02x04 - The Making of Loki: Season 2

[bunniefuu]

Here we are. It's go time.

Day one. Day one of 90.

Monday, June the 13th, 2022.

London, U.K.

Time doesn't exist in the TVA

and it doesn't exist in Loki's world.

And here we are. [CHUCKLES]

Although, it exists in my head.

I woke up this morning full of excitement

and full of gratitude, actually.

I just felt so lucky that I get to do this

and I'm still doing it, and

Yeah, I'm just, I'm excited to be back.

Back in the game, back in the TVA,

back with this amazing team.

KEVIN R. WRIGHT: We were all excited

to explore and unleash

the Multiverse in Season 1

Something terrible is happening.

When you're dealing with time travel,

with the Multiverse,

the plot can get very heavy.

And the only way any of that works

is usually to make it

as simple as possible

and to lean into your characters.

Mobius, it's me.

I don't know you.

ERIC MARTIN: On the outset,

we have to have all those conversations

about where this is gonna fit

into the MCU,

where this will fit

within all the other stories,

and how it will impact

all the other characters.

But as much as we could,

after we had those conversations,

we tried to step back

and just look at this as,

"Okay, now let's tell our story."

You were a villain and now you're not.

I thought we were good guys.

Now I'm not so sure.

At the very least, you've made us

ask some appropriate questions.

Our approach was

really, really doubling down

on who Loki cares about,

who we care about.

And then even trying

to personalize the stakes of,

"What is a timeline?

What is on a timeline?

"What does that mean

to people?"

Our job just really became helping steer

these characters into the vulnerability

that brought their humanity

to the surface.

I know it's hard to turn your back

on everything you have believed in.

But the TVA has to change

and it has to change now.

It's almost like a snow globe.

You know,

the TVA was a kind of snow globe

and the glass has been cracked

and the whole thing has been shaken up,

and so, the TVA

is in a process quite similar

to the process Loki went through

in Season 1,

which is a process of soul searching

and institutional analysis.

That's who built this place!

That's who stole your lives!

I think one of the things

we talked about is,

he always struggled with family

in the MCU,

but he's found a new family in the TVA.

Let me ask you, the Time Door

somehow sent you into the past

- and that's what started all this?

- Well, it was

Which way are we going?

The chemistry between the actors

is something we wanted to continue

to explore in Season 2.

They just really

got along, right,

they kind of clicked from the moment

that they were on set together

and had so much fun.

And we wanted to take that further.

- We did it!

- We did it!

We won!

It's a really special group of people.

Series 1 was full of challenges,

you know.

There was a global pandemic and I think

that actually brought us together.

And I think it shows onscreen.

- Wow, wow, wow.

- Very nice, very nice, very nice.

WUNMI MOSAKU: It was great coming back.

It had been a long time

since we'd seen each other.

It's tricky thinking about, like,

who B-15 is in Season 1

and who she evolves into

in Season 2.

I had to rewatch Season 1.

And you go, "I remember what happened

but who was she again?

"And how does she sound?

How does she move?"

And then, you put on the costume

and you go, "Yeah, I remember this."

Hey, O.B., this is Casey.

I thought he could help.

There's a lot of performers that

I didn't get to play with in Season 1.

And this season, I got to

play with everybody else,

and I mean everybody.

And there is a chemistry there

that is amazing.

And I think by introducing

a bunch of new characters,

you got to see more

of the world of the TVA.

You're Ouroboros?

- Yes.

- You wrote the TVA Handbook.

- You've read it?

- Read it? I practically memorized it.

- Would you sign it for me?

- Happy to.

KE HUY QUAN: It's really exciting

because I've been a fan

of the Marvel Universe

for a long, long time.

Oh, hey, welcome to R&A.

And I always fantasized

about joining the MCU family.

But I didn't think

it would ever come true

because it wasn't until recently

that I got back into acting.

And one day, my agent told me that,

"Kevin Feige is going

to give you a call."

And he told me between a certain time,

between 5:00 and 7:00.

And I was so nervous.

At the same time,

I was also very, very excited.

And I remember,

I was in a meeting at that time,

and I told the person

I was having a meeting with,

and I said, "I'm so sorry,

"but at 4:50,

I'm gonna have to leave."

And I didn't tell them why.

So I set my alarm clock at 4:50.

And when it rang, I got out of there,

expecting this important call

from Mr. Kevin Feige.

And I was just driving home,

and all of a sudden, my phone rang.

And I picked it up,

and on the other end,

you know, I heard this voice,

"Hello. Hi. I'm Kevin Feige.

Hello, Ke."

And he was telling me

about how much he enjoyed

Everything Everywhere All At Once.

And I was driving, and

he was just praising my performance

and praising the movie.

And I started getting teary-eyed.

And I was driving and I couldn't see.

And I had to pull off

to the side of the road.

And And we're talking and then,

then he said, you know,

"Would you like to join the MCU family?"

I was I was ecstatic.

I was so happy.

And to get that call from him

meant the world to me.

It's great being part of a team.

And sure enough,

couple of months later,

I was on a flight to London.

There you go.

That's everything you need to know.

WRIGHT: O.B. was a character

who was a really fun introduction

to the Repairs and Advancements world,

and another interesting kind of leaf

to kind of uncover at the TVA.

Everything you need to know about this,

I wrote about it in here.

WRIGHT: Similarly, we wanted to tell

more stories with our Minutemen.

