After a decade of foreshadowing of Marvel’s biggest baddie, after he snapped half of the universe into dust, when he finally crumbled into the same dust in the ‘Endgame’ (2019), […]
After a decade of foreshadowing of Marvel’s biggest baddie, after he snapped half of the universe into dust, when he finally crumbled into the same dust in the ‘Endgame’ (2019), it was a sight to behold. But it also opened up a can of worms – who’s next? Who will be the big, bad nemesis of The Avengers? Who would fill the huge shoes of Thanos? Well, MCU fans, the time is nigh for the entry of the biggest, the worst, most wicked Marvel supervillain – drumrolls….. make way for Kang The Conqueror! And with him begins the chaos, the cataclysmic chain of events, the eventual path to the ultimate destruction that would pit the multiverses against each other. The fans, who have read the comics, are aware of Kang’s prowess. For the fans who are yet to meet the time-travelling mad man, here’s what Iron Man had to say about him from David Michelinie’s ‘The Man Who Stole Tomorrow’ (1979) –
“…Kang isn’t like any of our ordinary mortal foes. In fact, he may not even be mortal at all anymore, at least as we know the term. Kang is a once-human creature who holds absolute mastery over space and time. Unfortunately, he also happens to be hopelessly insane. And he’s beaten us before….”
‘Loki’ introduces Kang as an unnamed person living in the citadel behind the demon Alioth. While it name drops the term ‘Conqueror’ rather surreptitiously, it even foreshadows the catastrophic future where the multiple variants of Kang would pose a challenge to the earth’s mightiest defenders. Jonathan Majors plays this unnamed role, which gets introduced about 10 mins into the show but gets the best part as both Lokis i.e. Loki and Sylvie finally meet the man behind TVA, a man who is known as he who remains! After he explains his true purpose behind creating TVA and pruning any non-linear timelines, Loki and Sylvie get into a duel as it becomes a battle between the two sides of the same person – the one who cannot trust and the other who cannot be trusted!
Marvel, in its last two shows ‘Wanda Vision’ and ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ has explored the days after the events of ‘Endgame’. Both shows portray their pivotal characters getting into an internal turmoil about their existence vis-a-vis the world they’ve been put in, post the ‘blip’. ‘Loki’ also does the same by placing Loki in a place where he’s clueless about his future. From a dangerous, Machiavellian villain, he gets transformed into a man, who’s willing to forego his ‘glorious purpose’ for the benefit of the whole universe. He even falls in love, with his narcissistic own self, in the form of Sylvie. From the tyrannical man who wanted to rule Asgard to the man sacrificing a life that he always wanted, Loki’s character graph takes a 360-degree turn in the show. Tom Hiddleston, as always steals the show with his act. He’s ably supported by Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna and Owen Wilson as Mobius.
Now that the multiverses have been officially created by the branching of the sacred timeline, it remains to be seen, how it gets tied to the events of ‘Wanda Vision’ and the forthcoming MCU movies, ‘Spiderman – No Way Home’ (2021), ‘Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness’ (2022) and ‘Ant-Man and Wasp – Quantumania’ (2023). Exciting things await fellow fans and knowing Marvel, it is not going to disappoint us fanatics even a little bit. For all times, always!
So we wait, with bated breaths to witness Kang in his full glory and hey, Loki returns in season 2!
The Cinemawala 