On June 9th, 2021, viewers will finally get a glimpse of what became of everyone’s favorite God of Mischief after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”
Following the success of WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki is the third MCU series on Disney+. The story begins after Loki (Tom Hiddleston) takes the Tesseract and comes face-to-face with the Time Variance Authority (TVA), an organization that exists outside of time and space which is in charge of monitoring the timeline.
This version of Loki comes from the original Avengers film from 2012 – where the events of Thor: Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and Avengers: Infinity War never happened. In the original timeline, Loki was sent to Asgard, was released by Thor to help defeat Malekith, faked his death, took over Asgard, redeemed himself in the fight against Hela and the Grandmaster, and died in Thanos’ hands.
Here, this “time variant” faces an all-new challenge. After arresting Loki, the TVA, led by Mobius (Owen Wilson) needs the God of Mischief’s assistance to fix the timeline problems caused by his theft of the Tesseract. In addition, Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Judge Ravonna Renslayer and Wunmi Mosaku plays Hunter B-15.
Written, created, and produced by Michael Waldron, who is also working on next year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (as well as Rick and Morty), Loki consists of 6 episodes.
Tom Hiddleston expressed excitement about exploring Loki’s identity as well as his shapeshifting powers that were also used in Thor: Dark World and Avengers: Endgame:
“I love this idea [of] Loki’s chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don’t know whether you can trust him. You don’t know whether he’s going to betray you. You don’t why he’s doing what he’s doing. If he’s shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it.”
Tom Hiddleston
Furthermore, Waldron has compared Loki’s character to Steve Jobs; both being adopted and having a desire for control. Waldron has also shown excitement, along with Hiddleston, for including the TVA into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Loki is a character that’s always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be… [That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he’s completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out.”
Michael Waldron
Production locations: Atlanta, Georgia (including the Atlanta Marriott Marquis); other Georgia locations
This series is part of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and after its premiere on June 9th, will run for 6 episodes until July 14th, just 5 days after “Black Widow” kicks off the Phase 4 films in theaters (July 9th).