Loki Episode 6: Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, Explained

Loki episode 6 featured a terrific efficiency by particular visitor star Jonathan Majors (Lovecraft Country) who entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a variant of Kang the Conqueror — a job he’s set to play in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, slated to launch in February 2023 in cinemas. But right here on Loki, that well-known Marvel Comics title of his was by no means bandied about, save for a cursory throwaway point out of “conqueror”. Instead, Majors was referred to as (and credited) solely as, He Who Remains. But we did briefly see the Conqueror model, or reasonably a statue of him, on the very finish of Loki episode 6. Who is he? Thankfully, Marvel has given us a bit extra info elsewhere.

In an interview with Marvel.com, Loki creator and head author Michael Waldron said: “We knew that we wanted this show to be huge, and we wanted it to really end with a bang and have a huge impact on the MCU moving forward. Knowing that Kang was probably going to be the next big cross-movie villain, and because he is a time-traveling, multiversal adversary, it just always made so much sense. I came up with that big multiversal war mythology and pitched it out in the room one day to our producers. And they said, yeah, let’s go for it. We knew we were going to end up meeting the man behind the curtain. And then it was just on us to make sure that that meeting really delivered.”

Waldron is kind of confirming that Kang the Conqueror will likely be Marvel’s subsequent huge villain, identical to Thanos was till now. Though he is subsequent anticipated to indicate his face in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, given what Majors talks about within the Loki season finale and the brand new multiverse nature of the MCU, we may simply run into different variants of Kang elsewhere. A chief candidate for that is Doctor Strange within the Multiverse of Madness, the upcoming March 2022 Marvel film that Loki ties into. And in fact, one model of him — Kang the Conqueror — is operating the Time Variance Authority within the parallel timeline that Loki episode 6 ends.

Marvel.com confirms this, explaining that the only statue we see rather than the Time Keepers statue is the variant He Who Remains warned them about, Kang, in a futuristic go well with. Loki manufacturing designer Kasra Farahani then provides that they saved the brand new TVA’s architectural design similar “to delay the audience and Loki’s understanding that they were in a different place, that they were in a different timeline.” If Mobius’ (Owen Wilson) response in Loki episode 6 hadn’t already instructed you that Loki had travelled throughout the multiverse, there you have got it. It’s additionally slightly curious that Kang the Conqueror would need to run his personal model of TVA, however he most likely has his causes.

It will likely be some time earlier than we study them — in both the now-confirmed Loki season 2 or Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, whichever comes first — and why Waldron wrote He Who Remains as a “very charismatic sociopath” on Loki episode 6: “You had to leave a lot of meat on the bone in terms of how evil he could be, because that’s He Who Remains’ whole thing, that it’s not me who you should be afraid of. ‘It’s the other versions of me that are going to come.’ It was trying to really hint at that terrifying evil within without going all the way there.”

Loki director Kate Herron referred to as Kang the theme of their present: “I was quite excited that we got to show him because he is the one that brings it all [together. He’s] the theme of our show. No one is completely good or completely bad, and people do fall into that gray area. I thought his reasoning with [Loki and Sylvie] that you can take me out, but I’ll be back here anyway…you’re going to awaken all these versions of me. And they are much scarier than me. I really believe him when he says that.”

Majors’ He Who Remains shares a part of his background together with his Marvel Comics counterpart, who can be initially from the thirty first century just like the variant we see in Loki episode 6. But whereas he was a scientist within the Disney+ sequence, Nathaniel Richards — as he’s identified in print — was a scholar who travels again in time to Egypt. He ping-pongs by way of time earlier than conquering Earth in thirty second century, the place he rebrands himself as Kang the Conqueror. The supervillain has had a protracted historical past since Kang’s first look in The Avengers comedian books in 1964, although he is by no means proven to be the creator of the TVA.

Marvel Studios is understood to tweak with characters when it introduces them, so that is nothing new. What stays to be seen is the place the MCU takes Majors and Kang.

All episodes of Loki season 1 at the moment are streaming on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar.