Today, Disney+ launches its latest Marvel Cinematic Universe small-screen spin-off, Loki, starring Tom Hiddleston reprising his big-screen God of Mischief.
You may recall Loki died — literally — at the hand of Thanos in the opening of Avengers: Infinity War. But thanks to some time-traveling Avengers in Endgame, he managed to flee their custody, and his future death. But that temporal escape runs him afoul of the Time Variance Authority, charged with policing the sacred natural order of time.
At a virtual press conference, Hiddleston admits learning that his character would live on was met with “a combination of delight and surprise.”
He says, “I was so excited by the idea and also had to scratch my head a bit, because that scene in Avengers: Infinity War had felt so final…as the end of Loki’s story.”
Hiddleston adds, “In that scene in [Endgame], Loki picks up the Tesseract and disappears in a puff of smoke. Where does he go? When does he go? That’s the starting point of Loki.”
The TVA had its start in a Thor comic in 1986 but hasn’t been seen onscreen yet, so the shadowy group — and Owen Wilson‘s mysterious agent Mobius — are new to viewers, and to Hiddleston’s character.
Show creator and executive producer Michael Waldron tells ABC Audio, “Loki is us in that situation…from the moment he’s brought into the TVA, because like him, we don’t know what the hell’s going on. [T]hat’s really fun.”
Waldron, a veteran of the acclaimed absurdist animated series Rick and Morty, also calls the show’s time-jumping premise, “a dream come true,” adding, “There was so much encouragement from Marvel to just be as imaginative as we possibly could…and to go weirder and to be bold and take chances.”
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