SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Loki Season 2, Episode 4, currently streaming on Disney+.
When Eric Martin (along with then-head writer Michael Waldron) began writing the first season finale of Loki, he already had a feeling that the Marvel Studios show would continue with a second season.
“There were definitely rumors about it when we were in the writers’ room for season one,” Martin says. “It didn’t become a sure thing until we got into COVID.”
During the enforced pandemic break – Martin estimates they had shot “about a third of the first season” before the shutdown – Martin said that Marvel Studios executive Kevin Wright approached him about becoming head writer for Season 2 would. “And then we really started Let’s get down to business and figure out where to go with the next half of the story.”
These efforts reached a serious tipping point in this week’s episode, “Heart of the TVA,” in which the titular temporal loom – the mechanism that harnesses the energy of time to power the TVA and traverse the Sacred Timeline – is under the Stress of the world explodes infinitely branching multiverse; The ensuing outbreak appears to engulf Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his compatriots before the episode fades to black.
Eric Martin Katie Martin
The catastrophe is the direct result of the decision Loki’s variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) makes in the season 1 finale to kill the TVA’s creator, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) – which accelerated the creation of the multiverse.
“When dictators are overthrown, when systems collapse, chaos ensues,” says Martin. “Problems always arise in situations that no one could have predicted because the system has silently taken care of them.”
It’s part of Martin’s overarching theme of season two to explore what happens when the characters and the TVA itself reach their limits. “Can people change? Can institutions change? “What happens when that system breaks down and you have to build a new system?” says Martin. “That’s exactly what we see. It all comes down to the idea of chaos versus order – which makes a lot of sense because we’re dealing with a lot of chaos.”
Given that Loki himself is the God of Mischief, this dichotomy plays a role in the way the Loki series aims to deconstruct one of the most beloved characters in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“We’re bringing back a little more of the old Loki’s mischief, but he’s still fighting for something bigger than himself,” says Martin. “Reinvention and self-discovery is really the overarching theme of our entire season.”
Martin spoke to Variety about putting together Season 2 of Loki, his experiences with the Marvel Method and the mysterious rule that governed his approach to the show.
Gareth Gatrell
“I want you to ask questions”
Martin’s biggest addition in Season 2 was Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros (aka OB), a technician who lives in the deepest depths of the TVA as the head (and seemingly sole employee) of the repair and advancement department. The character emerged from Martin’s interest in expanding the scope of the TVA as an institution.
“I felt like we were just on different levels in Season 1,” he says. “We see that it is a spacious place. So who are the people working at the lower levels?”
Martin took inspiration for OB from his own relatives. “I come from a family of engineers,” he says. “This is a very special kind of person. OB just came to mind as someone like my uncles. They love the technical aspects of their work and focus solely on that. At TVA, no one ages; Time simply stands still. Well, what if there was someone down there who’s only been doing all this stuff for a few hundred years, and he’s in a good mood because he loves what he does? He is surrounded by all his devices. That’s what he loves.”
While OB is responsible for designing most of the TVA’s shenanigans, the temporal loom was supposedly invented and built by “He Who Abides” – a very nerdy phrase that raises an even nerdier question: what was the timeline before the temporal one Loom?
“I want you to ask questions,” Martin says. “The loom is one of those things that makes you wonder, ‘How did that work before?’ What was it all like before?’ Trying to get this under control can be a bit of a headache. But I think what you can imagine is: What can we trust in what He who remains has said and what not? I don’t think we know, do we? We’re just figuring it all out.”
Marvel Studios
“What’s a surprising way to approach this character?”
Perhaps the second-biggest new addition to Season 2 is the introduction of Victor Timely, a variant of He Who Remains who is an inventor living in late 19th century Chicago. Both Timely and He Who Remains are versions of Kang, who is intended to be the central villain of the Multiverse saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But while Martin says he knew he “couldn’t finalize things for the character,” he also wasn’t given any direction about what to do with Timely.
“In the beginning there wasn’t really a conversation about, ‘Hey, this is what you can do with the character and what you can’t do,'” he says.
Martin says right off the bat that Season 2 was conceived as a “prelude to the multiversal war and leaned quite heavily on aspects of Kang’s diverse characters.” But ultimately he felt like this was an obvious direction.
“It just felt like, ‘What’s a surprising way to approach this character, something that’s a little off center after we’ve met He Who Remains?’ And that’s where Victor Timely came in,” he says. “There’s a Victor Timely character in the comics. It’s pretty thin. He’s just some kind of Kang variant who went back in time and had a stupid plan.”
To deepen the character, Martin and the writers imagined him as a Nikola Tesla figure rather than a con man.
“If you’re so far ahead of everyone, what you’re doing isn’t going to make sense to them,” he says. “So you have to outsmart people a little bit to get some money, and then you can go out and work on your projects.”
Gareth Gatrell
“I would like to have more control over everything”
Because there were so many interwoven storylines going on this season, Martin decided he needed to write all six episodes of the season.
“These things can be so unwieldy,” he says. “Essentially we’re doing three Marvel movies and it can get out of control. So I decided, ‘Okay, I’ll probably have to create each of these scripts myself to try to hold this thing together.'”
As production gained momentum, on-set writer Kathryn Blair joined Martin to complete Episode 4. When Martin became ill with COVID, production designer Kasra Farahani and his writing partner Jason O’Leary finished work on Episode 3, which Farahani was directing, at the end of the production schedule.
But while Martin was the lead writer on the second season of “Loki” and was a semi-regular on set in London, he was not the showrunner – a distinction unique to Marvel Studios, which has so far produced its TV series for Disney+ through a feature film model that gives producers and directors, not writers, the final say. In the case of Loki, that meant Wright and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead oversaw production logistics while Martin ran the writers’ room.
“There are a lot of Marvel mechanics that move things forward and a lot of decisions that a showrunner might make,” Martin says. “I was there too. I just don’t have the final say.”
Recently, Marvel decided to shift its TV production back to a traditional showrunner model, starting with Daredevil: Born Again. When asked what he thought about not being showrunner on “Loki,” Martin shrugged politely.
“Like everyone else, I would like to have more control over everything,” he says. “But I went into everything pretty sober and saw it as an opportunity. As a showrunner, you have to make a lot of decisions that aren’t creative. Since I don’t have to worry about keeping the trains running, I can concentrate on the creative and work on the scripts over and over again. So I tried to look at it as a benefit in that way. I just did my best to focus on the scripts and try to tell a great story and give all of my collaborators what they needed to do their best work. And give yourself a few extra hours of sleep by not having to be the only person at the front and doing all of this.”
Marvel Studios
“There is a very specific logic to what is happening”
Because Loki is about the multiverse, Martin is technically able to solve any plot dilemma through time travel and alternate character resurrections—a narrative trick that’s as convenient as it is unsatisfying. When asked about this dilemma, particularly in the context of Episode 4’s cliffhanger ending, Martin smiles knowingly.
“There is a very specific rule that I have memorized at this point in the season and beyond,” he says. “I’m not going to specifically point out what that is right now because I don’t want to ruin things for you. I put parameters there because I think it forces you to be more creative instead of having everything at your disposal. But there’s a very specific logic to what’s happening.”
So what can we expect from the final two episodes?
“I’m just saying: Of course the story continues,” says Martin. “Just don’t expect a straight line.”