What It Means for the MCU

The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 4.

At long last, a Loki credit scene arrived with the fourth episode of the Marvel show’s fourth season – although we haven’t actually been waiting that long. Both WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier waited until their penultimate episodes to introduce post-credits scenes that teed up their finales (and beyond), but it’s a testament to Loki’s fast-paced storytelling that we’re getting a credit scene with two more episodes to go.

The Loki Episode 4 credit scene has some major ramifications for the rest of the season (and the MCU as a whole), so let’s break down what exactly is going on there, what it means, and what it tells us about the final two episodes of the season.

The fourth episode of Loki, titled “The Nexus Event,” is chock-full of reveals. For one, we learn that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) may or may not have a romantic thing going on. We also learn that Sylvie was correct, all employees of the TVA are variants and were not – as they were previously told – created by the TVA. We also learn that Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) does indeed have some sinister underpinnings, as she knew everyone was a variant and prunes Mobius (Owen Wilson) when he finds out. And the final reveal is that the Time-Keepers don’t actually exist – they’re android facades being controlled by someone or something else.

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That all of this happens in under an hour and the episode also provides some genuine emotional heft is a testament to just how great Loki is, but the most shocking surprise was saved for last. As Loki and Sylvie fight off Renslayer and discover the Time-Keepers are androids, Loki is pruned by Renslayer, whom they thought was unconscious. The episode ends with Slyvie getting the upper hand, refusing to prune Renslayer and instead telling her that she’s going to tell her everything.

So is Loki dead? Of course not. The Loki credit scene finds Hiddleston’s Loki waking up in some strange land, saying, “Is this hell? Am I dead?” A voice offscreen replies, “Not yet. But you will be if you don’t come with us,” only for the camera to then reveal four Loki Variants staring Hiddleston’s Loki down, surrounded by a dilapidated city. Cut to black.

So the big takeaway here appears to be that when the TVA “prunes” the timeline of someone, they don’t actually delete them. They just send them… elsewhere. Wherever this is, it’s clearly dangerous, but also potentially inhabited by other Loki variants who have been pruned from the timeline – the most distinct of which being one played by Oscar-nominated actor Richard E. Grant.

Indeed, Grant appears to be playing a Loki variant who’s wearing the 1960s comics version of the Loki costume, but he’s flanked by other very different variants – Jack Veal (The End of the F***ing World) plays a young boy Loki, and Deobia Oparei (Game of Thrones) plays a brutish Loki (dubbed “Boastful Loki”) wielding what appears to be Mjolnir. And then of course there’s the best Loki variant of them all, a little alligator wearing a Loki helmet. Incredible.

So what does this all mean? Well for one, either Renslayer knew she was just sending variants elsewhere when pruning them or she was lied to. For another, we likely haven’t seen the last of Mobius, as he was pruned earlier in the episode and likely either sent to the same place as Hiddleston or a place where variants of his kind live. Something is up at the TVA, and now that we know that the Time-Keepers aren’t real, the hunt will be on for the Great and Powerful Oz who’s been operating them this whole time and overseeing “The Sacred Timeline” – which, as it turns out, might actually be a bunch of hogwash. Whoever is operating the Time-Keepers is clearly overseeing the timeline for their own benefit (which also brings up the question of why they wouldn’t have interfered with any of the Avengers’ shenanigans or Thanos’ snap, though perhaps that will be addressed at a later date).

But this also has larger ramifications for the MCU. Grant’s Loki variant was an opportunity to bring in a classic Marvel Comics costume and make that Loki actually exist within the MCU, so what other variants of other MCU characters are out there? Is there a timeline in which Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) did not die, and thus could re-enter the MCU as a very different version of himself? Could Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow be resurrected, of sorts, from another timeline or one of these worlds to which variants are banished?

That could be a stretch – by most accounts Downey completed his Marvel contract and is now doing other things with his career, and as with the various Loki variants, a lot of them are physically quite different from Hiddleston. So this could be a way to introduce different versions of Iron Man or other MCU heroes down the road, especially as the feature film sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (also written by Loki head writer Michael Waldron) will dive deep into the multiverse of the MCU.

What we know for sure is that Loki is alive, and all the Loki variants the TVA “pruned” may actually be alive in whatever world or pocket dimension that he was sent to. There are still two episodes of Loki left, and thus far each episode has been packed with story, so trying to predict exactly where this show will go may be a fool’s errand. For now, though, the Loki Episode 4 credit scene opens up even more possibilities, and at the very least promises we’ll get to see one of the most charismatic actors around – Richard E. Grant – put his own stamp on the Loki character in next week’s episode.

Stay tuned…

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