At this point, we’ve gotten used to scouring Marvel movies and TV shows for even the smallest details that might hint at storylines to come. The first episode of Loki has plenty of these intriguing details, including the appearance of Kablooie gum. Is the gum just a throwaway moment, or does it have something more it’s hiding?
The first time we see a pack of Kablooie gum is when Agent Mobius is trying to gain the trust of a girl in 1549 France who is apparently the only witness to one of the crimes against the Time Variance Authority’s agents. First, he uses his tablet to make her laugh with a moving doodle of a stick figure, and then he asks her about her teeth, which are tinted blue as if she’s been eating blue candy. She hands him a pack of blue gum, which, the label says, is Kablooie gum in “Blooberrie” flavor. “Devil bearing gifts,” Mobius comments to his TVA colleague as he instructs him to run the gum through their system for any information. We see it again briefly in the end credits, where someone at the TVA is holding the pack of gum, now in a clear evidence bag.
It seems like an awful lot of emphasis to put on something that’s not actually important. By the end of the episode, we’re led to believe that the villain who has been killing the TVA agents and messing with the timeline is another Loki, which would then mean that he’s the one who gave the gum to the girl. There’s reason to believe that’s not the case, though.
Ever since WandaVision aired, theories about two Marvel villains have been floating around: Nightmare and Mephisto. Both of these theories get a boost in this episode: the reference to the “devil,” plus a lingering shot of a stained-glass window depicting the devil, seems like winks at Mephisto, while the actual cartoon character on the Kablooie gum pack looks an awful lot like Nightmare does in the comics. If a gum pack is actually the key to figuring out Loki‘s mysteries, well, it still probably isn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened in a Marvel story!