This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame Encore.Call it a cash-grab, call it hype for Avengers: Doomsday, call it a genuine fan event made for people who love the MCU: Avengers: Endgame Encore has proven to be a hit. The re-release of the 2019 Phase Three capper won the box office this weekend, in part because it contains several new scenes that connect Endgame to this December’s Doomsday.One of those new scenes includes what Joe Russo, who directed Endgame and Doomsday with his brother Anthony, called “the most profound thing that’s ever happened to the MCU.” In this scene, Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson), Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), and Casey the tech (Eugene Cordero) stand inside the Time Variance Authority offices and watch as incursions—collisions between alternate Earths—take out hundreds of realities, resulting in multiversal collapse. “That scene… has a great level of importance,” Joe Russo continued. “It is certainly critical to the storytelling of Doomsday.” And in order to properly understand that scene, you need to watch Loki season 2. And that’s a good thing, because the merits of Endgame Encore may be debatable, but no one can deny that Loki’s second season is excellent.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});As with its first season, the second season of Loki follows the titular God of Lies as he seeks redemption by working with the TVA. Season one ended with the reveal that the TVA, the bureaucratic organization devoted to pruning alternate realities to maintain a single sacred timeline, was set up by He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) by prevent a war between his variants. When the Loki variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains, the multiverse was allowed to flourish, opening the way for his far more dangerous variants, especially Kang the Conqueror. As most readers know, Kang was intended to be the Thanos-esque big bad of Phases Four through Six of the MCU, making Loki‘s first season the kick-off to that arc. However, when Majors’s off-screen behavior got him dropped by Disney, Kevin Feige used to break to rethink the company’s plans, leading to the decision to bring back the Russo Brothers to direct Doomsday and to make Doctor Doom the new overarching threat.However, those decisions came after Loki‘s second season was shot. Rather than rendering the season superfluous, it instead gave the show its own quiet corner of the MCU to work in. The season does indeed deal with the fallout of Sylvie’s decision, as the multiverse is now spinning out of control without He Who Remains or a functioning TVA to stop it. Part of the episode is spent with Loki recruiting former TVA workers, who have gone on to new lives or have tried to return to the lives they led before He Who Remains plucked them out and remade them into his employees. The other part involves trying to deal with the threat of Kang by recruiting a younger, more peaceful variant called Victor Timely, played by Majors.Despite all of the high-stakes storytelling, the second season managed to keep focused on the characters. Without He Who Remains there to control them, the characters get glimpses of the lives they had and contrast them to the lives they currently live. For Mobius, that means realizing he was once a kindly jet ski salesman named Don, who enjoyed a quiet life in suburbia. For Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), that means she was both a well-liked vice principal and potentially an interplanatery conqueror in service of He Who Remains.The possibilities strike Loki hardest of all. While the first season convinced him that the “glorious purpose” he thought he deserved would never come to be, the second season leaves him wondering who he could be if not the God of Lies. His slow realization builds to a beautiful and tragic end, perhaps the most satisfying character arcs in the entire MCU.We won’t spoil it here, but the end is so perfect that one wonders how it will play into Doomsday. But even if the movie doesn’t touch on Loki’s personal development, the added scene in Avengers Encore demonstrates that the plot points of the show will carry on into the new movie. So whether you want more lore or satisfying character development, Loki season two is the perfect way to prepare for Doomsday.Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.The post Avengers: Endgame Encore Is Your Reminder to Watch Loki Season 2 appeared first on Den of Geek.