Tom Hiddleston admits to not getting how time travel works in the MCU

Marvel debuted its new series Loki today, and at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, it seems like it could be the best MCU TV show on Disney+ yet.

Loki follows our titular antihero/actual villain/undermined after the events of Avengers: Endgame, when he stole the Tesseract and warped off to parts unknown. Only that wasn’t the Loki we knew, but another Loki from a different timeline who hadn’t yet learned about trust and family and friendship and all that, so he’s still a mischievous little scamp.

Remember: in the MCU, time travel works not so much by literally going back in time a la Back to the Future but by traveling through the quantum realm to visit other dimensions, which split into separate timelines…only in Loki we meet the Time Variance Authority (TVA), whose job it is to protect the one “sacred” timeline, so it’s…confusing, for us and for the cast.

For instance, SyFy Wire asked star Tom Hiddleston whether he understood how time travel works in the MCU. “Probably not,” he laughed. “But, I found it very exciting. It was in Doctor Strange that I first came into contact with how the dimension of time might be integrated into the MCU. And then in Endgame when Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One explains it to Mark Ruffalo. I’m intrigued to find out. I’m sure that people who are smarter than me have plans for how this is going to turn out, but I’m just excited for the ride.”

I think that’s the best way to approach it: just go along for the ride and don’t expect it to make perfect sense; time travel rarely does.

Loki director untangles the timeline

That said, the producers on Loki are trying their hardest to make it as coherent as possible. “I think the thing that was exciting for us was that we had been building upon what had already been set up, but at the same time, it’s kind of a rug pull, right? We’re showing this new organization, we’re showing this new view on how the proper flow of time is managed,” said director Kate Herron. “It was that balancing act of, again, not unraveling anything that had come before, but at the same time, setting the table for a new set of ideas and opening the universe in a way.”

"There’s a drawing of a timeline that I’ve drawn so many times now. It was helpful for them, in a way, because I had fresh eyes and could say, ‘This makes sense to me, this bit needs more explanation, and this could be clearer if we did A, B, or C.’ But I remember [head writer Michael Waldron] drew this drawing of a line with the branches off of it, and I was like, ‘Oh, I get it now.’ That’s in the show. It was always important to make sure the time travel made sense to people so they could go along with the ride and have fun."

I’m ready to understand if they’re ready to explain. Or just give me more scenes where Loki is actually famous figures from history and I won’t care.

Loki and the cast of D. B. Cooper

Specifically, I’m talking about the bit where we learn that Loki was actually D.B. Cooper, a famous thief who held a commercial airplane hostage in November 1971. He ended up jumping out of the plane with a parachute and $200,000. Although some of the money was recovered, Cooper was never found.

As Loki tells us, that’s because he was warped up to Asgard. “That was me writing the pilot, or writing the first episode, having fun with Mobius showing Loki the scenes from his life,” Waldron told Decider. “People, I think when they heard about this show, they always thought, ‘Okay, it’s Loki traveling through time influencing historical events. So we’re gonna see Loki riding with Paul Revere and doing the most basic, PBS sort of stuff.’ And I got excited about, what is the deep cut, really fun stuff that we can imagine [for Loki]? And I just love D.B. Cooper. It’s a great piece of American folklore and now it’s canon: Loki is DB Cooper [in the Marvel Cinematic Universe]. We solved the riddle.”

Jimmy Kimmel unimpressed with Tom Hiddleston’s Marvel souvenir

Finally, in lighter news, Hiddleston went on Jimmy Kimmel Live and shared what he’d taken from the Marvel set. Chris Hemsworth (Thor) had taken several hammers over the years, so surely the God of Mischief pilfered something good, right? “Remember this?” Hiddleston asked, clearly delighted with his prize.

“A scarf,” Kimmel said. “No, I do not remember that.” Looks smart, though.

Keeping with the comedy, Hiddleston also weighed in on Matt Damon playing an actor who plays Loki in the Thor movies — he’s returning for Thor: Love and Thunder, by the way, although Hiddleston is not.

"Well, I have no ownership as you know. [Laughs] Loki contains multitudes, and he contains Matt Damon. I was so amused on that—I can’t remember, it was a couple of days on Ragnarok when he came in and did his thing. It was like looking into a very slightly distorted mirror. And his take on the whole thing was just hilarious, so I can’t wait to see what they’ve been doing."

New episodes of Loki drop every Wednesday on Disney+.

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