Loki Still Belongs as an MCU Villain, & Ms. Marvel Proves It
Warning! This article contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit #5
In the current landscape of the MCU, Loki has been completely redeemed and is more of a superhero as opposed to his original supervillain status, but Ms. Marvel proves that Loki should return to his life of villainy by revealing how widespread his villainous reputation truly is across Marvel’s multiverse.
Loki was killed by Thanos in the MCU film Avengers: Infinity War, but in Avengers: Endgame, when the Avengers go back in time to the events of the first Avengers film, Loki is able to get his hands on the Tesseract and escape his fate. While under normal circumstances he would be pruned by the Time Variance Authority and thereby erased from the timeline, Loki is able to fight back against the TVA and even dismantle the organization responsible for the eradication of countless worlds, a storyline that is told in the MCU Disney+ series, Loki. The first season of Loki leaves the titular character in a heroic light, detailing how far he has come from his selfish and villainous ways.
In the Marvel Comics series Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit by Samira Ahmed and Andres Genolet, Ms. Marvel is facing off against Qarin, a character who was plucked from her own world and dropped into Earth-616. When Qarin got to the main Marvel timeline, she realized that she was siphoning Ms. Marvel’s powers, allowing her to transform into the hero and use all of her abilities while simultaneously leaving Ms. Marvel in a weakened state. Plus, Qarin also discovered that she had access to Ms. Marvel’s mind, and can make her experience vivid hallucinations. When Qarin uses that particular ability against Kamala, she reveals that Loki is a terrifying villain in more than just one universe.
In the final pages of Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit #1, Kamala’s world turns into a Bollywood film, something fans now know was the doing of Qarin after reading the fifth issue of the series. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, Qarin also made Loki one of the starring characters as he is seen riding an elephant and is attempting to use it to stomp Ms. Marvel in the vision. Since this terrifying fantasy was created by Qarin, it only makes sense that she would know who Loki is before dropping him into Ms. Marvel’s hallucination in an attempt to make her fear for her life. This implies that Qarin’s world also dealt with their own Loki, and he made enough of an impact that she would use him, out of all the other villains Ms. Marvel has faced, to terrify her the most. Given his reputation in the comics, it seems wasteful that Loki isn’t a fear-inducing villain in the MCU anymore as well.
While Loki’s character development in the MCU paved the way for a plethora of all-new upcoming stories featuring the God of Mischief, his live-action version will never be someone Ms. Marvel will fear in any of her future MCU projects. Ms. Marvel is due to make her MCU debut in June of this year, and that version of the character will never experience what her comic book counterpart went through in this latest comic series, and given Loki’s brief yet impactful comic book presence, that is a real shame. Though he has grown as a person in the MCU, Ms. Marvel proves that Loki should revert back to his original ways as his villainous impact across the multiverse is too great to be ignored.