Let's Talk About The Big Bad 'Loki' Variant And What It Means For The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Major spoilers follow for the second episode of Loki. You've been warned!

The second episode of Loki on Disney+ revealed a lot, including having our Loki (Tom Hiddleston) come face-to-face with the Variant of himself wracking havoc on the Time Variance Authority and the Sacred Timeline. This isn't the first time we've seen a version of Loki like this – the comic book world has seen all sorts of Loki variants (well, maybe not in the TVA definition of the word), including this one.

Read on to learn more about this other version of Loki, and what it could mean for the MCU.

That's right — the other Loki is a woman, played by Sophia Di Martino. The show hinted at this in the first episode when Loki's TVA file listed him as gender fluid, and it's been something Marvel fans have been speculating about since Marvel announced Di Martino's casting.

Part of the fan speculation rested on the fact that this isn't the first time there's been a female version of Loki. Thor #5 and #6 in the 2007-8 comic book run, written by J. Michael Straczynski and penciled by Olivier Coipel, features Loki in the body of Lady Sif. 2009's The New Avengers #54 and #56, part of the Dark Reign arc written by Brian Michael Bendis and penciled by Stuart Immonen, also feature Loki in female form.

More recently, the 2019 young adult novel Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee also establishes that Loki is pansexual and gender fluid, teeing up the initial tease in episode 1.

All these versions of Loki, however, have one thing in common — they're all Loki. This means that each version of the trickster is well, tricky. All will have Loki's same ambitions, hang-ups, and personality traits. And all will likely waffle between being an anti-hero and a straight-up villain.

We don't know too much about Di Martino's Loki yet, other than she is pretty bent on destroying the Sacred Timeline and isn't afraid to kill a few Minutemen to do so. She also has clear contempt for Hiddleston's Loki when the two meet in 2050 Alabama. Why does she hate herself so much? Perhaps this isn't the first Loki variant she's run across — maybe enough Lokis have branched off the Sacred Timeline that she's had more than a few interactions with them, and she's frankly sick of it. That's pure speculation, however, though I'd love to see some of those other versions of Loki up close and personal.

If the show pulls from the comics at all, Lady Loki could be part of the Cabal introduced in The Dark Reign storyline. The Cabal in the comics is a secret society of supervillains and anti-heroes who are up to no good. In addition to Loki, the group includes Doctor Doom, Namor, Emma Frost, The Hood, and Norman Osborn. Does that mean we might see one or more of these other villains pop up in the remaining episodes of Loki? Given that Disney now controls the film and TV rights to the mutants and is making a Fantastic Four movie, it's certainly possible that Frost or Doctor Doom could make an appearance, though it's highly unlikely and you shouldn't get your hopes up.

Di Martino's Loki clearly has a plan of some sort. We'll have to wait for the upcoming episodes to drop, however, to learn what those plans are...and what that means for our original Loki and the rest of the Sacred Timeline.

New episodes of Loki drop on Wednesdays on Disney+.