Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Loki episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery”
Lokiepisode 5 was a dang Easter Eggfeast, as our main trickster god (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) took a trip into The Void, a cosmic timeless wasteland where the TVA sends its Variants to be consumed by a monstrous entity named Alioth. Strewn across The Void were comic book and MCU references as far as the eye could see—a Thanos-copter! Ronin the Accuser’s ship! A very conspicuous sphinx!—but one quick little visual alsosoundedfamiliar. As the camera pans beneath the ground, we catch a glimpse of a Mjolnir Variant buried next to a jar, where a tiny greensomethingstruggles against the glass to the unmistakable grunts ofChris Hemsworth’s Thor. Folks, meet Thor Frog, better known as Throg. Throg is canon. Throg is canon! Take to the streets for mass celebration, my friends, because Throg is canon.
Stuck to the side of the glass, you’ll see a label marked “T-365,” a reference toThor #356written and penciled byWalter Simonson. In a story delightfully titled “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, or, It’s Not Easy Being Green,” that issue marked the first full appearance of Thor Frog. At the time, the character was just the regular God of Thunder transformed into an amphibian by (who else?) his brother Loki, a magical piece of identity-swapping that results in Thor—still a frog, that’s very important—leading a crew of alligators in an uprising against an army of rats beneath the streets of New York City. In the end, Thor Frog is still able to lift Mjolnir, and the transformation completely and fully owns. Look at my guy. He’s wonderful.
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Over the years, Thor Frog has become his own character, separate from the God of Thunder but still containing a smidgeon of his powers. (The hammer he wields is named Frogjolnir, because hell yeah it is.) Over more than 100 issues across dozens of series, Throg has gotten into his fair share of bite-sized scraps and adventures, most notably forming the Pet Avengers alongside other animalistic Marvel characters such as the Inhuman bulldog Lockjaw, the kinetic cat Hairball, Aunt May’s lovable canine Ms. Lion, Falcon’s partner Redwing, and the X-Men’s resident alien dragon, Lockheed. Which version of Throg ended up trapped in a jar inLokiis impossible to say, because the entire point ofLokiis that we’re dealing with every possibility of every time that ever was or ever will be. The brief appearance of Throg is significant in that, for as many Lokis as we met in episode 5—and we met a lot of Lokis in episode 5—there’s an equally endless amount of assorted Thors flying around out there in the multiverse. Hell, there are Variants ofeveryAvenger. (Give me, like, Hulk Sharkimmediately.) If Loki and Sylvie succeed in taking down the TVA and its iron-grip mastery over the timelines, who’s to say we don’t meet a good number of them?
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