Kang’s Loki Season 2 Form Has A Callback To The Pre-Marvel Comics
The revealed Kang variant that will play a role in this year’s Loki season 2 has one very interesting connection to the pre-Marvel Comics.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania!Loki season 2 debuts this year on Disney+, and when it does, the show is poised to bring along a Kang the Conqueror variant that has a callback to the pre-Marvel Comics era of the company. Marvel Studios has shown how much trust it has on the Loki team, as Loki season 1 was responsible for kick-starting the events that set Jonathan Majors’ Kang loose to dominate the multiverse. On the show, the death of the Kang variant known as He Who Remains set things in motion for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next chapter.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania not only introduced Kang, but also laid the setup for Loki season 2’s story with the movie’s second post-credits scene. In the scene, Majors appears as a Kang variant named Victor Timely. The character is shown to be speaking about time at an event — in the past — to an audience, with it soon being revealed that Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Owen Wilson’s Mobius are watching the speech unfold, looking terrified. Victor Timely is an interesting choice for the MCU, and one that carries a connection to Marvel’s beginning.
Victor Timely’s Name References Timely Comics
While Marvel Comics has become one of the top two names in the medium, the company was not always called that. Timely Comics was founded in 1939, before changing names to Atlas Comics, and then Marvel Comics in 1961. While the Marvel movies do not exactly adapt the comics, the MCU including the Victor Timely variant of Kang allows the universe to have a neat connection to the name that started it all for Marvel.
How Victor Timely Fits Into Loki Season 2
Loki season 1 ended with the Time Variance Authority being taken over by one ruler whose statue looked exactly like He Who Remains, teasing that Kang the Conqueror was now in charge of the TVA. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s post-credits inclusion of Victor Timely alongside Loki and Mobius likely means the character will have an important part to play when Loki season 2 comes around. In the comics, Victor Timely is an alias used by Kang the Conqueror after the Avengers beat him, and Kang retreats to plan his next move.
Kang travels back in time to the year 1901 — which matches the clothing in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s post-credits scene — and founds a town named Timely, in Wisconsin. There, Kang creates Timely Industries, which would make some of his time travel gadgets. Loki season 2 could be a direct follow-up to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, with Kang not actually dying after Ant-Man beat him, but having been sent back in time to hide as Victor Timely. That Loki season 2 story would fit the MCU’s approach of not directly adapting the comics, and would pit Loki against Kang the Conqueror himself, instead of a He Who Remains return.
