Loki season 1 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania spoilers follow.
No matter what variant of Loki you meet, in whatever world you meet them, there is always one major similarity – they will always strive to survive.
But what about its Marvel TV iteration? Does it have the staying power the God of Mischief does? Or will it be disappearing into the multiverse, only to be seen in some parallel dimension by viewers who want it more than us? (As if that's possible!)
What to Read Next
Well, we're here and we have you covered.
Here's everything you need to know about the future of Loki.
Loki season 2 release date on Disney+: when can we see it?
Never fear, folks! Loki will be back for season two – it was confirmed in the end-credits sequence of the first season back in July 2021. And without further ado, the official release date on Disney+ is October 6, 2023. Don't believe us? Marvel Studios said so:
Reacting to the initial confirmation, Hiddleston told Marvel.com: "I am so grateful that we got to do season one, I still am not quite able to process that we get to have another go at this. I am so excited by the possibilities. We are already in discussions. Deep, deep, deep discussions. I can't wait to get started.
"I want to say thank you to the audience because without the audience, we wouldn't be able to make a season two," he added. "I hope season one was full of surprises. And I think season two will be full of even more."
Just maybe don't expect it to get weirder than season one – because that would be a trick even Loki himself would have trouble pulling off.
"We had an alligator drinking wine out of a kiddie pool," Loki writer-producer Michael Waldron said (via Polygon). "That felt like the Mount Everest peak of weird! I think there’s plenty of opportunity there."
...Well, he's not wrong!
"We're always looking to outdo ourselves, but hopefully it's always driven by character," he added. "And yeah, I learned on [Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness] once again, no idea is too crazy. You can write Stephen Strange possessing his own corpse, and maybe you'll end up shooting it. That encourages me to be bold, which is good."
Loki season 2 cast: Who will be in it?
In typical Marvel style, it's keeping plans for Loki season two pretty close to its chest. Obviously, Tom Hiddleston is on board, because after all what is Loki without, you know, Loki?
Season two filmed in London, which was handy for the title star. "I think it was just an accident of scheduling, but I'm thrilled about it," Hiddleston said on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The actor also confirmed in the interview that the entire cast would be returning for the follow-up season, which means more Lady Loki, more alligators drinking wine from a kids' pool (presumably), and definitely more Casey.
"Yes, yes, you can [look forward to more Casey]," Eugene Cordero said (via CBR). "You know, I can't [tease anything], because I don't even know. There's so many passwords and passcodes that I have to fill out just to even look at the pages that I'm on, and the way that it works is things constantly change in a great way.
"I'm excited to do more and I don't know to what capacity I'll be able to be a part of it, but I'm excited to do it. So yeah, get ready, it'll be fun, I hope? No, it will be, it'll be great."
Gugu Mbatha-Raw will also return as Ravonna Renslayer. Though, speaking to Digital Spy in December 2021, she admitted she had no idea what lay ahead for her character.
"Honestly, I genuinely don't know where it's going," she said. "I feel like there's so much potential, especially when you're dealing with time, as Renslayer does, you know? So, yeah, I don't know.
"I haven't really… I sort of keep an open mind. I've been working quite intensely on something else over the last five months. So I don't know. I'm sort of open to the next chapter. We'll see. I would, of course, be open to (a movie). I don't know where it's all going at this point, but we'll see."
"It's been amazing to shoot the second season of Loki," Mbatha-Raw told ET. "[Fans] are gonna be in for a real treat because the show is bolder and more surreal. And in many ways, goes to some bigger, bolder places than season 1, which is really exciting.
"In Loki, Ravonna is a powerful presence. Selfishly, Renslayer makes it out of the TVA, which I'm really excited about.
"The thing that I found with Loki's second season is everyone on the crew knows your character and I've never had that before, stepping onto a set where people already know your character. That's kind of a cool feeling."
Given how season one ended, we'll also be expecting the following cast members to return in Loki season two:
• Tara Strong as the voice of Miss Minutes
• Owen Wilson as Mobius M Mobius
• Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie
Wunmi Mosaku has also confirmed that she will be returning to the role of TVA Hunter B-15 – and we couldn't be more excited. Talking about season one's success, she told Digital Spy: "It definitely gave us confidence. It was just really nice coming back.
