01x03 - The Making of Loki

[bunniefuu]

Thyme

No, the other "Time".

Thank you. Much better.

Time

For some, time is a wheel.

An infinite repetition of what came

before and what is yet to come.

Looping endlessly over and over.

For others, time is an arrow.

Pressing faithfully forward.

We began Loki on February 10, 2020,

at eight o'clock in the morning

and wrapped production 299 days later.

Approximately 7,176 hours.

Or 430,560 minutes,

working and breathing and

dreaming with the show.

Take that number and whittle

it down with many clever edits,

and you get six episodes.

Totaling 280 minutes and

17 seconds of programming.

Now, whittle the experience

down even further,

and you get this one-hour

Give or take, documentary.

A comparatively brief time capsule.

A remembrance of things past.

Given the constraints, we

shouldn't waste a single second.

Let's go back to the beginning.

At the end of the first day,

I cannot believe that I'm doing this.

I literally cannot

believe it's happening.

Um, I first wore this

costume ten years ago.

I can't believe I'm still wearing it.

Um, and I'm so excited about this show.

Um, I'm so grateful to all of you

for everything you're gonna do on it.

So, um, thank you for day one of 849.

And onward we march.

I remember going to see the

first Iron Man in 2008.

And I was actually in Sweden,

working on a project there

with Kenneth Branagh.

And he went to see it the next weekend,

and we both thought, "God,

Iron Man was extraordinary".

And then he got the job

of directing Thor

I kind of joked about, you know

I think once we were on stage,

and I came in with an empty water cooler

and pretended it was the hammer of Thor.

He was able to invite me to audition

'cause he knew that it was going to be

a huge opportunity for so many people.

It's a long time since

I've seen you smile.

I remember, as clear

as day, the first auditions.

I almost remember the scenes.

There was a scene between two brothers,

and they couldn't reveal

the character names.

One was called Michael,

the other was called Lucas.

I believe I learned both sets of lines.

So you're saying

that our friends will stand

with me in defending our home,

but my own brother will not?

And then a month later,

Chris Hemsworth and I got

the call on the same day.

Chris and I got together, and

the moment I met him, I thought

"This is the beginning of the

most extraordinary journey.

"And I don't know

where it's going to go,

but I really like this person.

"This could be something".

From that point on, I

just threw myself at it.

I threw my whole soul at it.

Tom is a fan favorite.

People loved what he's brought

to the character Loki.

He's a character that has always

found a way to come back organically

in new, and interesting,

and exciting ways.

Your savior is here!

As we were looking

for the kind of stories

we wanted to tell on Disney Plus,

Tom just seemed like a real no-brainer

because of the richness

of that character

and the depth of that fan base.

Something happened after Avengers One.

That's when I realized

that Loki as a character

had taken on a life of its own

in the mind of the audience.

So that by the time we

got to Comic-Con in 2013,

Kevin Feige had this idea that I should

go out on stage in character.

And I said to him, "That's

insane and amazing.

"I'm in. Let's go".

It was a moment in time

that is unrepeatable.

I don't think I'll ever have a

moment like that ever again.

It was like stepping off

Somehow out of the environment,

into the world, as the character.

And hearing and feeling

the energy in that room

was something I will never forget.

Say my name.

- Loki!

- Say my name!

- Loki!

- Say my name!

Loki!

And I think after that,

it was, very generously,

that Kevin Feige, and Louis D'Esposito,

and Victoria Alonso at Marvel thought,

"Well, Loki's got to hang around

for a bit longer".

I, Loki, Prince of Asgard,

Odinson, rightful king of Jotunheim,

God of Mischief

I remember meeting

Joe and Anthony Russo.

And they said, "Infinity w*r is in

"It's a labyrinthine thing,

and everyone's involved.

"And we're trying to

refine what happens in it.

"There are some things we're

not sure of yet. However

we are sure that the

opening of this film

is Loki giving the Tesseract to Thanos".

You really are the worst brother.

"After which he is ex*cuted".

And I looked at Kevin, and I said

"So, that's it?"

And he was like, "Yep".

No resurrections this time.

It's gonna be an extraordinary

moment because

Immediately, you believe

in the power of Thanos.

That sacrifice meant something.

And we didn't wanna undo that sacrifice,

or suggest that it

never really happened,

or some other sort of way

that felt like it might cheapen

the real emotional weight

of that moment in that film.

We knew we wanted to tell

more stories with Tom.

On my way down to

coordinate search and rescue.

"On my way down to

coordinate search and rescue".

I mean, honestly, how do

you keep your food down

Shut up.

As Endgame was coming

together, the idea that,

throughout the time travel misadventures

of the Avengers, something goes wrong

No stairs!

Tom grabs the Cube and disappears.

It's a complication in that movie that

really sets our heroes

on their back foot.

One of the things that's

interesting is, it's not dealt with.

We have no idea where that goes.

One of the things that Kevin Feige

and myself were talking about was,

"Could that be a jumping-off point

for a new way to tell a Loki story?"

Variant identified.

I beg your pardon?

TV has always been

the medium of the anti-hero.

You think about the great anti-heroes

like Don Draper or Tony Soprano.

There's enough time

to kind of understand

what some people might call

"the bad guy" in another movie

or another type of story.

So we really wanted to have

as much runway as possible

to explore kind of what makes Loki tick.

We did the math, and he's

Loki's been on screen

for less than two hours

over the course of ten years,

and he's made this huge impact.

And suddenly now, we have

six hours to tell this story.

That's better.

It's a serious show.

It's a dramatic show.

It's a thrilling show.

It's a really wacky show.

And it was just this

amazing team of writers,

led by Michael Waldron,

just trying to cr*ck

the world and the logic

of how this show works.

"The TVA manages all of

time". What does that mean?

You know, I think a lot of people,

what they expected was, like,

"This is gonna be Quantum Leap.

