‘Loki’ Returns To Disney’s Timeline In October And Echo Drops Every Episode In November
Marvel announced its post-Invasion plans on Wednesday.
The platform is eying Loki to to be the next series to follow the upcoming Secret Invasion series, which launches soon. The God of Mischief will return to Disney+ on October 6th, while Echo, the spin-off of Hawkeye which starred Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld will launch on November 29th.
Loki is set in a Marvel Cinematic Universe-adjacent world, in which the anti-hero Avenger is a fish-out-of-water forced to work with the bureaucratic TVA (Time Variance Authority) after absconding with the Tesseract.
At the end of Loki‘s first season, Loki and Sylvie meet up with the architect of all the season’s chaos, He Who Remains. Sylvie sends Loki back to the TVA and murders He Who Remains, not knowing that this will unleash chaos. Back in the offices of the TVA, Loki meets Mobius (Owen Wilson), who does not recognize him, and realizes that he did not fall into the reality he believed.
The second season of Loki will most likely find him trying to fix the damage to the timeline caused by Sylvie, while continuing to explore time travel and its consequences. The series could also lead to the return of Kang (Jonathan Majors), who is another version of He Who Remains, as he rises from the ashes.
The Loki series is a key part of the MCU Phase V plot line, since it established the rules and elements of the multiverse and where a version of Kang, this Phase’s major villain, made his debut. Audiences saw yet another – and perhaps the prime – aspect of Kang this year in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In addition to Hiddleston and Wilson, the cast includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku and Richard E. Grant.
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead direct and executive produced Loki Season 2, and Eric Martin is head writer and executive produces, along with Hiddleston and Michael Waldron.
As for Echo, it was spawned from Hawkeye and is also directly related to upcoming franchise projects like Daredevil: Born Again. In fact, both Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin are expected to appear in the limited series.
The series centers around Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a deaf Native American superhero who has a talent that allows her imitate any opponent’s fighting style. Maya’s character was introduced during Hawkeye’s six-episode Disney+ run. In the comics, she interacts with Daredevil, Moon Knight and the Avengers.
In a surprising change in strategy, Marvel Studios will release all the episodes of the show on the same day and not weekly, as they have done with all of its other productions for the small screen.
“In Hawkeye, fans were first introduced to Maya Lopez, a character played by Alaqua Cox. She will return to get her revenge in Echo, a limited drama from an incredible team of indigenous writers, directors and cast members. And in a first for us all episodes will drop on November 29th,” Kevin Feige told the crowds at Disney’s Upfronts on Wednesday.
Zahn McClarnon, Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, Devery Jacobs, Cody Lightning and Graham Greene also star.