10 Movies That Accidentally Set Up Sequels
2. Avengers: Endgame
Watching Avengers: Endgame in light of last year's Loki Disney+ TV series, it's fair to assume that the memorable sequence where the 2012 variant of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) escapes with the Tesseract was always intended to provide a lead-in to the show.
But back in 2020, after the Loki series had been announced, a fan asked Endgame's co-screenwriter Stephen McFeely if this was indeed the case, and McFeely offered up a surprising response:
"No! We just thought it was a juicy way to upset the heist."
So, there it is from the horse's mouth. As much as Loki's cheeky exit felt like an organic-yet-calculated setup for the Loki series, the show hadn't actually been planned while Endgame was being shot, with Kevin Feige ultimately settling on the idea while it was in post-production.
Considering that fans would've been furious if Loki's departure had been left as a dangling, unanswered plot thread forever more, it was definitely a smart call, and Loki went on to become one of the MCU's most imaginative and interesting Disney+ shows to date.