When Sylvie, a Loki Variant, plunged her dagger into the chest of He Who Remains, the Sacred Timeline started branching and the Multiverse was reborn. The events of Loki opened the door to what happened in Spider-Man: No Way Home, while Doctor Strange in the Multiverse is expected to explore the concept even further (hence the title).
Michael Waldron was Loki's Head Writer and also penned the screenplay for the Doctor Strange sequel, so fans are expecting the two stories to be somehow connected.
Talking to The Playlist, Waldron chose his words carefully when asked about how they intertwine. "The headaches I have are probably intertwined. I mean, it’s all intertwined and it’s all stands alone," the writer teased. "Like a great comic universe, I think that one thing certainly informs the other. You’re going to have a better time watching the next chapter of an MCU story if you’ve seen the stuff before it. But also, hopefully, even if you’ve never if you’ve walked in off the street, you’ll still have a blast. It should be good enough that it stands on its own."
Adding that he's "really proud" of how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came together, Waldron revealed that he initially approached Loki as a limited series. However, Marvel Studios decided to shift things around as they neared the end of production, leaving us to wonder whether that story is more likely to play out in its own corner of the MCU rather than on the big screen.
In other words, we're not expecting the former Sorcerer Supreme to rescue the God of Mischief from the timeline he finds himself trapped in! When Waldron was later asked if Loki season 2 could get a higher episode count, he simply responded by saying, "Time will tell."
It would be surprising for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to not acknowledge the sudden emergence of Multiversal chaos, so Loki will probably be referenced in some way. Despite recent rumours, hoping for a cameo might be expecting too much, but we'll find out for sure on May 6.