Could Loki open the door for Robert Downey Jr. to return to the MCU? That’s the question Tom Hiddleston was faced with after the incredible Loki Season 2 finale blew open the MCU with seemingly infinite possibilities.
“Speaking for myself, Loki’s died a few times,” he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “I’m still here. I don’t know that death is necessarily... I mean death is – death is up for grabs, as an existential question. That’s all I can give you.”
Loki Season 2 spoilers follow.
Loki Season 2 ended with a bombshell: Loki himself is now the God of Stories. Finding himself at the heart of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, Loki is in the unique position of being able to influence any world that sits on, well, pretty much any timeline. The possibilities are endless, and it’s not surprising to see fans quickly jump to whether or not beloved characters such as Tony Stark or Steve Rodgers could find themselves resurrected thanks to the not-so-mischievous Norse God.
But Hiddleston admits that he isn’t sure how that might work. “Since Loki knows how to time-slip now, can he go find someone like Tony Stark, aka Iron Man?” Fallon asked Hiddleston.
“This guy. This is investigative journalism right here!” Hiddleston replied. “I mean, time-slipping, technically gives Loki some interesting moves he can make... I suppose, yeah, he can move from past, present, future. I know that I can time-slip. I don’t know that other characters can time-slip.”
It seems unlikely then, that Loki can just pull Tony Stark from one reality to another. However, that doesn’t mean he can’t technically timeslip back to before Stark’s heroic sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame and change the course of history. Although, the Loki season finale proved that’s not all that simple.
Still, there are some interesting possibilities, especially with The Marvels opening up Incursions and paving the way for Avengers: Secret Wars. The idea of worlds colliding and the multiverse expanding goes hand in hand with Loki’s new position at the center of everything, and his role as the God of Stories may end up being more important than ever.
Whether or not that means Iron Man, Cap, or any other now-deceased Avengers will return, remains to be seen. But with Marvel reportedly having considered a pivot to Doctor Doom as well as a return of the original Avengers, it feels as though anything is possible.
IGN’s Loki Season 2 finale review gave it 9/10 and said: “Loki wraps up a meandering second season by turning inwards. As a full-circle reflection on not just two seasons of television but the core concepts of the character played by Tom Hiddleston since 2011, ‘Glorious Purpose’ finds the narrow middle ground between Marvel Phase positioning and substantial drama that has so far eluded the MCU since Avengers: Endgame.”
Want to read more about Loki? Check out why Loki is officially the MCU’s best character as well as everything we know about upcoming Marvel movies and TV shows.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