"It's very rare for me to come back to a show. I think I've only ever come back to Vera, and I only came back for one episode."
She went on to add: "To come back to season two to see everybody and be like, 'Oh, we did this' – that was really fun. That was just really new. I think I felt a little bit more... I think I felt a little bit more nervous.
"I hope we live up to season one, because... that obviously went down well, because we're here at season two."
Don't be surprised if Jack Veal reprises the role of Kid Loki at some point too, whether it's in a second season of Loki or some kind of Young Avengers project. With multiple members now lined up, it's only a matter of time before Marvel's legacy team arrives, and we're hoping that Kid Loki will be a part of that, just like in the comics.
That's not the only Loki we're hoping to see return, either. Richard E Grant made a huge impact on fans with a brief but already iconic take on Classic Loki, complete with his Golden Age comic book outfit. Although this variant sacrificed himself to help Sylvie and Loki escape The Void, Grant told ET that his character could still return one day.
"Everything's possible," he said. And although Grant doesn't know how this would work after "going out with such a bang", he did reveal that he "wouldn't say no" to coming back.
"I think that because his sacrifice is so huge and it's going out with such a bang, how do you top that if he had to come back? I have no idea. You know, it's not within my arena to do that. But I wouldn't say no, if asked. Put it that way."
Blindspotting star Rafael Casal has also been seen on set, but casting hasn't been officially acknowledged by Marvel, and his role is being kept under wraps.
Game of Thrones' Kate Dickie has been cast as a villain, though her role is also being kept under wraps for the time being (surprise, surprise).
Dickie and Casal aren't the only new cast members to have joined the series, as it was announced that Everything Everywhere All at Once actor and Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan is also taking on an undisclosed role.
Back in September, during Disney's annual D23 Expo, Feige surprised fans by bringing Quan out on stage, as well as screening exclusive footage from the new season.
What about the talent behind the camera? When asked if she was keen to return, director Kate Herron previously told Collider that she was still very much focused on season one.
"I think for me, I'm just so focused on this story and I've been so wrapped up in it for two years. I think I poured every aspect of my soul and my time into the show, and I think for me, that's where my head's at really, is just focusing on this."
Along with Michael Waldron, Kate played a huge role in shaping this show, so it's a pretty big deal that she's since confirmed her exit ahead of the second season.
Explaining the decision to The Hollywood Reporter, she said that she "always intended just to do these six [episodes]".
"We were treating it like a movie, and we were running it like a movie," Herron explained. "We weren't doing it in the showrunner system. So it was a lot to direct these six episodes, and I gave it all of my energy and everything I had in my soul and in my heart. I threw everything I loved about Marvel at it.
"I just feel like my part is done," she added, "but I'm really excited to see where it's going to go next."
We haven't addressed the biggest shadow hanging over the MCU at the moment: Jonathan Majors was expected to return in the MCU, particularly in Loki, as either Kang the Conqueror or another variant like season one's He Who Remains.
However, since the actor was arrested on a charge of assault and harassment, with further accusations having been levelled at him by other women (all of which he denies categorically), his future at the family-friendly Disney corp has become unknown (and might be why the second season is scheduled for October rather than summer as planned). Marvel has so far made no statement and is unlikely to before Majors' court date of August 3.
Loki season 2 plot: What will the second season be about?
As expected, season one ended with a cataclysmic event that set up multiverses. Many theorised that it directly set up the chaos of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, along with Wanda's role in the film too. After all the Scarlet Witch is a Nexus Being, which would have tied the two together very nicely.
The multiverse and its impact were later shown in Spider-Man: No Way Home in December 2021, with heroes, villains and multiple variants of characters being pulled through to our universe by Doctor Strange after a spell went wrong. As a result, they were all living in the same timeline together.
However, Doctor Strange's release has since quashed those theories pretty much like Wanda trying to stamp out America Chavez. In fact, the events in Loki didn't even make the post-credits scene.
Michael Waldron, the screenwriter behind Dr Strange and Loki, explained his reasoning for keeping the two separate during a recent interview with Deadline. When talking about the lack of Kang in Doctor Strange, Waldron said: "To me it felt like we had the biggest best bullet in Wanda.