This is gonna be Loki

riding with Paul Revere,

influencing historical events".

And my pitch from the first

time I met with those guys is,

"Let's blow up what

people think the show is".

How'd we do?

When we were looking

for a director for this series,

we had a lot of interested parties,

a lot of great conversations.

Kate really rose above all of them

because of her take on the material.

I remember my agent

telling me, basically,

"This is just, like, a friendly

kind of meet-and-greet.

Do not prepare a pitch".

I ignored that and I did,

like, a full-on pitch.

She came in with

this shock-and-awe pitch

that was the most amazing

pitch that I had ever seen,

where it truly was the

What the show has become.

And I remember leaving that meeting

feeling like this is a person

who understands the spirit

of what we would love

to achieve with it.

And wasn't just going

to execute those ideas,

but that was going to

push them even further.

All at the same time, lift your

weapons up towards these guys,

like, ready to fight.

I asked her, "What do you think,

Kate, that the show is about?"

And she said, "I think

it's about self-acceptance.

You got a character who doesn't

know how to change and grow.

And we have this amazing

story that's actually about

coming to terms with who you are".

From that moment, I thought,

"This woman knows

what she's doing. She's in".

It was such a human, such a

deep insight, so simply put.

I'm just a bit of a

cheeseball, to be honest.

Like, I just I love

that it's about self-love

and, like, getting past your demons.

And I think something I always try

and bring to everything I do is,

digging into the emotion

and the truth of that,

and sort of letting the

characters be ugly, in a way.

For me, it feels a bit more real.

Again, I think it's just,

like, don't be scared

to tread on each other a bit.

- Okay, okay, nice. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

- 'Cause it's like

- As long as it's okay that we overlap.

- Here we go. Picture up

She has so many real-life

experiences that she puts into the show.

She's worked in a lot of offices

that sound a lot like the TVA,

so she would understand the buttons

to push to drive Loki crazy.

Shh!

The passage of time may be constant,

but the sensation of time is not.

An hour on the beach,

basking in the briny

glow of utter freedom,

feels very different from an hour-long

session in a dentist's chair.

And yet, a minute is

a minute is a minute.

We move forward one minute at

a time, one moment at a time

Stop

whether we want to or not.

It.

- And for that

- Stop it!

we can thank our tireless friends

at the Time Variance Authority.

There's an organization that goes back

in the history of Marvel Comics

called the Time Variance

Authority, the TVA.

It's an organization that I've

long been fascinated with,

just as I've paged through

comics at Marvel

in the many years that I've been there.

And I always knew that they could

have a very cool story to tell.

The notion of this bureaucracy

that basically controls

all of time and space.

- Come on.

- Let's go.

You're making a terrible mistake.

He's the trickster, and

he's this prince of Asgard,

this God of Mischief, who's had this

somewhat villainous role to play.

And we really just liked

the idea of plucking him,

quite literally out of his own time

and throwing him down in a place

where he doesn't know the rules.

You see him first in

his Avengers costume.

And so, that's this, you know,

very elaborate sort of

fighting outfit, right?

Absolutely not.

This is fine Asgardian leather.

So we wanted to just

do a real stark contrast.

Just a very, like,

open it up with a bang.

Now, hang on just a minute.

Two one Action!

We put him in a

standard-issue TVA jumpsuit

and essentially, in that scene,

break him down to his

most vulnerable core.

Please, through the door.

Oh, right. So the floor can drop out

from under me as soon as I try to leave.

Nice try. I'm ready for it this time.

- That's not how this chamber works.

- Liar.

You kind of wanted to give a

little insight into the character

that wasn't just about the wall

of the superhero costume, right?

You wanted to feel like

you were penetrating some

layers into this character.

You have no idea what I'm capable of!

I I think I might.

Have an idea of what he's capable of.

I remember sitting down with

Kevin Wright, the producer,

and some of the writers,

and they were telling me the story

of the show. And they were like,

"So, there's this really interesting

character called Mobius and, um,

he's kind of like an analyst in the TVA.

And he's a great intellect,

and he's a scholar.

And he kind of understands Loki.

And he's able to show

him parts of himself

he's never understood before".

And I always thought, "God, I wonder

who's gonna play that part?"

- And here he is.

- Here he is.

The one and only.

Let me ask you this. How

Thought you were leading up to, like,

"And there's only one

person in my mind"

- There's only

- " who could play this".

There's only one person.

- Instead it was, "Who is it gonna be?"

- It was only ever

"Here he is".

Well, when they first

spoke to me about Iron Man,

I kind of wanted to let Marvel

get established a little bit.

And so then when they talked to me

about Thor, and then about

uh, Captain America, and even Hulk,

I was like, "Well, you

know, I don't know"

So, um, it I'm just kidding.

You know what's funny is, like,

even the name "Mobius", it's like

I just like that name.

- It just is a cool

- It's a great name. Yeah.

So when people say,

"What are you doing?"

And, you know, "What are you

doing in the Marvel Universe?"

"No, I'm not wearing a cape. I'm

not I don't have any superpowers.

Other than the name 'Mobius',

which has a certain power to it".

In a story about anti-heroes,

the exciting thing about

Mobius was to play a guy

who was really just kind of a

down-the-middle, old-school hero.

Clock's always tickin'.

Which is better than the alternative.

He's the rascally detective.

And such a good foil for Tom.

How's training going?

- Complete natural.

- Yeah?

Learning about my jet ski there?

It was great when I first got

down here to work in Atlanta

because Tom We sort of

called them "The Loki Lectures"

that Tom would take us through

and work with me individually.

Just going over the lore

and everything that

he felt was important,

and showing me clips and things.

So that was really important

to me for understanding.

And then also, I ended up

just sort of writing down

some of the stuff he

said describing Loki.

And I think that even worked its way

sometimes into dialogue

that I would say.

Glorious purpose.

I remember Owen asking me

what I loved about playing Loki.

