It's one thing for major franchises to promote their sponsored partnerships on television, but it's a whole different story when their logo is being shoved right in the audience's faces. So, what's the big deal with Marvel's Loki Season 2 featuring the 1980s McDonald's? Does it have any importance with the Loki series?
The Thing with McDonald's in Loki Season 2
You have to remember: Sylvie barely had a happy childhood, especially after she got taken away from her own timeline at a young age.
After successfully killing He Who Remains, aka the Kang variant who ran the Time Variance Authority, the Lady Loki variant's first decision was to find a place for herself on the Sacred Timeline.
In this case, she found 1980s Oklahoma's McDonald's. The red and yellow colors are as vivid as they come, not to mention, the iconic logo of the fast food chain printed on Sylvie's uniform when Loki found her in the second episode of Loki Season 2.
To be clear, this is hardly the first time Marvel Studios has had brand partnerships. Why, Iron Man had a Whopper back in his first film, so what makes this any different from the Loki series having McDonald's?
While it seems pretty random for a show like Loki to randomly decide on working at a fast food joint, the executive producer of the show, Kevin Wright, had a pretty sentimental reason for it.
READ MORE: Loki Season 2 Episode 3 Release Date & Time, Countdown, and Everything You Need To Know
What Does it Mean for the MCU To Involve McDonald's?
In a previous interview with Kevin Wright, the exec emphasized it was all about having Sylvie find her own voice beyond destroying the TVA. Check out what he had to say below (via Fast Company):
"This character had been on a decades-long, maybe centuries-long revenge mission, and the classic trope of those stories is that it's all-consuming and she's not thinking about what comes next. Now she has this moment of opportunity, where is she going to go?"
To that, Sophia Di Martino (Sylvie's actress) was quick to reply, "She'd probably be pretty hungry."
Wright continued on to say how McDonald's has always been a symbol of nostalgia for Americans, "You play a little League game and go to McDonald's. Someone like Sylvie would never have experienced that, and would be really taken by that."
As it turned out, McDonald's was never really supposed to do anything but get their part in this partnership. Instead, they were specifically written into the script, which (while it had Wright worrying over how the fast food chain would respond to it) they were pretty on board with.
McDonald's global chief marketing officer Morgan Flatley had one thing to say for involving themselves with Loki and Marvel:
"We tend to embrace things like this, which we feel can be an opportunity for us to learn, especially because we felt that between Marvel and Loki, there was a real willingness to take their rabid fandom and mix it with a fan truth around McDonald's and bring them together. Sylvie's storyline perfectly aligned with how we think about our brand in terms of providing comfort and familiarity."
This is likely not going to be the last time Marvel Studios would make use of their global partnerships.
With the Marvel Cinematic Universe involving plenty of alternate universes to jump to, it would seem that this is just the beginning of the ever-growing franchise.
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