~~ SPOILER WARNING: ENDINGS OF MASS EFFECT (3) AND LOKI ~~

I don't know how many people here will have played Mass Effect but I wanted to share this. I noticed that the ending of Loki is actually remarkably similar to the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect summary for anyone who isn't planning on playing it (though I really recommend it): In Mass Effect, there was an apex race that noticed their subservient races would make AIs that eventually destroyed them. They, in their arrogance, made their own AI (later referred to as the Catalyst) with the purpose of finding a way to preserve organic life. The Catalyst made a hybrid machine-organic race referred to as the Reapers that harvest all advanced species. Once the galaxy hits a stage of development, advanced life is wiped out and converted into new Reapers. In the ending, the protagonist Shepard confronts the Catalyst at its home, a space station called The Citadel. The Catalyst offers Shepard the choices of either replacing it as the controller of the Reapers, or wiping them out and taking the chance of being wiped out by future AI races.

So the parallels:

• Multiverse war and AI conflict: Serve as a existential threat that prompts galactic/universal authoritarianism.

• TVA and The Reapers: Incredibly powerful force imposing peace via (ironically) systemic annihilation as a solution to the existential threat. Uses those they prune/harvest to make more of themselves to continue enforcing control indefinitely.

• Kang and The Catalyst: Main antagonist, a single entity that created and directs the controlling force.

• The Citadel at the End of Time and The Citadel: Where the protagonist(s) find the being behind directing the controlling power.

• The final choice: Protagonist(s) are offered a choice to either recognize that the controlling force is doing something valuable and take over, or destroy it and risk the original existential threat.

• Bonus: Male and female version of Loki confront Kang, and either a male or female version of Shepard can confront the Catalyst.

Obviously it's not a perfect match, the reasoning behind why the single entity gives up power is different, and Mass Effect does have other ending choices (though control/destroy have dramatically more attention/buildup). Regardless I thought it was cool how similar these otherwise very specific plotlines were.