Marvel Studios: Assembled (2021) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Thyme
No, the other "Time".
Thank you. Much better.
Time
For some, time is a wheel.
An infinite repetition of what came
before and what is yet to come.
Looping endlessly over and over.
For others, time is an arrow.
Pressing faithfully forward.
We began Loki on February 10, 2020,
at eight o'clock in the morning
and wrapped production 299 days later.
Approximately 7,176 hours.
Or 430,560 minutes,
working and breathing and
dreaming with the show.
Take that number and whittle
it down with many clever edits,
and you get six episodes.
Totaling 280 minutes and
17 seconds of programming.
Now, whittle the experience
down even further,
and you get this one-hour
Give or take, documentary.
A comparatively brief time capsule.
A remembrance of things past.
Given the constraints, we
shouldn't waste a single second.
Let's go back to the beginning.
At the end of the first day,
I cannot believe that I'm doing this.
I literally cannot
believe it's happening.
Um, I first wore this
costume ten years ago.
I can't believe I'm still wearing it.
Um, and I'm so excited about this show.
Um, I'm so grateful to all of you
for everything you're gonna do on it.
So, um, thank you for day one of 849.
And onward we march.
I remember going to see the
first Iron Man in 2008.
And I was actually in Sweden,
working on a project there
with Kenneth Branagh.
And he went to see it the next weekend,
and we both thought, "God,
Iron Man was extraordinary".
And then he got the job
of directing Thor
I kind of joked about, you know
I think once we were on stage,
and I came in with an empty water cooler
and pretended it was the hammer of Thor.
He was able to invite me to audition
'cause he knew that it was going to be
a huge opportunity for so many people.
It's a long time since
I've seen you smile.
I remember, as clear
as day, the first auditions.
I almost remember the scenes.
There was a scene between two brothers,
and they couldn't reveal
the character names.
One was called Michael,
the other was called Lucas.
I believe I learned both sets of lines.
So you're saying
that our friends will stand
with me in defending our home,
but my own brother will not?
And then a month later,
Chris Hemsworth and I got
the call on the same day.
Chris and I got together, and
the moment I met him, I thought
"This is the beginning of the
most extraordinary journey.
"And I don't know
where it's going to go,
but I really like this person.
"This could be something".
From that point on, I
just threw myself at it.
I threw my whole soul at it.
Tom is a fan favorite.
People loved what he's brought
to the character Loki.
He's a character that has always
found a way to come back organically
in new, and interesting,
and exciting ways.
Your savior is here!
As we were looking
for the kind of stories
we wanted to tell on Disney Plus,
Tom just seemed like a real no-brainer
because of the richness
of that character
and the depth of that fan base.
Something happened after Avengers One.
That's when I realized
that Loki as a character
had taken on a life of its own
in the mind of the audience.
So that by the time we
got to Comic-Con in 2013,
Kevin Feige had this idea that I should
go out on stage in character.
And I said to him, "That's
insane and amazing.
"I'm in. Let's go".
It was a moment in time
that is unrepeatable.
I don't think I'll ever have a
moment like that ever again.
It was like stepping off
Somehow out of the environment,
into the world, as the character.
And hearing and feeling
the energy in that room
was something I will never forget.
Say my name.
- Loki!
- Say my name!
- Loki!
- Say my name!
Loki!
And I think after that,
it was, very generously,
that Kevin Feige, and Louis D'Esposito,
and Victoria Alonso at Marvel thought,
"Well, Loki's got to hang around
for a bit longer".
I, Loki, Prince of Asgard,
Odinson, rightful king of Jotunheim,
God of Mischief
I remember meeting
Joe and Anthony Russo.
And they said, "Infinity War is in
"It's a labyrinthine thing,
and everyone's involved.
"And we're trying to
refine what happens in it.
"There are some things we're
not sure of yet. However
we are sure that the
opening of this film
is Loki giving the Tesseract to Thanos".
You really are the worst brother.
"After which he is executed".
And I looked at Kevin, and I said
"So, that's it?"
And he was like, "Yep".
No resurrections this time.
It's gonna be an extraordinary
moment because
Immediately, you believe
in the power of Thanos.
That sacrifice meant something.
And we didn't wanna undo that sacrifice,
or suggest that it
never really happened,
or some other sort of way
that felt like it might cheapen
the real emotional weight
of that moment in that film.
We knew we wanted to tell
more stories with Tom.
On my way down to
coordinate search and rescue.
"On my way down to
coordinate search and rescue".
I mean, honestly, how do
you keep your food down
Shut up.
As Endgame was coming
together, the idea that,
throughout the time travel misadventures
of the Avengers, something goes wrong
No stairs!
Tom grabs the Cube and disappears.
It's a complication in that movie that
really sets our heroes
on their back foot.
One of the things that's
interesting is, it's not dealt with.
We have no idea where that goes.
One of the things that Kevin Feige
and myself were talking about was,
"Could that be a jumping-off point
for a new way to tell a Loki story?"
Variant identified.
I beg your pardon?
TV has always been
the medium of the anti-hero.
