SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses some general plot developments in Loki Season 2, Episode 2, currently streaming on Disney+.
Dan Deleeuw has been working on visual effects for 30 years, from The Mask to Armageddon to Night at the Museum – but he always had the dream of one day directing. That opportunity finally came in 2019, when Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo — who had worked with Deleeuw on VFX for their three previous Marvel Studios productions — hired him to shoot additional photography for the behemoth production . This gig led to him taking directing credits on “Eternals” in 2021 and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” in 2023, and ultimately taking over the lead director’s chair for the second episode of the second season of “Loki.”
Deleeuw, who was responsible for the visual effects on the series’ first season, assumed he was hired for his skills in handling the episode’s action beats, which featured Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his TVA compatriot Mobius (Owen Wilson) pursue a renegade TVA As a soldier (Rafael Casal), he travels to London in the 1970s and later meets up with Loki’s variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) at McDonald’s in 1980s Oklahoma. But Deleeuw says executive producer Kevin Wright told him he was hired to direct because, even when he’s working on visual effects, he’s “always talking about the story.”
Deleeuw also spoke about how both he and Ke Huy Quan – who joined the show for the second season – were surprised at how Hiddleston approached the show’s rehearsals, why production decided to have Sylvie work at McDonald’s – and how he reacted to Marvel’s recent decision by VFX artists to unionize.
Since Sylvie lives in a branching timeline, have you ever talked about having an alternate version of McDonald’s instead of the actual McDonald’s?
We started saying, “Okay, she sets a schedule, which restaurant do we use?” At that point, there was a pitch for RoxBurger – you know, the evil company in the Marvel Universe, Roxxon. But it didn’t tell a story other than that it was a fake restaurant. And so McDonald’s came into play as a suggestion. And McDonald’s is, in a way, timeless – it transcends countries and borders. Everyone started talking about this nostalgic moment they had with McDonald’s. By quickly drawing the audience’s attention to what Sylvie is feeling – being on the run for so long and seeing normal people and wanting to just have that and leave everything else behind – we use McDonald’s to transport the audience to a place , where it can choose I figure it out pretty quickly. That’s what sealed the deal for using McDonald’s.
Rafael Casal in episode 2 of “Loki”. Courtesy of Marvel Studios
What was one of the biggest surprises about the experience of directing this episode?
Something I will always try to do with every other show I direct: it was the openness to collaboration that Kevin Wright had, particularly encouraged by Tom Hiddleston and his experience in the theater. When the scripts were ready, we invited all the directors to come and watch their various episodes. All the actors would come. The authors are there. And we had a week and a half, two weeks where we went through every single script, just rehearsing it, playing with them and improving it. It was just this wonderfully creative moment in the show. When we started filming we had a really good idea of what we wanted to do. Ke [Huy Quan] sat next to me. He saw everything happening, Owen and Tom playing with lines. He leaned forward and asked, “Is this normal?” I think, “It’s normal for her!”
You’ve been working with Marvel for over 10 years now, mostly in the visual effects space. Have you always had the ambition to direct?
Yes. In high school and college we made little films – public access, back when it was still public access. This was something I always wanted to do. Even from a visual effects standpoint – designing the sequences and creating animations – I loved telling the story. When I first started working with the Russos, they definitely encouraged it and gave me the opportunity to do additional photography for Endgame, which led to me directing the second unit. I just always approach something from a story standpoint. So Kevin Wright realized I had that kind of brain and invited me back to direct the second season.
How did he explain that to you?
Since I’ve been at Marvel for 10 years, there’s a bit of a rumor mill going around. So I knew they had hired Justin and Aaron, and then I heard that Kasra [Farahani], the production designer, had been given an episode. I thought, “Ah, there’s one more left!” And then Kevin called me one day and said, “Yeah, how would you like to direct ‘Loki’?” “Yeah!” It was that simple .
Last year, several VFX artists who worked on Marvel projects expressed great frustration with their working conditions, which contributed to the recent decision to vote to unionize. What experiences have you had with these problems?
I support everything they do. I’ve been here for a long time. The number of hours for visual effects has been embedded in the system for years. From the beginning we always had this crunch time. We’ll take a few months off and then come back to it. What you see now is that the shows are so much bigger and you have so many shows. Many of the artists on set and especially in the visual effects companies move from one big show to the next big show to the next big show.
There has to be something that allows for a better work-life balance, for the artists’ health, for their families and simply for their creativity. Otherwise, you will have diminishing returns. It’s your crew. You have to take care of them. I think we need to think about this and find a solution.
How did your experience with visual effects influence your approach to directing this episode, particularly with regards to the VFX?
I can tell a story with something that isn’t there. In the original draft there was talk of a chase. It didn’t make much sense why Loki was involved in a chase. We decided we wanted to lean a little more into the dark side of Loki and move away from a traditional chase scene. I imagined one day, “What could Loki do?” and invented the shadow gags with the horns and things like that.
Did you do anything that a director who didn’t work in visual effects might not know?
You already know how much time and difficulty it will take and what you will do trying to get through the day [VFX artists] If you try to shoot without getting the blue screen just right, because I know the consequences, I will fight harder to get it right so the artists don’t have to deal with it. When you start post-production, you know how much of a storytelling effect you can add if you have to change the set a little just to make sense of Loki’s whereabouts. We have an editor at Marvel, Jeff Ford, who has edited a lot of films. Jeff is a master. He doesn’t change his cut to fit the footage, he changes the footage to fit his cut. I think this is an insightful way to learn how to use some visual effects in post without getting too into it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.