The MCU finally has some major, on-screen representation!
Raffy ErmacWarning! Spoilers for Disney+'s Loki series ahead!
It's official: Loki is the bisexual icon that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been so desperately needing!
In the third episode of his very own Disney+ solo series that premiered earlier today, Loki (played famously over the past decade in the MCU by British actor Tom Hiddleston) is having a conversation with Lady Loki (she's going by the name Sylvie and was revealed at the end of episode two last week, played by Sophia Di Martino) on a doomed Kree moon when the topic of love and romantic partners casually comes up.
"So, on the subject of love, is there a lucky beau waiting for you at the end of this crusade?" Loki asks her.
"Yeah there is, actually," she replies. "Managed to maintain quite a serious long-distance relationship with a postman whilst running across time from one apocalypse to another."
A little later on in the conversation, Sylvie turns the tables and ponders if our fave Norse trickster has a special someone in his life, asking, "How about you? You’re a prince. Must have been would-be-princesses. Or perhaps another prince?"
To which Loki responds, "A bit of both. I suspect the same as you. But nothing ever–”
"–real." Sylvie finishes.
A major character in the world's most popular movie/TV superhero franchise explicitly saying that he has dated both women and men in the past is a huge thing, especially considering how long LGBTQ+ Marvel fans have been waiting for even the tiniest morsel of explicit, on-screen representation. Queer viewers can finally start to feel like they can see themselves in the media they consume, and the importance of the small, but momentous, occasion wasn't lost on Loki director Kate Herron, who took to Twitter to celebrate.
"From the moment I joined @LokiOfficial it was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual," she wrote. "It is a part of who he is and who I am too. I know this is a small step but I’m happy, and my heart is so full, to say that this is now canon in the #MCU."
This isn't the first time Loki has made headlines for pushing boundaries for queer rep in superhero media, though! Earlier this year, it was confirmed that Loki's genderfluidity would be explored in the series with the introduction of Lady Loki, and that was something that was important to the show's star Tom Hiddleston.
"I've known about the breadth of Loki's identity since I was first cast as the character 10 years ago," Hiddleston told Out earlier this month when asked about the recent confirmation of Loki's fluid identity and whether or not he already knew that about the character from the comics. (Multiple versions of Thor's mischievous brother have appeared in the pages of comic books over the years, including the canonically pansexual and genderfluid Lady Loki.) "Back then, I did a really deep dive into my own research and could see that not just in the comics, that's always been there, but also in the history of the character across hundreds of thousands of years, there's been a fluidity about Loki that I found really interesting and compelling and very much a part of the fabric of the character. It was really thrilling to get to touch on that this time around."
It's been a long time coming, but we're SO GLAD the MCU is getting bigger, better, and queerer!
RELATED | Tom Hiddleston Talks Loki's Gender Fluidity & Getting a Disney+ Series
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