Like, never mind what was

great about the character,

what other people could see.

He was like, "Tom, what

do you love about it?

What do you love about Loki?"

And I heard myself saying,

"He plays all the keys on the piano.

So, he plays the light keys

and the major keys, all the

All the light, white notes up there.

But he also plays the heavy

keys with the left hand.

Those deep, profound chords

which are full of sorrow,

and grief, and anger.

And he's able to somehow make it

The music of Loki internally

has this breadth of the scale".

Um, and Owen said, "That

sounds about right".

Enough.

Back in your cage.

See, I can play the heavy keys, too.

I had a nice conversation

one day where I was talking with Tom.

And he quoted something, and

I said, "Is that Shakespeare?"

And he said, "Yes, Hamlet".

And I was proud just that

I got the Shakespeare part.

And then I said, "Have

you played Hamlet?"

And he said, yes, he had.

That, in fact, Kenneth Branagh

directed him in some

performances of Hamlet.

And he described what that was

like and how rewarding it was,

and I was just listening.

And, um, when he finished,

and this is, I guess,

that sort of English politeness,

uh, there was a slight sort of pause.

And then he said, "Have you

ever played Hamlet?"

Uh, and it's the first

time, uh, that, uh

That someone I've worked with

has ever even thought to ask

me if that was a possibility.

Because I can't imagine Ben

Stiller ever having wondered,

"God, has Owen ever played Hamlet?"

If you had to do a Shakespeare play

what would you choose?

Two Gentlemen of Verona, I think.

Do you know it well?

Tom almost was able to

keep a straight face.

- By heart.

- That's when I felt like

When he was asking the question,

"Have you played Hamlet?"

That's, like He was just, like

Just being so polite about it.

- But

- You never know.

- You could've played it at school

- Yeah.

in a school production.

- Yeah. What one could I

- You know most of it.

He knows most of Hamlet.

People don't know that.

- You know it by heart.

- No.

- That's not true.

- You know some of it.

- As You Like It?

- "Cease to persuade, loving Proteus.

"Home-keeping youth

have ever homely wit".

That's the first line from Two

Gentlemen of Verona, I think.

Which, I don't know the play,

but in college, I took

a Shakespeare class.

Déjà vu. Yeah, time moves a

little differently here in the TVA.

I think something that

me and Owen spoke about

at the very beginning was

he really wanted to,

like, get out of himself.

And I think a key thing

for that was the wig.

Obviously, we wanted to keep

the moustache for Mobius

'cause that's so key to

his character in the comics

and the artist that he's based on.

You gonna keep this? Or is

this gonna stay in your life?

Well, I've gotten a lot of

compliments on this moustache.

- It's very dashing, I think.

- "Dashing" is the word that

a lot of people have used. So I might

- I can't afford

- "Dapper".

"Dapper". I don't think

- I can afford to shave this.

- "Smart". Yep.

- This might be from

- "Fancy".

From here on out when you see ol' OCW,

you might see him with a mustache.

I really like the whole look.

And maybe it's a little bit sort

of like that feeling as a kid

when you're kind of make believe.

Come on, gear up.

There's been an att*ck.

Well, that's why I like this hat,

because this feels

a little bit like a

A gumshoe from kind of the '40s,

which I feel like this

"TVA" is a bit like.

I just wanted him to look completely

like off-the-rack detective.

Almost as if he, you know,

just found his clothing

through the lost and found at the TVA.

"Insubordinate,

stubborn, unpredictable".

Sounds like someone else I know.

I was just thinking it sounds

like someone I know.

We always had the Time-Keepers

as kind of this big, omnipotent thr*at,

antagonistic force in the TVA.

But as we were writing the series,

we realized we probably need

a more on-the-ground thr*at.

And that really took the

form of Judge Renslayer.

You ridiculous bureaucrats will

not dictate how my story ends!

It's not your story, Mr.

Laufeyson. It never was.

Judge Renslayer, played

with such poise, and

authority, and power

by Gugu Mbatha-Raw,

is the TVA's Chief Justice.

Hey!

I loved the dimensions of Renslayer.

I felt like people who know

the comics know who she is,

but she's never been

interpreted before, you know.

So, there is a sense that you

are really getting to create her.

And I just love the depths that she has

and the layers that she has.

And I think that she's powerful.

She's well respected.

She's worked her way up.

There's our Variant.

I don't think I've ever played

such an authoritative character.

You know what would happen if

we didn't prune the Timeline?

- What?

- Chaos. Death.

Free will?

Free will?

Only one person gets free will.

The one in charge.

We are here in my office

Uh, Ravonna Renslayer,

Judge Renslayer's office.

Uh, and this is This

is an incredible set.

And obviously we can't

fully see right behind us,

but between the Time-Keepers right here,

um, there's an amazing view,

um, of the whole of the TVA.

And it's really, um It's

really a powerful space.

I love it. And it's got that

mid-century warmth to it.

I really feel like I've bonded

with the space.

We all just knew

we wanted to build sets.

The TVA just lent itself to a

tactile, real, grounded feeling.

You wanted to see the rings

of coffee on papers and desks.

And like, to do that, you just

You have to build the world.

For the record, this really does feel

like a k*lling-me kind of a room.

You wanna have this kind

of Big-Brother-is-watching vibe

with the TVA, that the

Time-Keepers are always watching.

And it has this beautiful, big

statues of the Time-Keepers,

'cause they are gods, essentially.

But I love the idea of marrying that

with the Mad Men aesthetic,

because, you know, we think that

they're good guys, and it's stylish.

Home sweet home.

I thought there was no magic here.

There isn't.

We talked a lot about

fun sci-fi bureaucracies,

things like Defending Your

Life, or Beetlejuice,

or Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

They've all been great touchstones

for this massive organization

that feels kind of stuck in the

past, in that it's very analog

There's a lot of paper,

a lot of older machines.

