Marvel Spoils Premise of MCU's Next What If Episode

The latest Marvel Studios live-action Disney+ series was that of Tom Hiddleston's Loki. The show showed audiences who the God of Mischief is on a personal level and also introduced Sylvie to the world alongside many more Variants of Loki himself.

Needless to say, Loki is on the mind. In fact, his show paved the way for the currently airing What If...?, an animated venture that explores various alternate timelines which are now allowed to exist thanks to Sylvie's actions in Loki's finale.

When fans learned that the next episode of What If...? was set to focus on Thor, many probably assumed Tom Hiddleston's Loki would also play some sort of role—after all, he did show up in a meaty role for the third episode.

Sadly, however, it looks like Hiddleston is going to be a no-show.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki Takes a Raincheck

Marvel

Entertainment Weekly released its first look at the next installment of Marvel Studios' What If...?, where Marvel spilled that the title would be "What If... Thor Was an Only Child?"

The concept sees Thor having not grown up with Loki, Tom Hiddleston's famous God of Mischief. Marvel's What If...?'s head writer A.C. Bradley noted that the episode is "fun and silly," and they wanted to "play around... without the framework of tragedy:"  

"I love the Thor-Jane relationship and we wanted to play around with that part of the love story without the framework of tragedy... The story took root from a love of '80s and '90s rom-coms and party films. After so many serious episodes, what's the most fun we could possibly have? And the answer to that is: Let Thor throw a party."

Director Bryan Andrews admitted that some parts of the episode have leaked thanks to merchandising, so he expects the audience to know "a certain degree of the attitude behind this episode:"

"... some of the stuff has already been a little bit leaked because of merchandising, there's like shirts that say 'Party Thor!' so it lets you know a certain degree of the attitude behind this episode... [there's a] complete 180 from the couple episodes that came before that were more serious, more dramatic, tragedy and shock. It's going to be a really great palate cleanser from the stuff that came before and it will set you up for the stuff that will come after."

In talking about the absence of Loki, Bradley said that "anyone who has siblings knows that that relationship affects [someone] greatly:"

"Anyone who has siblings knows that that relationship affects us greatly growing up... So in the MCU, Thor grew up with Loki, literally the god of mischief, always running into trouble, so Thor became the good prince, the good son. Without his brother dragging him into trouble, Thor had to find it on his own and so he grew up a bit differently — still our lovable hero, but his interests are less about becoming king of Asgard, and more about becoming perhaps the party prince."

Thor, the Only Child

It's sad to learn that there won't be any Tom Hiddleston shenanigans, but, fans have already gotten an entire series focused on the character; so it's only fair that Thor gets the full spotlight.

After all, the concept is all about the absence of Loki in Thor's life, and that is plenty intriguing enough to make up for the lack of mischief—at least on Loki's part. There will likely be plenty of chaos brought about by Thor's partying to fill in any gaps left behind.

The Party Thor episode has been one which has left fans scratching their heads as that part of the concept has been known for quite a while thanks to the merchandise being released. After episodes like Doctor Strange losing the love of his life or a zombie virus being released upon the MCU, how would an episode with Thor throwing parties stand up to them?

Fans will have to tune into What If...? to find out, which airs every Wednesday exclusively on Disney+.