So we will meet General Dox

who is played by Kate Dickie,

or Hunter X-5, who also becomes

Brad Wolfe, by Rafael Casal.

Oh, good. Welcome back.

Why don't you take off this Time Collar

and treat me like somebody

who outranks you?

Oh, I don't work here.

Oh, I'm glad that you know that.

You should stop talking now.

RAFAEL CASAL:

X-5 Brad Wolfe is an antagonist for Season 2.

It's a weird phrase on a show

that's about an antagonist.

You know, we're all in a show

that is about exposing the duality

and humanity of the antagonist.

And so, in a lot of ways,

the way we talked about

X-5 and Brad Wolfe

was as Loki's sort of

mirror for Season 2

of another person who feels wronged

and is trying to find the justice

of themselves,

and is also trying to figure out

what the goodness in them means.

You could do with a little perspective

on yourself, so let me help you here.

It's you. You're the problem.

Every single time we've come across

one of you, it's you.

A lot of my job

was get under Loki's skin.

And so, I think Tom and I

got to have so much fun with that.

[BOTH LAUGHING, SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]

And what's great is that

the character X-5 of Brad Wolfe

has worked at the TVA so long

that he's read his file so many times.

He knows him so well.

Earlier, I said some

really hurtful things,

even brought up your mom.

I'm very, very sorry about that.

What does this one do?

CASAL: Tom is the person

who's setting the tone for everything.

And he and I would talk a lot

about setting the floor

and setting the ceiling for the show.

And what you do is you look at Tom to know

how big to go and how small to go.

- And now we know what the numbers are.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

CASAL: And he's a veteran

in this world, he knows,

you know, what a scene needs.

So it's amazing to sort of watch him

set those markers in a scene,

like, "All right, let's

"Let's play this one this way

or play this one really big."

You wanna be, ideally, chasing the bike

and I'm chasing

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A lot of us haven't ever acted

in something this big before.

We go, "All right, yeah, this is a world

where people teleport

"and blow out walls, and like,

fly through space and time."

I need a little help adjusting,

you know, you gotta help me get there.

MOORHEAD: Tom is way beyond

just the lead performer.

He is in the writers room,

he is in the visual effects meetings,

he is right there with us.

He is very much the author

of all things Loki.

A group of people

who have a collective aura,

unique to that moment in time.

Does that make sense?

Sort of like you're drawing the

RICHARD GRAVES: Tom is fabulous.

He will always want

to give that extra take.

The extra The extra 20 percent.

And he comes in wanting to give,

wanting to perform.

PAUL ZUCKER: There's something

that he's working towards.

And my job as an editor

is to listen to his performance.

For Tom, there are shades to it.

He may adjust his pace,

he may adjust his intensity.

But by and large,

he's very, very focused.

It's not about where or when.

It's about who. Who I care about.

I can rewrite the story.

- And, scene.

- [ALL LAUGH]

QUAN: What's really interesting,

every morning,

the way we began the day,

Tom would walk onto the stage,

but before you see him,

you would hear him,

because he always comes to set

with a little, you know,

portable speaker.

And you would hear him enter the stage,

make his way to the set,

and when he arrives,

it just wakes everybody up

and lifts everybody's spirit up.

And that's how

we start the day every day.

CORDERO: It's amazing

just having him there,

leading the way as Loki,

and then, everybody else just having,

like, a fun ensemble.

And it's a great ensemble that will save,

you know, humanity.

I mean, honestly,

that's what we do here at the TVA.

LOKI: We should be dealing

with the bigger problem here.

- He Who Remains.

- I understand and we'll get to that.

In order to do that,

I need a Loki Who Remains.

We need to address you disappearing.

WRIGHT: We knew we wanted

to embrace the idea

of time looping

throughout this season.

We talked a lot about Slaughterhouse-Five,

the Kurt Vonnegut novel,

where there's somebody who's slipping

through time, uncontrollably,

trying to figure out how to make sense

of their life and the narrative

because they're

experiencing it all out of order.

And there was something in that

that was really compelling with Loki.

He desperately is trying

to get back to our TVA

and let them know

something terrible is coming.

And yet, Loki can't even just stay

in a single place.

Something had happened

to the nature of time.

Once He Who Remains

is k*lled by Sylvie,

the timelines start to branch.

And essentially,

Loki's anchor in the dimension of time

becomes unstable.

It's real, Mobius.

I'll be in the past TVA

and suddenly I'll feel it all grow thin

and I'll be torn apart,

pulled through time,

ripped from there to here.

- How is that possible?

- I don't know.

But I don't know how long I have

until it happens again.

HIDDLESTON: His physical presence

doesn't have a secure grip

on temporal reality.

You know, even right now, I think,

I am here now.

I'm here in space, but I'm here now.

And Loki's having a problem,

which is that he's rooted in space

but he's not rooted in time.

And so, he's essentially glitching

Damn it!

between the past, present

and the future.

He's in one place, and then,

suddenly he's in the same place

but at a different time.

It's incredibly destabilizing for him

and for everybody

who's in his presence

because it looks like

he keeps disappearing.

- You just disappeared.

- I know.

And I can't keep looking at it

'cause it's horrible.

What? I thought you said

it didn't look that bad.

I was lying.

CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND: It's sort of evolved

as we've been discussing this

on a script level and also

a character level and a visual level.

And realizing that one of the things

that could be very interesting

is making it a very painful experience.

And Tom has really embraced this.

So it's kind of

a windmill and down.

