you know, the tempad at the time was not calibrated to jump between universes, then it wouldn’t have, I guess we had all kind of jumped to conclusions if you’re taking that theory, right? We had all jumped to conclusions thinking it was the different Multiverse when up to that point we’d never seen a tempad take you to a different Multiverse or sorry, a different universe.

Katie: Right.

Taylor: Only a different point within the Sacred Timeline.

Katie: We were all just excited about the Multiverse.

Taylor: Yeah, and there is a scene in the trailer which again, take them all with a grain of salt. But there’s a scene in the trailer where you see Loki take one of the pruning wands and stick it into a wall, get rid of what do they call them? 

Katie: The Timekeepers.

Taylor: Yeah, the Timekeepers. And all of a sudden you have Kang behind it. Almost like he’s re-revealing what we saw in the last one or two episodes of Season One.

Katie: Well, here’s my other thought process. He comes out and he sees a massive Kang statue where the Timekeepers were. Say he does go back in time. Maybe there was a time in which He Who Remains didn’t use the Timekeepers as an excuse because remember, it’s like Wizard of Oz. He hid behind them like a curtain. He was the guy pulling all the shots, but they were what people thought were in charge of everything and kept everything going. So maybe he went to a time in which Kang never or He Who Remains more specifically, never used them pretty much as a scapegoat or as his facade, I should say, more accurately. And instead, it’s his face, it’s him, it’s his TVA.

Taylor: The other alternative is that he didn’t go back, he went forward to a time where Kang is openly running the- sorry He Who Remains just to be more specific, is openly running the TVA, but perhaps, they’ve mind wiped them before. Who’s to say they didn’t mind wipe them again after Loki and Sylvie pulled all their little mischief in the place beyond time.

Katie: Right and that wraps all the way back to your thing that I couldn’t remember everything you said back to me. So now I have brought it full circle in which you were saying, how are we seeing our Mobius? Well, that could be part of it. We may never have left the universe. We just might be at a different point in time, in which case he just needs to get himself further, either further or back, depending on- I do like the idea of it also being further like in the future, he needs to get himself back. He doesn’t need to jump around the universes. I’m going to take Loki as yes, things are happening with the Multiverse, but at the core of it, it’s time travel.

Taylor: Right.

Katie: The variants are being caused because of them jumping around and changing things on the timeline and time is getting all screwed up. 

Taylor: And I think this latest theory that Loki never left the universe then goes back to your second part of your very long question that I found overwhelming. The idea of Victor Timely, right? He now doesn’t have to create the TVA. It doesn’t completely get rid of the idea that he is the predecessor of He Who Remains. That’s entirely possible. I mean, I think one thing that I took away from the Kang episode is that Kang evolves to be what he needs to be to either survive or get richer or whatever his motive is for that time period. He evolves to match that. I mean, think of, you know, Kang Industries is something that I think about and how he basically, you know, took the role of a businessman to get what he needed at the time. And so I think I like the idea of Victor Timely then, you know evolving into He Who Remains stepping back from society, creating the TVA because he found that to be a more efficient way of managing the timeline and making sure that, you know, everything that he did, or everything that he wanted was what was happening on the timeline. I think that’s an interesting theory, and I kind of like that in that Loki and Mobius, though we’ve been told time doesn’t work this way. We’re trying to do the whole Rhodey suggestion of killing baby Thanos, right? You eliminate Victor Timely, you eliminate, you know, the man who would then become He Who Remains. Now, again, that’s not exactly how we’ve been told time works in the MCU, but that could be, I don’t know. I feel like there really are no rules anymore because everybody just breaks them so I don’t know.

Katie: Or alternately, we’re going backward and Victor Timely is okay first, I guess I should just say, for those of you who don’t remember in our Kang episode, we had to kind of go through this when we went through a couple of the different big variants of Kang is that they all kind of eventually become each other.

Taylor: Yeah. 

Katie: So one kind of merges in, like he eventually takes on the next form of the next one and whatever. So it’s kind of weird because if you do pluck them all from their respective universes or timelines or whatever, whatever, they could all be in different forms. But over time they tend to kind of morph into each other. So that being said, you know, we could have because in the comics it’s Kang the Conqueror who comes and becomes Victor Timely. He takes on that, that presence. Victor Timely then eventually becomes a different version, which I believe is Kang Prime, who I also believe then takes on a different version of the character. Maybe eventually Immortus, I can’t remember. One of them is like the end point of Kang and I’m blanking on it.