But also do this amazing, huge job of

controlling all of time, basically.

Is this the greatest

power in the universe?

Autumn, our director of photography,

is doing an amazing job.

Painting with light and making

things feel very cinematic,

very moody, and very cool.

Mischievous scamp.

The world that the production

designers created

and kind of Kate's come up

with is very unique for Loki,

and it has a lot of texture.

And I like to kind of

bring that to the space

with lighting and lens choice.

And, you know, I want it to not

be too sharp and too pristine,

so it feels like it could

have been sh*t on 35.

And that's important to me,

and I think everyone was

kind of on board with that.

Swinging for the fences!

The TVA is radically different

than what we've seen so far in the MCU.

It's heavily kind of influenced by

mid-century Modernism and Brutalism,

with a strong dose of

Kafka-esque humor mixed into it

and bureaucratic kind of chaos.

Wish I could say I was surprised.

Yeah, I wish you hadn't interrupted us.

- Me? It's my fault?

- Look, he can't have gotten very far.

Split up!

Some of the architecture

and the design are circular.

I suppose it's the idea

of how we think of time.

Time does exist in circles.

Clocks and watches are circular.

We talk of the years and the seasons.

We speak of seasonal cycles, and

we think of time as a kind of

it's something that rolls along.

Take a ticket.

In some ways, that

is one of our simplest sets.

And yet it's a lot of people's favorite,

and it's sort of the funniest.

The idea is that it's

like a very oppressive,

compressed but trash compactor box.

Standing in this room now,

the ceiling is incredibly low,

and there are all these lights.

It feels quite claustrophobic.

And you just wanna get out.

The ceilings are 7'6'.

Even in a pretty humble apartment,

you typically have 8-foot ceilings,

so there's six inches less headroom.

So it feels like it's kind

of crushing down on you.

And then, obviously, as you

know, the ceiling is covered

in this sea of illuminated

circles of white, reflected light.

And inside of each circle,

there is a bulb that has a chrome tip

at the bottom and shines light up.

And so, if you look at it,

it looks like a sea of

eyeballs, essentially.

And, you know, there's

all the stanchions

and the kind of nylon ropes

that are corralling them like cattle,

immediately stripping them

of any kind of free will.

Thanks for visiting the TVA.

Don't hesitate to let us

know how we're doin'.

We interestingly have

a lot of hierarchy

across the whole story.

Like the TVA, in its

design, for example,

you have Minutemen,

Analysts, then Judges.

But that's reflected in

the design of the TVA.

We have these kind of Shining

Overlook-style corridors

that are endless and go on forever.

But we have the security level,

and the management office level,

and then the level where Renslayer is.

And I think that that

was really key as well,

was making it clear that the TVA,

even in the design and the architecture,

had this kind of feeling of hierarchy.

We really worked hard to develop

class systems in this show.

So we just created all

this different ranking.

So basically, the Hunters

have solid black uniforms.

All the Minutemen, all the

sort of enlisted, have,

what I call the harlequin pattern,

where everybody's, from side

to side, it's a contrasting panel,

and it switches around on each person.

So sometimes one panel is

lighter on the right side.

On the other person, it's

light on the left side.

On an another, it's light on the front.

So that it played with the

concept of time and space.

If you see a Loki, prune it.

The bad Loki, preferably.

It is kind of meant to

feel that this organization

sort of strips you

of your individuality.

And the only things that I

did do were scarring marks.

Like B-15 has the amount of kills

she's scratched in

numbers on her helmet.

She's a badass. She's

proficient physically.

And, um, she's strong.

She's dedicated and loyal.

Your Loki jumped me.

I told you he wasn't to be trusted.

When we were casting, Wunmi

came in, and it was just like,

"This is it. This is the character".

We talked a lot about

religion and faith.

And when people have crisis of faith or

like an epiphany or an awakening

and everything changes.

I looked happy.

What now?

She brings this warmth to the character,

but then she is our most badass.

Honestly, she's like

an action hero, right?

It was such an exciting

moment to be, like,

bring this really awesome

woman to the MCU.

I really was excited about

doing the stunts and

doing all of that stuff

'cause I've never really

done that stuff before.

A huge part of it was

just being comfortable

with a w*apon like the Time Stick,

where you turn it on,

and you snap it open

and twist it, and the light goes on.

It's orange when you

want to prune something.

You almost hit me!

And then we have the TemPad, which,

it looks like a mobile phone,

a gold mobile phone.

And you can call up a Time Door.

So that's what we'd use

to get to the new branch

and back to the TVA.

The technology that they're using

needs to feel like it's not,

it's not futuristic,

but it's not archaic.

It needs to be this kind

of ethereal place in time.

Because the way that it

was written and described

in the script from the writers was

that it was a glassy time door,

it instantly kind of started

to all click into place.

Sir

And one of the things

that really inspired us

for the Time Doors was

David Lynch's Dune,

when they're practice fighting,

and they have these kind

of shields over them.

And we did a camera test sh**t,

and we sh*t an element.

And instantly I jumped into literally

lookdeving this element out.

And we lookdeved out probably

a good 150 different designs

before we landed on something

that everyone really liked.

Fancy technology.

Threatening interrogation tactics.

Seems you and I are

in a loop of our own.

Yeah, the Time Theater's where

we really broke the back of this,

the early part of our sh**t.

And there's such a huge

and hugely important scene

that takes place in it.

Do you enjoy hurting people?

It's a simple question.

Do you enjoy k*lling?

I'll k*ll you.

What, like you k*lled your mother?

He and Mobius in the Time Theater,

it's two people talking

for 30 pages about identity

and philosophy, and

life, and it's thrilling.

I can't believe you were D.B. Cooper.

I was young, and I lost a bet to Thor.

Obviously, when you're working

on a Marvel production,

there's a lot of secrecy, right?

So not everyone has a script.

