Watching "Loki" on Disney Plus last week immediately got me thinking a lot about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show gives an ever-so-subtle preview of some of the biggest changes planned for the future, but treats them seriously enough to suggest that they are not for fun.

Spoiler Warning. Spoilers lie ahead for the first episode of Loki and other MCU shows and movies that have been released.

Wanda Vision's big Pietro recasting moment has put fans everywhere on a red alert - mutants are coming, mutants are coming. I have a feeling that "Loki" is the series that actually lays the groundwork for the next big change in the MCU.

Or so Loki would have us believe. Let's look at the evidence.

First of all, context is king (which Loki is still exploring). As you can see from the first episode, the show's Loki Laufeison is not the real Loki.

Not the Loki who died in "Avengers: Infinity War" at the hands of Thanos. It is Loki who escaped from the main timeline using the Tesseract while in custody in "Avengers" ("Avengers: Endgame").

This alone does not make much sense. However, when Loki goes to the Time Variation Bureau, he is labeled a "variant." We learn this from Miss Minutes. Miss Minutes is an animated clock that explains a lot.

She says to Loki, "Sometimes people like you deviate from the path created by the timekeepers. We'll take that...

Spider-Man fans should have their spidey-sense tingling at full throttle at this point if they've been paying attention to the rumors about "Spider-Man: No Way Home."

The MCU's best-kept secret has been the fact that different versions from the past two decades of Spider-Man films, perhaps Spider-Man and his nemesis will appear. In other words, all eyes are on Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

The trade press reports that past villains will return, including Electro (who appeared in Garfield's The Amazing Spider-Man 2), played by Jamie Foxx. Then Alfred Molina (last seen in Maguire's Spider-Man 2 as Dr. Otto Octavius) said in an interview that he would indeed play Doctor Octopus (aka Doc Ock) in the new film, making a big deal out of it all.

Next, listen to another big part of Miss Minute's speech in the first episode of "Loki."

Introducing the mission of the Time Variation Bureau, this cheeky animated clock says: "The time is a time of change. Countless unique timelines fought for supremacy and all were nearly destroyed. But an omniscient and omnipotent Timekeeper emerged and brought peace by reorganizing the multiverse into a single timeline, the Sacred Timeline.

So now we know the background of the coming multiverse chaos of the MCU. Until now, we have had only two pieces of that puzzle.

First, in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Quentin Beck (Mysterio, played by Jake Gyllenhaal) claimed to be from another multiverse. Then it turned out that Beck was both honest and truthful and trustworthy (as in "not at all"), and we were forced to essentially abandon this idea before the film was completed.

Later, however, the official title of the second Doctor Strange film, "Doctor Strange: The Multiverse of Madness," was announced. And hope was restored.

Of course, now we have to trust that Miss Minutes and TVA are not dragging us down. Since Wanda Maximoff (Scarlett Witch) appears in "The Multiverse of Madness," it is suggested in the final post-credits scene of "Wanda Vision" that she may be searching for her family in another timeline and throughout the multiverse.

It turns out that Loki is not the only one tripping through fantastic timelines. Check out this clip embedded below. If you didn't notice this one, you might just yelp.

Watch. Did you have to play it back several times?

Exactly. Peggy Carter herself is interfering with the timeline. Whether she is fighting Hydra across time or just looking for Steve Rogers ("retired" Captain America) is anyone's guess, but either way, this is a big deal.

Carter is virtually the furthest thing from a supernatural friend the Marvel Cinematic Universe has. However, she has her own reasons for traveling through time and space. Will she travel through time to tell her daughter Sharon Carter to stop being a power broker? Or is something else afoot?

This whole scenario means that Marvel has got a new way to get all the cameos it wants. Abusing cameos by Steve Rogers and Tony Stark would not work.

All we know is that Loki's first episode throws so many rules of the Marvel Cinematic Universe out the window that feelings of MCU fatigue may soon be a thing of the past.

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