Taylor: And I just want to place some of these characters in where we’ve seen them thus far. We saw Kang the Conqueror in Quantumania. He was the main protagonist, right? 

Katie: Correct. 

Taylor: The guy that they killed at the end or so they say they killed because think about it this way. No body no death. That is the golden rule in the MCU. No body no death. And that man’s body, I mean, I’m sorry, but falling into a time thing, all he did was go somewhere else in time. He is not dead.

Katie: And is he currently in Chicago in the 19 somethings, as Victor Timely? 

Taylor: Entirely possible. Entirely possible. Then you mentioned Immortus. Immortus we see in the end credits scene as one of the three main Kangs that are having a conversation. We obviously see the whole stadium of Kangs, but only three really seem to stand out prominently. Scarlet Centurion, Immortus and Rama Tut. So we have seen some of these versions already, quasi and may or may not be dead, my money’s on not. And then, you know, really coming after Earth what sounded like at the end of Ant-Man. So I just want to give that a little bit of context, because to Katie’s point, a lot of these, can exist at the same time, but because he moves around the timeline so much, even though multiple versions of him can be in the same place at the same time from different timelines because it’s still the same person moving, you know, one becomes the other starts a new timeline, but it’s still from that original Kang, if that makes sense? So yeah, there’s just a lot going on. It’s very circular. His timeline in a lot of ways, it just all kind of melds into one another.

Katie: Yeah, he’s a hard character to kind of pin down, and so we’re going to go with that for him for the time being we’re going to go with that’s kind of why Loki’s, you know, interacting with Victor Timely. I think that’s the main variant we’re going to see throughout Season Two. Unfortunately, whether this is because of how the trailer just happened to be cut or this also goes to obviously the ongoing issues with Jonathan Majors in real life, we don’t really know the level of involvement Victor Timely actually is going to have. What we saw could be it. We might not really see much more or he could be a huge bit of the season. We don’t really know. So that’s just going to have to be an ongoing question mark. But I just want to get us and rip the bandaid off the final big thing because quite honestly, and this is not because I don’t have much love for Sylvie in general, but I just don’t feel like Sylvie needs too much time right now. We actually don’t see as much of her in the trailers as I expect. I think she’ll be in it, but I definitely expected more of her. We’ll find her eventually. That’s what the trailers have pretty much let me know. Loki eventually finds Sylvie.

Taylor: There is one thing that she says in the trailers that I do want to point out and I think is an interesting…

Katie: I know what you’re going to say.

Taylor: Yeah, it’s an interesting door to go down because it opens a lot of possibilities. She says, no matter what we do, we’re basically playing God to which Loki very funnily responds, we’ve always been gods, but I think the essence of what Sylvie is saying is they have now taken on the responsibility of He Who Remains to essentially manage the Multiverse.

Katie: Which is so ironic because that’s literally what he said. He was like, you could take my job or kill me. And at the end of the day, she killed him but it looks like they’re taking his job.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. So I think what he, you know, forewarned is essentially coming true. And that’s, I think why we find her hidden in McDonald’s, because she is quite literally hiding from the responsibility that she took on by murdering that, I don’t call him a man because I’m not really sure what he is at that point. But by murdering that being, she took on the responsibility of making sure the Multiverse doesn’t collapse, because that seems to be, for lack of a better term, the end game of the show based on the voiceovers is we have to make sure the Multiverse doesn’t implode. Now, I don’t want to get too far into this part of the conversation, but I will say it gets a little weird with Secret Wars because- unless, oh God, this is this is where it gets funky. I only read like Secret Wars themselves. I’m sure there are comics leading up to it, but if I remember correctly, the actual Secret Wars happens after every other universe has had an incursion upon itself and so there are only two left.

Katie: Because Battleworld was created.

