WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery,” streaming now on Disney+.
Loki added whole new dimensions to the cosmology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by exploring just how many branching timelines there are. Time travel first became an issue in Avengers: Endgame, but as the Time Variance Authority stated themselves, the Avengers’ interference with time did not merit their corrections to the timeline.
But it appears that one Avenger did not toe the line so closely. Spotted only briefly in the latest Loki episode in the Void, where all pruned individuals go, there was a Frog Thor, or Throg, trapped inside a jar. While the MCU is full of comic book references, there may be deeper implications to Throg’s appearance than just being a cute Easter egg.
The outline of the multiverse given by the TVA comes with evermore grains of salt as the audience learns to not trust the organization. At first touting their mission to protect the integrity of “The Sacred Timeline” in order to preserve peace in the multiverse, the organization increasingly seems to rely on deception and misdirection in conducting its business. Indeed, even its “pruning” of individuals and timelines was revealed not to destroy matter altogether, but transport it to a different timeline the TVA has designated as a sort of waste dump. It is there in the Void that audiences first see Throg.
After Loki is pruned and meets several variants of himself in the Void, he goes to a subterranean base, where the quartet hides out from the apocalyptic Alioth. In the transition to the lair, the camera sees a cross-section of the littered ground between the surface and the lair itself. Not only is there a Mjolnir buried there, but a jar labeled “365” that contains Throg. Recognizable from the comics, where the character is variably either an alternate reality version of Thor or the main timeline’s Thor transformed into a frog, the moment could just be a discardable Easter egg. But it stands out as a notable exception from everything seen so far in Loki.
There are now over half a dozen different Loki variants and the TVA is apparently staffed entirely with variants taken from divergent timelines. Infinity Stones fill desk drawers, there have been references to vampires and Kree arrested in the past and throughout it all, there has been a distinct lack of Avengers. Earlier in Loki, the God of Mischief pointed out how the Avengers’ own interference in time should have been more egregious than his own, yet their interference was apparently all according to some unseen plan. But it seems Thor, at least in some timeline, didn’t stick to the plan.
Thor’s choices already have a massive impact on the MCU’s timeline. Thor was the one who first brought Loki’s attention to Earth, destroyed Asgard in order to defeat Hela and narrowly missed ending Thanos’ life before he could ever snap his fingers by neglecting to “go for the head.” But there is some version of Thor out there who apparently made an even more consequential deviation from what could have been, and he did it as a frog. It could be possible to handwave Throg as not the real Thor at all, but the same episode gives some precedent for this being the case with Alligator Loki. Thus, this is a world of magic and shapeshifting, and sometimes Asgardian gods get turned into reptiles.
It’s even notable that a human-scale Mjolnir sits just inches away from the buried Throg, who seems desperate to escape, indicating this is not just any wing-helmeted frog, but an actual variant of the God of Thunder. Could there be more Avengers pruned? If so, what is it about Loki that makes him so particularly tenacious as to have several variants running around before anybody else in the multiverse does?
The TVA’s handwaving about the Avengers’ crimes compared to Loki’s always felt like a fly in the ointment. It seems that Throg may be the start to settling that dispute once and for all.
Loki stars Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant, Sasha Lane, and Eugene Cordero. New episodes air Wednesdays on Disney+.
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