Loki is the first of Marvel’s Disney+ TV shows to end with a promise of a second season on the way. The first ended with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his alternate universe variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) meeting with He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), who created the Time Variance Authority in order to make sure the multiverse doesn’t get out of whack. Well, all bets are off now, and fans have lots of questions.
Obviously, Hiddleston isn’t going to answer of them directly, but he confirm to The Playlist that the cliffhanger ending to the first season — where a new version of He Who Remains is apparently ruling a very different TVA with an iron fist — wasn’t the original plan. “It made me not want to stop and just keep going, but I’m sure it was good for everybody’s energy levels that we did stop,” he said of the twists and turns at the end.
Shooting on season 2 will start soon. “We’re in it already. I mean, we’re not filming, but we’re in prep, but we start in like six weeks or something,” Hiddleston said. “So we’re in full steam ahead in terms of a script and story and it’s really exciting. Yeah, I can’t say too much, but lots of questions to be answered.”
Loki will be in “a place of self-awareness” in season 2
When Loki does return to action, he will be in a better place than he was when the season started, when he was holding to the idea that he had a glorious purpose to serve. Learning about the TVA put his ambitions into perspective to the point where he tried to talk Sylvie out of getting vengeance in the season finale, even though that’s something he’s usually for. “I think he’s in a place of self-awareness, of acceptance,” Hiddleston said. “He’s trying to break the record. He’s trying to play another tune. It felt very original, very new, very fresh and I loved the journey.”
Feeling new and fresh is something that’s important to Hiddleston, and was why he took the job in the first place. And he tries to bring that sense of unpredictability to his performance by volleying with his costars, including Owen Wilson, who plays the TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius:
"I remember in the preparation for the show…he was kind of asking me to take him through the journey of playing Loki and the movies and the story and everything. And one afternoon he said, “I think I got it. I’m just so curious. I’ve seen the films and I understand the journey, but Tom, what do you love about playing Loki?” And I said, “I suppose it’s the character’s got so much range.” And I said, “It’s like a piano. He can play the light keys, but he can also play the heavy keys.” And then in a scene once, in the Time Theater, when Loki is trying to intimidate and threaten Mobius, Owen, just threw back, “See I can play the heavy keys too.” And it was great. And it’s in the show, you know? It’s those moments where that feels really exciting."
We’ve got a while to wait yet for more Loki, but in the meantime, the Marvel series of the moment — Moon Knight — wraps up this Wednesday.
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