You think about the great anti-heroes
like Don Draper or Tony Soprano.
There's enough time
to kind of understand
what some people might call
"the bad guy" in another movie
or another type of story.
So we really wanted to have
as much runway as possible
to explore kind of what makes Loki tick.
We did the math, and he's
Loki's been on screen
for less than two hours
over the course of ten years,
and he's made this huge impact.
And suddenly now, we have
six hours to tell this story.
That's better.
It's a serious show.
It's a dramatic show.
It's a thrilling show.
It's a really wacky show.
And it was just this
amazing team of writers,
led by Michael Waldron,
just trying to crack
the world and the logic
of how this show works.
"The TVA manages all of
time". What does that mean?
You know, I think a lot of people,
what they expected was, like,
"This is gonna be Quantum Leap.
This is gonna be Loki
riding with Paul Revere,
influencing historical events".
And my pitch from the first
time I met with those guys is,
"Let's blow up what
people think the show is".
How'd we do?
When we were looking
for a director for this series,
we had a lot of interested parties,
a lot of great conversations.
Kate really rose above all of them
because of her take on the material.
I remember my agent
telling me, basically,
"This is just, like, a friendly
kind of meet-and-greet.
Do not prepare a pitch".
I ignored that and I did,
like, a full-on pitch.
She came in with
this shock-and-awe pitch
that was the most amazing
pitch that I had ever seen,
where it truly was the
What the show has become.
And I remember leaving that meeting
feeling like this is a person
who understands the spirit
of what we would love
to achieve with it.
And wasn't just going
to execute those ideas,
but that was going to
push them even further.
All at the same time, lift your
weapons up towards these guys,
like, ready to fight.
I asked her, "What do you think,
Kate, that the show is about?"
And she said, "I think
it's about self-acceptance.
You got a character who doesn't
know how to change and grow.
And we have this amazing
story that's actually about
coming to terms with who you are".
From that moment, I thought,
"This woman knows
what she's doing. She's in".
It was such a human, such a
deep insight, so simply put.
I'm just a bit of a
cheeseball, to be honest.
Like, I just I love
that it's about self-love
and, like, getting past your demons.
And I think something I always try
and bring to everything I do is,
digging into the emotion
and the truth of that,
and sort of letting the
characters be ugly, in a way.
For me, it feels a bit more real.
Again, I think it's just,
like, don't be scared
to tread on each other a bit.
- Okay, okay, nice. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
- 'Cause it's like
- As long as it's okay that we overlap.
- Here we go. Picture up
She has so many real-life
experiences that she puts into the show.
She's worked in a lot of offices
that sound a lot like the TVA,
so she would understand the buttons
to push to drive Loki crazy.
Shh!
The passage of time may be constant,
but the sensation of time is not.
An hour on the beach,
basking in the briny
glow of utter freedom,
feels very different from an hour-long
session in a dentist's chair.
And yet, a minute is
a minute is a minute.
We move forward one minute at
a time, one moment at a time
Stop
whether we want to or not.
It.
- And for that
- Stop it!
we can thank our tireless friends
at the Time Variance Authority.
There's an organization that goes back
in the history of Marvel Comics
called the Time Variance
Authority, the TVA.
It's an organization that I've
long been fascinated with,
just as I've paged through
comics at Marvel
in the many years that I've been there.
And I always knew that they could
have a very cool story to tell.
The notion of this bureaucracy
that basically controls
all of time and space.
- Come on.
- Let's go.
You're making a terrible mistake.
He's the trickster, and
he's this prince of Asgard,
this God of Mischief, who's had this
somewhat villainous role to play.
And we really just liked
the idea of plucking him,
quite literally out of his own time
and throwing him down in a place
where he doesn't know the rules.
You see him first in
his Avengers costume.
And so, that's this, you know,
very elaborate sort of
fighting outfit, right?
Absolutely not.
This is fine Asgardian leather.
So we wanted to just
do a real stark contrast.
Just a very, like,
open it up with a bang.
Now, hang on just a minute.
Two one Action!
We put him in a
standard-issue TVA jumpsuit
and essentially, in that scene,
break him down to his
most vulnerable core.
Please, through the door.
Oh, right. So the floor can drop out
from under me as soon as I try to leave.
Nice try. I'm ready for it this time.
- That's not how this chamber works.
- Liar.
You kind of wanted to give a
little insight into the character
that wasn't just about the wall
of the superhero costume, right?
You wanted to feel like
you were penetrating some
layers into this character.
You have no idea what I'm capable of!
I I think I might.
Have an idea of what he's capable of.
I remember sitting down with
Kevin Wright, the producer,
and some of the writers,
and they were telling me the story
of the show. And they were like,
"So, there's this really interesting
character called Mobius and, um,
he's kind of like an analyst in the TVA.
And he's a great intellect,
and he's a scholar.
And he kind of understands Loki.
And he's able to show
him parts of himself
he's never understood before".
And I always thought, "God, I wonder
who's gonna play that part?"
- And here he is.
- Here he is.
The one and only.
