Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is every Marvel fan’s favorite god of mischief, and the character has finally returned thanks to the premiere of his new Disney+ series, Loki. The show sees Thor’s brother leaping through time to stop “nexus events” and alternate realities, making it feel like anything is possible. But as Marvel Cinematic Universe boss Kevin Feige revealed during a recent press conference, Loki’s future was once even more uncertain than it is now.
When the majority of big screen MCU superheroes died at the conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War, it was generally assumed that most of them would return–with the exceptions of Vision and Loki, whose deaths were separate from the calamitous “snap.” The MCU shows on Disney+ have proved otherwise, but according to Feige, bringing Loki back for his own show wasn’t always the plan.
“I think we did not know [how Loki would return] when we shot Infinity War,” Feige said. “But I think we did know it when we shot Endgame, is my recollection of it.”
“One of my favorite things coming out of Endgame was people saying that we forget to tie up the loose end of Loki,” he continued. “Loki just disappears and we forgot to mention what happens to him at the end of that movie. And, at that point, we did know that there was Disney+ coming and the show coming. It became very exciting to make people wait until we figured out what the show would be.”
Hiddleston, whose portrayal of the character is beloved by fans, said he reacted with “a combination of delight and surprise” when he learned that Loki would return.
“I had to scratch my head, because [Loki’s death] scene in Avengers: Infinity War had felt so final, had felt so conclusive, as the end of Loki’s story,” the actor said. “But I knew that Avengers: Endgame was coming around the corner.”
Loki’s premiere episode drew inspiration from noir thrillers, and at times even felt like a two-character play, as the god of mischief and Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius explored long scenes of dialogue opposite one another. For Hiddleston, getting to find out more about this character is an opportunity.
“What I love about the series is Loki is stripped of everything that’s familiar to him,” the actor said. “Thor is not close by, Asgard seems some distance away, the Avengers, for the time being, aren’t in sight. He’s stripped of his status and his power. And if you take all those things that Loki has used to identify himself over the last six movies, what remains of Loki? Who is he, within or outside all of those things? And I think those questions became, for all of us, really fascinating to ask.”
“I just love playing the character,” he added. “I always have. And I feel so fortunate that I’m still here, and that there are still new aspects to the character every time that I learn about. I think he’s a character of huge range. So it never feels like the same experience. And particularly this time around, I mean, I’m surrounded by these amazing people, truly. It’s not something that is lost on me, you know, all my conversations with Kevin [Feige] and [director] Kate [Herron] and [head writer] Michael [Waldron], and my interactions with Owen [Wilson] and Gugu [Mbatha-Raw] and Wunmi [Mosaku]–we just have a really good time.”
Loki airs Wednesdays on Disney+. For more coverage of the premiere episode, check out our list of , as well as our breakdown of the .
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