Why Did Loki Episode 6 Introduced Kang’s Variant And Not Kang?

Our impression is that he’s a variant/version of Kang and that the “actual” Kang — the one who’s going to be the MCU’s next major villain — is one of the evil variants He Who Remains alluded to as escaping if he was killed.

Sylvie killed He Who Remains, allowing the timeline to branch off, and that is what will trigger the entry of Kang the way we think of him into the MCU. That’s also presumably the kickoff of the next few films that are Multiverse/Quantum Realm-focused, e.g. the next Dr. Strange and Ant-Man movies.

The big hang-up for a lot of people — certainly us, and others whose writing/analysis we’ve seen — on getting on board with Kang as the head of the TVA was that it seemed implausible for a major villain to be introduced in a Disney+ series. That was a huge reason why we, even knowing that the series’ clues pointed to Kang, preferred the “King Loki” idea, which seemed to fit better in a Loki-centric series. (And we maintain that it could have worked, with that Loki’s overthrow being what brought Kang in to take over).

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But the writers seem to have met in the middle, introducing a Kang who isn’t really “Kang.” It’s sort of a mix of the He Who Remains concept in the comics with Kang the Conqueror: Have HWR be a Kang. That resolves the TVA mystery without giving away too much of the goods for the next major villain. And they gave enough of a hint of what would happen in the fallout — evil variants running amok — to tee up the next part of the story.

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We are also guessing that the retconned (or alternate-universe?) TVA headquarters’ statue Loki sees to end the episode is the “actual” Kang, who’s already started to take over and remake the TVA, pretty much immediately after being freed after HWR’s death, or else had his TVA “come through” when the timelines started splitting off.