Taylor: Exactly. There are 616 and whatever universe they decide to collide with, ours, whether that’s 838, a universe we haven’t seen yet, I’m not sure. But what could be happening with Loki, and this kind of gets back to the conversation we were having at the very beginning and that I know we’ll dive deeper into the timeline if they are having this major ramification, maybe we just don’t see them win. If their goal is to control the Multiverse, maybe they fail and they actually end up accelerating us into the first parts of what will become Battleworld. And if you think about what Clea said to Doctor Strange, he started an incursion. Well, maybe it wasn’t just him, right? So many of these pieces go together. Maybe what he did was visible and she can’t necessarily understand and, you know, have a line of sight into what’s happening in the place beyond time and the TVA. But if there are incursions starting to happen, maybe that’s what Loki and Sylvie and team are reacting to. They’re unable to stop it. And we’re starting to see universes collapsing in on one another. And then the beginnings of basically the domino effect of the Multiverse completely falling apart and then we get to Secret Wars. Because here’s the other thing on a more meta sense, if you look at the timeline, how many more properties do we have between here and Secret Wars that actually actively focus on the Multiverse? One or two? 

Katie: Yeah, that was actually going to be something I was just going to point out as well was I was like, if everything stays where it’s at, we’ve got a cosmic movie coming up. We’re going to ignore the shows for right now, we’ve got two ground levels coming up with Thunderbolts and Cap 4. Not in that order, sorry, Cap 4 comes first, and then Thunderbolts. I don’t know what you want to call Blade, but Blade’s in there. And then the only other one prior to the Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars is Fantastic Four, which should, depending on how they go about Fantastic Four, involve this. But if you look at those other five I believe that’s it. 

Taylor: And Deadpool. Deadpool 3. 

Katie: Correct. Deadpool 3 is also going to be really wonky though, so I don’t even want to think about it at the moment, but that is a good one to add as well. That one will have things about this. I’m weary to say how much as far as the technical stuff. 

Taylor: Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to advance the Multiverse in any way. It’s going to use the Multiverse as the centerpiece of its joke.

Katie: Like MoM. Not in a joke, but like it’s going to be the main crux of how the movie works, but it’s not inherently going to move too much around. 

Taylor: It’s going to be a plot device, but it’s not going to move the plot of the Multiverse forward in the same way that a Loki will or this season of Loki absolutely will. 

Katie: Right and like I said, that was just obviously the movies, although if you really look at the TV slate, there’s not a lot there either that should deal with the Multiverse too much. So this is going to be kind of the big moment, I think, and so let’s rip that bandaid off. We are being told that the Sacred Timeline, or Sacred Circle that I have tried so hard to understand its existence and how it works is running out of time. It is falling apart. I don’t know how circles fall apart because they’re circular. So this is kind of throwing away the Sacred Circle right now. 

Taylor: Well, can I? This is my theory and how I am interpreting it. If you’re looking at it’s the Sacred Circle business so sacred anymore because it’s got a bajillion branches coming off of it. And that’s where I think the problem starts. Because if you’re thinking, okay, time’s moving, circle, circle, circle. But then you have all these branches. Now the branches are starting to run into each other. They’re starting to run back potentially into the Sacred Circle. Things are just starting, like the actual foundation is starting to collapse because it’s not strong enough to support a Multiverse, the Sacred Circle. That’s my best guess. 

Katie: I guess I’m just when we were thinking about Sacred Circle when we created this mindset, I don’t think I thought with the Multiverse, we always, and granted this is us saying we’re wrong because this would mean we are because we kind of said we have the Sacred Circle and then the Multiverse kind of could start to create itself above it. But we have branches that connect through each of them, and then we kind of said, well, the branch would start, but then it would kind of start creating its own circle and then another branch could start, but it would start creating its other circle. But from what we’re seeing and what that thought process that you just said it kind of says is that is not how this works. And if we look at the actual image that we see in the trailer where they look to have like some weird device trying to hold together the timeline and it’s almost like you know, how like they have those train track thingies that are like putting down the tracks. It’s almost like that. It’s like trying to keep the timeline going and sewing it back together. It looks like almost so many branches are coming out of it that there’s just no Sacred Timeline left anymore.

Taylor: Yeah, no, that’s a really good analogy because I know I can picture the exact image that your looking at right now. 

Katie: You know exactly what I’m saying.  

Taylor: Yeah, Yeah. And it’s kind of colorful and pretty beautiful if it didn’t mean the, you know, entire collapse of the Multiverse.

