The ending of the Disney+ series Loki has far-reaching consequences, not only for the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but for its predecessor Spider-Man: No Way Home and even the animated series What If...?
Producer Richie Palmer picked apart the chain reaction in an interview with Marvel.com. "If the events of Loki never took place, if Sylvie didn’t do what she did, this movie and the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home wouldn’t have been able to happen," said Palmer. "It was the activation of the Multiverse, or maybe the reactivation of the Multiverse at the end of Loki that really led to the possibilities that you see in What If…?, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."
Sylvie, a variant of Loki introduced in the series, killed the Time Variance Authority's mastermind known as He Who Remains in the Season 1 finale. This allowed for the unchecked proliferation of endless alternate timelines, many of which have been glimpsed in the MCU since the episode aired. No Way Home showed Peter Parker and Doctor Strange collaborating to weave a spell that would remove the memory of Peter's identity from everyone's memories, which misfires and creates a multiversal breach. Strange is able to return the subsequent alternate-reality visitors to their own worlds, but Multiverse of Madness reveals that his work has just begun.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige previously discussed the interconnected fallout in Multiverse of Madness, saying, "There’s always a method to the madness even in the Multiverse." Feige went on to point out that "Loki and Sylvie did something at the end of [Loki] that sort of allowed all of this to be possible... He Who Remains is gone, and that allowed a spell to go wrong in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which leads to the entire Multiverse going quite mad in [Doctor Strange 2]."
Palmer added some clarification, saying, "What Kevin was referring to about that spell at the end of Spider-Man is if that spell had just gone the way that Doctor Strange thought it would, even if Peter Parker messed it up so horribly like he did, it really still would have only affected people within our Universe." It seems to have been a case of missing vital information: "Doctor Strange wasn’t considering that he had to, in doing that spell and setting it up, worry about all the infinite other universes out there that are filled with people that know who Spider-Man is. That shouldn’t have been a factor. That was something that’s not known to Strange and Wong at that point that they have to be factoring in all these alternate realities in the Multiverse."
The key moment that set off the potential for the Multiverse plot points goes back to the Loki Season 1 finale, Palmer explained. "At that moment, the Multiverse expanded indefinitely forward into the future, back into the past, sideways, left and right, to alternate realities we can’t even comprehend," the producer said. "If it wasn’t for Sylvie, we wouldn’t be here right now."
The first season of Loki can be streamed on Disney+. Season 2 does not yet have a release date. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters now.
Source: Marvel.com