And I remember filming

on the Time Theater,

Owen and Tom are looking at a

stage, but there's nothing on it.

So, the stage is paused

on the Avengers on stage.

And then Loki gets up. He

sets down the Time Disk.

Me and the editors have

kind of cut together, like,

"Okay, we think this is a good

moment to play, or this moment".

Let's go from the top of that clip,

just so we get the timing on it.

All right. Let's reset. Let's sh**t it.

There were points

where the crew were like,

"Okay. This is two guys in a room,

and they're looking at a wall.

And Kate and Tom seem to have

a groove for what's going on".

'Cause I'd say, "Now it's Dark

World. Or now it's Avengers".

So, I've gone back to the

same clip of Mum dying.

This is where the reaction

goes on my own now.

What was really

beautiful about it was that,

filming that, some of the

crew were probably, like,

"Okay, this is very strange".

But they still threw their

heart and souls into it.

And I think it was a real

unifying moment for everyone.

And also, beyond that,

just seeing Owen and

Tom's chemistry on screen.

It was incredible.

And, like, it kind of

began this chess match

that both those characters really

play across the whole show.

A fugitive Variant's been

k*lling our Minutemen.

And you need the God of Mischief

to help you stop him?

That's right.

Why me?

The Variant we're hunting is

you.

I beg your pardon?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

And Loki is, by far,

his own worst enemy.

In the 11 years of playing

him, over six films,

spanning 13 hours and 50 minutes,

he has fought his

brother and his father,

Frost Giants and Elves,

Avengers and Titans.

But I can say with complete certainty

that Loki's biggest battle has

always been within himself

until now.

If this show was about Loki

learning to love himself,

a key way to help him arc and

learn to overcome those things

is to have somebody that's gonna come in

and challenge those

views in the first place.

This isn't about you.

Right.

Sophia plays a character in the comics

that was known as Sylvie Lushton.

She was an apprentice of Loki's

and sort of someone that he

groomed to be a great sorcerer.

Our version in the show is basically

another version of Loki himself.

What are you doing?

What are you doing?

- You trying to enchant me?

- No.

- It won't work.

- Why? Because you're a magician?

No, because my mind is too strong.

What really intrigued me

about the story was that

this was a female variant of

Loki who was a lot more in line

with The Enchantress character

that we know from the comics,

but also, in a sense, a complete

re-imagining of The Enchantress.

I thought there was something

interesting in that.

Like, taking these two

kind of identities of Loki

but doing something different.

- Keep it together.

- It's gonna be fine.

She's another version of him in

the unlimited universes

um, that are around. And there

are many versions of Loki.

So her nexus event

pulled her away from

her Loki life in Asgard,

and so she's been living a

parallel life the whole time.

And it hasn't been great for Sylvie.

We still needed cues

to her being a Loki.

But she needed to feel armored in a more

lost-and-found sort of way as well.

Sort of as if she was picking up pieces

along the way in her hideout.

It's as if Sylvie needed to feel

as though she was trying to recede

into these worlds a little bit,

but also be badass, tough, and armored.

They've borrowed things from Loki.

Sort of the gold shape around the neck,

and the leather, and the cape.

The green circles on

On the arms are The

green is for Loki, obviously.

And there's little bits of

Enchantress there as well.

We really wanted it

to be super practical.

Something that you can fight in

and that Sylvie could be on the run in,

rather than high heels and a leotard.

Such a gift of a character.

I get to just be this absolute

badass who's really angry,

and fight all of these guys.

Something that was really fun

in looking at Sylvie

and her fighting style

and looking at these little

differences between her,

you know, being a

female version of Loki,

what makes her different?

And it's the nature and nurture.

Bam. Push down.

Loki grew up in a palace,

and he's very balletic,

the way he fights.

It's very graceful and very beautiful.

Whereas Sylvie, she's

had to be on the run

and live and grow up in an apocalypse.

So, I always think of her a bit like

a feral cat, the way she fights.

You almost expect her to bite someone.

You see her at some

point take off her horns

and put them in someone's face.

Whereas Loki, it's very,

like, big arm movements.

Loki has this matador style of fighting,

where everything is about

a kind of elegance

and a kind of showmanship.

And fight!

We're actually trying to

build on everything I've done,

but make it even more

graceful, I suppose. If I can.

It's another mechanism

for story. It's very cool.

Hey! There it is.

Once you take away all

the action and spectacle,

our story is about identity

and someone finding

their place in the world.

- You're not a serious man.

- You're right. I'm a god.

You're a clown.

In Episode Three, in Shuroo,

this is a really big moment for

Loki and Sylvie in their journey.

They're actually working as a team.

We have to get on that ark

and make sure it takes off.

How?

We go around.

Loki and Sylvie have

to run through this town,

and the stakes are very high.

And the scene has to have

an enormous amount of

momentum and propulsive energy.

And Kasra built a town.

He just built the town on the backlot.

Shuroo was a set and a set piece

that from the early days, we

planted the flag and said,

"This is what it's going to be.

And we want it to be big.

We want it to be practical.

They need to be able to

run through this city.

We have to build the city".

Shuroo, where we are now,

has some of the archetypical

visual elements of a frontier town,

but has some elements that

are completely different,

from what we've seen on Earth

and completely different

from any other alien worlds

that have been established

so far in the MCU.

The scenes are all at night, and

you gotta check it out at night.

There's a lot of black light paint,

so the finishes, as you see them now,

are quite different than where

they actually end up being.

There's a quality where the architecture

itself becomes light sources

because there's these

elaborate, painted patterns

that are interactive with light on them.

And so, it's almost, like,

floating, glowing patterns.

Do we trust each other?

We do and you can.

Good.

So, we walk up, we walk

through this tunnel

and into the city of Shuroo. Follow me.

Ta-da!

Which is, I have to say,

the most amazing One of the most

amazing sets I have ever been on.

