Nexus events: Loki just explained WandaVision's weirdest Easter egg

And just like that, Loki Episode 1 answered a question Marvel fans have been asking for for months.

Marvel’s new Disney+ series just made its long-awaited debut, and the premiere didn’t waste a minute before establishing the rules its characters (and viewers) need to know. A handy animated TVA ad at the start of the Loki premiere delivers most of the episode’s necessary exposition and, impressively, even goes so far as to shine some light on one of the most confusing moments from WandaVision.

Nexus events in Loki

The most ambiguous of WandaVision’s fake commercials was, undoubtedly, its ad promoting a fake pharmaceutical drug called “Nexus.” Unlike most of WandaVision’s other ads, the series never offered an explanation for its Nexus commercial, and Marvel fans have spent the past few months speculating about its possible meaning and broader MCU implications.

Thankfully, Loki Episode 1 not only makes mention of “Nexus events,” but even goes so far as to explain what the term means. According to the Disney+ series, Nexus events are moments in the sacred timeline when branch realities are created. In other words, they are events caused by variants breaking off from the path set forth by the TVA’s Time Keepers, who guard over the Sacred Timeline and which threaten to throw reality into chaos.

So what does that tell us about WandaVision’s Nexus commercial?

WandaVision’s weirdest ad

When WandaVision Episode 7 initially premiered, most Marvel fans assumed “Nexus” was a nod to Wanda’s status as a Nexus being in the Marvel comics. For context, Nexus beings are essentially anchors for their respective realities, capable of altering the very stability of the multiverse and the flow of the Universal Time Stream. Kang the Conqueror is, notably, also considered a Nexus being in the comics.

That reference at the very least seemed to explain the WandaVision commercial’s tongue-in-cheek final line (“Because the world doesn’t revolve around you, or does it?”). But while it’s still possible that is what WandaVision was referencing, Loki seems to imply its Disney+ predecessor wasn’t just setting up Wanda as a being powerful enough to affect the Time Stream but also foreshadowing her role in a future Nexus event of some kind.

Assuming that’s the case, it alters both the implications of the WandaVision commercial and the show as a whole. In specific, it forces us to wonder what Nexus event Wanda will cause that creates the kind of branch realities the TVA and Time Keepers so diligently seek to prevent.

Fortunately, a few possibilities come to mind.

The first is that Wanda will, as the final WandaVision post-credits scene implies, begin exploring the multiverse in search of her twin sons, Billy and Tommy. That seems like the kind of action that could pretty easily lead to some major ramifications throughout the multiverse — and would conceivably contradict the path already set for her by the Time Keepers.

However, it’s also possible that Wanda’s creation of Westview could be the very Nexus event the show’s commercial is hinting at. Loki does technically take place before WandaVision, which means the TVA could be shown reacting to her actions in that show at some point in the future (either in Loki or Doctor Strange 2). That seems slightly less likely than the previous theory, but it’s worth considering all the same.

Either way, one can be fairly confident Loki will do a lot — possibly even more than WandaVision — to set up Wanda’s rumored multiversal mistakes in next year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

The Inverse analysis — Loki’s premiere gives fans a lot of information to take in and digest over the course of its 51-minute runtime. The episode’s mention and explanation of Nexus events is just one of several major moments that feel like they could carry significant weight in the MCU moving forward, but as is always the case with Marvel, it’s difficult to know right now which moments will actually go on to be as important as we’re speculating they could be.

No matter how Marvel ends up incorporating the Nexus commercial in WandaVision into the MCU, it’s refreshing to see one of the studio’s Disney+ series already playing off and tying into the events of another. It doesn’t appear that Loki’s Phase 4 connections will stop here, either.

Loki is streaming now on Disney+.