WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Loki Season 1 finale, "For All Time. Always." now streaming on Disney+.

It's not too hard to see how Jonathan Majors' Loki performance doubled as a Wonderful Wizard of Oz homage.

Loki director Kate Herron told Entertainment Weekly that, in addition to casting Majors as the elusive Time Variance Authority founder He Who Remains, they also let him play the Time-Keeper automatons similar to the Wizard's iconic projection self. "Something that was really fun for me was we hadn't, for example, cast the voice of the Time Keepers yet, because you know Wizard of Oz was an obvious reference of ours. I was like, 'Oh, let's get Jonathan to do it, because he's an amazing character actor,'" Herron said. "We sent him the art of all the characters and it was really fun [because] he was sending us all of these different voices he could do for each character, which was great."

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Initially, Loki depicted its three Time-Keepers as mythic beings who, according to the TVA's animated mascot Miss Minutes, singlehandedly saved the Sacred Timeline from a great Multiversal War that nearly destroyed reality. Following his TVA incarceration, Loki sought to gain an audience with the Time-Keepers in hopes of overthrowing them, eventually receiving it alongside his female counterpart Sylvie in the show's fourth episode. When Sylvie tried to kill one of the Time-Keepers, however, they discover that all three are little more than "mindless androids," raising more questions about the organization's true purpose.

Loki's season finale eventually revealed that He Who Remains built the Time-Keepers to justify an elaborate lie about his identity to the TVA's employees, just like the Wizard of Oz did for Oz's people. Majors, who will also play Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, divulges that he is an alternate version of Kang and that Multiversal War was actually fought amongst his other selves until he, after weaponizing the power of Alioth, defeated them all and separated the timeline from their reach. Despite warning Loki and Sylvie of the other Variants resurfacing should he die, Sylvie killed him anyway and threw Loki into a TemPad Time Door to prevent him from interfering with her revenge. This decision resulted in immediate consequences, with Loki finding the TVA's Time-Keeper statues replaced with that of a figure resembling He Who Remains.

Majors will reprise his role -- or a variant of it -- in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is set to release Feb. 17, 2023. However, with a second season of Loki in the works, he may return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe sooner than that. All six episodes of Loki Season 1 are currently available on Disney+.

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Source: EW