And he has given us

these incredible performances

that we in visual effects will be

joining up these various elements of him

as he goes through and flickers

through these different time periods.

HIDDLESTON: Loki's body is being

molecularly ripped apart.

Ripped Every

Every atom, every cell in his body

is being ripped

and pulled apart, disassembled,

and then reassembled very quickly

and kind of re-ripping in another time.

TOWNSEND: There's a line

about looking like

he's being born and dying

all at the same time.

And that idea of

how do you visualize that,

how do you actually make it feel

gruesome and almost like a horror movie.

But not in a bloody guts and gore way,

but something that's a little bit more

stylish and elegant.

This is where I'm embarrassed

to say that in my

limited carpet bag of physical abilities,

I can't, in fact, time slip.

So we've had to find a way.

Obviously, I knew at some point,

I was going to be

brilliantly assisted

by our visual effects department.

And I wanted to give them

enough to work with,

so we tried to film different variations

of being spun into or spun out of,

or ripped away from,

or pulled into, reality.

TOWNSEND: And then can you do one

where you're lunging right at the camera?

So you come back at camera,

twist around and come

right back at the camera.

He's giving us all these things

and he's throwing himself

into the, sort of, performances

absolutely brilliantly.

You couldn't have asked

for a better performer

and a better partner

in this sort of endeavor.

Maybe I'll do one this way too?

And then spin around, yeah.

In the edit, we basically brought

all those elements together.

We picked out, you know, the

The craziest swinging of arms,

and we created an effect

in the edit for that.

And then with that,

we played with sounds.

We had stretching sounds

and bone crunching sounds

and all kinds of things

that would really enhance

the visuals for the time slip.

And then,

we're taking those performances

and then creating this sort of meld

between them all

and then stretching

between each performance.

And in 3D, on the computer,

we're simulating,

we're joining up these performances

and we're using simulation software

and modeling software

to stretch one performance to another

and make it feel like

he's being ripped through time,

and being born and dying

all at the same time.

I take my hat off already

to the visual effects team

for helping me out.

But it has been a really physical thing.

More physical than I thought

it was going to be.

London School of Contemporary Dance.

It allowed us to play a fun game

of letting Loki slip

through various moments

across all these branches

of the Sacred Timeline.

But he's always being pulled

to people that he knows,

or places that he's been before.

And then we start to realize

that maybe in some way,

Loki is the glue that's holding

all of these things together.

Every one of your friends

has a temporal aura, right?

Right.

Well, that means a group of people

would have a collective aura

unique to that moment in time.

MARTIN: With each person in the TVA,

we wanted to go further

into who they are,

what's driving them

to do everything.

And they're all existing

in this sea change moment.

Tell the TVA to stop pruning,

effective immediately.

[GRUNTS]

MARTIN: Everybody at the TVA,

they lived one path,

and now they're suddenly told that, like,

that path was foisted upon them,

that they had other lives,

that they are all Variants.

I'm not a hunter,

you're not an analyst.

None of this is real.

You know, it's really hard

to keep an eye on the whole story.

Because there's just,

there's time slipping,

there's past Loki, present Loki,

past B-15, present B-15,

B-15 Variant on the timeline,

and you know, there was,

even just the other day, we were like,

"Oh, this is the first time

we've seen Loki time-slip."

And I was like,

"No, we've seen it before."

And they're like, "No actually,

"we just sh*t out of sequence,

you haven't seen it.

"And that wasn't you,

that was B-15 of the timeline,

"that wasn't B-15 in the TVA."

I was like, "Ahh!"

MARTIN: There were many conversations had

about how is everybody gonna respond,

knowing that they had lives

on the timeline.

B-15, she had a different experience

because she was shown by Sylvie

what her life was on the timeline.

I looked happy.

What now?

MARTIN: So when she comes in,

she has kind of

a resolute feeling about that.

And she wants to get back to that,

but she also has to kind of fight

for that to exist for other people.

People have lives on the timeline, Mobius.

They have to have the chance

to live those lives.

The beauty of the writing

is that everyone has a journey.

And, like, for me personally,

I start off in my full armor

and Time Stick and bringing down gods.

I end with a crooked tie and no armor.

She becomes softer and softer

and she's moving towards

who she once was on the timeline

rather than what the TVA made her.

MOBIUS: No turning back now.

Who said anything about turning back?

OWEN WILSON: The scene today is,

Loki is returning to the timeline

to find Mobius,

who is living his original life

where he is working

Actually, right here, yeah.

It's called "Piranha."

Piranha Powersports.

And they offer, you know,

things like this.

Well, they say the personal watercraft

is kind of the thinking man's dirt bike.

Come on,

you ready for your Poseidon moment?

Jump up on this bad boy.

How do I create a persona between Don

that's different from Mobius?

Well, Don is a salesman.

And so, it kind of has a bit of that

personality in trying to make a sale.

Hey, you know the Hawaiian word "mana"?

It means "spiritual life force

that permeates the whole universe."

You ready to jump up on this bad boy

and start sucking up the mana?

And Mobius is a little bit more

of a cynical detective type.

You gotta be careful when you've been

doing this as long as I have

because you can start to phone it in

if you're not careful.

Because it all gets

a little bit predictable, stale.

But you are breathing new life

into this song.

WRIGHT: The situation is funny,

the world is funny.

The characters have

have character to them.

Like, Mobius can be eccentric

because Loki is eccentric, he just is.

But, like, they don't

see themselves that way.

