Tom Hiddleston lectured Owen Wilson to prepare him for his role in Loki

There are now 23 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s already complicated enough to follow, and Marvel is going to expand on it greatly by giving us a huge slate of MCU TV shows, starting with the delightfully surprising WandaVision.

That’s a lot of lore to remember, especially if you’re catching up on the franchise from the very beginning. That was the situation Owen Wilson found himself in when he was hired for a role in the upcoming Loki series starring Tom Hiddleston. Happily, the God of Mischief himself was willing to give him an MCU crash course.

Loki picks up after Avengers: Endgame, right after the titular character escapes imprisonment by swiping the Tesseract and warping away. In the show, he ends up getting caught by the  Time Variance Authority, a group tasked with maintaining the multiverse.

Wilson plays Mobius M. Mobius, an agent of the Time Variance Authority. Other than that, we don’t much about his character. Since Hiddleston felt the need to give him lectures about the wider MCU, his role may be pretty sizable. Wilson talked about it all on an episode of The Jess Cagle Show:

"Actually, Tom Hiddleston – who of course plays Loki – he kind of – or we kind of – you know, they were almost like the Loki lecturers. And so he, for a couple days, walked me through everything and the whole lore and showing me clips from the other movies and how it all fed into this story."

Hiddleston sounds like a good teacher; he even used visual aids! And it can’t be easy to explain the history of a character like Loki, who has died and come a couple of times now. Even Thanos couldn’t kill him for good in Infinity War, despite saying “no resurrections this time.”

“So, it was really kind of Tom telling me about it and telling me about his character,” Wilson continued. “And even in the way sometimes that he would describe his character, it was useful for me, because my character Mobius in Loki is kind of interviewing him at some point. So, it kind of worked doing it that way.”

Loki is the third MCU series coming this year, after WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Owen Wilson isn’t the only fresh face joining the franchise in Loki. The series also stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Morning Show), Sophia Di Martino (Into the Badlands), Cailey Fleming (The Walking Dead) and Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).

I suppose we’ll see just how well Hiddleston’s lecture worked when Loki airs. I doubt WIlson’s knowledge isn’t exactly encyclopedic, but hopefully he knows enough to put in a convincing performance.

Loki still doesn’t have a release date, but is expected to air on Disney+ sometime this spring.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels