La Ron S. Readus
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Is Loki the Main Character of the Multiverse Saga? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2023-08-11 18:01:00 +0000 UTC(sits on couch) Okay. Loki is the main character of the Multiverse Saga. (pauses) Where’s everyone going?
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With the October 2023 release of Loki season 2, Phase 5 of the MCU will be releasing its second narrative in The Multiverse Saga following Ant-Man and the Wasp Quanumania.
And because Phase 4 put it in motion with Loki Season 1, What If Season 1, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness...
(I kinda hesitate to count Shang-Chi and Ms. Marvel season 1 among the multiverse narrative because it hasn’t been confirmed if the ten rings and the bangle are connected somehow; it’s still just a theory that we’ll hopefully get answers to in The Marvels)
The MCU’s Multiverse Saga seems to be using its installments to establish some very interesting yet retrospectively unsurprising story tropes in its narrative
And it’s done so in a way that according to both the chronological and release date timelines, that if there’s gonna be a main character in The Multiverse Saga, the most logical choice so far would be Loki.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna show my work here. Just know that these are my opinions, my points, and you are welcome to agree or disagree with them as you see fit.
But if you end up liking what I’m putting down, my name is La’Ron Readus; offering you critique and immersion of your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
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Now with that out of the way, here’s why I think the Multiverse Saga has a main character, and why I think it’s Loki
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Here’s what Marvel did right.
Using the final installments of the Infinity Saga to plant the seeds for the Multiverse Saga was, in my opinion, a very solid move.
/It used Avengers: Endgame to explain how branching timelines give birth to new universes in the surviving Avengers quest to undo Thanos’ snap, and then show the creation of a new universe via a branching timeline in real time by allowing Avengers Loki -- aka TVA Loki -- to escape./
(Sighs) Insert obligatory honorable mention of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” here (Are you saying there’s a multiverse?)
Its through the POV of this Loki thanks to Loki Season 1 that we learn more of the basics about timelines and the multiverse in order to understand the upcoming narrative.
/We learn what Variants are, that the creation of new timelines from said variants are called Nexus events, and that too many would give a rebirth to the multiverse after the TVA -- or, in this case, the Kang variant He Who Remains -- was able to reform it into The Sacred Timeline./
It’s through Loki’s character development, his relationship with his female variant Sylvie and finally meeting the Kang behind the curtain that he gets an idea of how dangerous Kang can be and the threat he’ll have on the entire multiverse if he and his variants are allowed to exist again.
/So when Sylvie kills He Who Remains after sending Loki back to the TVA, it paradoxically restores every branching timeline/universe out of the sacred timeline to form the multiverse proper again, allowing every Kang variant to once again exist as if they were never purged from their respective timelines to begin with. And because Loki was outside of space and time when he and Sylvie were in He Who Remains’ headquarters, he’s the only one in the new timeline he was pushed into to have this information./
Before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was released, Loki and Sylvie were the only two individuals who know how dangerous Kang is and how much of a threat he is to the now-established multiverse.
/And because he knows, we see in the end credit scene of Quantumania and in the trailer for Loki season 2 that he’s able to convince this AU Morbius to join him in searching for all of the Kang variants that now exist in order to stop him./
This is part of what makes Loki qualify as, and be the main contender for, the main character of The Multiverse Saga; he both has hands-on experience with the major threat of the Multiverse Saga, and is currently in the process of trying to stop it.
But because his knowledge is limited, it allows other major players in the MCU who either have their own knowledge of the multiverse or their own experiences with Kang to show that they might also qualify as the hero of the Multiverse Saga.
Specifically Doctor Strange and Ant-Man
While I definitely have my opinions about it, which you can check out in a video I did on my main channel...
/Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness competes with Loki Season 1 regarding how much information about how the MCU multiverse is provided./
We get refreshers about how the multiverse works in case you don’t have a Disney Plus subscription in the form of universe-jumping America Chavez, for example.
/But the new information that the movie reveals that Loki season 1 kept out was the concept of incursions; an event when two or more universes in the multiverse collide and possibly one or more of the ones involved are destroyed in the process./
But is his knowledge of the multiverse and learning about the threat of incursions enough to qualify him as the main character of The Multiverse Saga? Not exactly.
MCU Stephen has enough knowledge of the Multiverse to be a couple steps below a TVA agent like Ravonna.
/We know this because of the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home when the spell he tried to cast for Peter went haywire, and his solution for it was very much “A place for everything and everything in its place.”/
But even then, he didn’t know everything about how the multiverse worked. After all, he learned about dreamwalking from Earth-838’s Baron Mordo and about incursions from that earth’s Reed Richards.
/But now that he’s experienced both being pursued by a dreamwalker and dreamwalking himself, and stepping into an incursion-destroyed universe before Clea spirited him away during the mid-credit scene to stop an incursion from happening that’ll either be a third Doctor Strange movie or either Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars, Doctor Strange has more knowledge about the multiverse under his belt than before and very little knowledge of Kang’s presence and the threat he serves to it./
/Which, if you remember the beginning of Avengers Infinity War, kinda tracks./ (Thanos is coming. Who?)
Scott Lang and the rest of the Ant-Man family however, are kinda on the opposite spectrum thanks to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
But just because they have more info on Kang and less about the multiverse, doesn’t mean that Scott qualifies for main character status for the Multiverse Saga.
Before the movie was released, a lot of peeps thought that Quantumania was gonna be the film that established Kang as an Avengers-level threat and brought serious stakes to the major conflict of the Multiverse Saga.
Thanks to the one image that leaked of the t-shirt that the crew wore, a lot of us thought that this was gonna be accomplished by having Kang kill Scott.
/Very similar to when the death of Agent Colson helped the Avengers assemble for the first time./
But, as those of us who watched the movie know, the lie detector determined that was a lie.
/Instead, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania provides something else to the overall narrative of the Multiverse Saga. It takes the knowledge of both the multiverse and Kang gathered from Loki season 1 and Multiverse of Madness -- variants, Nexus events, and incursions alike -- and tells you how it’s all gonna culminate in Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars/ (Universes colliding. Endless incursions. I saw the multiverse, and it was dying)
But what disqualifies Lang from reaching Multiverse Saga main character status isn’t his awareness of how dangerous Kang and his variants are. What disqualifies him is in his priorities.
/Yes, Scott knows how dangerous the Kang he faced in the Quantum realm is because he’s experienced it. He’s seen Kang overpower himself and MODOK, torture his daughter and lay waste to multiple citizens of the quantum realm with his technology. Janet witnessed how much of a master manipulator he was to get her help in rebuilding his chair, only for him to immediately come out of his code-switching once he realized she saw too much of his mind to convince her to finish the job./
But because he’s first and foremost focused on the safety of his family and getting them out of the quantum realm, the realization of how dangerous Kang and his variants are to the multiverse doesn’t really dawn on him until after he and Hope defeat him, they all make it out, and their lives return to a state of normalcy.
/And even then, despite all the second-guessing, the doubt, and the recollection that causes him to focus on the gravity of the situation he was previously in, he doesn’t really take up the initiative to try and deal with it./ (It’s probably fine)
But you know who does? You know who we see do so 11 minutes and 12 seconds after the movie ends?
/Loki/
Now I need to preface that just because I see Loki taking more initiative to fight Kang than I do Doctor Strange and Ant-Man, doesn’t mean I don’t find their contributions to the Multiverse Saga less important because they don’t give off main character energy to me. As far as I’m concerned...
They have their own roles to play.
While I’m absolutely sure that Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars are going to put plenty of focus on a lot of other characters in its climax...
The MCU installments that have been carrying the Multiverse Saga so far and the characters that’ve been driving them feel like they’re following a bit of an archetypal formula when it comes to this type of storytelling.
Loki so far in this narrative is “The Hero” in this Hero’s Journey.
/And yes, the adventure he goes on in Season 1 of Loki is an entire Hero’s Journey cycle if that’s all you focus on./
Once you acknowledge Loki’s hero status and add the story of Loki Season 1 to the overall narrative of the Multiverse Saga so far however...
/The involvement of Loki the character in both season 1 and season 2 only collectively cover the first act
Doctor Strange’s role in this oversized Hero’s Journey that the Multiverse Saga is putting Loki through is the role of mentor.
Being one himself, Loki knows about variants. And just like Doctor Strange, he also knows about how said variants break off from the Sacred Timeline in order to birth brand new universes in the multiverse.
/But while Doctor Strange so far in the narrative has no immediate knowledge of Kang the Conqueror, he knows about the threat that incursions bring to multiple universes while Loki so far does not, and there’s a lot he can teach Loki about the multiverse in his journey to stop Kang and talk sense into Sylvie./
In this instance, Loki is to Luke Skywalker as Doctor Strange is to Yoda. And I compare him to Yoda specifically because Loki already has a basic knowledge of the multiverse by the time he’ll eventually meet Strange, just like Obi-Wan already taught Luke the basics of the Force before sending him to Yoda.
Once Loki learns about incursions from Strange and possibly Clea, and once Janet Van Dyne FINALLY reveals to either Loki or the rest of the Ant-Man family that the Council of Kangs plan on utilizing MULTIPLE incursions to have their Multiversal War (God, she REALLY don’t like telling people important shit, huh...)
/Then Loki’s desire to side with the heroes to stop both Sylvie from causing more damage and the council of Kangs from destroying the very multiverse itself will be tenfold so that he can truly hold on to the things he holds dear. Bringing true meaning to Loki’s line of being “burdened by glorious purpose.”/
Conclusion
Now I’m not expecting to be 100% right about everything I stated here as far as where I think Marvel Studios is gonna take the narrative of the Multiverse Saga.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they completely pushed all the character work that was done to the side just to make sure it didn’t overshadow the main heroes they’re gonna be promoting with the movies just for Secret Wars to end the Multiverse Saga with another Avengers Assemble treadmill run like they did in Endgame.
But it would’ve been an insult to both how stories are commonly structured and, y’know, my own common sense, if I didn’t state that Loki’s role in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga is looking REAL Main Character right now.
/And if it was intentional, I’m not mad at it./
(Snaps) Right! Yes! Homework!
Write in the comment section below what YOU think about the use of Loki in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga so far
Or if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, let me know if there’s another character you feel deserves the title of “The Main Character of the Multiverse Saga”
Whichever one you wanna answer, feel free to let me know!
/Thank you to ALL of my patrons -- big and small -- for your financial support and making this possible! If you want to support the creation of the videos for this and the main channel, make sure you click the card at the end or the link in the description to join.
But until then this is Readus 201. Class dismissed./
