Loki Season 3: Will It Ever Happen?

For well over a decade, Marvel fans have followed the exploits of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the Asgardian trickster god who permanently straddles the line between good and evil. Loki's various plots have wreaked havoc on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he's also saved the lives of Thor and other heroes on a number of different occasions. The Disney+ series "Loki" follows the god on a redemptive journey, carrying him through dozens of different points in time throughout the multiverse.

Loki found himself in a new role at the end of Season 2, and though in some ways he's more important to the MCU than ever, his story has also seemingly come to an end. He's finally finished the transformation from villain to true hero, and his last sacrifice guaranteed a future of freedom for all of his closest friends. With that, the story's over, right?

Don't be so sure. This is the MCU after all, and characters can almost always find their way back to the forefront of another story. "Loki" Season 2 dropped a few hints about the future of the character and the series as a whole, and the people who worked on the show have been playing coy about the potential for another season. We can't say for sure if "Loki" Season 3 will ever happen, but we can start putting together as many clues as possible to suss out an answer.

Marvel has made a big push for creating Disney+ shows in recent years, but it hasn't followed the typical TV formula with its series. "Loki" and "What If...?" are the only series that have been given second seasons. Every other show has functioned like a one-and-done miniseries, though the possibility of there being more seasons isn't usually off the table.

With that in mind, it's not all that surprising that Marvel hasn't already announced a third season for "Loki." Season 2 only recently aired its finale, and Marvel probably wants to let what happened at the end of the season have a little bit of breathing room before continuing on with the story. Season 2 introduced some dramatic changes for Loki and shifted the landscape of the MCU a little bit, so we might need to see how the rest of the universe reacts before pushing forward with another season.

Luckily for fans, there's definitely real room for hope here. In just three days, the Season 2 finale had more than 11 million views on Disney+, which made it the second most-watched season-ender on the platform in 2023. "Loki" actually grew in popularity the longer it went on, so Marvel has some pretty significant reasons to find a way to keep the show going, even though "Glorious Purpose" seemingly provided the series with a very solid conclusion.

Of course, from a storytelling perspective, "Loki" Season 3 would need to do some serious heavy lifting. The first season ended on a massive cliffhanger, but Season 2 wrapped things up pretty definitively. It turns out that was a very purposeful decision from the people making the show, and even though the possibility of another season hasn't been ruled out, no one was planning on a third season when the series began.

"We approached this like two halves of a book," said head writer Eric Martin in an interview with Cinemablend. When they started work on the show, they intended the first season to introduce all the characters and lay the groundwork for the story. Then, Martin said, "Season 2, we close the book on Loki and the TVA." That's arguably what makes both seasons of "Loki" feel so cohesive, but it could spell doom for fans who aren't ready for the series to be over. On the other hand, Martin didn't exactly dump cold water on the possibility of another season in the interview. "Where it goes beyond that, I don't know," he said.

In a universe as sprawling as the MCU, individual writers really don't have the final say on what happens with specific characters or even entire narratives. Someone at Marvel might have bigger plans for Loki, or for "Loki," but the rest of us probably won't find out one way or another for quite some time.

Eric Martin's statement about the two seasons of "Loki" being a complete book definitely makes it sound like the people working on the show think that the story is officially over. Executive producer Kevin Wright hasn't contradicted what Martin said exactly, but he's made a couple of comments that seem to hint towards there being more "Loki" yet to come.

In an interview with Deadline, Wright was asked about whether or not the show's creators had a multi-season plan for "Loki" while working on Season 2. He said, "We take it season by season, and there are certainly things that Tom and I and other casts have talked about of where we see this going, and I know there's some excitement for that internally." He went on to acknowledge once again that Seasons 1 and 2 were designed to tell a single story, but it certainly sounds like there are real ideas for a Season 3.

Wright dropped another hint about the future of "Loki" in an interview with Collider. Once again using the book analogy, Wright said, "We felt pretty strongly, all of us involved, that Season 2 was about closing that book but that there are many other books on the shelf for this character and for this world." What those other books might contain is still a mystery. Tom Hiddleston's Loki seems to have reached a pretty permanent endpoint, but there are countless other Lokis another book could follow.

The second season of "Loki" didn't end on a jaw-dropping cliffhanger like Season 1 did. That was part of the show's design. "We don't want to constantly leave people with drastic cliffhangers for our finales," Kevin Wright told Collider. Season 2 wrapped the central narrative up pretty well, but it did leave some questions unresolved. Where will Sylvie go now? What is Mobius going to do with his free will? And what's with the purple light that Ravonna Renslayer saw?

