The Wrap recently caught up with Loki director Kate Herron, and the filmmaker - who won't return for the show's second season - confirmed that even before plans were finalised to continue telling the God of Mischef's story, the series was set to end of a major cliffhanger.
"The Multiverse being released, we always knew that is where 'Loki's' story was going to end," she explains, revealing that it wasn't until the series was in post-production that she learned about plans for another batch of episodes. "It was just coming out of the fact that everyone was really excited with the work we’d all done. And it just felt clearly that there was so much more road to travel with the characters."
Herron went on to confirm that the show's final scene changed slightly when that decision was made, hence why Loki ends up in a totally different version of the Time Variance Authority.
"In terms of the end, where he’s in the TVA, and he runs through, and it’s like, Is he in the TVA we know?" Herron says. "Definitely we worked on [that] once we knew the story was continuing. But I think we always intended to have questions for the characters."
Herron would also confirm that, yes, Loki is in an alternate timeline rather than an altered MCU. "Our interpretation of it was that [Sylvie] thinks that she’s sending him back to the TVA that we know, but because of what’s happening outside that window, it’s on into another branch and it is a different version of the TVA. That reality as we know it, has changed."
"He’s a long way from home."
That's something we'll see touched on in Loki's second season, but with reliable sources reporting that Tom Hiddleston will reprise the role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it's possible he'll escape this twisted TVA (ruled over by Kang the Conqueror) sooner rather than later.
Where do you see things going for the God of Mischief following that huge cliffhanger?