Katie: Yeah. 

Taylor: Yeah, I don’t know then how that aligns with the idea of incursions, because at the end of the day, that’s the one North star that we have is unless they’re completely mismoshing the entire concept of Secret Wars, you have to have incursions in order to get there. That is the main point. And people are going to not be okay with you changing the entire plot of one of the most important resets in the comics. So everything has to be set through an incursion lens or viewed through an incursion lens and how that works together or the entire fabric of this phase or saga doesn’t work. 

Katie: Hear me out. This might be another moment of me going off on a theory that might only make sense when you play it back. What if we’re semi-backpedaling incursions? So the idea of the incursion is two universes or, you know, let’s just say how many we want, right? It could be a lot, hit each other, and are pretty much like slamming into each other like two tectonic plates of the earth. We’re creating earthquakes.

Taylor: Universe quakes?

Katie: Sure. That’s the simplified version, right? Like that’s where we’re at. What if what we’re seeing in that image is because the Sacred Timeline is falling apart and because it has these different branches that, you know, instead of just one solid strand, we’re seeing 17, but they’re all still hitting each other because they’re still coming off the Sacred Timeline. So what if the incursions are taking place right as that thing that’s trying to sew it all together, the incursions are happening on the other side of it, and that is the end of time. That’s the end of this universe itself because it falls apart after that. I’m getting a really great blank look from Taylor. 

Taylor: I am trying so hard to wrap my mind around it, but I also am watching Time Travel and Agents of SHIELD, and that’s really messing me so maybe that wasn’t a good decision. 

Katie: But do you see what I’m trying to say this incursion bit is happening past what is still put together of the Sacred Timeline. And if we want to wrap in something you said earlier, the heroes don’t win this time. And I think that was something I brought up from the very beginning was something I was bothered by, and we didn’t go into the details of it yet, but I was saying, how will this affect the MCU as a whole? Maybe they aren’t able to solve it and they aren’t able to save the Sacred Timeline. Because if you save the Sacred Timeline, then yeah, I don’t see how we get to Secret Wars, but you have to think like we’ve got Doctor Strange causing an incursion in that Sacred Timeline. We have No Way Home happening, all our heroes are sitting in that Sacred Timeline, rushing towards the end of time, and they don’t even know it. 

Taylor: I guess I need to understand. I need you to clarify what do you mean by the end of time? Do you mean no more, I guess here’s where I’m getting tripped up and I need some clarification. If we’re saying end of time, we’re saying end of MCU, right? Because what we know as the MCU is 616. And so unless we are completely jumping into another universe and we’re going to follow a whole new set of heroes for the rest of our natural lives, as long as they keep making these movies. Is that what you’re saying by the end of time or simply that because things are falling apart, the circle is unable to complete? Or are we throwing away the circle like, I just need a little bit of clarification on what you mean, because I think it can be interpreted in so many different ways. I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole that you don’t actually mean. 

Katie: Okay, so I think I need, there’s a lot of questions you asked and I’m not sure of anything I’m going to say is actually going to help clarify anything but here’s my thought. First off, I think the Sacred Circle exists. I’m not throwing that out. I’m not throwing out the Sacred Circle. We’ve been told time is circular. We have been shown a circle. I’m sticking with that. That is what we have been explained to us before. 

Taylor: This is my circle and I’m sticking to it.

Katie: Exactly. But in order for the circle to keep moving, everything has to happen correctly and nothing can, we can’t have variants causing bridges. Cool, that is why TVA exists. Well, now Loki and Sylvie killed the person who’s controlling the TVA and who is singlehandedly also making sure that the Sacred Circle stays a Sacred Circle. So what if that point that we see where they’re trying to tie everything together, the Sacred Circle’s already broken on the other side, we see it. We see it’s woven together on the right, we see it’s broken on the left. What if that’s, say that’s when Dr. Strange starts causing an incursion, and that is when everything is falling apart. And so they’re trying to weave together the Sacred Timeline but I don’t think they’re going to be successful at it, because I think the ring’s already broken. I think we are shoving ourselves into different universes, and maybe that’s not the incursion. Maybe those are the actions of Doctor Strange in No Way Home. Maybe those are the actions of Wanda in MoM.

