Since Iron Man kicked off the MCU all those years ago, I’ve come to find that if there’s one thing Marvel Cinematic Universe fan’s love apart from, well… Marvel, it’s a thoughtful crossover. Whether it be a massive, universe-altering event, or a subtle interaction that harkens back to a conversation that happened five years prior, crossovers and connections are indisputably fun to find, theorize about, and simply experience. Fortunately for Marvel fans, the MCU is chock-full of ’em, and their newest Disney+ show, Loki, is no exception. However, rather than take a look at every little Easter egg tucked away in the show’s most recent episode (Revengers, anyone?), we’re going to talk about one item in particular: Roxxcart.
After successfully nailing down when and where the Loki Variant (or are they?) is located, Loki, Mobius, and a squad of the Time Variance Authority’s finest Minutemen travel to the year 2050 and head to Haven Hills, Alabama, a corporate town owned and operated by the Roxxon Corporation (which, just to be clear, has no relation to UPROXX). So once in Haven Hills, the team busts into the corporation’s version of a Walmart-like big box store, Roxxcart, where they encounter folks seeking shelter from an imminent and sadly devastating hurricane, as well as the variant they’ve been hunting down. While everything that happens within Roxxcart is incredibly engaging, if you’re anything like us you might have spent a least a bit of time wondering why Roxxcart sounds vaguely familiar and if there’s any significance to it the neon-lit superstore’s appearance. Well, we’re here to tell you there is a reason why, and there certainly is a least a little bit of significance.
So as I mentioned before, Roxxcart is Roxxon’s privately owned superstore, and while Loki marks the first time Roxxcart has even been mentioned in both the MCU and the comics, Marvel and Roxxon has a history in both. First appearing in Captain America #180 in 1974, Roxxon Energy is essentially the evil corporation of the Marvel universe and has been involved in several stories with several Marvel heroes. Much like the Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil, Jurassic Park‘s Ingen, and Alien’s Weyland-Yutani, Roxxon is basically always up to something that’s either actively harming the planet or humanity all in the pursuit of “progress,” which lands them in hot water a lot. However, seeing as Loki and the gang are waltzing into a Roxxon-operated store in the year 2050, you can safely assume these guys never really learn their lesson, and — like all multi-billion-dollar conglomerates — have themselves so intertwined in the people’s lives that their profitability is unwavering. However, even before 2050 we’ve seen Roxxon everywhere.
Prior to Roxxon’s appearance in Loki, the energy and power company has made appearances in Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Cloak and Dagger, Helstom, Iron Fist, Daredevil, Runaways, and every last one of the Iron Man movies, as seen above. While Roxxon never serves as the villain in any of these stories, in every single last one of them, Roxxon acts as an important part of Marvel’s world-building. People have conversations about the company, hear about them in the news, or walk past their ads on the streets. In Daredevil, Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson defend the company as interns. In Iron Man 3, “The Mandarin” threatens to kill a Roxxon employee on air after the company spilled a million gallons of oil into the gulf and faced zero consequences for it. In Agent Carter, you discover that in the Marvel world, Roxxon is responsible for creating America’s atomic bombs.
So while Roxxon has yet to take center stage in any MCU story, we are constantly reminded the company exists, and that these worlds are all so intimately connected to one another, making the Roxxcart Easter egg a pretty damn cool one.
