Now that Loki has been renewed for a second season, the question of when and where it will fit amongst the multiverse has been at the forefront of fans’ minds. Based on the event of season 1, Loki begins during the tail end of Avengers: Endgame and carries on after Thanos has been defeated by the heroes. This places season 1 of Loki before WandaVision, and has provoked a lot of fans to ask themselves why the TVA never got involved with Wanda’s Westview reality. The answer could be found in season 2 of Loki, depending on how it fits into the MCU timeline.
When Loki was released, it was unclear whether or not the show would get a second season, or serve as a limited series, so many fans assumed that Loki and Sylvie would succeed in destroying the TVA by the time the final episode was released. This would have made sense as to why the TVA never arrested Wanda for playing with the fabric of time and creating her own personal reality, because if Loki and Sylvie had destroyed the TVA, there would have been nobody around to arrest Wanda for her crimes. Wanda’s actions should have created a pretty huge red flag for the TVA, because she was hurting innocent people (albeit unintentionally) and her source of magic is one of a kind.
Chaos magic and The Scarlet Witch are said to be nothing more than a scary story, so it’s hard to believe that such a large burst of never-before-seen activity would not have been picked up by the TVA. The TVA should have realized what Wanda was doing in Westview, so either they completely ignored it or she was somehow able to stay off their radar and get away with crafting her own small universe. As fans saw in Loki, the TVA has arrested people for much less, which includes children playing with toys or old men leaving a life of isolation behind to reunite with their family. Neither of these things are actual crimes, yet Wanda was somehow allowed to hold hundreds of people hostage for the sake of clinging on to her deceased loved ones.
If season 2 of Loki is set directly after the events of season 1, it makes sense as to why the TVA never went to get Wanda, because they were already falling apart. It would also confirm the fan theory that the TVA never intervened in WandaVision, because they no longer existed by the time Wanda took the town hostage. This seems unlikely, though, because Loki season 1 already created the multiverse, which is the major driving point of Phase 4 moving forward.
Loki is rumored to make an appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, alongside Wanda and Stephen Strange, so clearly the effects of destroying Kang’s timeline can be felt all over the universe, beyond just the Loki series. Bringing all three of these characters together implies that the multiverse wasn’t created until after Wanda left Westview, and the TVA was still up and running during WandaVision, so they could have done something to stop her.
The general assumption is that season 2 of Loki will be set after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so the question to ask now is why the TVA let Wanda make her own reality. Was it because they couldn’t detect her magic since The Scarlet Witch is essentially a myth? Was Wanda meant to capture a town of innocent people, according to Kang’s original plan? These are things that season 2 of Loki or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness should answer, in order to explain how the events of WandaVision were allowed to take place.
Figuring out the MCU timeline can be extremely difficult, now that the multiverse has been introduced to the franchise. It’s entirely possible that more recent Marvel projects don’t adhere to the more traditional, linear passage of time, and are happening all at once on different parts of the sacred timeline. Regardless, determining where Loki season 2 fits in amongst the universe could have serious consequences on other upcoming MCU projects.
Now that fans know Phase 4 is multiverse-focused, there’s a good chance that Kang’s destroyed timeline will continue to wreak havoc in other Marvel projects, like Hawkeye or Secret Invasion. A Kang variant is already expected to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and the creation of the multiverse in Loki has made room for multiple Spider-Man variants to appear in the next installment of the franchise. This proves that Loki has had serious consequences on the rest of the Marvel Universe and the importance of the show extends beyond the weekly episodes fans have seen this summer. Season 2 will likely pack the same punch, but when it is set could make or break the continuity of the MCU timeline.