Loki has been left for dead more than once, and no two of those endings work the same way. Each one changes what the next film or series can do with him. The question is live again because “Avengers: Doomsday” arrives on December 18th, 2026 and Disney’s official cast list includes Tom Hiddleston. The list names the actor but not the version of Loki he plays.
Here is Loki’s whole run of endings in story order, some of them tricks and some of them not. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Thor”, “The Avengers”, “Thor: The Dark World”, “Thor: Ragnarok”, “Avengers: Infinity War”, “Avengers: Endgame”, “Avengers Endgame: Encore” and both seasons of “Loki”.
The list names the actor but not the version of Loki he plays.”
In “Thor” the first fall comes when Thor (Chris Hemsworth) wrecks the Bifrost Bridge to stop his brother and Odin (Anthony Hopkins) wakes in time to stop the fall. Loki lets go anyway when Odin turns down his plea for approval. Disney’s D23 site calls him “presumed dead.” That is a thin kind of death because nobody sees a body, and in “The Avengers” he returns to lead the Chitauri invasion of Earth. The ending sets a pattern that every later fake exit follows. A Loki who drops out of sight is not a Loki who is gone.
The second death is staged. In “Thor: The Dark World”, Loki is fatally wounded on Svartalfheim in the fight against the Dark Elves and the film plays it as a real goodbye. The truth comes in the last scene. Thor turns down the throne and leaves Odin in charge, but the man on the throne is Loki in disguise. ScreenCrush notes that the film never explains how he faked his death. The real Odin turns up in “Thor: Ragnarok”, on Earth in Norway. This death was a plan, and it taught the audience to doubt every Loki funeral after it.
The real death comes at the start of “Avengers: Infinity War”, when Thanos (Josh Brolin) catches the ship carrying the survivors of Asgard and demands the Tesseract so he can take the Space Stone. Loki gives it up. ComicBook.com reports that he tries one last trick by nearly slicing Thanos’s throat before Thanos strangles him to death, and CinemaBlend and Yahoo also describe a choking. Looper reports that Joe Russo has said Loki stays dead in the main timeline. That makes this an ending with no escape clause.
In “Avengers: Endgame”, the 2012 Loki escapes. The surviving heroes travel back to the Battle of New York to take the Tesseract, just after Loki has been captured there. The plan goes wrong and the Tesseract lands at his feet, so he grabs it and disappears. This is not the Loki who died. GamesRadar says the escape split the timeline into what is known as a Nexus Event and Looper says it was enough to break off a branched reality. One Loki stays dead while a second walks away with a different future.
“Loki” picks up from that escape. In the premiere the Time Variance Authority captures him in the Gobi Desert. Agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) then offers him a shot at redemption, according to D23. GamesRadar says the branch is why the TVA wants to kill him. The threat is carried out in the fourth episode, “The Nexus Event”, when Ravonna Renslayer prunes him and he vanishes. It looks like another death but it is not, because Looper explains that the pruning batons do not kill variants and instead send them to a place called the Void. Pruning is a removal that only looks like dying.
In the Void, Loki meets other pruned Lokis. They include Boastful Loki, Kid Loki, Classic Loki and Alligator Loki, and Sylvie prunes herself and joins them. ET Online calls Sylvie a female Loki variant. Their world belongs to Alioth, a cloud monster that devours the pruned. Classic Loki’s end is a death with a point. He conjures a vision of Asgard to distract Alioth, and Alioth eats him for it. Looper writes that he gives his life “glorious purpose.” Rolling Stone reads it as proof that “Lokis can change.”
Season 2 closes with an ending that is not a death. The season deals with the fallout of Sylvie killing He Who Remains, and in the finale, “Glorious Purpose”, the Temporal Loom cannot hold an ever-growing multiverse. Loki gathers the dying timeline branches, revives them with his magic and takes a throne at the end of time. Slashfilm and Den of Geek say the branches form a tree like Yggdrasil. The Ringer and Looper say he becomes the God of Stories. Looper adds that the TVA is reformed to protect the tree. Popverse and GamesRadar both note that if Loki leaves that throne the multiverse dies.
Disney’s own pages confirm Hiddleston as part of the “Avengers: Doomsday” cast. The Disney Movies page lists him and Disney+ says he is “also confirmed”, and both give the release date as December 18th, 2026. Neither names a role. D23 quotes Anthony Russo saying “We have absolutely not announced the entire cast. There is more to come.” Hiddleston has said little. GamesRadar reports he told a TikTok interviewer, “It’s been an extraordinary chapter in my life playing Loki, and it’s not over yet.” TheWrap quotes him saying the story “just has never been done before.” That is a teaser, not an answer.
A key clue came in September. The re-release “Avengers Endgame: Encore” tacked a new scene onto the ending of the original film. As Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) dance someone knocks. Peggy asks, “Can I help you?” and Loki, in a TVA uniform, offers to help them both. D23 reports a second new scene in which Mobius, Casey (Eugene Cordero) and OB (Ke Huy Quan) watch the multiverse collapse through a chain of incursions. Joe Russo calls that scene “one of the more significant events that’s ever happened in the MCU”, D23 reports. Anthony Russo says that in that moment “that’s where Doomsday is born”, according to GamesRadar.
Which Loki that is remains open. TheWrap says it is unclear whether the scene comes before or after he became the God of Stories. GamesRadar asks how a Loki who cannot leave his throne got to Steve and Peggy’s house. Laughing Place quotes Anthony Russo telling Empire, “One of the delights of Doomsday is, you’re going to get a new incarnation of that character.” Slashfilm suggested at the cast announcement that the easiest answer is another universe with another Loki variant. None of that is confirmed.
Every other ending took Loki off the board for a while. The throne was different because it was meant to last. Inverse says “something happened to make that sacrifice all for naught”, and the Encore scenes show a multiverse in trouble. “Doomsday” will have to say whether the Loki on Disney’s list is the one who was supposed to hold the timelines together or someone who arrived after they broke.
What Do You Think? Which of Loki’s endings felt like the real one: the fall in “Thor”, the death in “Avengers: Infinity War” or Classic Loki’s last trick in the Void? Should “Avengers: Doomsday” bring back the Loki from the throne or a new one? And does the God of Stories ending still hold up?
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