How Avengers: Endgame Brings Back Tom Hiddleston's Loki From the Dead

Loki is dead. Or.... is..... he?

At this point, it's no secret that Loki-inarguably the best villain, or anti-hero (depending on who you ask) in the MCU-was killed by Thanos in the opening moments of Avengers: Infinity War. The God of Mischief has been one of Marvel's most commonly recurring characters, and one of its most popular, but having essentially been squished like a bug, Loki seemed to have his fate sealed.

Things started to get a little fishy when Disney announced that a series-starring Tom Hiddleston-would center on Loki for its upcoming Disney+ streaming platform. But he's dead! How could this be?

More from @Marvel : Loki, a new series starring Tom Hiddleston, is coming to #DisneyPlus . - Disney (@Disney) April 11, 2019

In Avengers: Endgame, we get a pretty clear roadmap as to how this will start to happen. A key component of Endgame is time travel, an endeavor that finds our heroes revisiting a number of different moments from films in the past, and sometimes, in the case of Captain America, running into their past selves as well.

When the gang goes back to the timeline of the original Avengers, the plan goes according to plan for Tony Stark and Ant-Man...until it doesn't. They retrieve the Infinity Stone that they had planned to return to the present, but in a skirmish, lose it. Loki, who was until that point in custody (from the end of Avengers), grabs the stone (then still in the cubed, "tesseract" form), and warps right out of sight.

Much in the same way that past versions of Thanos, Nebula, and Gamora eventually find their ways to the present, 2012 Loki is now very much bouncing his way through time. He's once again a piece for the MCU minds at work to play with. A little taste of what's to come? It's said that his Disney+ series "will follow Loki as the trickster and shape-shifter pops up throughout human history as an unlikely influencer on historical events." Sounds good to us.

Just to recap: this is not the original timeline Loki. The Loki who held trial in Asgard, who grew into something of an Anti-Hero in both Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and Avengers: Infinity War, this is not. That Loki? Definitely dead. But Avengers villain Loki? Definitely alive, and we'll see him soon-whenever Disney+, which is expected to launch later this year, makes Hiddleston's Loki series available.