I mean, it's been This has

all been built on the backlot,

here in Atlanta at the studios.

Uh, it's all been lit and painted

so that it glows in the dark.

Uh, it didn't exist before.

And even on a Marvel project,

I've never been on a set

this size, I don't think.

The scene here is being sh*t as a oner.

And so what's required to do that

is essentially a set that is

360 degrees photographable.

So, every surface has to be designed,

and built, and set decked.

Big part of it was not building

any more set than we need.

It's really doing a lot of

planning in the early phases.

Kate worked with previz

and storyboards quite a lot

to figure out exactly

how much we needed.

So that was a huge part to making sure

the resources were utilized well.

Kate and I have probably been

working on this for about a year

when we first met,

and started our prep in

Los Angeles at Disney.

There are cuts in our sequence,

but we wanted the audience

to feel like it's one sh*t.

So, we have stitches that transition

us from one sh*t to the other.

But the way that we filmed

them, we hide them

so that they feel seamless,

so you feel like it's one

sh*t from start to finish.

I think it will be eight or nine

sort of stitches in the oner.

But essentially, we come

through this thing.

And behind me, you see

In the show, you see this

enormous crowd of people.

And at the very, very end of

this street, up in the night sky,

is the docking point for this ark,

this ship that is potentially leaving.

And these meteors are

crashing into the buildings,

and the buildings are falling

down, and it's mayhem.

People are running and screaming,

and trying to get on the ark.

And there are guards who

are trying to stop them.

So, to have the two of us,

to have Loki and Sylvie,

myself and Sophia, have

to get through this,

just creates an extraordinary,

dynamic momentum.

And it's so exciting that at the moment

that Loki and Sylvie actually connect,

that it finishes at the end of this

extraordinary piece of action.

Do you think that what

makes a Loki a Loki

is the fact that we're destined to lose?

No.

We may lose.

Sometimes painfully.

But we don't die.

One of the writers in our

writers' room, Elissa Karasik,

she came in with a real strong POV

that it should run at

that love-story thing.

And it was something

the whole writers' room

got behind from day one.

Not bad.

You know, it's so chaotic to fall

in love with a version of yourself,

but at the same time, it's such

a bad idea and so mischievous,

it's, like, of course Loki would

fall in love with himself.

But he's also a character that,

I think, needs to, you know,

get past his demons

and find the good within himself

to be able to go on

that redemptive journey.

So at the heart of it,

it is this love story,

and you never fall in

love at the right time.

The nice thing about it is that

Crater Lake is where these two

characters really come together,

and they realize there's

something deeper going on here.

You know, in life,

we all go through struggles,

but we can't do it alone.

And if we have people we can trust,

it lightens the load,

and it gladdens the heart.

And I think the relationship

between Loki

and Sylvie is about that connection.

That they learn, each of them,

to care about the other.

What a incredible seismic narcissist.

You fell for yourself.

Her name was Sylvie.

Ah, Sylvie.

Lovely. How do you spell that?

Is that with an I-E or just an I?

Is she alive?

For now.

People in love often

speak of time stopping

when they first catch that

jolting glance of their paramours,

as if our brain, perhaps even

the universe, is telling us,

"Your life is forever changed".

"Sear this moment into your memory".

So much is forgotten

and discarded every day.

A password, an acquaintance's name.

Our inability to control

what stays and what goes

is a constant reminder of the

fallibility of the human mind.

Objects in the rear view are often

much smaller than they appear,

and they get smaller

and smaller each day.

But as we march forever onward,

we will inevitably arrive at

one of those defining moments

where clarity arrives, followed

quickly by more uncertainty.

What we do in this moment

can often define our lives

in ways we never dreamed of.

What is it?

Sylvie finally gets to the Time-Keepers.

And then she finds herself

in a fight with Renslayer.

That was a really fun scene.

It's like, "Oh, wow!

This woman can fight. Ah!"

"Sugar. Maybe I've met my match here".

This time I finish the job.

It's really the first time that we

get to see them both together.

They have such different

styles, I think,

because Renslayer came up

from the m*llitary

background as a Hunter,

and Sylvie really did have this

street-wise fighting style.

The stunt team and the fight team

are really careful as well

about making sure the fights

make sense with the story.

And we make sure that the

The scenes work as scenes

without any fighting

and then, sort of add the fighting in.

I think it does make sense to go back.

- Yeah.

- Even though it's less aggressive,

- but she's coming forward.

- Yeah.

- Also

- Keep the counter step.

- It's a good counter step.

- Yeah.

In a musical, you sing

when you don't have the words

to express how you feel anymore.

When you get to that

point, you start singing.

With this, it's like, when

you don't have the words

to express how you feel anymore,

we fight.

For Renslayer, it's kind of

a fascinating arc to go from

this very, very sort of straight

perception of the world that she has

to it sort of all crumbling

before her eyes.

Did Judge Renslayer really

feel betrayed by her beloved TVA?

Why don't you come back out

and we can talk about it?

When I pitched The Void,

my thought was it's meant to be

this barren wasteland where the TVA

sends everyone, and it's rubbish.

It was so weird 'cause

I was on set, obviously,

and we're in this countryside.

And it's gray, and it's miserable.

And I was like, "Oh, my God.

I've pitched England".

But it really did remind me of it.

It was quite strange. Quite a lot

of our cast and crew are British.

We were like, "Yeah, we

feel like we're home".

What I really wanted to

feel in The Void was,

it's this place where it's

like an overgrown garden.

We have all these weird structures.

Like, we have a boat on land,

and you see all these kind of strange

things that have been deleted

that shouldn't exist in time.

We had a lot of fun with Easter eggs

and sprinkling in stuff

that shouldn't be there.

There's meant to be this kind of sadness

and this kind of lack

of life about the place.

But there are some things in The Void

which have learned to stay alive.

And they've managed to

make a life in The Void,

if that's even possible.

