Gareth Gatrell / Courtesy of Marvel Studios
Of the eight live-action TV shows Marvel Studios has produced for Disney+ so far, only one ended with the explicit promise of a second season: That would be “Loki,” the incredibly entertaining series about Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief and his metaphysical ilk Heroics in the Time Variance Authority.
It turns out those plans were in the works before a second of Loki was ever streamed. As executive producer Kevin Wright explains to Variety, he and Hiddleston began talking about the show’s second season during production of the third episode of the first season.
“While we were filming the ‘Lamentis’ episode, Tom and I started having a lot of conversations about how this world could be created and how we could delve deeper into it,” he says. “A big part of what we wanted to do was not repeat ourselves and not try to play the hits.” At the same time, he adds, they also wanted to make sure that the second season didn’t end with a “fast-paced Fast Forward Through the Drama” of the Season 1 finale began.
And so much happened in this finale. To recap: Loki and his variant-turned-potential soulmate, Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), arrive at the end of time, where they meet the creator of the TVA, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) – the variant of supervillain Kang Who has won a massive multiversal war. To prevent future Kangs from emerging, He Who Remains used the TVA to maintain a single, sacred timeline – cutting away trillions of potential lives in the process. He presents Sylvie and Loki with an impossible choice: replace him as head of the TVA or kill him and spawn infinite Kangs.
Loki wants the first option; Sylvie wants the second one. She wins, killing He Who Remains and sending Loki back to an alternate version of the TVA, where former compatriots Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) cannot remember ever meeting him.
Variety has screened the first four (of six) episodes of Loki, and without giving anything away, Season 2 picks up pretty much where the first season left off – before setting off on its own storytelling path. The full cast returns, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw as former TVA judge Ravonna Renslayer and Eugene Cordero as TVA official Casey. And Majors returns, as does He Who Remains, in addition to another Kang variant, a 19th-century inventor named Victor Timely. They will be joined by new actors including Kate Dickie (“Game of Thrones”), Rafael Casal (“Blindspotting”) and current Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan as TVA technician Ouroboros, also known as “OB”.
There have been some changes behind the scenes compared to the first season. The series’ original director, Kate Herron, and head writer Michael Waldron both stepped down to focus on other projects. In their place, Moon Knight’s Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have stepped in as lead directors, and season one writer Eric Martin has taken over as head writer for season two.
Gareth Gatrell / Courtesy of Marvel Studios
To delve deeper into the second season of Loki, Wright spoke to Variety about casting Quan, just before his appearance in the multiverse spectacle Everything Everywhere All at Once changed the actor’s life forever; what the future of the series “Loki” and the character Loki might look like after season 2; and how Majors’ March arrest on assault charges affected (or didn’t) their plans for Season 2.
What were the discussions like about how to approach Season 2?
I think we needed to keep reminding ourselves that the TVA is a great world. Let us live in the drama of what we create there. That doesn’t mean fast-forwarding the drama where they just decided to stop shortening timelines, but also staying in the emotional turmoil that Loki and Sylvie come into this season with.
Also, there were certain things in Season 1 that perhaps felt like a risk, and we didn’t know how the audience would react. When we realized they had accepted it, we felt a great freedom to go further.
What did you perceive as a risk?
In a very early draft of the script written by Michael Waldron, this first Time Theater conversation between Mobius and Loki ran to perhaps a few pages. And then a lot of other big Marvel-type action things happened after that and we all thought, “That’s not the interesting thing. This Time Theater conversation is interesting. This is what the show could look like.” When we really dive into the character-based philosophy and introspection, it’s very different than the last 10 years of Marvel films. Would the audience follow us?
Tom Hiddleston famously held seminars on the character of Loki in Season 1. Did he do something like that in season 2?
No, because we tried to bring as much crew as possible from the first season. It was mostly the same team. Obviously we drove from Atlanta to London [for production], but many of our department heads have taken over, so institutional knowledge has been built in. And Tom is literally my producing partner. Before we had any writers or directors, it was Tom and I who fleshed out this story for months. We had a 30-page document that went like this: “This is the show: TVA, He Who Remains” – even Victor Timely was in that first document years ago. And it just gets done.
Even though Kate Herron sort of handed over the reins at the end of the first season, there is an institutional knowledge that leads us to be the glue between seasons.
You mentioned He Who Remains and Victor Timely. You finished filming the second season in 2022, but has Jonathan Majors’ arrest on assault charges in March led to any changes to the series?
