Is Loki still alive in the MCU? Here’s everything you need to know

Is Loki still alive in the MCU? That’s the million-dollar question. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has turned the concept of “death” into a joke at this point. You think he’s gone, and there he is, smirking and causing chaos again. Thanks to all that timeline-hopping and his gig as the multiverse’s cosmic custodian, the usual Marvel rules about who’s alive or not are out the window.

Now, with Phase 5 wrapping up with Ironheart in 2025, and Phase 6 on the horizon, including Avengers: Doomsday, Loki’s fate is pivotal both narratively and commercially.

Let's dig into Loki's journey, from his perceived death in Avengers: Infinity War, then, thanks to a time heist in Avengers: Endgame, we get Variant Loki, who breaks the rules of the universe just by existing. Fast-forward: two seasons of Disney+, and Loki has gone through character development.

We’re digging into how the MCU flips the script on death and turns it into a multiverse thing where every “ending” just spawns a new branch. We also need to talk about where Loki actually lands at the end of Season 2. Also, he’s already confirmed to show up again in Phase 6, so he is not exactly resting in peace.

The plan is to give you a ton of details, some context you won’t get from a basic recap, and our own spin on whether Loki’s really “alive” these days and what that even means, now that the rules are out the window for the whole MCU.

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Loki’s canonical death in Avengers: Infinity War

Loki’s death in Avengers: Infinity War hits harder than most Marvel stuff. Thanos strangles him in the opening scene, and everything goes down on the wrecked Asgardian ship, just after Thor: Ragnarok left everything in shambles.

Then Thanos utters, “No resurrections this time,” which means they are not messing with the viewers this time around, and Loki is gone for good. Critics and the creative team confirmed in interviews and official tie-ins. They couldn’t have made it any clearer: this was supposed to be the end of the line for that character.

All this takes place in the “Sacred Timeline,” aka Earth-616, which is the main MCU universe. Marvel Studios confirmed it, and outlets like Collider and Deseret News added that the actual Loki we’ve been following since 2011 is still gone. The Marvel Wiki and all official encyclopedias back it up, too.

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Variants: The ‘2012 Loki’ and the evolution of identity

Now, we have a “2012 Loki” in the MCU. Remember in Avengers: Endgame when the crew goes back to the Battle of New York? Things don’t exactly go as planned. Hulk smashes a door, Tony drops the Tesseract, and Loki just scoops it up and peaces out. He essentially enters a completely new timeline.

So, now we have a “variant” Loki who never underwent all that character growth, never received the redemption arc, and none of that. The Loki whom Thanos killed in Avengers: Infinity War was the original. This new Loki is fresh off his villain phase, and he’s just as chaotic as ever.

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The variant Loki and the TVA: Seasons 1 & 2

Loki Season 1 kicked off in summer 2021. We follow this alternate Loki (the one who fled with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame), and he has no clue he is supposed to bite the dust later on. Instead, he gets snatched up by the TVA (Time Variance Authority), and he’s knee-deep in time cop drama and existential red tape.

So, in the series, the TVA is introduced as an extremely old bureaucratic group that’s the time police of the universe. Their whole deal is to keep the so-called “Sacred Timeline” tidy and free of “variants” who go off-script and mess with how things are “supposed” to happen. That means if you zig when you were supposed to zag, you’re a variant, and the TVA is coming for you.

Fast forward to Loki Season 2 (which dropped in late 2023). He gives up his own freedom just to save all the multiverse branches. He wrecks the Temporal Loom, which is a big TVA gizmo running the whole show, and reshapes timelines into Yggdrasil itself. Now, instead of running around causing chaos, Loki is stuck as an eternal cosmic guardian; like, he literally becomes the thing holding the whole multiverse together.

So Loki is still around, just not in the usual way. After all the chaos, he is upgraded to “God of Stories,” outside regular time like some cosmic narrator. Marvel has been pretty clear about it; he’s not dead, just running the multiverse from behind the curtain now.

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Confirmation of Loki’s return in Phase 6

Tom Hiddleston will be back as Loki in Avengers: Doomsday in the MCU Phase 6. The film is set to hit big screens on December 18, 2026. Marvel went all out with their five-and-a-half-hour live stream to show off the cast. And Hiddleston was there, along with a horde of other MCU and X-Men faces.

At the 2025 Olivier Awards, he said:

“Very, very excited. It’s really remarkable that I can talk about it because mostly I’m in a position of knowing and not being able to say anything … it’s been an extraordinary chapter of my life playing Loki, and it’s not over yet.”

On Jimmy Kimmel Live, he confirmed:

“I can exclusively tell you...I will be there. There was the big thing they released of all the names on the back of the chairs, I didn't know, I was like, 'Oh I guess I'm in the movie.'”

When asked about Loki holding timelines together, Tom added:

"Still is...I mean, we haven't seen him do anything different."

Now, did Tom spill any details about Loki’s screen time? Absolutely not. He played it cool and gave the “wait and see” routine.

Story-wise, he’s not just some sneaky villain anymore; now he’s the person who literally went out in a blaze of glory and snagged a seat at the cosmic authority. So when the squad is up against rough things, like an incursion led by Doctor Doom and the merging of the MCU with Fox’s X-Men legacy cast, you better believe his choices and powers are going to mess with everyone’s plans. The trickster gig is old news. Now he’s a cosmic wildcard, and everyone has to deal with it.

In fact, according to insider Alex Perez, Loki is turning into the MCU’s MacGuffin for Avengers: Doomsday. The whole plot apparently spins around him—everyone is either chasing Loki down or fighting over him.

Meanwhile, Avengers: Doomsday is about to put Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth back together. We haven’t seen these two share the screen since Avengers: Endgame, and Loki dropping the “The sun will shine on us again” line becomes a poignant promise, and fans expect Avengers: Doomsday to give us that reunion we have been waiting for.

Some fans are even speculating that Avengers: Secret Wars might be Tom Hiddleston’s final bow as Loki. He has been around the MCU since the early days. Avengers: Doomsday could be one of his last big moments... or not, who knows with Marvel?

Critics at Entertainment Weekly called Loki’s Season 2 finale a “poetic redemption.” Loki goes from being an egomaniac to literally holding the universe together just so everyone else can keep existing.