They're the straight man

in this absurd world.

Wind in the hair,

little mist slapping you in the face.

And nothing but open water

in front of you.

Man, I feel

like I'm shredding glass today.

On the timeline,

O.B. is a sci-fi writer.

QUAN: His name is A.D. Doug.

PhD, extremely smart guy.

But he's a passionate writer.

And he writes these amazing

science-fiction novels

that nobody wants to read.

Hey, look! You're lucky.

You should really give this a try.

And right now,

we are in his garage, his workshop.

And it is one of the coolest sets

I've ever seen.

What's so surprising on this series

is that a lot of the sets are practical.

And it's something that I'm used to

because back in the '80s,

that's how we made movies.

And it's really a sight to behold.

Is this room safe?

Yeah, this whole area

is totally abandoned.

No one's around for miles.

CORDERO: Knowing that you were plucked

from a timeline

to work at the TVA

just gives you a lot to wonder

about who this person was before this.

Casey. Thank God you're here.

How'd you get here?

How did I get where? Where's here?

Alcatraz.

Being able to see Casey as a Variant

and doing these Alcatraz scenes

was awesome.

The fact that Casey was this prisoner,

I thought that was the coolest turn.

I remember when looking

at the script, going like,

"This is not what you really want me

to do. This is amazing."

You gotta find your own way off this rock.

Sorry, pal.

We meet Brad Wolfe in Episode 1,

and he's looking

at Mobius's jet ski magazine.

And part of that is him

just realizing, like,

"Wait a second,

there is a greater world out there

"that I haven't really experienced."

WRIGHT: He's gone back in time,

he sort of gamed the system.

He can't go back

and make Star Wars,

he can't do something giant that's going

to change the course of history.

But he could go, "Well, what if I

start making comic book movies?

"What if I start doing these things

before they got really big?"

X-5 is an actor now?

Or he's undercover.

Looks pretty real to me.

Behind us is the Zaniac premiere

in the 1970s.

There's a big crowd here ready

to see movie superstar Brad Wolfe

in his leading role as the Zaniac.

And Loki and Mobius have shown up

to try to figure out why X-5's tracker

is leading them here.

And they're astonished to find that

he's this completely different person now

and they need to get

to the bottom of it.

How do you feel about

your meteoric rise to fame?

I don't know how I feel, but I look good.

Come on, look at this.

Pretty darn good.

I think Brad's movie is probably

not going to stand the test of time.

Come on, Mobius.

You're gonna ruin my life here.

Your life here?

You know, getting to burst through doors

and, you know, run down alleyways

and jump down staircases

and go underground at times,

and do this crazy maze

getting chased by a god,

is always an adventure in itself.

You're doing your own stunts now?

Real cute.

DI MARTINO: I remember

having a conversation

with Kevin Wright, the producer,

after we sh*t that scene

where Sylvie kills He Who Remains.

And it was the last scene that we sh*t

in Atlanta, on Series 1.

And he said to me,

"Where do you think Sylvie goes next?"

And I was like,

"Where do you think she goes next?

"I think she'd be really hungry."

[CHUCKLES]

And that was my lesson in being careful

what you say to producers.

Because next thing I know,

I'm in a McDonald's uniform.

Ordering everything on the menu.

How do I do this?

What would you like?

Not squirrel, not possum, not rats.

Something that's already dead,

and nothing with a face.

Please.

It's just a metaphor, really,

for Sylvie wanting

to experience what it's like

to be in the world.

And not to have to be

on the run the whole time,

not to be hiding out

in these apocalyptic places

where she's constantly in danger,

but to experience

what it's like to be normal.

HIDDLESTON: She is on

a branch of a timeline,

essentially, for the first time,

inhabiting free will.

She's never had it.

Sylvie wasn't supposed to exist.

She's not part of the Sacred Timeline

so she's been on the run from the TVA

since she was a child.

And And this is her first chance

to experiment with freedom, with choice.

Look, Loki, as much as I'd love to see

the TVA burnt down,

I have no intention of going back there.

My life's here now.

Sylvie realizes how much

she's missed out on

and she begins to make connections

with just a few human beings.

And she starts to realize

how important that is to her.

Your friends are back where they belong.

But without them

Where do I belong?

We're all writing our own stories now.

BROUSSARD: We had a really

amazing team on Season 1

and we wanted to retain

as much of that crew as possible,

so production designer

Kasra Farahani

is production designing

Season 2 as well.

He stepped into the director's chair

for one episode.

Same for visual effects supervisor

Dan DeLeeuw,

who we made a bunch of movies with

in the visual effects department.

Multiple Academy Award nominee

for that work.

And it's been fun to watch people

step into new roles and really deliver.

Similarly, we had an amazing experience

on Moon Knight with Aaron and Justin.

And they've stepped in

to kind of be the anchor director role

on this one,

directing four of the six episodes.

All four of our directors, you know,

Aaron and Justin, Dan, and Kasra,

have been so sympathetic

to what we created in the first series.

They know that it's already

a sort of live, big beast.

So they haven't come in

and just tried to change everything.

But they've each subtly put their mark

on their episodes.

A greater portion of our body of work

is characters who grow in such a way

that they become less the villain

of their own story

and more the hero

of their own story.

This is where it all started.

MOORHEAD: There's a sci-fi aspect of Loki

that dovetails very nicely

with all of our work,

and in the same way that Moon Knight

had a lot of permission to be weird,

one of the first things

that Kevin Feige ever said to us

when he was asking

if we wanted to do Season 2 was,

"We don't want you to do it

if it's not gonna be something different."

