As He Who Remains once said in Loki, “The players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. I shake it off, I shake it off.” Wait, no, that was Taylor Swift — sorry, I keep getting them mixed up!
I mean, can you blame me? The Loki writers keep sneaking Taylor Swift lyrics into the show’s dialogues, and they’re always conveniently directed at Tom Hiddleston. Surely, this time it has to have been intentional.
Last time, Brad Wolfe/Hunter-X05 basically called Loki an “anti-hero” by way of paraphrasing the iconic chorus to the chart-topping Taylor Swift song. “It’s you, you’re the problem,” he told Loki, but we knew exactly what the writers were doing. Frankly, it was a perfect reference, since the newly-crowned God of Stories is the MCU’s most accomplished villain-turned-hero.
While we do concede that the second season of Loki was probably filmed before “Anti-Hero” had even been recorded, and maybe it was just an act of fate, the latest Taylor Swift Easter egg casually dropped by He Who Remains in the finale of the show could very well have been purposeful.
Allow me to refresh your memory, since not every brain is as hard-coded with Taylor Swift lyrics as mine, but there is a moment during the conversation between Loki and He Who Remains, at the Citadel at the End of Time, where the defeated Time Lord tells the former God of Mischief to “shake it off” after dropping some truth bombs (we won’t spoil it).
If I had a penny for every time someone quoted the pop princess’s music to Tom Hiddleston’s face in Loki, I would have exactly two pennies. It’s not much, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Poor guy is probably just trying to move on with his life, but much like Thanos, Taylor Swift is inevitable. Or maybe Marvel is just dropping hints that the Grammy-winning singer will soon suit up herself to join the big leagues— at least, if the Deadpool 3 rumors are to be believed.