- What I'm interested in the show
is "Can we get to a point where Loki
is doing that self-reflection on his own
gaining a better understanding of who he is on his own?"
I think that's a really compelling journey
to take a blockbuster movie villain on
over the course of a six episode TV series.
- You picked up the Tesseract breaking reality.
I want you to help us fix it.
- [Michael Waldron] Loki picks up in 2012,
right after the battle of New York
after Loki has been defeated.
- [Kate Herron] In "Endgame," we see Loki,
obviously steal a Tesseract, a different Loki,
when they travel back in time.
And that Loki is our Loki,
who we'll be following in the show.
So he wasn't supposed to steal the Tesseract.
He was going to, you know, go back to Asgard and be
arrested, and a lot of things obviously happened to him
across that time and go on that journey
from villain to antihero and see this growth
and reconcile with his brother,
and our Loki hasn't done that.
Like, you know, he's in a very different
emotional space and he breaks time.
And basically by stealing that Tesseract
and then he's arrested by an organization
called the Time Variance Authority.
- Which is a sort of bureau in the MCU that deals with time
and essentially maintaining the integrity of time.
The idea is that there's this Sacred Timeline
how things are meant to happen and unfold.
And, and that's sort of overseen
by these overlords, the timekeepers as it were.
- Basically it's their job to make sure
that things are proceeding along that correct path.
As Loki's pulled into the TVA,
I would say, arguably, that takes place almost outside
of time where the TVA exists as in sort of outside
and alongside that, you know, time, as we think about it.
- [Loki] You're taking me somewhere to kill me.
- No, I'm taking you someplace to talk.
- Well, I don't like to talk.
- But you do like to lie, which you just did.
- [Owen Wilson] Mobius represents the TVA
and he believes in that mission.
Mobius has really studied Loki
and knows, you know, so much about, you know, his life.
And that actually is sort of the chess match that kind
of plays out between Mobius and Loki.
The fact that I'm really kind of a Loki expert, you know,
that sometimes can even give me
the upper hand in dealing with him.
And the fact that I sort of know things about his life
and what's to come and can prove it to him.
You know, the idea of free will,
I'm not sure that Mobius even concerns himself with,
you know, that philosophical question.
He sort of just accepts the timeline for what it is.
And that's that.
- What I'm interested in in this show is "Can we get
to a point where Loki is asking
those questions of himself, unprompted?"
- [Kate Herron] Tom always has this really
beautiful way of describing Loki.
Like the personality he has is, like,
always different keys on the piano
and in the, you know, the movies that have come before,
before us, we've seen some keys on this piano
but I think in the television show
we're making, we get to explore so much more.
And I think even just things like Loki's magic
we get to explore more of that.
And the whole show is really about identity and self worth.
And, you know, am I completely bad?
Am I completely good?
Am I something more in between?
And I think Loki is the perfect character
to explore that idea with,
and that echoes out across all the characters in the show.
So, I just think from like a nerdy perspective,
it's fun, right,
because there's the nature and nurture aspect
because obviously we've seen this Loki from Avengers
go on a very different story
and seeing how those circumstances affected him.
But I love in our story that we've put a character we know
but in a completely different circumstance
and it's like "Oh, well,
will his journey be similar or won't it?"
And I think that's something really fun to unpack.