Editor's Note: The following contains Thor: Love and Thunder spoilers.It's difficult to imagine a Thor story without his trickster little brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). But, Thor: Love and Thunder seems to be just that. Whereas the first three Thor movies all included Loki, either as a villain or an ally, Love and Thunder doesn't seem to include Tom Hiddleston as Loki at all.
We know after the Disney+ series Loki that a variant of Loki, who grabbed the tesseract during the time heist of Avengers: Endgame, exists out there in the world. And, thanks to the TVA, that version of Loki has all of our original (and now dead) Loki's memories. But, it seems like it'll be a while before we get a reunion of the fated Asgardian brothers. Does Loki show up in Love and Thunder? Well, technically no. Tom Hiddleston is not in the movie. But, Loki, god of mischief, does appear in another surprising way.
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New Asgard, formerly known as Tønsberg, is now a bustling city. It's main export? Tourism! People come from far and wide to ride on the floating viking ships around the fjord, come and see Thor's shattered hammer, meet some Asgardians, and, oh yeah, they also come enjoy the theatre.
It seems like our beloved Asgardian theater actors made it off the planet before Surtur destroyed Asgard. Yes, Matt Damon, Luke Hemsworth, and Sam Neill are back! But now, post-Ragnarok, the players have a new sequel to their original play. They've brought in Melissa McCarthy to play Hela. So while we don't get to enjoy the flare and drama of the real Loki, or a variant of him, at least we can take comfort that Matt Damon is here to portray him in live theater for the people visiting New Asgard.
Why Loki Isn't In Thor: Love & Thunder
With so many versions of Loki out there, it's clear that this leg of Thor's journey was about him finding himself. In many ways, Loki has overshadowed Thor in the past, he was the standout character that fans fell in love with in Thor. So much so that we then saw Loki appear again in The Avengers as the main villain, in Thor: The Dark World in a more antihero role, in Thor: Ragnarok alongside his brother and Valkyrie fighting off Hela, and, of course, we saw him meet his end in Infinity War and then experience a sort of rebirth in Endgame. The character who was supposed to meet his end in The Dark World, ended up moving beyond the mortal bindings of time and space.
Thor told Rocket about Loki's death in Infinity War, "He's been dead before, though this time I think it might be true." But, with so many variants of Loki jumping around, and with the TVA in chaos, it's only a matter of time before Variant Loki turns up to help/mess with his older brother. Perhaps he'll bring Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) along? Or Kid Loki (Jack Veal)? Or Alligator Loki? Given that Loki is apparently one of the beings with the most amount of variants that the TVA has had to deal with, and that the future of the MCU stories as a whole seem to be leading us toward Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors), it's not a matter of if Loki will show up but when.
Thor: Love and Thunder comes to theaters on July 8.
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