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Due to its singular nature in the Marvel Multiverse, Loki’s Alioth appears to be the exact same character who was in Marvel’s Avengers comic books.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery,” streaming now on Disney+.
In the grand scheme of the Marvel Multiverse, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the comic book Marvel Universe are essentially parallel realities. The MCU and the Marvel Comics Universe each have their own distinct versions of Thor, Iron Man and other Marvel characters that effectively coexist alongside each other within the multiverse.
But by all accounts, there’s only one version of the Alioth in the Marvel Multiverse, which means that the monstrous villain in the penultimate episode of Loki is the exact same character who troubled the Avengers in comics in the early ‘90s. While the MCU is filled with alternate versions of characters who debuted in comics, this appears to be the first time that the MCU has featured the exact same version of the same character who appeared in comics, thanks to Alioth’s status as a being that exists across timelines and dimensions.
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Alioth the Usurper was introduced in 1993’s Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective #1 by Mark Gruenwald and Mike Gustovich as one of the first beings in all of existence who was able to breach the laws of space and time. Expanding and spreading across time, Alioth was able to claim entire swaths of the timeline as part of its domain — including the distant past of the timestream, where it roamed freely and uncontested as the lord of time. It was only held at bay by a handful of other groups such as the TVA and the Congress of Realities, but its greatest deterrent was the expanding empire of time-traveling Avengers villain Kang the Conqueror, whose own ambitions matched those of Alioth. When Alioth turned its attention to the entire span of existence in the core Marvel Universe, Kang and Ravonna were forced to work with the Avengers to combat him.
Even then, they weren’t able to actually defeat or destroy the time being. Instead, they could only lock it into perpetual and endless combat with one of Kang’s agents, Tempus. This lasted until the events of 1999’s Avengers Forever #9, by Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Carlos Pacheco, when Kang unleashed Alioth to take down the Congress of Realities.
While that was Alioth’s last appearance in a story before appearing in the Void at the end of time in Loki, a profile on Alioth in 2010’s Avengers Assemble, a handbook-style guide featuring several Marvel characters, explicitly describes the creature as a “trans-temporal entity” that “exists across divergent realities.” Assuming that description still holds true, that means that Alioth is a unique being in that there is only one incarnation of it across many worlds of the multiverse.
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This suggests that the Alioth seen in Loki — where it appears as a massive and ferocious monster made of an ever-shifting cloud that reduces all matter to nothingness and serves as a guardian for the mastermind at the end of the timestream — is indeed the same one who appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics.
During its appearance in “Journey Into Mystery,” the fifth episode of Loki, Alioth displays its ability to absorb others into its mass, leaving little remains behind once it does so. That lines up with its stated comic book ability to absorb time-travelers into its mass to grow its power. It is the protector of what lays beyond the end of time, and the climax of the episode sees Loki and Slyvie combine their power to enchant it and move past it, which hints at how powerful the force behind everything at the MCU’s TVA really is. Due to Alioth’s nature, there aren’t variants or alternate reality versions of the creature like there are with other Marvel characters. As things stand, there appears to be only one Alioth in the multiverse, which makes the creature the first character to truly crossover between the MCU and Marvel Comics.
While there have been plenty of deep-cut references to the history of the original Marvel Universe, there have actually been no appearances from genuine figures within the MCU until now. Although the MCU has started embracing the cosmology of the Marvel Multiverse with the likes of WandaVision, Loki and the upcoming Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Alioth is able to “cross” the boundaries that separate the MCU and Marvel Comics Universe by existing outside of them both.
Although Alioth may have only made a handful of appearances, the creature appears to have the distinct honor of being the first Marvel character to truly coexist in comics and the MCU at the same time.
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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