And I can introduce you to

them if you like.

So when I got a call to do it,

I said, "Well, what is it?

"Is it to play an older version of Tom?"

That's what I assumed it was.

They put it much more delicately.

They said, "No, you're

playing Classic Loki".

So I said, "So it's in the green

Lycra bodysuit, with muscles".

They said, "No, you're not

gonna have the muscles".

So I'm very distraught that,

having had been born

without any, as you can see,

that I thought I would finally

I would finally get to wear

a green Lycra suit

with built-in muscles.

But that hasn't happened.

But I've got everything else.

The horns, and the cape, and

the, you know, the boots.

When I knew there was

gonna be this character,

- there are, obviously, all these Lokis

- Old.

No, no. It wasn't

just old. We literally,

there's only one person we

thought of. And it was Richard.

If we If you'd said, "No",

I don't know what we

would have done, really.

- 'Cause it'd be

- You would've gone to

No. No, no. It was

In fact, even in the concept

art when we were drawing it,

it was drawn with Richard's face.

It was like a wish fulfilment.

- Here we are, livin' the dream.

- Good.

I'm livin' the dream. You may not be.

- I am in the dream.

- You're saying that

- 'cause the cameras are rolling.

- I'm living in the dream.

Well, thank God that

Loki has a sense of humor.

And thank God that the MCU

has a sense of humor

because it was just feeling

like you could go really

to all corners for inspiration.

In so many ways I kinda thought,

there's no acting required

because the costume does it.

I mean, it's so massive, and I'm 6'6".

But then the boots that I have

have, like, two inches

on it, so I feel

I'm probably 6'8" in it already.

And the shoulders are out here.

I betrayed you, and now, I'm king.

My army, my throne.

Something from the comics

that I love about Loki is, like,

he has been all these different

personalities, you know.

In the early comics,

he was very villainous,

but then you have the very different

Kid Loki in the later comics.

He's been like a unicorn.

He's been President.

I feel like I'm having

an identity crisis.

It was fun. It was weird.

We were able to create all of

these bandit versions of Lokis.

They all got different nicknames.

They were, like, Glamshades Wolfie,

which was kinda

based originally of, like,

sort of a tribal leader. Like a shaman.

And we had Poky Loki.

It was just another play on

In-Prison Loki. Bicycle Loki.

These are bicycle handlebars,

which I think is very creative,

and you could probably try to make,

to recreate at home, if you so choose.

It was endless.

Why the hell is there

an alligator in here?

Alligator Loki is wholly

invented by Michael Waldron

in the first pitch he

ever came to us with.

I'll tell you, for every

really dumb idea

like that that made it in,

there's a hundred even stupider ones

that these guys had

to pull me back from.

That's alligator for growling and

saying "liar" at the same time.

I remember sending a note to

the VFX team from our team,

which was basically like,

"We want to have an alligator

that's very handsome

with beautiful eyes".

And I was like, "What is this job?"

Alligator Loki was a very unique

character because of the fact that

sometimes the physics

of a real alligator

are not taken into consideration.

Things like picking him up for instance.

Well, picking up an alligator

is a very, very strange thing

because alligators' spines

only kind of bend a certain way.

So we were working with ILM on this.

They found a piece of reference

that was one of the best

references I've ever seen.

It's this alligator called Wally,

and he is a support alligator.

He's absolutely amazing.

So we used this reference

to make our alligator, based off

of this particular Wally alligator.

It can't just be an alligator.

It can't be something that's

like, "That's just an alligator".

We really wanted it to give

that kind of cheeky Loki grin

or that mischievous look to him.

So, we based our alligator off of

as much reality as we possibly could.

Inside The Void is a living

storm that consumes matter.

You can think of the biggest

storm you've ever seen.

Thunder, lightning, dark clouds.

And the storm is called Alioth.

I love monster movies.

And trying to tackle a monster

where we kind of give little

tastes and teases of this creature,

but we don't kind of show him off

completely until the big showdown.

'Cause I love Jaws,

and I think something really

effective about that film is that

you get peeks at the shark,

but you don't completely see it

until the big finale on the boat.

And I think, for us, we were really

inspired with Alioth by nature,

and nature can be terrifying.

While they were pitching the story,

I literally was like, "Hey, guys,

could you give me one second?"

And I jumped on Google.

And I'd seen a documentary

on volcanic eruptions,

and pyroclastic flows, and

just absolutely beautiful, uh,

thermal lightning inside

these pyroclastic flows.

So, I got the job,

and then the first thing that I said

as soon as I had boots

on the ground was,

"We need to start

lookdeving this character".

We put together this absolutely

fantastic kind of package

that had a very, very

short animation of Alioth

in what I envisioned him to be.

Come and get me! Come on!

The main thing with Alioth is that

even Kid Loki describes, as he says,

"He's a shark, and we're

in his t*nk, basically".

I think that was the key thing with

Alioth, is that he's a predator,

and he's just there to eat.

And it's great 'cause the TVA are just

throwing him loads of T-bone steaks.

"It was the best of times,

it was the worst of times".

It also happens to be the end of time.

In the final episode of Loki,

after jumping from New

York to the Gobi Desert

to the TVA to a Renaissance fair

to Pompeii to Roxxcart to

You get the idea.

- Long, strange trip and all that jazz.

- Ow!

After all the space-time shenanigans,

our heroes arrive at their destination.

The end of the road trip

where you get out of the car,

stretch your legs, and continue on,

barely pausing to reflect

on the journey behind you.

It's a refreshing change to go

into the final act of a story,

where Loki is neither leading

an alien horde into battle

nor knifing a loved one in the back.

Usually in Marvel, the

third act of the story

is obviously, like, a massive battle

and a huge, amazing spectacle.

And I feel like our Episode

Five of Alioth is sort of

almost like a traditional

third act of an MCU story.