All of those questions could make good starting points for brand-new stories. The Loki that MCU fans have known since the very first "Thor" movie has seemingly reached the end of his story, but over the past two seasons, "Loki" has introduced a number of other characters who could take up the mantle or carry the show forward in some other way.

The most obvious focal point for Season 3 would be Sylvie. In many ways, "Loki" was just as much about her as it was about the titular character. She started out with a vendetta against the TVA, and now that it's been resolved, she needs to find some new motivation to carry her through her days. Season 3 could double down on Sylvie's character and follow her as she transforms into a true superhero or possibly makes a return to some version of Asgard.

Over the past two seasons, "Loki" has massively expanded the scope of the MCU and introduced a number of characters who could easily form the basis for a Season 3 cast. Oddly enough, from a storytelling perspective, the only person who we really wouldn't expect to see in "Loki" Season 3 is Loki himself. He's busy being the God of Stories, and since his current role in the MCU is watching after the stories of others, he isn't doing much that translates well into the plot of a TV show.

The main actor we would expect to see in "Loki" Season 3 is Sophia Di Martino. Her character Sylvie is technically a Loki from a different dimension, so even though she doesn't go by her Asgardian name, she could very easily step into the role of the show's titular character. We'd also expect to see Gugu Mbatha-Raw (because we really need to know what happens to Ravonna) and Owen Wilson (because at this point "Loki" wouldn't be the same without Mobius).

Beyond that, the door is wide open for other MCU characters to make cameo appearances and for the writers to introduce entirely new characters to the series. It might make sense for Jonathan Majors to return to the show in some capacity, but the assault allegations that have landed him in legal trouble have left his future in the MCU as a whole up in the air.

Alright, "Loki" Season 2 ended with our favorite Asgardian becoming the God of Stories and essentially leaving the regular universe behind forever, but do any of us really believe he's gone for good? At this point, we've seen Loki's story come to an end — usually a gruesome one — multiple times, but he always finds some way to come back. That might not be the case this time because there's one person who seems to really believe that Loki has reached the end of his road: Tom Hiddleston.

Hiddleston went on The Tonight Show to talk to Jimmy Fallon about "Loki" Season 2, and his comments were bittersweet for people who've been with him and Loki since his first appearance in "Thor." Talking about the Season 2 finale, Hiddleston said, "It's also the conclusion to six films and twelve episodes and fourteen years of my life." He talked about how the episode had subtle callbacks to every version of the character that he's played, which really made it the perfect sendoff for the character. That all sounds pretty final. If there's going to be a "Loki" Season 3, then the writers may need to find a way to continue the show without its original protagonist.

Loki is obviously the main character of "Loki," but there's an argument to be made that the TVA itself is the show's secondary protagonist. The show starts when Loki's story first intersects with the TVA, and over the course of both seasons, the origins, flaws, and eventual reworking of the TVA provide the plot with most of its gas. By the end of Season 2, Loki has basically reshaped the entire organization and put it on a new course that will hopefully turn out better than the original version, which virtually imprisoned Mobius and all the other agents.

The future of the TVA could be fodder for more seasons of "Loki." Executive producer Kevin Wright has already hinted at that possibility. He told Deadline, "The TVA is an organization that will continue to have stories to tell, which is one of the exciting things about it to us." He could just be pointing out that everything in the MCU is connected and that the TVA will likely show up in other Marvel properties, or he could be dropping a subtle hint about the future of "Loki."

So far the Disney+ era of the MCU has mostly been made up of one-offs and miniseries. Behind the scenes, shows like "Loki" haven't functioned like traditional TV series at all. Marvel didn't hire showrunners, didn't film pilots, and didn't create show bibles that could help define the direction of a series for years to come. All of that is changing now.

Marvel has made it clear that it's shifting its approach to TV. Showrunners, pilots, and show bibles will all be a part of the formula moving forward as the company starts to shift its focus to creating more traditional multi-season shows. That means we could see more shows like "Loki," which is the first Disney+ show to get a second season, and it also means that there's even more reason to believe that "Loki" Season 3 will eventually become a reality.

No one at Marvel has confirmed or denied that "Loki" will continue, but if the plan is to start focusing on longer shows that carry stories on through multiple seasons, then it would make sense to build on the success that "Loki" has already found. Marvel would first need to find an official showrunner for the series, and it would need to build out a long-term plan for its future, but since the rest of the MCU's TV offerings are apparently moving in that direction, "Loki" could very easily jump on that train.