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Renewing Loki for a second season, the very first MCU Disney Plus series to receive that honor, must’ve seemed like an easy win for Marvel Studios. And so far, it’s largely paid off — with the season 2 premiere earning over 10 million views in its first few days and sporting 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. And yet Loki season 2 is only Disney Plus’ second biggest-ever opening and its RT score is lagging behind other Marvel TV hits.
It’d be churlish to complain about these minor quibbles, but it has to be said that Loki season 2’s opening episode makes clear another potential future problem for the MCU.
While fans seemed to enjoy getting to grips with its deep dive into TVA lore, new quirky characters, and a timey-wimey plot that would give the Doctor a headache, this episode must’ve been all but impenetrable for anyone without a degree in MCU-ology.
The question of whether the franchise’s over-arching story has become too hard to follow has been raging since the Multiverse Saga began (and even before then). However, Marvel’s streaming series have always been relatively accessible for newcomers. The likes of Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight introduced brand new characters while WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier dropped familiar heroes into fresh situations that required little foreknowledge.
Loki season 1 is perhaps the best example of this, as we the audience learned about the TVA along with the titular trickster himself. But Loki season 2 has hit the ground running and assumes everyone watching is familiar with all the twists and turns of a two-year-old six-part season. After all, trying to figure out exactly how the Sacred Timeline works is tricky even for those of us who love this universe so much we sat through Quantumania more than once.
Loki is the most-viewed Marvel Disney Plus show, so it’ll probably get away with it, but once — or if — we get second runs for the likes of Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk, the shows will become increasingly catered towards the hardcore fandom. By 2024, we’ll have had 9 MCU sequels in a row so clearly the movies are beyond hope, and it looks like Marvel on TV is headed the same way.
The Marvel fandom is enormous, so catering to experts hardly means it’s in danger, but it does still have to welcome in new people to sustain itself. Otherwise, in the long run, the MCU will prune itself out of existence.