This article contains Loki spoilers
Loki episode one, “Ouroboros”, is now streaming on Disney+, and eagle-eyed Marvel fans will have had a huge thrill watching the opening installment of the show this week. There were of course plenty of Easter eggs from the pages of Marvel Comics to feast on, including a reference to Broxton, Oklahoma in the episode’s post-credits scene. But for those who have been desperate for any sign of the X-Men’s imminent debut in the MCU, one moment truly stood out and had us yelling “bro!” – Cerebro, that is!
After Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) finds out that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been time slipping inside the TVA and that the timeline is branching, he reacts to the news that the TVA is experiencing power surges by taking Loki, Mobius (Owen Wilson), and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) to a very unique location: the temporal core, home to the temporal loom. Before our intrepid time variance crew can get inside, though, there’s a very ominous moment where they stop dead in the hallway, and the camera pans over to the entrance door of the temporal loom.
Once you spot the familiar nature and design of the door, you won’t be able to unsee it, as it’s eerily similar to the entrance of Charles Xavier’s Cerebro, the machine used by Prof X to amplify his telepathic ability in the X-Men movies. Check out the side-by-side below…
Did this scene in ‘LOKI’ remind you of something? 👀 #Loki pic.twitter.com/gSQayVRFdX
— X-Men Updates (@XMenUpdate) October 6, 2023
While admittedly the TVA’s entrance isn’t circular or silver, it does heavily hint that the TVA was at least partially constructed from X-Men tech during its construction. If you recall, there was also a long gangway that led to Prof X’s Cerebro in the X-Men movies, which is very similar to the one that leads to the temporal loom.
In the X-Men franchise, Prof X used Cerebro to observe all the mutants and humans throughout the world, and it also could locate any individual. This could explain how He Who Remains was able to engineer full control over both the Sacred Timeline, and the Variants who branched onto different timelines. If he had been able to combine Cerebro’s abilities with the loom somehow, he would have been basically unstoppable.
We can also guess how He Who Remains got away with taking Cerebro at some point in the past (or the future) and utilizing it for his own gain. After all, he only needed to succeed in one universe, and by creating the Sacred Timeline he effectively nullified the era of the X-Men entirely, and brought about the events of the MCU as we know them.
Marvel have been trying to keep any future MCU casting reveals a surprise, but from what we’ve learned from behind the scenes leaks on Deadpool 3, it appears that the TVA are about to be imminently and inexorably linked with the X-Men in the MCU. We know that Deadpool 3 will officially bring back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine from the X-Men movies, and that the Merc with a Mouth and Logan will join the MCU in the movie, but Owen Wilson’s TVA analyst Mobius is also rumored to have a huge role in the upcoming blockbuster, which will likely see the X-Men franchise and the TVA finally collide after the events of Loki season two.
Did you spot any other X-Men Easter eggs in the Loki premiere? Let us know in the comments!