And I think that really got us

engaged with the whole thing,

that it can be as weird

as we would want it to be.

So it's not like you're going

Like that.

It's because he's still jumping,

so it's more like you're here, down.

They come from a sort of

horror background

and I can tell when they're sh**ting

that they love, like,

a slow zoom-in on the face,

they love a bit of symmetry,

they like creating atmosphere.

That's really fun to do as an actor,

especially because you know

that it's gonna translate well onscreen.

BENSON: When we are preparing

our sh*t list, or storyboards,

or whatever it is we're preparing for

in pre-production,

we literally work

with blueprints, photographs,

and sometimes models of these sets.

So there's not huge surprises

when you walk in.

MOORHEAD: When we were

developing our sh*ts

and doing the sh*t list and the planning,

we wrote, you know, a dense,

roughly 12-page document

about general visual approach.

And then an hour-long video cut together

of different examples

of things that work,

things that don't,

here's what we're gonna do

and not do,

'cause the visual style

is different from Season 1.

And then, our cinematographer,

Isaac Bauman,

took that and made a 700-page book

of not just references,

typed out book,

of the entire visual language of the show

down to the smallest lights.

ISAAC BAUMAN: When you're designing

the look of a project,

the way to make it look

stylish and stylized

and have integrity, is actually to do

as little range as possible.

Create as little diversity as possible

in the amount of looks you're doing

so that the project

takes on a cohesive whole.

However, you want it

to do something different

with all these different time periods

we're visiting

because it was motivated, you know.

We couldn't ignore that motivation.

So, before we started sh**ting

the first episode,

we mapped all this out,

every single time period, every set.

Everything was calibrated to stand out

and be specific and motivated

by the environment that it was in.

But also by prepping so far in advance,

we made sure that every single thing

felt like a cohesive slice of the pie.

First season of Loki,

they asked me to come in and help out

in post-production

on the visual effects.

I fell in love with the show.

So when the opportunity came up,

and said, "Hey, how do you feel about

doing an episode on Season 2?"

I'm like,

I jumped at the chance.

The irony is that Episode 2

has the least amount of visual effects

in the entire season.

And the number of times

a lot of the crew came up, it's like,

"You know, it's weird

you're doing the show

"that has the least amount

of visual effects."

It's like, "Yeah, that occurred to me."

Episode 2 is very much

a kind of a conspiracy

and kind of a, like a thriller-esque thing

where they have to find Sylvie,

they need answers,

what happened at the End of Time.

When I first read the script,

it kind of felt something, you know,

plays out like The French Connection,

from a lot of the '70s movies where you

stay in the perspective of the characters

as they work

to solve the puzzle.

Dan will say, "I saw this thing

that you did in Episode 1,

"I remember this thing you did

in the table read for Episode 2.

"I don't want you to forget it.

Let's do it in take three.

"Let's do two straight,

"then that curveball one

where you're playing around."

- Zaniac.

- What about it?

- I wanna know about it.

- Oh, come on.

- Please.

- You don't care about my movie.

Brad, I saw the poster.

It looked scary.

It's not. It's not.

It's not scary.

It's elevated thriller, all right?

- It is?

- It's cinema.

Like you would know anything

about that.

DELEEUW: Even though it's,

conceptually, it's, you know,

it's like TV,

in the sense

that you have showrunners,

the studio is guiding the scripts,

but when you're brought in,

you're instantaneously brought

into the room with everyone else,

where the scripts

are being developed,

the writers and the producers

are there,

and our other directors on this season,

you're all collaborating

on everybody's episode.

We workshop the script,

and we'll have Tom there

and we'll have Owen come in

and Sophia come in,

everybody gives their perspective

on the characters,

and it keeps elevating the script

and elevating the script

And it's always the idea,

you know, that the best idea wins.

A little over the top, don't you think,

all the shadow play?

I thought it was spot on.

I've been on this team,

on this Loki ride, for quite a while now.

Since fall of 2019.

That's when we started prep

on Season 1.

And so, when this season came about,

started back up,

they asked me if I wanted

to participate in the writers' room,

which was a huge honor

and a lot of fun, and

In some ways, it made sense

because so much of the show

comes out of the world

in which it's set.

Out of that opportunity

came this even cooler opportunity

to direct Episode 3,

which is very different than the rest

of the season, I can say.

DI MARTINO: Kasra is doing these,

like, huge long takes

of really intricate scenes,

where he's doing just, like,

these big swooping, like, oners almost,

which is really cool to do

because it's a challenge.

You can really get into the flow of it

when you're not cutting all the time.

So we have different styles, okay?

I'm not sightseeing.

You're a man of action, which is fine.

I take a more slow, deliberate,

cerebral approach

because I see everything.

FARAHANI: The decision for this episode

to be set in the World's Fair

predates my involvement with the project,

but I think it's sort of a very distinct

and iconoclastic setting.

Also, it's just a very unlikely place

to find the next Variant of Kang.

I mean, if they're here, we'll find 'em.

If they're here.

Only one way to find out.

FARAHANI: So this is

the Midway Plaisance.

Some people refer to it almost

as the amusement park

or the gift shop of the World's Fair.

And the Midway was sort of

the more recreational part of it

where there were exhibitions

from different parts of the world

with a more accessible format

to working-class people.

How great is this Ferris wheel?

[CHUCKLES] Cut.

As you can see, there's blue screens

on both ends of the set.

There will be set extension.

But we were able to create

quite a good size chunk of it.

And you'll see

there's Cairo, Egyptian exhibition,

and there's a Chinese village,

and a Norwegian longhouse structure,

where there are the important statues

of the Norse gods,

from which Loki

has been excluded.

You know, sometimes I forget

that you're one of them.

You are one of them. Blows my mind.

MARTIN: Coming into Season 2,

we knew we wanted

to use He Who Remains

and a Variant of He Who Remains

in some form.

But we wanted

to subvert expectations with that

and not have that be the straight line

that people might expect.

So when we see Jonathan there

on that stage,

there is He Who Remains

and it's a totally different version

of him.

Don't be shocked

when I tell you

that time is the future of

energy.

He's a brilliant scientist,

but he's kind of born

into the wrong time.

And, so, maybe someday,

he'll become He Who Remains.

He'll become

that dangerous, formidable person.

But right now,

he's kind of this likeable character.

We're doing really great here.

We are here in great Chicago.

My name is Victor Timely.

Time is everything.

FARAHANI: In terms

of the Loom itself,

this is essentially the prototype

of the Temporal Loom that ultimately

is at the core of the TVA.

And the idea

is that Victor Timely's innovation

in concert with the information he got

from the TVA Handbook,

which was filled with O.B.'s writings,

and it's through that process

that he arrived at this prototype Loom.

My Temporal Loom

inverts the temporal decay

of the electricity flowing through it,

lowering its entropy and gathering it

into fine, organized threads of

power!

FARAHANI: And in the case

of this Victorian-era one,

the idea is that

it's weaving strands of energy

because this one is focused

on refining the efficiency

of electrical output.

Whereas the one in the TVA

applies the same sort of idea

to strands of time.

So there's a similar kind

of visual language

between this Loom

and the one in the TVA,

but this one is rendered in materials

and construction methods

from the Victorian era.

All science is fiction

until it's fact!

Mr. Timely. A moment, please.

[STAMMERS] Of course.

We need to talk about your future.

MOORHEAD: Gugu completely understood

where we were trying to bring Renslayer.

She could've easily fallen into villain

status and instead is a human being.

You're the one who sided

with a Loki over me.

Don't play the teamwork card on me now.

There is a really easy way

to take Renslayer that is one-dimensional,

which is, she wants power,

and that's it.

We just pretty strongly felt

like what it really was is,

she has been done wrong

and she genuinely has a desire

to bring stability to the TVA,

which is important.

So she is an antagonist,

but I don't think she's a villain.

- Miss Minutes?

- MISS MINUTES: Yeah?

- This is your moment.

- ROBBER BARON: Get him!

- Boo! [LAUGHS]

- [CROWD SCREAMING]

TOWNSEND: Miss Minutes is coming back

so we're gonna be seeing her quite a bit,

which is gonna be lovely,

to work with her.

When we can get her out of her trailer.

She can be quite temperamental.

Well, even before the TVA

or her, you created me.

And we worked together at the End of Time.

I'm here because I know

what a great man you can become.

EMMA MCCLEAVE: On set, they sh**t

Miss Minutes with a lamp.

And we have an on-set reader

who does a really great job

working with the actors

to create the scene.

We then go away,

myself and the director Kasra,

and we cut a version

of the scene that works.

My assistant editors go in

and do their best

to comp in a version of Miss Minutes.

And then we recorded Tara's ADR.

So then you refine the scene again.

And you hope that the animation

is all going to come together.

Rising Sun Pictures did Miss Minutes

this season, she's phenomenal.

So, original orange Miss Minutes,

they revamped her a little bit

to give her a bit

of a different rig

so that she had more expression

and all that stuff.

Just watch.

PAUL: Then there's black and white

Miss Minutes that we see in Episode 3,

and initially, Kasra,

who directed that episode,

wanted her to be fully 2D cel-animated.

And we could have done it but it

would've been prohibitively expensive.

So we asked,

"Is there any way that you can rig this

"so it looks like

a 2D cel-animated figure?"

Better?

PAUL: And they were able to do it

and she looks fantastic.

With all your powers

and all your abilities,

you just kept me as your thing.

Your computer, your toy.

Instead of what I could have been.

Your girl.

FARAHANI: This is

the Temporal Core control room.

So, this set is very much influenced

by mid-century European

and Eastern European power plants,

along with some kind

of NORAD-type environments.

As you walk through

the containment corridor,

you're walking through a series

of three to four-foot thick doors.

And then ultimately, when you get

to the main door into the control room,

you know, the threshold

for that door is about nine feet.

And then you get in here,

and as you go

into the control room airlock

and you go through the airlock door,

there's another 8-foot deep

concrete threshold

that you have to move through.

The idea is that

what is outside this window

is the most awesome force,

something akin to a nuclear blast

or a volcano.

Suit up, get down the gangway

as fast as you can,

load the Multiplier, hit the green button,

launch it and get back.

DI MARTINO: It was actually really great

sh**ting in here with everyone,

that we did a lot of days in this room.

We did a lot of different versions

of the same events

over and over again,

almost like Groundhog Day.

Hit the green button.

Hit the green button.

That's right. Now launch it.

That's it, you've done it.

Get back, get back. Go, go!

There were some really fun times

when we were all going

a little bit stir-crazy.

Cabin fever, sort of, you know,

on the edge.