Taylor: Here’s where I struggle with that. The incursion part. Because an incursion should not well, I guess here’s where I’m struggling with the incursion part and I just needed a second to clarify it within my own mind. Going back to Secret Wars being our North Star, the incursions and you know what? This may just be a straight-up change from the comics, in which case, fine, throw the comic out the window in that sense that instead of it being kind of process of elimination, which is my interpretation of how Secret Wars even happens, or at least, you know, we get to Battleworld, that incursion is just universes coming one on one. What it could be, to your point, is that instead of just I’m going to pick a number 715 and 825 coming together and mashing and whatever pieces are left, then form Battleworld thanks to an all-powerful Dr. Doom, which is why we obviously need the Fantastic Four previous to Secret Wars coming in. But the thing is, if they switch it up so that what you were referencing at the left being a broken timeline, it’s not just that the Sacred Circle is broken, it’s that every timeline is incurring, having an incursion, I guess is a better way to put it together at the same time, creating Battleworld.

Katie: I was, we just reached the same thought because if well, no one could see my face but Taylor but those were the faces I was making because I was like, wait a second, what if Loki and them, in the attempt to put back together the Sacred Timeline and weave it together, create Battleworld?

Taylor: Yeah because essentially, if they’re not understanding, because the only person who truly understands the Multiverse was He Who Remains or a version of Kang, right? They don’t have a version of Kang on their side. I don’t think Victor Timely is their ally. I don’t know why they are going for Victor Timely. I know we thrown out a few theories, but I still have not landed on one that I feel fully comfortable with, and that I’m willing to put my neck on the line for. But I am willing to put on the board that I don’t think that he is an ally. So they don’t have a version of Kang who understands the big picture, they just understand the Multiverse is collapsing. If they feel that the best way or they make the decision, as you know, playing God, that the best decision forward is to try to smoosh everything literally back into one timeline, thereby causing incursions. It could be, if you’re trying to shoehorn Doctor Strange in there too, maybe Doctor Strange was just out there being a dummy and he caused one incursion, right? Yes. Katie’s face says he’s always being a dummy. He was the dummy and he was, you know, causing incursions.

Katie: Yeah.

Taylor: The answer to Doctor Strange is always yes, he was being a dummy. So dummy over there started his own one on one Incursion.

Katie: Dummy Strange.

Taylor: I love him to death, I really do, but he’s a dummy. A big old dummy. But Loki and Sylvie and Mobius and crew, they all on a much grander scale, said, I can fix this problem and literally put everything together, thereby causing universes to collapse in on one another, causing an incursion on a grander scale.

Katie: I like this.

Taylor: And then I want to wrap in Clea because there’s a whole nother thing to here that we need to talk about that is a little Easter egg.

Katie: Wait, then wrap her in before I say what I want to say because you might change what I’m going to say.

Taylor: Okay, so this is a little bit of a cut but there’s this character who you see on the marquee when they’re in the 1800s called Zaniac, and I was like, all right, that seems important slash mildly familiar. So I did a little bit of digging on Zaniac because Zaniac if you’ve seen Agents of SHIELD, I kind of picture him as like a non-inhuman Hive. He’s a parasitic organism that has multiple parts that basically infest a host to do his bidding, so you know Hive. And the thing that is important about Zaniac as it relates to clear is Clea comes from the Dark Dimension. He’s sent to earth by none other than Dormammu and Dormammu happens to be Clea’s uncle. So we’re starting to tie things and now we’re starting to tie in Doctor Strange. We’re starting to tie in Clea. We’re starting to tie in the Dark Dimension, which we still don’t know if that’s a whole nother universe or not because I don’t know. They say these words like they’re not the same, and then I watch Agents of SHIELD and that’s a whole other way of looking at it but it’s fine. 

Katie: I feel like they just have a list of buzz words that sometimes they’re just, like, hit them all. Let’s see what happens.

Taylor: It’s like talking point, talking point, talking point, and nobody defines them. But anyway, I bring up this character because again, if we’re talking about Doctor Strange, Clea, incursions, this is yet another tie. I think we’re going in the right direction by bringing them in because now we have a direct tie to the Dark Dimension and Dormammu.

