Superhero universes are famed for their revolving-door approach to character death: You can hardly name a major comics character who’s never had some sort of death-and-resurrection arc. But even compared to the genre-standard number rate of deaths and returns, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki — who’s apparently set to appear in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, according to Marvel’s stunty casting livestream — has pushed the envelope.
In the space of about half a dozen MCU stories, spanning from 2011’s Thor to Loki season 2, Hiddleston’s god of mischief has died, seemed to die, or otherwise been removed from the board four times already, and yet he’ll be back for Doomsday once again.
Lest we forget, Loki had his first dramatic death scene at the end of 2011’s Thor, when he responded to the latest rejection from his adoptive father Odin by allowing himself to fall into the abyss of space, like a classic Disney villain dropping to their death. He returned in Thor: The Dark World, where he had a much clearer and even more dramatic on-screen death, but it turned out he faked that to bamboozle his big brother Thor and take Odin’s place in Valhalla via trickery. Then, after an apparent turn toward heroism, he was absolutely obliterated by Thanos in the opening scenes of Avengers: Infinity War. But the MCU simply spun off a new Loki: an alternate-timeline version who escaped during the Avengers’ time heist in Avengers: Endgame, and started working for the Time Variance Authority.
Finally, the Loki TV series appeared to end with Loki sacrificing his freedom and his future to save a potentially infinite multiverse of parallel timelines, transforming his godly form into a cosmic structure that holds time together. And now, Marvel’s announcement suggests, he’ll be back in some capacity for Avengers: Doomsday.
We should take a moment to say that it’s likely that the massive set of actors — nearly 30 names! — that Marvel revealed today isn’t the movie’s complete hero/villain cast list. The odds of there being no surprise cameos from other MCU characters seems low. Given the obvious multiverse-jumping plans needed to bring the Fox X-Men characters into the MCU, that could even include characters who don’t seem like they’re in a position to show up, like Chris Evans’ Captain America, who currently has the body of an 80-year-old man, or Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, who, Johansson has repeatedly pointed out, is dead. But obviously, Marvel would want to keep some surprises under wraps for the movie itself.
So Hiddleston is a particularly notable part of today’s announcement, given where we last saw his character. (Same goes for James Marsden’s Cyclops, who died back in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, and Channing Tatum’s Gambit from Deadpool & Wolverine, who was largely an inside-joke character, and was left behind in a cosmic junk heap in an alternate reality.) The wrinkle here is that Loki isn’t dead or in the wrong universe: He’s supposedly holding the multiverse together through sheer force of will. He had a very complete character arc that culminated in making a huge sacrifice for the cosmos.
And he’s also in Avengers: Doomsday, and Marvel doesn’t care to keep that a secret.
This isn’t a complaint about Marvel’s plans for the movie. It’s more a statement of awe and appreciation. Awe and appreciation for the clearly enduring appeal — to MCU producers, not just MCU fans — of Tom Hiddleston’s charm, and his willingness to work. Is the most indelible Marvel movie character Tony Stark as Iron Man? Chris Evans as Captain America? Or is it, in fact, Tom Hiddleston as Loki ? The question lies before us, and answering it leaves us burdened with glorious purpose.
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