Yes.

I've spent so many days in this room.

We sh*t this scene,

A version, B version, C, D, E, F, G, H,

I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P

And I would go home

and I would dream about it

and have to come to set

and do it all over again.

And then go home and dream about it.

[CHUCKLES]

And then come to set and do it all over again.

I mean, I will always remember

the Temporal Core.

With the Loom,

there was quite a bit of R&D.

It was more to make sure

the thing looked real.

Art department was incredible.

They were the ones

that started the concept work.

And then we handed it off

in pre-production

to a vendor called Trixter,

who works out of Germany.

And they started to try

and make this thing function.

Initially, it was supposed to be

the size of a moon.

But the distance for it to be

how big we see it in screen

would've had to have been

so extremely far away

that it wouldn't have been functional

in a way for us to try and fix it.

Benson and Moorhead were really big on us

having a lot of color in there.

They wanted to see, like,

the full spectrum.

That Temporal Core lighting setup

was absolutely massive, it was

the biggest we did in the whole season.

You'll see as the characters

move through that space,

rainbow patterns slide over them.

You've got about five minutes.

BAUMAN: And that was actually

incredibly difficult to figure out.

The first issue is,

no existing LED unit is capable

of making a rainbow

with delineated sections of color.

So, the lighting department,

my gaffer Mark Taylor,

worked with Chris Townsend,

the VFX supervisor,

to develop with VFX tools,

a graphic design rainbow

that we had printed

on these tiny little plates,

it looks like a petri dish

microscope slide-sized little plate.

And then those,

we slid into these units

that are designed mostly

for theatrical, like,

moving LED, point source, spotlight

type of units.

And the light pushed

through the plate

and projected, in effect,

a rainbow on the scene.

However, what we discovered was,

what we put in the computer

and what was printed on the plate

and what it looked like

when the light was shining through it

were all completely different things.

So we kind of

had to work backwards from,

"All right, well,

this design looks like this

"when it's actually

being projected."

It looks nothing like the design.

So we had to make the designs

look all weird

to get it to where it looked normal

in real life, on set.

So it took all

It not only took all ten weeks of prep,

but it took, you know,

the first ten weeks of sh**ting

before we had moved

into the Temporal Core control room set,

to trial-and-error this thing.

Trust me. If you stop, you die.

All right.

Here we go.

CHRISTINE WADA:

The main objective with that suit was,

"Just how cumbersome

can we possibly make this thing?"

Believe it or not, that is not

an easy thing to accomplish in this scale.

You're good.

You're good.

WADA: Just getting

the materials to work out,

for instance, I R&D'd many different

treatments to the fabric

to get sort of a retro look

to this canvas,

but yet, a protective quality.

And I thought I found it with a latex

that we would spray onto this canvas.

And about three weeks in,

we discovered that it was turning pink

because the latex was reacting to UV.

Then we had to try

to find UV-protective

Anyhow, the whole thing

had to get ditched.

We had to do another, we had already

R&D'd this whole process.

But for the Temporal Core suit,

it peels away under temporal energy

and there was a

A layer underneath that was

had this reflective quilted quality.

Just figuring out how to get the,

you know,

hundreds of yards of quilting

through these machines,

we had to build

these special stretchers for it,

so it's just endless amount

of engineering feats for that.

And then also, just how does somebody

wear that much weight and scale

and not look like a walkabout costume?

You think it's gonna be really easy

to make something cumbersome for an actor,

and then you realize it's actually

not that easy. [CHUCKLES]

BENSON: There were definitely certain

trips out to the Loom launcher

that were meant to be comedic

in how darkly funny they were.

Then there was other ones

where we're just

drawing out the tension

as much as we could.

MOORHEAD: We knew that

the more cumbersome the journey,

the more painful it would be.

Kind of thinking about when,

like in Gravity,

when someone's reaching for something

and because they don't have the inertia,

it's physically impossible

for them to try harder

to reach something,

it was like that.

[GRUNTS]

Be brave. You're being so brave.

TOWNSEND: We've got several scenes

where we have characters

that walk out along the gangway

towards the Temporal Loom

in order to fix it,

or solve a certain problem,

and as a consequence,

one of the things that happens

when characters walk out there

is that they get affected

by the temporal energy.

And if they're not careful,

and if the temporal energy

is too strong,

they will start, their suits

will start degrading and spaghettifying.

So, almost all the sh*ts you see

have got some visual effects

on the suit itself.

And we are destroying them,

degrading them in-camera,

and we're pulling threads out in this

sort of a spaghettification manner

in a similar way that we've used in

other temporal, sort of, visualizations.

So it's something that's been

a really interesting process,

trying to find that language

that sort of fits in

with the idea of it decaying.

We sh*t everyone

at 40 frames a second

so that they move

just a little bit more slowly.

We got great performances

from Owen and from Jonathan,

who were all in the suits.

Push the green button!

Sometimes, the suits are all CG

in some of the sh*ts,

but we tried to use the real suits

as much as possible.

Yes!

Pumpkins.

What do I do?

It's the Sacred Timeline, or nothing.

It's not enough

to protect the Sacred Timeline, Loki.

Even down there,

it's full of death and destruction

and injustice.

Do you really wanna be the god

who takes away everyone's free will

so you can protect that?

But what good is free will

if everyone's dead?

And who are you to say

we can't die trying?

Who are you to decide

we can't die fighting?

