MCU fans will have some homework to do before heading to the theater to watch Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in 2021. While we already knew the events of the Disney+ series WandaVision would play directly into the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, it turns out the Loki series will also have a key role to play.

Marvel Phase 4: Official Lineup 17 IMAGES

Loading

That news comes from Bloomberg , which just published a lengthy profile of Disney CEO Bob Iger ahead of the launch of Disney+. During the course of the story, Marvel's newly minted Chief Creative Officer Kevin Feige reveals Marvel's Loki will have a significant connection to Multiverse of Madness.Bloomberg writes, "[Feige] declines to discuss the budget for the shows—including reports Disney is spending as much as $25 million per episode on some Marvel shows, more than HBO is believed to have spent during the final season of Game of Thrones. He does drop one little morsel, though. If you want to understand everything in future Marvel movies, he says, you’ll probably need a Disney+ subscription, because events from the new shows will factor into forthcoming films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Scarlet Witch will be a key character in that movie, and Feige points out that the Loki series will tie in, too. “I’m not sure we’ve actually acknowledged that before,” he says. “But it does.”We've previously speculated on how WandaVision may set up Scarlet Witch's role in The Multiverse of Madness , but Loki's involvement comes as a surprise. We know little about the plot of the Loki series right now, other than Feige's earlier confirmation the series will focus on the 2012 version of Loki who escapes with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame. A single Loki teaser image hints time travel will play a big role in the story. Will Loki's use of the Tesseract somehow open up the MCU to the wider Marvel multiverse?Marvel's Loki will see Tom Hiddleston reprise his role as Loki one more. The series is directed by Kate Herron and written by Michael Waldron, with Herron promising, " We’re taking Loki to an entirely new part of the MCU. " The series slated to run six episodes and will debut on Disney+ in spring 2021 For more on the future of the MCU, check out the full lineup for Phase 4 , and then see what's next for Spider-Man now that Disney and Sony have mended fences.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter