'Avengers: Endgame' directors explain the movie's Loki twist, and it could have major implications for the character's Disney Plus TV series

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Warning: This post contains spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame."
"Avengers: Endgame" could have major consequences for Disney Plus' "Loki" TV series.
The movie's directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, told Business Insider that Loki created a "branched reality."
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Warning: This post contains spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame."

"Avengers: Endgame" doesn't just conclude the Marvel Cinematic Universe's "Infinity Saga" — it has huge ramifications for the MCU's future on both the big and the small screen.

In the movie, the Avengers travel back in time to find the Infinity Stones so they can reverse the Thanos snap that wiped out half of humanity in last year's "Avengers: Infinity War." A group travels to 2012 during the Battle of New York in the first "Avengers" movie, and the Space Stone heist goes horribly wrong. The villain Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) uses the stone to escape the Avengers and teleport to an unknown location.

In the final moments of "Endgame," Captain America travels back to when the Infinity Stones were stolen, to reverse the timeline. But according to the movie's directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, Loki still manages to escape.

In an interview, the Russo brothers told Business Insider that the Loki of that period actually created his own timeline.

"It gets very complicated, but it would be impossible for [Cap] to rectify the timeline unless he found Loki," Joe Russo said. "The minute that Loki does something as dramatic as take the Space Stone, he creates a branched reality."

This move has implications for the "Loki" TV series in the works for Disney's upcoming streaming platform, Disney Plus. Loki was killed by Thanos in "Infinity War," so one might assume that the TV series, in which Hiddleston will reprise his role, would take place before that movie. That may still be the case, but it could also take place in an alternate reality.

The latest trailer for July's "Spider-Man: Far From Home" confirms that the events of "Infinity War" and "Endgame" created a "multiverse."

TV series have already spun out of the MCU — such as Netflix's Marvel shows like "Daredevil" and ABC's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." — but they were only loosely connected. The Disney Plus series "will intersect with the movies in a very big way," Kevin Feige, the Marvel Studios president, told Variety last month, highlighting how much the MCU and Marvel's strategy could shift after "Endgame."

"It's a totally new form of storytelling that we get to play with and explore," Feige added.

Other Marvel TV shows being developed for Disney Plus include "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, and "WandaVision," starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany. Disney Plus is set to launch November 12.