No. This may – not maybe – be the first Marvel series to never feature additional photography. The story shown on the screen is the story we wanted to make. We went in with a very specific idea of what we wanted and found a way to tell it in this production phase. It’s largely in line with what’s seen on Disney+.
It’s clear that Majors play an integral role this season, and you just hinted that Marvel usually does additional photography for all titles. Given the uncertainty about what happened to the majors, was there any discussion about changes to the show?
No. And that was mostly because – I know as much as you right now. It felt rushed to do anything without knowing how it would all turn out.
How early in the writing of season two did you decide to cast Ke Huy Quan as OB?
We were in London, so I at least had a version of our scripts. The way the process works, they’re constantly being rewritten, but OB was there, and his introductory scene was almost exactly as it was originally written. I’d like to say it was in early spring, so maybe just two months before we started filming. We were casting and Everything Everywhere All at Once was playing in LA and New York, but it wasn’t available nationwide yet. I think it would start next week. We had gotten a call from our casting director who said, “Hey, I’m in the process of putting together a list for OB – just initial thoughts.” But before I do that, I really think you should meet Ke, and I think it should be Ke. I think you should meet with him quickly because he will probably have a lot of offers for different things by Monday.”
This Friday, myself, Justin and Aaron, two of our directors, had a Zoom with Ke. We introduced him to the show and this character. We shared with him this introductory scene and perhaps the entire script. And then that Monday we called in the big guns; Kevin Feige called him and said, “Ke, I know you read the script. I know you’ve spoken to the boys. We really think you should. I really want you to join the Marvel family.” And he had already made his decision over the weekend. It was like, “I’m here. I’ve been a big fan of it for a long time.”
Gareth Gatrell
In Season 1, the series explored several time periods and locations outside of TVA, but the first four episodes of this season just stick with 1880s Chicago, 1970s London, and 1980s Midwest. How did you decide to focus more on the TVA and expanding its history?
Because that seemed to be where so many of our core character conflicts would come from. There was so much intersectionality of our characters and what they think about the TVA. Sylvie wants to burn it down because, as she says, the apple is rotten. Loki sees this as perhaps the only form of defense against whatever else comes his way in a war with Kang. Mobius and B-15 have dedicated their entire lives to this. You’re not quite ready to give it up yet. Renslayer feels like she’s on top of things, and you really understand why she feels she should be the one to get things back on track.
We want everyone to be in the gray area – they are neither good nor bad. They may make bad or heroic decisions, but they are trying to figure out who they are. The TVA seemed like the place where we could maximize the storytelling and thereby learn more about these characters. But stay tuned as we will be traveling to even more places [in Episodes 5 and 6].
Do you think TVA could appear in other MCU titles?
I would love it. Look, I’ve been involved with Loki for almost five years now by the time that show ends, and with every filmmaker that’s been involved with the show, we’ve all had the same conversations: It feels like this The TVA could really be this exciting unifying tool for all this storytelling. And we only saw a fraction of it. We’re specifically concerned with this one smaller section with Mobius and B-15 and Renslayer, but look at these vistas – this place is endless. The exciting thing for us is that there are certainly more stories to tell there. We carved out our own little corner of the sandbox and built something cool. We hope other people will want to come and play with it.
One of the things I liked most about Loki is the way it tells its own story. But have you thought about bringing more of the MCU into it?
Yes, in both seasons of Writers’ Rooms. It always felt wrong to go too far beyond the scope of things that would directly contribute to Loki’s character arc in these two seasons. That’s why we get [Jaimie Alexander as] Sif in there [in Season 1], we play with the variations in the void and different levels of Asgard-specific storytelling. But despite telling stories for almost 12 hours, it never feels like we have enough time. Ultimately, it was always the top priority to deal with the stories of our ensemble and not to neglect them.
Now, seasons 1 and 2 were always conceived as two chapters of the same book. The hope would be that in the future there will be more books that allow us to tell these stories. I definitely think we could start with that.
Would there be a third season of Loki? Is the future of the show finite or rather open?
I think the ending is open. We certainly didn’t develop this season with a mindset of, “We need to tackle Season 3,” like we did with Season 1, where there was a very specific, “Hey, we’re coming back.” But I also think that there can certainly be many, many, many more stories in this series with Loki in the “Loki” world and in other worlds connected to Loki the character.
Do you think Loki would ever return to the larger world of the MCU?
That is the hope. I don’t want to – yes. I think that the sun shining again on Loki and Thor was always the priority of the story we are telling. But for this meeting to be truly fulfilling, we need to get Loki to a certain point emotionally. I think that was the goal of these two seasons.
This interview has been edited and condensed.