"When working with Sam (Raimi), I said we should really make the decision to make Wanda the antagonist in this film, we can't let another movie have that fun."
He added: "If you introduced Kang… you would have risked the movie getting overstuffed."
Wanting to give Wanda some breathing room to do her thing is definitely understandable. But what does that mean for Kang and his multiversal involvement?
During season two discussions surrounding Kang and the character's plot involvement, the screenwriter revealed: "In creating the show in the first place, the only way it's worth doing to me is that we can find a new story to tell with this character.
"It felt like we had new emotional ground to cover with Loki. That's the only way into season two. We absolutely found that. It's a great continuation of that story that feels different from season one and hopefully will subvert expectations."
Loki still has to contend with Sylvie's betrayal and the ramifications of what she did.
With Kang (He Who Remains) gone, an infinite number of his variants will rise up and take control of the multiverse. We've already seen that happen in "our" Time Variance Authority with the arrival of Kang's statue. As noted earlier, Jonathan Majors' legal situation puts all Kang business up in the air, but it's understood that he plays a major part in season two.
In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's mid-credits scene, a council of countless Kangs celebrate the 'death' of Kang the Conqueror who got sucked into the ginormous core of his ship. (It's a whole thing which you can read about here).
The Conqueror may be gone but the other Kangs look ready to stir up some mess unless someone can stem the flow of variants that are about to come spilling out of the multiverse. Will the Marvel top team wipe out Kang as a boss-level villain and start again? Or recast, using some timey-wimey plot logic? Only time will tell.
We do know that Loki and Mobius are returning, and the latter, thank Odin, has somehow either gotten his memory back, become acquainted with this Loki, or is a variant who is already up to speed with all this kerfuffle. In any case, they're on the same page.
The two have found themselves in the 1900s and are taking in a very interesting show of some sort. A familiar-looking man by the name of Victor Timely has taken to the stage and is dazzling the audience with talks of time manipulation.
Timely is a Kang Variant. This version of Kang debuted in Avengers Annual No. 21 and is the Kang who travelled back to 1901 Wisconsin where he would establish Timely Industries, the company responsible for advancing technology in the time-travel sector allowing him to become a time traveller.
However, this Timely Kang is said not to be just another version of the many Kangs, but the Conqueror himself.
It's therefore highly likely that Loki and Mobius are cooking up a plan that involves tracking Kang the Conqueror, and perhaps stopping him before he can unleash the horrors that He Who Remains predicted. Which is problematic for Marvel.
And, as it turns out, that Quantumania sequence is our first look at Loki season two.
"[It's] actually a cut-down version of a scene from season two of Loki," Reed said of "the final tag" while speaking to ET.
"That's obviously Victor Timely," Reed said. "I was whisked by the set when they were shooting that and I just loved his Frederick Douglass hair and his whole sort of period, the intonation of his voice and everything."
"It really was to sort of tease the audience with the idea of like, 'In Phase Five, you're going to meet a lot of different variants.'"
"As the MCU has been steering towards these multiversal stories… it made sense to sort of adapt [Kang] for that. And it worked with what was going to go on in Loki, so very early on as they were developing Loki and we were developing this movie, it just made sense."
Speaking previously at the MCM London Comic-Con, Hiddleston gave some juicy season two context, even if he did hold his cards very close to his chest.
"OK so look, we can't say anything unfortunately, but at the end of episode six, season one, Loki comes back to TVA," Hiddleston said.
"He's quite traumatised, he's quite emotional and he tries to explain what happens to Mobius [Owen Wilson], and Mobius doesn't recognise him. And then he turns to look at the statue of the Timekeepers, but it's not a statue of the Timekeepers, it's a statue of someone else... And I guess we'll start from there."
The cast and crew of Loki are being – understandably – tight-lipped when it comes to plot spoilers, for fear of Kevin Feige's red sniper dot landing on their foreheads. But Hiddleston did give an extra clue to season two's arc during an Entertainment Weekly joint interview at D23 Expo 2022 (alongside co-stars Sophia Di Martino and Ke Huy Quan).
