Loki Season 2 May Have The MCU's Second Most Disgusting Death
Contains spoilers for "Loki" Season 2, Episode 4 — "Heart of the TVA"
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is designed for the whole family to enjoy, so most character deaths are hidden behind a cinematic veneer of PG-13 glamor, but every now and then, Marvel takes the kid gloves off and delivers a character death so gnarly, so disgusting, that even the sturdiest would falter. "Loki" Season 2, Episode 4, "Heart of the TVA," adds to this particular category with what could be one of the most viscerally upsetting deaths in the entire franchise.
Thanks to the efforts of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Mobius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and the good people of the Time Variance Authority, General Dox (Kate Dickie) and her rogue Minutemen are confined to a prison cell with Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal). But instead of a fair trial, they encounter Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). The former TVA leader attempts to sway General Dox and co. to her side, but the general's disagreement with the TVA is very different from Renslayer's, and only Hunter X-5 defects. But the rest? Renslayer encapsulates them in a Time Cube.
What comes next is not shown on-screen, but thanks to Loki's interrogation antics in Episode 2, "Breaking Brad," we know a Time Cube can shrink to crush anything inside of it. And while Loki stops shy of actually smushing Hunter X-5 into a pulp, Renslayer doesn't. The camera focuses on her expression as the imprisoned Minutemen and General Dox are slowly crushed to death. The associated sound effects, aside from the screaming, are distressingly ... wet.
Contenders for the most disgusting MCU on-screen death
The only thing that prevents the mass murder in Season 2 of "Loki" from being the most disgusting death in the MCU is that the whole thing occurs off-camera. Viewers can fill in the blanks well enough, but it's not the same as seeing it play out on-screen. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other deaths that meet that grizzly requirement. In "Ant-Man," Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) kills a Pym Technologies senior executive with an unstable shrink ray. It's over in an instant, but that's all it takes for audiences to watch the poor guy get transformed into a quivering blob of orange, gelatinous slime. Unphased, Darren wipes up what's left of the man with a bit of paper towel and flushes it down the toilet.
Another contender for Marvel's Grossest Nightmare Fuel is the death of Black Bolt (Anson Mount). In "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) magically removes Black Bolt's mouth so that he cannot use his voice to kill her. When Black Bolt screams, the destructive sound makes its way through his skull, and although the hero's helmet keeps the gore contained, it doesn't diminish the gruesome view of his head deflating like a popped balloon.