Loki ends on one heck of a cliffhanger when it's revealed that the God of Mischief has been sent to the wrong timeline by Sylvie. Finding himself in a version of the Time Variance Authority ruled over by Kang the Conqueror - with a Mobius and Hunter B-15 who have no idea who he is - this was a great note to end things on (but not one that was planned right from the start).
"When I started, there wasn’t a discussion of Season 2, exactly," Loki director Kate Herron recently told Variety. "It was just that season of ‘Loki.’ As we got deeper into production, everyone was very happy, and obviously there’s so much to explore with Loki. It felt like we should continue the story. So I think the cliffhanger ending came in later in the process."
She added that in order to establish that Loki was in a different timeline, sets were redressed slightly to throw viewers off, while Eugene Cordero's TVA receptionist Casey was turned into one of the Hunters heading to the armoury and a blink-and-you'd-miss-it Easter Egg.
Mobius saying "Who are you?" to Loki was a deliberate move as it's the same thing that woman in the Gobi desert asked during the premiere. "That was kind of the question of the whole first season," Herron notes.
In the same interview, the filmmaker commented on the Infinity Stones being part of the series as paperweights used by employees in the TVA. "That was in Michael [Waldron]'s script when I first got it to pitch [for the directing job]," Herron says. "I remember being like, ‘WHAT?! You put me through so much!’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?'"
"I was quite excited by it," she adds. "It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU - and it’s not what we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to."
It's certainly going to be interesting seeing how Marvel Studios picks up on this cliffhanger, but with countless timelines in existence, finding the God of Mischief could be easier said than done for the original Mobius and Sylvie (if she chooses to leave the Citadel at the End of Time, that is).
Where do you think the villain turned hero's story is heading in Loki season two?