"Season two is kind of a challenge of a question asked of the [Time Variance Authority] itself," Hiddleston said (via CBR). "A battle for the soul of the TVA."
During the same interview, Ke Huy Quan said the second season's story is "really good" and that he was excited for audiences to experience it. Same!
Director Kate Herron might not be carrying on with season two (we're still waiting to hear who will replace her – and she'll be a tough act to follow), but she does have some ideas about where the story could go next (via The Hollywood Reporter).
"So the way I see it in my head is that the TVA exists outside of space and time, but reality and everything as we understood it has completely changed in the last few minutes. With the multiverse branching, how do we know the TVA still exists in that way?
"We don't know, and I suppose that's a big question that will be answered as the show goes on. But in my head, the intention is that Sylvie thinks she's sending him back to the TVA, but because of the way time and branches are crossing each other outside the window, Loki has unfortunately been sent back somewhere very different.
"So reality has shifted just by the nature of what He Who Remains said, and the idea is that he’s in this alternate TVA now."
That's actually a genius premise, and one that could keep the show going for as long as Doctor Who (or Sliders, at the very least). Let's hope Herron left behind detailed notes for whoever replaces her.
And don't think for a second that this is the last we'll see of Sylvie either. The last time we saw her, the Goddess of Mischief was dealing with the ramifications of her choice in Kang's Citadel. But now that she has a TemPad, expect Sylvie to pop up again very soon. But will she be a friend or a foe? Or even a lover? That kiss sure carried a lot of emotional heft right before that betrayal.
Maybe, just maybe, we'll see "our" Loki enjoy a romantic connection with another man following episode three's groundbreaking reveal. Bisexual people don't need to demonstrate same-sex attractions in order to be validated, but Marvel has notoriously shied away from anything like this in the past, so Loki season two could be a good way to address the character's queerness in a physical way.
When Collider asked Herron about this possibility, she said: "Basically I don't know plans for the future with Loki – I'm so focused on this story. But I would say that part of my thinking was, well, if it's canon and it's acknowledged, then yeah I hope there's obviously more road to travel with that aspect of his personality. And I hope it has opened the door to more stories, definitely."
Loki season 2 trailer: When can we see new footage?
We've taken advantage of the split in the Sacred Timeline, reached into the future and plucked out the latest Loki season two trailer just for you. You're very welcome.
The trailer came just one month ahead of the season two release and shows Loki glitching all over the place post breaking the sacred timeline (very much giving Across the Spider-Verse vibes).
He explains that his dematerialisation and rematerialisation is due to the fact that he is "time slipping", which in layman's terms means he is being pulled back and forth through time.
We also get a sneak peek of fan favourites Mobius, Hunter B-15, and Sylvie as well as more from Everything Everywhere All at Once's Ke Huy Quan's character post the initial teaser trailer.
The teaser trailer that was shown to an exclusive few at the September 2022 Disney D23 expo reached fans in July and also showed. Loki glitching in and out of time as he attempts to fix the calamity left behind in the season one finale.
Ke Huy Quan was featured alongside Wilson and Hiddleston as the mysterious TVA worker OB (though details about his character and what he does there remain thin for the time being).
As mentioned above, it remains to be seen how prominently Majors will feature following the accusations made against him in recent months (which he's denied). He appears very briefly in the new trailer.
Narrative-wise, the Loki both season two teaser trailers fill us with hope that the follow-up season will be just as exciting as the first, but we'll let you make up your mind about that once you've watched it.
Loki is streaming exclusively on Disney+.
Marvel/Zavvi/Salesone Loki limited edition twin headpiece set
Funko Pop! Ravonna Renslayer with Miss Minutes Funko Pop! figure
..
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
She has been heard giving her insight on the latest TV stories on BBC Radio across the country and on BBC News.
Previously working with The Sun Online, Yahoo, Metro.co.uk and Independent IE amongst others, she joined the Digital Spy team from 2021-2023 as Deputy TV Editor (Maternity cover).
With a speciality in TV drama and true crime, Tilly has been praised for her exclusive content with A-list stars ranging from Sir David Attenborough to the lawyers behind Making A Murderer.
She’s happy to report her mum now takes her seriously as a journalist as she got to interview George Clooney once.
TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.