Katie: Okay, so this isn’t to dispute anything you said, but this is a question I kind of have, and maybe this can’t be answered and maybe this is me thinking too deeply. But we know Doctor Strange 3 is on the horizon like that’s it’s been confirmed it’s happening. And I guess I should say on the horizon, I mean, it is the sliver of the sun, like it is not coming soon. I guess my thing is, is his incursion and the whole Clea thing going right into Secret Wars or was that trying to set up Doctor Strange 3? Because I think that’s an important distinction. Keep in mind, everything is getting pushed around. Secret Wars and Kang Dynasty have both been moved. So do we think there could be a possibility they’re trying to shove a Doctor Strange 3 in beforehand and if so, how does this all fit?

Taylor: I think it’s possible and I don’t, I don’t want to get too meta here, but I think a lot of it actually hinges on, I don’t want to say a lot of it. I think one of the variables that they’re looking at truly is the Jonathan Majors trial, because if you think about it, yes, he is not, you know, a huge player in Secret Wars. He actually doesn’t appear. But clearly, he’s going to be important in Kang Dynasty and in potentially future projects leading up to that. So it’s tough because I think that is definitely something that they’re thinking about, you know, how that trial plays out could affect whether they have to completely recast for their main villain. Not an easy task, time-consuming. They have to find someone who is going to work with Majors’s portrayal of the character up to this point. Luckily, they have the Multiverse and can kind of use that to explain but then again, they just showed us a whole stadium full of, you know, Jonathan Majors, which, you know, I saw someone not to make light of the situation in any sense, but basically someone saying after this all came out, Marvel’s kicking themselves for that scene because they had an out in the Multiverse. But then again, you have the multiple Peters, so and of course, you know, just to reiterate our prior position on this, the most important thing is that he’s brought to justice if in fact, he did do what he is accused of doing. But we’re just going to focus on how it affects the MCU in this conversation and I think that’s definitely a variable. I do think that some of the feedback that has been coming out just from fans, but also, probably more importantly from Bob Iger basically saying you need to pull back the reins on how much you’re pumping out in terms of content because I think the underlying undertone there is that the quality has suffered. I mean, I think we’ve all seen it objectively. The movies have not been as good, the universe has not been as connected. It’s something we’ve complained about a lot. And so I think that Kevin and Co are getting pressure from the top to make it a more cohesive story again and to make it make sense, basically. And if these delays allow them to put a few more movies in the slot, and add a few more movies and to actually build up to a Secret Wars, I think that’s the best way to do it, because as we talked about earlier in the episode, there is not a lot of opportunity to build into a Kang Dynasty or a Secret Wars based on the slate that we have to date. These movies, outside of end-credit scene opportunities and mid-credit scenes are not going to do it. And you’re not going to tell me that a two-minute end credits scene is going to prep me for a Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars-level movie. It’s just not going to happen. This could give you time for a Doctor Strange 3. Potentially introduce the Young Avengers who I think would be interesting for a Kang Dynasty, not so much a Secret Wars. The Fantastic Four needs to come in. Obviously, that’s on the slate, but that needs to be developed. There are just a lot of things that need to happen between now and then. And so to answer your question, I think it could be paving the way for a Doctor Strange 3 to help us better understand what is the incursion he caused? How does it relate to Loki? And is it just kind of a one-off thing? Is it just kind of he created an incursion, but that’s separate from the large incursion that Loki and Sylvie and their crew are going to create, you know, trying to save the day, but actually making things exponentially worse. I think that’s you know, that’s a possibility.

Katie: Well, and the reason I say all that is because to wrap in why I brought it up into Loki is I think there are two ways to look at this because I think if Doctor Strange is setting up Doctor Strange 3 prior to Secret wars, we could have him and Clea dealing with an incursion that is completely unrelated to anything happening in Season Two of Loki.

Taylor: Right.

Katie: Or if Doctor Strange 3 is unfortunately going to happen have the same thing happen to it that Doctor Strange 2 did and it’s going to be fully disconnected, unfortunately, because it’s going to come after the next phase’s big battle. You know, maybe the whole Clea thing and him is setting up for directly Secret Wars and there won’t be a movie between there and they are going to feed right into the Loki thing with the main timeline, the Sacred Circle unraveling, and creating Battleworld or Loki creating Battleworld indirectly by playing God as he even says. So I think there are two answers there. And the reason I say Doctor Strange is, I mean, come on his second movie, while it might have stayed true to its name or not, was a MoM, Multiverse of Madness. And so he’s going there. He’s one of the only few that are going there. And so he’s one of the only other properties tying into whatever we’re going to see in Season Two.

