The premiere episode of Falcon & The Winter Soldier, MCU fans were eagerly anticipating Tom Hiddleston's return as the God of Mischief. Now blessed with his own Disney+ solo series, Loki has all of time and space to bother, and the premiere wastes little time throwing Hiddleston from the Avengers' frying pan into the TVA's fire.
After using the Tesseract to escape The Avengers in Avengers: Endgame, Loki is swiftly picked up by the Time Variance Authority - a seemingly omniscient organization overseeing the entirety of time and space. Evidently not ones to take prisoners, Loki's fate at the TVA looks grim, but Owen Wilson's Major Mobius intervenes, handing the silver-tongued variant a reprieve. In the opening episode, Mobius successfully digs to the root of Loki's dastardly ways, breaking him down to (presumably) build him back up, all with the aim of enlisting Loki's services as an ally to hunt down an especially vicious variant murdering the TVA's Minute Men.
Loki's premiere is predictably heavy with exposition, and relatively limited in scope, mostly taking place within the walls of TVA HQ. Nevertheless, Michael Waldron (creator) and Kate Herron (director) pepper the 50-minute installment with an array of references to the Marvel comics, MCU history callbacks, and hints of the multiverse madness to come. Here's every Easter egg we discovered in Loki's "Glorious Purpose."
Click here to watch Every Easter Egg In Loki Episode One on YouTube.
The Avengers Intro Sequence
Loki's introductory scene is somewhat of an Easter egg itself, retelling the famous Tesseract heist from Avengers: Endgame. Much of the footage here derives straight from the 2019 box office behemoth, meaning no other MCU stars filmed additional footage or recorded new dialogue especially for Loki. With that said, a few extra Tom Hiddleston moments are spliced into the existing footage to show events entirely from Loki's point of view. The villain's Steve Rogers "search and rescue" gag is zoomed-in, and there's a closer shot of Loki waving goodbye to Hulk in the elevator, as well as fresh reaction shots during the Stark scuffle in the lobby.
An Iron Man Callback
After commandeering the Tesseract in New York, Loki finds himself falling from the sky above Mongolia's Gobi Desert, landing unceremoniously in the sand below, and this scene might trigger a sense of déjà vu for longtime MCU fans. In 2008's Iron Man, Tony Stark escapes capture by creating a rudimentary suit of hi-tech armor. Flying to safety, the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist also lands roughly in a remote desert. There's a symbolic correlation in how Iron Man marked the beginning of the MCU, while Loki is now ushering in a whole new chapter, and both begin with their protagonists in matching predicaments. Both characters also crash while evading incarceration, though only Loki immediately finds himself in chains once again.
"Burdened With Glorious Purpose"
As a man who rarely shuts up, Loki has plenty of wry MCU catchphrases, and one of his most famous would be "I am burdened with glorious purpose" from Tom Hiddleston repeating the quote on several occasions throughout the episode, the phrase becoming less sinister with every utterance.
The TVA
The addition of the TVA to MCU canon was confirmed ahead of time via Loki's trailer and, sure enough, the paradoxical pen-pushers play a prominent part in the premiere. Although their motivations and methods are somewhat altered from the source material (as well as their aesthetic, which now sits closer to Thor that featured several time-hopping agents, one of which picked a random Earthling up for jaywalking.
A Skrull At The TVA
Given their propensity to shape-shift and assimilate the forms of other races, it's not surprising that a Skrull might be lurking around the TVA's front desk. One of the MCU's green aliens can be spotted in the background as Loki gets marched in, and though it's not clear why the Secret Invasion is right around the corner.
The Time Twisters
As you'd predict, Loki tries running away. With minimum effort, Hunter B-15 (played by Wunmi Mosaku) clicks a device, and Loki is pulled back to where he stood moments earlier, effectively making escape impossible. These time twisters appear to be standard issue at the TVA, and have a vaguely similar counterpart in the Marvel comics called the Retroactive Cannon. Far more lethal than Loki's little clickers, these devices would rewind a person completely until they were unwritten from history. Like The Algorithm in Tenet, but less confusing.
Life Model Decoys
For someone who spent many, many years unaware he was actually a Frost Giant, Loki probably shouldn't be shocked that some people don't realize they're secretly robots. Heading through the TVA's airport scanner, Loki es the test with flying colors, though he remains perplexed by the idea someone could be unknowingly cybernetic, Loki's line is a nod to Agents of SHIELD. These lifelike androids can mimic mankind so perfectly, the LMD itself isn't always certain of the truth.
Secret Wars?
Whether you've accidentally arrived late for work, or just escaped a group of costumed vigilantes by seizing a glowing blue cube from the beginning of time, being labeled as a variant is confusing stuff. Luckily, the TVA has put together a short animation to fill quantum criminals in on the basics. The helpful Miss Minutes finally provides an explanation of the MCU multiverse, revealing how, long ago, separate timelines fought an inter-dimensional war for supremacy that almost resulted in total annihilation. Since then, the TVA has strictly maintained one single reality - the Sacred Timeline *echoes*. The history lesson bears some similarity to 2015's Secret Wars comic event, in which conflicting universes came together in Battleworld (the setting of the original Secret Wars), and attempts were made to streamline Marvel's sandbox.
The Time-Keepers
The TVA's infomercial also confirms the organization are led by three Time-Keepers, who oversee the combined reality and dictate the proper flow of history. This big-faced trio were first introduced in the late 1970s, created from the sole remaining survivor of the previous universe's destruction. The mysterious overlords performed much the same function in the comics as they do in Loki, and possessed virtually complete mastery over time.
Kree and Nova's Attack On Titan
As the animated exposition rumbles on, Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong) uses "starting an uprising" as an example of something the TVA might potentially frown upon. The corresponding image shows two armies clashing, with the blue folk on the left appearing to be Kree, and the force on the right possibly the Nova Corps. Based on the spiky ruins in the background, the battle is taking place on Thanos' home planet of Titan. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Ronan confirmed the Kree and Nova Corps were at war for 1000 years - was the TVA involved somehow?
