When Loki was first introduced in the MCU, there was no doubting he was a villain. Bitter over his father Odin's favoritism towards his other son, Thor, the God of Mischief made it his mission to wreak havoc across Asgard and beyond, ultimately launching an attack on the Avengers and New York City. Recently, though, we've seen a more heroic side of the character; particularly the version we've come to know in his very own Marvel TV series.
As Loki season 2 kicks off on Disney Plus, though, executive producer Kevin Wright assures fans of the trickster that we'll see his devilish side come out once again in the upcoming episodes.
"We talked a lot about that with this being a show about identity," he tells GamesRadar+. "We've seen him as a villain, we've seen him as an antihero and he's kind of lived somewhere in the middle through various points in all those years of movies. But now we're pushing him into these situations with more heroic stakes. We know we can't just make him a hero straightaway; we wanted it to be sort of like a series of challenges and obstacles. Is this even something that Loki is capable of?"
Released in 2021, season 1 centered on Loki (Tom Hiddleston) trying to free himself from the clutches of the TVA, and inadvertently uncovering dark truths about the underground organization – and the being who created it. He was captured for using the Tesseract to mess with time and avoid being imprisoned. In doing so, he broke the Sacred Timeline and created a branch; things the TVA's intimidating Minute Men are tasked with "pruning". Or, erasing, essentially. Season 2, however, sees the titular character quite literally try to save the day... and all the days that come after it, too.
"Clearly because of the things that happened to him in season one, he's trying to do the right thing," Wright adds. "We just wanted to always challenge that because it lead to even cooler ideas; people can say they're about one thing or they can think that they're one thing, but when they are faced with raising stakes and action and situations where you just have to react, you can't think, it lets out your true self. So that was exciting.
"But Loki is still who he is, frankly, and in this season, we see him play into people's fear of him. There's a scene later on where someone challenges him, and he's just like, 'Oh, you think that's what I am? You haven't seen anything yet. Just let me take the fangs out. It's fun narratively, but I think the audience miss that side of Loki a bit and we wanted to make it clear it's not gone."
According to Wright and director Dan DeLeeuw, who helmed the second season's second episode, the new chapter also explores whether Loki, having discovered that he's actually brave, optimistic and open-hearted, can reconcile that with the man he used to be – and the things that he's done.
"Something that Tom identified in development was, 'If you want to become the best version of yourself, you have to embrace all sides, flaws and all, which means he has to face up to all the misdeeds of his past," says Wright. "Tom juggles that complexity really, really well and once we started looking at that as a theme, we saw it across a lot of our characters."
As DeLeeuw points out, while it's been ten years since we saw Loki wage war on Iron Man, Captain America, and co in The Avengers, the events of that movie only happened a week or so ago in terms of the show's timeline. In short, he's still that same guy. Before he made his directorial debut, DeLeeuw was a visual effects supervisor within the MCU, too, so having Loki use his super powers again was something he was personally keen to do.
"Last season, he was being held back by the TVA, he couldn't use his magic and Mobius had him on a tight leash but here we're dealing with things like fate and personal choice, so we had to free him up a bit," he adds. "The arrogant God of Mischief is now somewhat introspective."
Loki season 2 episode 1 is streaming on Disney Plus now. Hear more of our interviews with Kevin Wright and Dan DeLeeuw on the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast. For more on the show, check out our spoilery deep-dives on:
- When does Loki season 2 take place on the Marvel timeline?
- Loki season 2 release schedule
- Loki season 1 recap
- How to watch the Marvel movies in order
- Loki season 2 episode 1 post-credits scene explained
- Marvel phase 5
- Upcoming Marvel movies and shows
- Victor Timely comic book history explained
- Judge Renslayer comic book history explained
- What is Time-Slipping?
- All the differences between comic book Loki and show Loki
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