Marvel fans have gotten one thing they really wanted in the month of June, with the premiere of Loki on Disney+. However, one thing they haven’t gotten is the highly-anticipated trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home. And while this may just be our theory, we think fans may want to re-align their expectations, because the trailer for Spider-Man 3 may not arrive until Loki is almost ending. After seeing Loki‘s premiere episode, and hearing from the cast and creators, it seems more and more likely that Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s trailer will be the first big indicator of how the limited series changes the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in a big way!
During ComicBook.com’s interview with Loki star Tom Hiddleston, Phase Zero host Brandon Davis asked the actor which episode of the series he thinks will really blow fans’ minds. Here’s what Hiddleston said:
“That is a really good question. Basically, I think 4 or 5 for me. That’s when the show just kind of takes these big leaps forward. I’m really, really intrigued to see what people think about sort of the end of 4, beginning of 5. It’s like… yeah.”
That comment alone could mean a lot of things – perhaps a drastic turn of fate for Loki? A surprising death? Could be anything (especially in this show). However, also consider Kevin Feige’s comments on how pivotal Loki is to Phase 4 of the MCU: “It’s tremendously important. It perhaps will have more impact on the MCU than any of the shows thus far,” Feige told Empire.
The first episode of Loki exposes the version of Loki that escaped with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame to a much bigger power at work in the universe: the Time Variance Authority. It’s made abundantly clear in Loki‘s premiere that the TVA’s power hilariously dwarfs that of the Infinity Stones– and the realization of that power hierarchy has a profound effect on Loki.
Right now, it looks like this Loki series could see the Endgame variant of Loki go in a more heroic direction – but this is Loki we’re talking about, right? In the end, it will be mischief from this character, and it’s not hard to imagine Loki breaking the TVA machine in an attempt to let a wild (if unstable) Marvel Multiverse flourish beyond their control, once again. The premiere episode forced the Endgame variant Loki to see the dark life he’s fated to suffer in the “Sacred Timeline” – why wouldn’t he want to create the possibility of many timelines – including ones where he doesn’t kill his mother or die by Thanos’ hand?
If the big turn in Loki is indeed a break in the TVA system of order (Loki’s specialty) and the establishment of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, then by all indicators from Tom Hiddleston it could come around episode 4 or 5 of the series (which is six episodes in total). That’s a date range between June 30th (Loki episode 4) and July 7th (Loki episode 5), which coincides with Black Widow‘s theatrical release on July 9th. Coincidence? Maybe… Maybe not.
It makes perfect sense why Spider-Man: No Way Home hasn’t begun marketing yet if indeed the big game-changing turn Loki is headed for is the breakdown in the Sacred Timeline, and a multiverse run rampant. Every rumor about No Way Home points to a story of Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man colliding with Spider-Men of other realities (Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield) to battle a Sinister Six villain team pulled from the Multiverse (Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus…); that kind of spectacle can’t be shown off without explanation. The Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer would presumably need to drop late enough not to spoil Loki‘s twists for the viewing audience, but still in time so that the larger movie audience could still get in on the last bit of Loki while it’s still going on (really pump up those finale numbers, ya know?).
With that all laid out on the table, it indeed seems like the story events and episode schedule of Loki could be the determining factors of when we get that Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer.