Double the trouble: Marvel's 'Loki' confirms second season renewal in multiversal finale

Glorious purpose indeed! Loki has officially become the first Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series to confirm that it will be returning for a second season. The show made the exciting announcement following the end credits for its sixth and final episode ("For All Time. Always.") that dropped on Disney+ Wednesday morning.

It recalled the way in which Lucasfilm announced The Book of Boba Fett at the end of The Mandalorian's second installment last winter.

While many viewers expected the god of mischief's latest adventure to simply set the stage for the stranger — no pun intended — side of Phase 4 on the big screen, we now know that the character's run-in with the Time Variance Authority will not be a standalone experience. Rather, it's the start of a larger story arc for the lovable trickster, played to charming perfection by Tom Hiddleston.

***WARNING! The following contains major spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Loki!***

There was just no way fans weren't going to get a sophomore outing after that Twilight Zone-y twist of an ending where Loki finds himself in a version of the TVA ruled over not by the Time-Keepers, but by a militant version of Kang the Conquerer. Oh yeah, the finale also revealed Jonathan Majors (Lovecraft Country) as the temporal warmonger, whose bellicose variants will most likely serve as the central villains of Season 2.

How the character fits into the plot of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (out in winter 2023) remains to be seen, but we should definitely expect Sylvie's (Sophia Di Martino) decision to kill the prime iteration of Kang and free the timeline to have massive repercussions for both Spider-Man: No Way Home (out this December) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The latter movie, which debuts next March, was directed by Sam Raimi and penned by Loki head writer and executive producer, Michael Waldron.

"It's a thrill ride," he recently told SYFY WIRE about Multiverse of Madness. "It's a thrill ride with heart like you'd expect from a Sam Raimi superhero movie. Sam'ss a genius and the way he moves the camera is really exciting and he's not afraid to take chances. I think it's gonna be a really cool experience for everybody."

Disney has yet to set a firm premiere date for Season 2 of Loki, but given the immense popularity of the show, we'd guess the studio is raring to kick off production as soon as possible. Audiences could see the god of mischief return as early as next year. It's going according to Kang's master plan.

Loki is the best-reviewed television project to come out of Marvel Studios so far with a 92 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. That's one point ahead of WandaVision and two more than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

"They’re all different," Waldron said in reference to the three series. "They’re all great and really cool. I think that WandaVision is just so experimental and is so original. I’m astounded by that concept, the execution of it, and the commitment to it. That’s a show about grief in a lot of ways. Falcon and the Winter Soldier is just a blast of an adventure show that also is about legacy. And our show… maybe we exist somewhere a little more in between the two. I’d say [with] this show, we probably reckon with identity. [That's] probably our biggest concern."

All six episodes of Loki's debut season are now available to stream on Disney+.