Paving the way for what’s up next is forever the name of the game with any new MCU project, but it’s particularly expected when it comes to Loki season 2. The first season of the Tom Hiddleston TV show had a major impact on the ongoing Multiverse Saga by introducing Jonathan Majors as (a variant of) Kang into our midst, so all eyes are on its second run to set various other plates spinning. Majors is back as a new Kang variant, Victor Timely, for starters.
In addition, though, Loki has found itself being closely connected with an upcoming MCU movie that, at first glance, it might not seem to have much in common with. Namely, Deadpool 3. Unusually for the ultra-secretive studio, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have been allowed to be pretty open about the Fox-flavored threequel, which means we already know to expect some tie-ins with Loki. But how exactly will they connect?
Marvel Studios heavily hints at how Loki will feed into Deadpool 3
First of all, let’s begin with what the studio itself has to say on the subject. When it comes to Marvel’s responses to the latest MCU rumors, what it doesn’t say is almost more telling than what it does say, and that’s definitely the case here. In the run-up to Loki season 2’s premiere, executive producer Kevin Wright was asked by ComicBook.com to address how the show sets up DP3. Wright gave a classic politician’s answer, mostly dodging the question, but his comments were nonetheless illuminating:
“I think everything we are doing here certainly lays the groundwork for fertile storytelling elsewhere,” Wright said. “I can say from everyone on the Loki team, we are hopeful and excited about the possibility of the TVA being able to— to continue to tell stories at the TVA. I always kind of think of them as our time-based multiverse version of S.H.I.E.L.D. that it’s like we can use them in so many places and tell so many cool stories.”
Wright’s description of the TVA as a “multiverse version of S.H.I.E.L.D.” may just spoil how the organization will be able to bounce around the MCU in the future (or the past and the present, as the case may be), showing up wherever something’s gone wrong with time in much the same way as S.H.I.E.L.D. used to back up the Avengers in Phases One and Two. In other words, this is how we can expect the TVA to factor into the story of Deadpool 3. Which matches up exactly with leaked plot details of the film.
Deadpool 3 plot details hint at full-scale Loki crossovers
Thanks to Deadpool 3 filming much of its production out in the open, prior to the strikes forcing Marvel to press pause on it over the summer, some form of Loki crossover is 100% confirmed, thanks to set pics revealing vehicles bearing the TVA’s logo pursuing Wade Wilson. So clearly the plot will in some way revolve around the former citizen of the Fox universe getting in trouble with the organization for causing multiversal mayhem.
The oft-shared first look at Reynolds and Jackman in their swanky new superhero suits may also tell us more than it appears to. It’s believed that DP will travel to The Void, the realm at the end of time where the various variants pruned by the TVA end up, as revealed in Loki season 1. The desolate landscape the pair are photographed in certainly resembles The Void. This would likewise perfectly explain how Jackman’s Logan returns — he’s a pruned variant of Wolverine who didn’t die in Logan.
That’s not even mentioning that Owen Wilson is rumored to be making a cameo as Mobius, with Tom Hiddleston similarly linked, although there’s even less evidence for that one. A certain connectivity between Loki and Deadpool 3 is confirmed, then, with some major crossovers potentially on the way. With any luck, that X-Men Easter egg in Loki season 2, episode 1 is just a brief taste of something much more appetizing to come.