'Loki' Season 2 Episode 3 Was a World's Fair of Marvel Easter Eggs
The long-awaited second season of Loki finally hit its stride in Episode 3, delivering the kind of winking historical adventure that audiences have come to expect from a show all about time travel while simultaneously furthering the wider plot.
This week, we followed Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) as they drew closer to tracking down Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) on the Sacred Timeline during a visit to the 1868 Chicago World's Fair. Once there, they encountered a variant of the multiverse-spanning villain Kang, who in this reality is a Thomas Edison-type character named Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), who shows off his technological innovations—or "temporal marvels"—to an impressed audience.
And of course, as this is a Marvel show, a handful of nifty allusions to other MCU stories and characters were thrown in for good measure. Here are five blink-and-you'll-miss them Easter eggs from Episode 3.
Baldr
The version of Loki we see in the MCU—aka Thor's mischievous villain-turned-antihero brother—is based on Marvel Comics, which are themselves based on certain aspects of Norse mythology. However, in the original myths, Loki was not depicted as the brother of Thor until later retellings. Instead, Odin and Frigg had another son, a heroic prince named Baldr (also stylized as Balder or Baldur).
The World's Fair setting of this episode features a sculpture of the Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Baldr, with Loki commenting: "Why'd they even include Baldr? No one's even heard of him." It's a fun nod at the fact that Loki has replaced Baldr in the Marvel universe as Thor's brother, as well as the existence of the lesser-known comics character Balder the Brave, Thor and Loki's half-brother.
Loki's Theme
Prior to Victor Timely's demonstration, a band can be seen and heard playing music on the stage. They are performing a period-appropriate rendition of the "Green Theme," a composition from the Season 1 score of Loki.
Ferdinand Lang
A poster at the World's Fair advertises the Temporal Marvels of Victor Timely. Above his name is that of one Ferdinand Lang, a singer. This is possibly an ancestor of Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, whose latest foray into the Quantum Realm marked the official introduction into the MCU of Kang the Conqueror.
Rama-Tut
While fleeing through the World's Fair, Victor Timely hides briefly behind an Ancient Egyptian exhibit, alluding to one of his alternate selves. During the post-credit scene in Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, we are given a glimpse of Kang's many variants, including Rama-Tut, a version of the character who traveled back in time and ruled as an Egyptian pharaoh.
SS Herron
When Ravonna Renslayer and Victor Timely depart for Timely's laboratory, they do so by boarding a ship named the SS Herron; this is named in honor of Kate Herron, the executive producer who directed every episode of Loki Season 1.
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