Loki Season 2 is almost upon us, burdened with glorious purpose. However — and you may be aware of this — Loki Season 1 aired a while ago. Like, a long time ago. Like, two years ago. So before Loki Season 2 premieres on October 5, you’re probably wondering what to watch before Loki Season 2.
Great question. Good news! That was the headline of this article, and it’s a question we’ll answer right… About… Now.
What To Watch Before Loki Season 2 (Complete List Of Movies And Shows):
We’ll start with the obvious one: you’re going to want to watch — or rewatch — Loki Season 1. Mainly because of the gap in time, and the, er, time travel shenanigans Loki (Tom Hiddleston) got up to in Season 1, a refresh is probably in order.
However, there have been many more appearances of the trickster god in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) before the series’s first season. There’s also at least one movie it might be important to watch that has been released afterward.
Also complicating things? The Loki you’re watching in the Loki series is not the same Loki from all of the movies. We’ll come back to that in a second, but before we get too in the weeds, here’s a list of every movie and TV show you could potentially watch before Loki Season 2:
- Thor (2011)
- The Avengers (2012)
- Thor: The Dark World (2013)
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Loki Season 1 (2021)
- What If…? (2021)
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
…Also every other movie and show in the MCU, because as Jeph Loeb used to like to say: it’s all connected.
A few notes on that above list. Loki does not appear in Quantumania, but it is the second appearance of Jonathan Majors in the MCU after Loki Season 1, and his first official appearance as Kang. He’ll be popping up again on Loki Season 2, current legal troubles be damned.
And What If…? is what I would describe as tangentially canonical. Meaning technically it takes place in continuity, but chances are good that you won’t really see any repercussions from the animated series in live-action, at least for the moment. That said, if you want to watch the Loki episodes: episode 3, episode 7, and episode 9.
And that’s all well and good but as of publish time, there are just a few days to go until Loki Season 2 premieres. So here’s what to watch if you want to stay focused.
What To Watch Before Loki Season 2 (Only The Essentials):
So the Loki in Loki the TV show is not the same Loki we watched throughout the MCU. That Loki died in Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his neck. The one on TV is actually from the end of The Avengers, which makes your job a little easier; particularly because they recap everything else in Loki Season 1.
So here’s the abbreviated version of your watching order before Loki Season 2:
- Thor (2011)
- The Avengers (2012)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Loki Season 1 (2021)
We meet Loki in Thor, he attacks New York in The Avengers, and Avengers: Endgame explains how he ends up in the Time Variance Authority (TVA). If you want to skip Endgame, you can do that, too, because they replay the necessary scene in Loki Season 1. Easy! Confusing, if you don’t like time travel. But way easier.
And there you go! Everything you need to watch before Loki Season 2 premieres October 5 at 9pm ET on Disney+.
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