Taylor: I think the other way to look at it is whether Kang Dynasty is to Secret Wars as Infinity War was to Endgame, or whether Kang Dynasty is to Secret Wars as Age of Ultron was to Infinity War. In the sense that it’s an Avengers movie that is an Avengers movie, but it is not, it’s not a direct prequel to Infinity War. So much of it sets up what will happen in Infinity War, right? So many of the ramifications, the Sokovia Accords, things like that.

Katie: Or even Civil War would be a great example too.

Taylor: Yeah, and any one of those movies have a director effect on Infinity War, but you can’t necessarily call them a direct prequel. Whereas obviously Infinity War, and Endgame prequel-sequel, you know.

Katie: Totally. 

Taylor: And I think if you’re looking at it that way if you’re saying that Kang Dynasty is more of an Age of Ultron or a Civil War, then there is potentially more time. I know that they’re having them come out one year apart like Infinity War and Endgame and that kind of leads you to believe it’s going to go that route. But who’s to say things aren’t going to change again with the timeline and they’re going to take what we’re seeing with Kang, what happened in Quantumania and those types of things, because again, Kang is not a player in Secret Wars. So maybe Kang is the big bad for that film, you end it and then you have a few more films that are continuing to build up this Multiverse aspect. Maybe the Multiverse and Kang are two separate big bads, if you will. The Multiverse isn’t necessarily a person with motivations, but it is clearly a problem. So maybe you solve one problem in Kang Dynasty and you solve another problem in Secret Wars. I don’t know but that’s the other thing that’s kind of a variable here is how much are those two films related? Because I think that helps kind of frame what we’re looking at in Loki and in Doctor Strange specifically, and how they relate to one another.

Katie: We’ve actually said this before, but not directly in Loki with Doctor Strange or any of this mindset. But we have brought up how it’s very weird to us that we’ve had Avengers: Age of Ultron and then, well, and honestly, I half count Civil War because it became an Avengers film. RIP to Cap and having his own trilogy, but it was still a great film. Then we had Infinity War, then we had Endgame. We had to team up movies that established us an Avengers team and I think we talked about before how we don’t have one of those right now. Unless, you know, Kang Dynasty is that. I don’t know. My fear with that is if it is just an Avengers team-up film, why are we putting this much work into Kang, you know? Because I feel I mean, think about it, Age of Ultron, Ultron himself was a one movie dude. Loki, well, Loki’s complicated, but Loki as the big bad of a film, was a one and a half, if you count Thor, but was a one-film villain. So I feel like putting in all this work just for it to be a the Avengers teamed up and they defeated Kang. Like, I feel there has to be more to that than it being a stepping stone for bigger things. So I don’t know. I just think a lot of this thought process of how these things relate affects how we think about Loki and how we think about Season Two specifically and the outcomes of it.

Taylor: Yeah, I agree, because I think we’ve said it a million times in this episode. This is one of the few projects that directly deals with the Multiverse and Kang. If you think about Quantumania, obviously Kang was the main villain. In that movie, he was a one-movie villain because that and you guys can’t see my air quotes, but that version of Kang is dead. But that was a Kang-related film. It did not really have to deal with the Multiverse. It was the Quantum realm and we saw MoM, which was wholly 100% Multiverse focused but no, Kang. Loki is the one property that brings them both together. It was the birth of the Multiverse and also our first introduction to the being that would be our first big bad. So this series is so incredibly important to the future of the MCU, but it has to relate to the other parts of the MCU and bring them together. It has to relate to an MoM, has to relate to a Quantumania in order for things to make sense as a unit. That’s not even getting into any of the other properties who don’t even deal with these elements at all and are going to be completely coming in cold to basically the whole point of, you know, four, five, and six. But all of that aside, the one centerpiece we’ve got is Loki and understanding how Loki relates to everything else is central to understanding where we’re going and how we get from where we are to Kang Dynasty and to Secret Wars. And so I think I just want to wrap it up on behalf of both of us by saying, pay attention to this show. The next six weeks are basically going to tell us how we’re going to see the you know, I think it’s 2026 now or 2025 for Dynasty and 2026 for Secret Wars or something along those lines.

