According to an industry insider, the Norse god of mischief will be bisexual in Marvel and Disney+’s new limited series, Loki, coming spring 2021.

Loki is one of the first of several series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be made for Disney’s streaming platform, alongside WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. As with many of the MCU’s upcoming projects, Loki was in production when the coronavirus pandemic struck, and hence its development had to be delayed for a few months.  

Reportedly, the series will follow Tom Hiddleston’s Loki throughout human history as he influences historical events (The Hollywood Reporter). Previously in the MCU, Loki was murdered by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War although he reappeared in Endgame when the Avengers time traveled to the past. In that particular past, Loki stole the Tesseract to teleport and escape SHIELD agents, hence creating an alternate timeline where he never died in the first place. This timeline alteration is supposed to lead the way into the new series.

A sneak-peek of the series premiered during the 2020 Super Bowl, where Loki was seen in a suit with the initials “TVA” on it, which supposedly stands for “Time Variance Authority”. Marvel’s Time Variance Authority is an organization that monitors time to prevent interferences in the timelines and, since Loki says “I’m gonna burn this place to the ground” in the teaser, we can expect he has been captured by them. In an interview with comicbook, Loki‘s executive producer himself said that “There will be a man on the run quality to [the plot] and we get the chance to explore more human sides of Loki”.

Insider Daniel Richtman revealed to We Got This Covered that the new series will show Loki having two love interests: a man and a woman. Even with Thor: Love and Thunder and The Eternals becoming the first MCU feature films to portray LGBT+ characters explicitly in the spotlight, this insight would make Loki the first major LGBT+ character in the MCU. Tessa Thompson who plays Valkyrie – one of the LGBT+ characters to be explored in the next Thor installation – said to Variety that Marvel will ‘push the bounds of’ representation in this next phase of the MCU. Indeed, allowing one of the MCU’s most famous villains to be bisexual onscreen would mean much progress in LGBT+ representation even if it is long overdue. 

 

On the other hand, set pictures leaked of Sophia di Marino in a costume very much similar to Loki’s, which led fans to believe she would be playing a female version of the trickster god. Besides di Marino, actors such as Owen Wilson and Richard E. Grant have confirmed their participation in the series.  

These additions to the MCU’s representation of Loki will make his portrayal even more accurate in relation to the comics since in them he was also bisexual and often changed genders thanks to his shapeshifting abilities, just as he did in Norse mythology. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tom Hiddleston said that “there’s so much to explore” in the series that he has not yet explored. “That’s very exciting.”