The first two episodes of Loki season 2 featured a couple of shots that many fans perceived to be X-Men Easter Eggs, which may or may not have been teasing the imminent arrival of the iconic mutant heroes to the MCU.
The series premiere included what seemed like a pretty blatant nod to the "Cerebro Door" that was a regular fixture of 20th Century Fox's X-Men movies.
Then, in "Breaking Brad," Loki and Mobius travel to a timeline where Hunter B-5 has gone rogue and is living his best life as an actor named Brad Wolfe. When the God of Mischief catches up with "Zaniac," some graffiti can be glimpsed on the wall which reads: "All M are brothers."
These may well have been added as X-Men Easter Eggs, but according to director Dan DeLeeuw, they weren't something he had planned to include as a way of hinting at the super-team's arrival.
"That's the art department, Kasra [Farahani, who also helmed episode 3], our production designer, is a genius with all the sets," the filmmaker explained to Screen Rant. "You can see with the posters in the TVA, if you let the art department run with something, they will just come up with amazing ideas that have a story behind them."
"But it's something you never would have anticipated showing up on set. It wasn't really planned."
DeLeeuw then recalled how his humanities tutor at university would often tell the class, 'Well, if it's there, it's there', if she had a different idea or perspective on a book they happened to be studying. "It's like, 'Okay, I don't think that was the intention, but, if they wanted it to be there, sure.'"
So, we probably shouldn't expect to see Loki interact with any of the X-Men in the Disney+ series, but that doesn't mean they won't cross paths at some point. The TVA are rumored to factor into Deadpool 3, which will feature Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and possibly several other characters from the Fox era.
Did you spot these references? Drop us a comment down below.
Loki season 2 "promises new excitement as it thrusts the infamous God of Mischief into a new set of adventures with the TVA."
The series stars Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, Tara Strong, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Neil Ellice, with Jonathan Majors, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson.
Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Dan Deleeuw and Kasra Farahani will direct all six episodes.
The head writer is Eric Martin. Kevin Feige, Stephen Broussard, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, Kevin R. Wright, Tom Hiddleston, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Eric Martin and Michael Waldron are the executive producers, with Trevor Waterson serving as co-executive producer.
The first three episodes of
Loki season 2 are now streaming on Disney+.