Whereas I loved in Episode Six

that it was actually

more within our show like,

"No, we're gonna sit down, and

we're gonna have a conversation

about all these questions

we've put forward to you guys

over the last six hours".

After a very long journey, Sylvie

and Loki are able to discover

that the TVA had an architect.

At the end of time, beyond The

Void, beyond Alioth, is a doorway,

and through the doorway is a Citadel.

The Citadel is essentially

uninhabited and abandoned.

But there is one solitary

light on in the window,

and that light is illuminated

by He Who Remains.

I was really inspired by the idea

of this kind of manor house

like Sunset Boulevard or Grey Gardens.

These basically big, ornate houses,

but there's a loneliness to them.

Then something that

Kasra came up with that

Which I thought was so inspired,

was that the Citadel's actually carved

from the rock of this asteroid,

which I think gives it such

a beautiful, unique look

with the gold veins running

through this black kind of rock.

I really wanted the Citadel

to feel like it had big scale,

because it only added to He Who

Remains' loneliness and isolation,

and, like, what lengths

he's gone for basically

to protect himself from himself.

The Wizard of Oz was a big touchstone.

It's somebody who is

looming large over the story

and is the driving force of the mystery

of finding the man behind the curtain.

And hopefully being surprised by

what you find when you finally

get a peek behind the curtain.

This is wild.

Once you see behind the curtain,

everything is changed.

And so, I think, for that role,

it's so exciting for an actor then,

like Jonathan to come in,

and live this character

and get to do it.

Because, while they're only here

for maybe 30 minutes of this series,

it feels like they are just in the

DNA of the entire run of the show.

I'd try to explain what I'm capable of,

but we don't have the million years

it would take for you to understand.

Some cultural pop references were,

of course, The Wizard of Oz,

Sunset Boulevard, Citizen Kane,

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

The archetype of the wizard

and what happens to him

when he gets bored, you know?

And he becomes a trickster.

Guys, if I was gonna

do an exploding chair,

why wouldn't I just do

an exploding floor?

And I think when we meet He Who Remains,

he's on the borderline

of those two things.

You don't really know where he's at.

And I think the ambiguity of that

is one of the wicked things about it.

You think I'm just here with you.

Whoo!

I am everywhere.

He Who Remains has lived forever.

One of the great things

I got to experience

with our costume designer is that

every piece, we decided,

was from a different place.

The cape I had on was

from the Victorian era,

the shoes are from Genghis Khan,

the pants from Mongolia, et cetera.

You just mix and match it together,

and it informs the character.

Without the me, without the TVA

everything burns.

Then what are you so afraid of?

Me.

Jonathan Majors came into this

production in our final week,

and has created something,

I think, that it will be talked

about for a long time.

- Yeah, we're dancin'.

- Very nice.

- We're dancin', just dancin'.

- Yeah.

It's absolutely thrilling.

And you could feel the energy on set,

because I think the crew knew.

Like, we're watching the flowering

of the next phase of

the Marvel Universe.

The Variant of He Who Remains,

the one he's been talking about,

the one that he's so afraid of

I'll see you soon.

is Kang.

Kang is bent on destruction.

And I'm so curious to see what

Jonathan does in the future.

I think with He Who Remains,

the objective for me

was to give me the

largest canvas possible.

And then from that, as Kang begins

to rear his head and do his deeds,

in so many ways, he has no

choice but to be in opposition

or to be different from He Who Remains.

That was the thing that grabbed

me and pulled me into the role.

The fact that Kang lives

in so many iterations.

As He Who Remains says,

"Reincarnation, baby".

You know you can't get to the end

until you've been

changed by the journey.

This stuff, it needs to happen.

The potential of a multiverse

is literally infinite.

We can already look at our

singular universe with awe.

One decision begets another and another.

We like to say

that the possibilities are endless.

But in a singular timeline,

that is simply not the case.

Each falling grain of

sand in an hourglass

changes how every other grain will fall.

We're both masters of our own

destiny and victims of circumstance.

There's simply no knowing

how things will turn out,

until they happen.

As William Shakespeare wrote

in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,

"It ain't over till it's over".

Or maybe that was Lenny Kravitz.

Anyway, the future of

Loki is still unwritten,

as it is with us all.

I will be 40 years old when

Loki goes out on Disney Plus.

And I was 29 years old

when I was cast as Loki,

so it's been ten,

going on for 11, years.

It has been one of the great,

if not the greatest, surprise

of my whole life, probably.

I mean, it just It's hard to sum up.

I was a young actor,

and I felt so lucky even to have

the chance to audition for Thor.

Today was the first day that

I wore this particular costume.

Under this

My best friend.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Hello.

In all my fittings way back,

you know, four, five months ago,

I kept thinking, "When am

I gonna get the horns on?"

'Cause it's almost like the

last piece of the jigsaw

in kind of becoming the character.

And to wear this thing is,

it feels enormously powerful.

What happened to you on

Earth that turned you so soft?

To be cast as Loki

and to have that extraordinary

opportunity to make that film,

even as a standalone experience,

was more than I could

ever have dreamed of.

As Loki, I had to play the villain

and then I had to play the anti-hero.

And this time around is the first chance

I've had to see if we can really

break the mold and change him.

Why aren't we seeing this the same way?

Because you can't trust

and I can't be trusted.

I really want the fans

to feel that energy

and feel excited and inspired

about where we go next.

You know, we're here at

the end of this sh**t now.

I hope we've made something that

people feel is very special.

I'd love to do one more

after this where I don't cry.

I feel very grateful that

I'm part of a project

that I think has probably changed

the direction of the MCU.

What people don't know is that

Is that Owen has basically broken

open the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

That's what they call it, the MCU.

What's that mean?

- The Marvel Cinematic Universe.

- Yeah.

So, the whole interweaving

web of all the movies.

They're all stitched together.

They all reference each other.

And Mobius has cracked it all open.

It's true.