Reintroducing Tom Hiddleston as the titular ‘trickster god’ from the Avengers films, it arrived with a degree of buzz, but nothing compared to the hype around WandaVision, the MCU’s first venture into TV streaming.

But Loki has quickly become a phenomenon and arguably one of the catalysing pop culture moments of 2021.

For one thing, it’s racking up the numbers. According to audience data, viewership has eclipsed that of both WandaVision and March’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series.

Go on social media, meanwhile, and it feels half the world is speculating as to the twists and turns ahead.

One major development is the revelation that Loki is bisexual. “It was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual. It is a part of who he is and who I am too,” tweeted showrunner Kate Herron.

There have been gay Marvel characters in the comic books, whilst the upcoming Eternals film will feature the first same-sex onscreen kiss in the MCU. Nonetheless, Loki coming out as bi is regarded as a major step forward.

Even Marvel must be surprised by the response to the show. A tale of time-hopping and interweaving temporary pathways, Loki is one of the Disney-owned studio’s weirdest projects yet.

Arriving in a layer of 70s grime, it is certainly a departure from the shiny-spandex chic of Captain American and tech-laden advances of Iron Man.

That isn’t by accident. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, JG Ballard’s High Rise (a 2015 adaptation of which likewise starred Hiddleston) and David Fincher’s Zodiac are among the references Kate Herron has chucked into the pot. It’s even got a whiff of prestige TV staple Mad Men.

These are not influences typically found in a comic book adaptation. And then there’s a cast that includes Owen Wilson, the doyen of wry 2000s comedy (and collaborator with high priest of quirkiness Wes Anderson), Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sasha Lane.

Loki’s big idea is that there is one “correct’ timeline and that a bureaucratic agency called the Time Variance Authority (TVA) exists to ensure “variant” ones don’t muck up the universe.

This means pinging back and forth across the decades eliminating anomalies and removing “variants” — people who have strayed off their predestined path and essentially become an alternate version of themselves.

Loki has become one such variant. A bit like Dublin winning six All-Irelands in a row or Dustin the Turkey at Eurovision, that simply wasn’t supposed to happen and has the potential to ruin the future for all mankind. So Loki 2.0 — the “variant” whom we accompany for the rest of the series — is detained by the TVA.

The TVA is revealed to be a bit of a grim 70s neverland. Herron, the show runner, used to temp with Britain’s NHS and was struck by the arcane technology.

The lesson was that big, bureaucratic organisations often get by on wildly outdated tech — a sensibility she has transposed to Loki.

There’s also lots of brutalist architecture and horrific wallpaper — touches that evoke everything from A Clockwork Orange to Gilliam’s Brazil via the dystopian fiction of Ballard.

“I had this big pitch document,” Herron says of her early meetings with Marvel. “And a lot of it was brutalist architecture because I grew up in south-east London, and there’s a lot of architecture like that there.

“A Clockwork Orange was filmed near where I grew up, and Children of Men. I wanted to kind of bring that idea into it because you’ve got these godly timekeepers overseeing everything. And that felt really appropriate in that regard.”

The lesson is that, 18 or so months into a once-in-a-century pandemic, either we’re living through a golden age of quirky entertainment or a year and a half of the dreariest dystopia ever has taken us somewhere very, very strange.