The thing that Tom said to me

very, very early in Season 2

was if this is about Loki

becoming the best version of himself,

you can't become

the best version of yourself

without accepting your past.

Which means accepting all of it,

warts and all.

And there was an interesting thing of,

like, to become a true, true, true hero,

a guy who is never going to benefit

from any of these choices he makes

He's gonna get that throne

he always wanted,

but it's not in the way

that he ever anticipated.

He wants to be with his friends, he can't.

To make a true sacrificial play,

he has got to truly understand who he is.

Loki, what are you doing?

I know what I want.

I know what kind of god I need to be

for you.

For all of us.

WRIGHT: And when he steps into

the Temporal Loom and sacrifices himself,

I think that's a moment

that's been coming for Loki,

that we haven't seen.

We wanted to truly have him step up

from lowercase-G god,

to capital-G God.

There was a draft of the script

of the very end, the very end.

Something wasn't sitting right

with both of us about it.

And the issue was, this draft

didn't have Loki destroying the Loom.

He saved the Loom from imploding

and then ascended the throne.

We all knew something was up,

we didn't know what.

'Cause it was like,

he's trying to save the Loom,

he gets the throne, all of this.

But the problem was,

is that he didn't have the sacrifice

and we realized,

why doesn't he destroy the Loom

and then have to take over

the Loom's massive responsibility?

He doesn't get anything out of it.

It seems so obvious now,

it seems like exactly the right choice.

But that was a watershed moment

in the development of it,

when we realized Loki needs

to destroy and become the Loom.

TOWNSEND: We see

his normal clothes shed off

and reveal his final Loki costume

and his horns begin to grow back.

We've already sh*t Tom

climbing these stairs

and ascending to what will become,

effectively, his throne,

as he then holds onto time

and holds it all together.

That was a pretty epic sort of moment.

WADA: Tonally, that was

a very tough costume to land on

because it needed

to have a monastic quality,

but he also has a history

of wanting the throne, to be a king.

And he's kind of

positioning himself to be

looking over everything

in the manner of a king, but humble.

And humbled by the weight

of that responsibility,

so it's just figuring out how that costume

could say all those things.

- The grand finale.

- The grand finale of Loki.

- Yeah.

- Seasons 1 and 2.

It's resonant, it's moving,

'cause he's been through so much.

And so much struggle

and so much suffering, and

So many questions.

And to sort of come back,

it feels like it's

a reacceptance of something.

Or a redefinition of himself, somehow.

And I think it's interesting

that from the beginning,

we always talked,

I mean, from November,

- we talked about it being organic.

- Yeah.

- And it is that organic part of Loki.

- Yeah.

- It's real. It's a toss-up.

- It's very real.

It's an inter

It's the inside on the outside.

WADA: It is. Yes.

HIDDLESTON: So, what I love about it is,

it's familiar in its colors

and in its shape,

but it's new in its humility.

- So, gone are the

- WADA: Armors.

HIDDLESTON: the armor and the metal

and the breastplates.

- It's kind of a hybrid.

- It's more vulnerable.

It is. And it's a hybrid of, like,

sort of a king and a monk.

- Right?

- Yeah. Yeah.

These are

These are the robes of someone

who might be dedicated to a purpose

- beyond the self.

- WADA: Right.

HIDDLESTON: And these are

the garments of purpose and practice.

WADA: And weight.

HIDDLESTON: And weight.

- Yeah.

- WADA: Yeah.

HIDDLESTON: Was it Mobius

who says in Episode 6,

"Sometimes purpose

is more burden than glory.

"You choose your burden."

And so, this is him

accepting that mantle.

WRIGHT: The first ten years of movies

with Loki was about the glory.

He was a villain,

he was chasing a throne.

This season is about him learning

that his glorious purpose

is to carry the burden

of everyone else.

He's embracing the caring person

that he's turned into

through these two seasons,

but he's also embracing his past

and his status as an Asgardian god

to hold everything together

and to save his friends.

He's giving us a chance.

His magical power as a demigod

is enhanced because he realizes

that this

this authority he has

over coordinating and managing time

is, in fact, where the story ends.

And it's his only resistance

against the grand plan of He Who Remains.

There was a huge opportunity here

to show a character evolve

from being petty to being

someone who sacrifices for others

and feels the value of that.

And to tell that story,

especially today, was a gift.

I think what was also really important

is that the sacrifice

weren't just a superhero sacrifice,

it was one where he never even

gets to see the benefits of it.

He doesn't get to save his friends

and then hang out with them.

It is a pure sacrifice.

He is Atlas at the End of Time

holding it all together.

And then that came from wanting

to tell a story

that had, like, a mythic weight to it,

that's befitting the Norse mythology

that all of this is built on.

I remember,

over two years ago,

I put this on for Season 1.

And Season 1 felt like a new beginning

because we were stripping Loki

of everything that was familiar to him,

it was taking him away from Asgard

and Thor and Odin.

A new beginning,

a new story, a new chapter.

And wearing this jumpsuit and hoping

that the audience would accept

and be inspired by our new story.

No matter how hard you work,

there's always that sense of uncertainty.

You think, "Well, I hope they love it,

"and I hope they are as excited

and interested in this new idea as I am."

And I feel so fortunate

and so grateful to the audience

'cause people really

seem to be interested

in the ideas and the characters

and the world and the TVA

and the performances and all these

great new actors in the MCU.

So, my feeling

is one of immense gratitude and,

to be completely honest,

profound excitement.