Credit: Marvel StudiosOver a week in November, Loki Season 2 amassed 753 million minutes of watch time across Disney+ subscribers. The huge surge in viewers, which can largely be attributed to the TV show’s epic finale on November 10, saw the Marvel series claim the number-one spot on the Nielsen Original Series streaming charts. But, with Loki now retired after two seasons, what can Disney and Marvel do to keep in the audiences’ good graces?
Following up on the record-breaking first season, Loki Season 2 became a light in the dark for Marvel’s TV efforts, quickly becoming positively reviewed and generating buzz from fans. Following the events of the Season 1 finale, which saw Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), Loki Season 2 found the titular God of Mischief, once again played by Tom Hiddleston, deal with the aftermath of his Variant’s actions — the branching, unstable Multiverse.
Loki Season 2 brought back many familiar faces like Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Wunmi Mosaku as Mobius M. Mobius, Ravonna Renslayer, and Hunter B-15, respectively. Jonathan Majors also returned as both He Who Remains and another Kang the Conqueror Variant, Victor Timely. Academy Award-winner Ke Huy Quan made his MCU debut as Ouroboros/”O.B.”
Marvel Loki Series Retirement Will Change Everything
As Season 2 propelled towards its finale, viewers believed that Loki would eventually become the new He Who Remains, taking on his role at the End of Time to keep the Sacred Timeline in check. Due to interference from his companions, mainly Sylvie, Loki realized that he needed to abandon his friends and manipulate the Temporal Loom (which had been malfunctioning to cater to all the branched timelines) into a tree-like structure capable of holding and expanding with the multiple new timelines.
Originally created by Michael Waldron, Loki Season 2 saw Eric Martin serve as head writer, with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead leading the directing team. The latter pair will next head up the forthcoming Daredevil: Born Again series after a major creative shake-up. However, neither party will be returning to Loki.
As confirmed by Loki executive producer Kevin Wright earlier this year, Loki was always conceived as a two-parter. That is, the entire story was never meant to stretch into a third and fourth season, and so on. Because of this show’s retirement, there will be no more new Loki in the future for fans to enjoy, and it will change everything.
In a world where Marvel projects are not the sure-fire hits many have come to expect from the House of Mouse-owned studio, Loki‘s success in the recent Nielsen original series streaming charts from November 6 through November 12 proves there is still immense love for certain aspects — or characters — in the superhero franchise. With no more Loki seasons to fall back on, and let’s not forget that the first season also issued in a major change for all Disney+ original series because of its success, Marvel and Disney will need to find its replacement fast or risk losing even more footing in the streaming world.
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There is also the notion of Loki‘s lasting footprint in the fictional universe of the MCU. The Multiverse truly began on the small screen back in June 2021, and now that very same Multiverse has been changed forever, again in the living rooms and bedrooms of fans all over the world. That major change has to translate somehow onto the big screen, and with branched timelines now an accepted part of the universe, anyone and everyone could come walking out at literally any time.
Inside the Magic reached out to Disney+ for comment on the success of Loki on the Nielsen streaming charts, but they did not respond by the time of publication.
It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios’ billion-dollar franchise, is struggling. The behemoth has been going at a glacial pace this year at the box office, only offset by the $800 million hit Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) from James Gunn. Both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and The Marvels (2023) left little to be desired with their global takings.
On the TV front, all eyes were on the return of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in Secret Invasion, the six-episode Disney+ series based on the classic Marvel Comics run of the same name. Secret Invasion, despite its stellar cast, which also included Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke, failed to live up to the hype and became one of the franchise’s poorest-rated shows.
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Looking ahead, Marvel Studios will next release What If…? Season 2 for nine consecutive nights from December 22. Then, in the New Year, the studio will drop all five episodes of its TV-MA series, Echo, onto Disney+. Later in 2024, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, the WandaVision spinoff, will debut.
Do you think Disney+ will thrive without the Marvel Loki series or not? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!