 Katie: It’s either that or it’s 2026 and 2027, I can’t remember.

Taylor: Yeah, we’ll just say the next 3 to 5 years. This show will give us the blueprint, well should, it should if they play their cards right, should give us the blueprint for how we get to the next culminating piece in the next 3 to 5 years. So pay attention. We’re going to be analyzing this to the nth degree because there is so much that converges on this show and that leans on this show for understanding how it all comes together.

Katie: I couldn’t agree more. I think you put it on nice little bow on that. The only last thing I have to say and I don’t even know if it needs to be a debate or just a statement of my opinion. I don’t think there’s going to be a Loki Season Three.

Taylor: I don’t see how there could be. They’re not going to fit one in one.

Katie: Quite frankly what do you do next? They opened the Multiverse. Now they’re trying to save the Sacred Timeline. Well, yeah, considering timing, where do you get another season? Even if one comes out in two years, you’re shoving it in right before something like Kang Dynasty so that’s rough. And that’s if everything goes off without a hitch. I mean, as of right now, we’re still in strikes. I mean, that would not even allow anything to get started. But on top of that, again, what do you do next? This show is the blueprint, as you said, this show, the fact that it doesn’t sit in the MCU happily, but is the biggest stepping stone and backbone to everything coming in, it is pivotal. So what do you do to allow it to carry to the next part of the MCU? Well, the MCU is going to take the effects of the show and run with it now. After this, it’s running with it. So I just want to throw out there. I don’t think there’s going to be a third season. I think Loki is being used the way it needs to be used, and that’s to explain that backend Multiversal crap that’s more than just Doctor Strange, you know, or more specifically Wanda unaliving about five people in a totally different universe while also like body snatching herself. So there’s that. It’s more than that. It’s showing us there’s back-end crap on and so I think this is it for Loki so let’s see what happens. Maybe he’ll make it back to the timeline. Maybe he won’t. We’ll see.

Taylor: All I want is a reunion with Thor. That’s it.

Katie: Oh my God. 

Taylor: So he can meet his niece.

Katie: The longer Thor remains in the MCU, the longer my hope is. 

Taylor: Yeah.

Katie: Because I just, as long as those characters are on the board, I don’t care. It needs to happen.

Taylor: Can you imagine Loki as an uncle?

Katie: Can you imagine Love as a niece? 

Taylor: Right but like the combination of Loki and Love, that’s all they want. They can have their own mini-series. I don’t even need Chris Hemsworth in there.

Katie: It can be like the I am Groot, just like a five-minute, six-episode thing. 

Taylor: Yeah. Get India Hemsworth I think that’s her name. Get India Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston down here for it and we’re good.

Katie: Yeah, I hope it happens. I need it. I need the sun to shine on them again.

Taylor: Don’t say those words to me or I will cry.

Katie: I know, I know, I’m sorry.

Taylor: And on that note, while I’m trying not to get emotional all over this microphone, we are going to call it a day on our Loki predictions. It was about as chaotic as we said it would be, and hopefully, it was coherent. But we’re going to come back at you in the next six weeks with reactions to every single episode on Mondays. So make sure that you are subscribed on your podcast platform of choice so you get notifications whenever they come out and you don’t miss any of our recaps for what is promising to be a very, very intense six weeks. Also, make sure you are checking out the website on a regular basis. We have all of our blogs up there and other links to our socials and all of that, so definitely make sure that the website is bookmarked and visited often. You can also support the show on our home page from there, so definitely a great hub of all things Sisters Assembled.

Katie: Follow us on Twitter at SisAssembledPod and Instagram and Threads at SistersAssembled so you can keep up with us and the show to whatever extent you want to. And Taylor said it, we’ve got six weeks, at least. At least six weeks, because who knows what doors this show going to open for us to cover moving past it. So at least six weeks of Loki, probably going to end up being more because the show is absolutely chaotic. So buckle up because the first episode of Loki is here in a few days. So get ready, guys, and keep up with us as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.