Let me ask you this. How
Thought you were leading up to, like,
"And there's only one
person in my mind"
- There's only
- " who could play this".
There's only one person.
- Instead it was, "Who is it gonna be?"
- It was only ever
"Here he is".
Well, when they first
spoke to me about Iron Man,
I kind of wanted to let Marvel
get established a little bit.
And so then when they talked to me
about Thor, and then about
uh, Captain America, and even Hulk,
I was like, "Well, you
know, I don't know"
So, um, it I'm just kidding.
You know what's funny is, like,
even the name "Mobius", it's like
I just like that name.
- It just is a cool
- It's a great name. Yeah.
So when people say,
"What are you doing?"
And, you know, "What are you
doing in the Marvel Universe?"
"No, I'm not wearing a cape. I'm
not I don't have any superpowers.
Other than the name 'Mobius',
which has a certain power to it".
In a story about anti-heroes,
the exciting thing about
Mobius was to play a guy
who was really just kind of a
down-the-middle, old-school hero.
Clock's always tickin'.
Which is better than the alternative.
He's the rascally detective.
And such a good foil for Tom.
How's training going?
- Complete natural.
- Yeah?
Learning about my jet ski there?
It was great when I first got
down here to work in Atlanta
because Tom We sort of
called them "The Loki Lectures"
that Tom would take us through
and work with me individually.
Just going over the lore
and everything that
he felt was important,
and showing me clips and things.
So that was really important
to me for understanding.
And then also, I ended up
just sort of writing down
some of the stuff he
said describing Loki.
And I think that even worked its way
sometimes into dialogue
that I would say.
Glorious purpose.
I remember Owen asking me
what I loved about playing Loki.
Like, never mind what was
great about the character,
what other people could see.
He was like, "Tom, what
do you love about it?
What do you love about Loki?"
And I heard myself saying,
"He plays all the keys on the piano.
So, he plays the light keys
and the major keys, all the
All the light, white notes up there.
But he also plays the heavy
keys with the left hand.
Those deep, profound chords
which are full of sorrow,
and grief, and anger.
And he's able to somehow make it
The music of Loki internally
has this breadth of the scale".
Um, and Owen said, "That
sounds about right".
Enough.
Back in your cage.
See, I can play the heavy keys, too.
I had a nice conversation
one day where I was talking with Tom.
And he quoted something, and
I said, "Is that Shakespeare?"
And he said, "Yes, Hamlet".
And I was proud just that
I got the Shakespeare part.
And then I said, "Have
you played Hamlet?"
And he said, yes, he had.
That, in fact, Kenneth Branagh
directed him in some
performances of Hamlet.
And he described what that was
like and how rewarding it was,
and I was just listening.
And, um, when he finished,
and this is, I guess,
that sort of English politeness,
uh, there was a slight sort of pause.
And then he said, "Have you
ever played Hamlet?"
Uh, and it's the first
time, uh, that, uh
That someone I've worked with
has ever even thought to ask
me if that was a possibility.
Because I can't imagine Ben
Stiller ever having wondered,
"God, has Owen ever played Hamlet?"
If you had to do a Shakespeare play
what would you choose?
Two Gentlemen of Verona, I think.
Do you know it well?
Tom almost was able to
keep a straight face.
- By heart.
- That's when I felt like
When he was asking the question,
"Have you played Hamlet?"
That's, like He was just, like
Just being so polite about it.
- But
- You never know.
- You could've played it at school
- Yeah.
in a school production.
- Yeah. What one could I
- You know most of it.
He knows most of Hamlet.
People don't know that.
- You know it by heart.
- No.
- That's not true.
- You know some of it.
- As You Like It?
- "Cease to persuade, loving Proteus.
"Home-keeping youth
have ever homely wit".
That's the first line from Two
Gentlemen of Verona, I think.
Which, I don't know the play,
but in college, I took
a Shakespeare class.
Déjà vu. Yeah, time moves a
little differently here in the TVA.
I think something that
me and Owen spoke about
at the very beginning was
he really wanted to,
like, get out of himself.
And I think a key thing
for that was the wig.
Obviously, we wanted to keep
the moustache for Mobius
'cause that's so key to
his character in the comics
and the artist that he's based on.
You gonna keep this? Or is
this gonna stay in your life?
Well, I've gotten a lot of
compliments on this moustache.
- It's very dashing, I think.
- "Dashing" is the word that
a lot of people have used. So I might
- I can't afford
- "Dapper".
"Dapper". I don't think
- I can afford to shave this.
- "Smart". Yep.
- This might be from
- "Fancy".
From here on out when you see ol' OCW,
you might see him with a mustache.
I really like the whole look.
And maybe it's a little bit sort
of like that feeling as a kid
when you're kind of make believe.
Come on, gear up.
There's been an attack.
Well, that's why I like this hat,
because this feels
a little bit like a
A gumshoe from kind of the '40s,
which I feel like this
"TVA" is a bit like.
I just wanted him to look completely
like off-the-rack detective.
Almost as if he, you know,
just found his clothing
through the lost and found at the TVA.
"Insubordinate,
stubborn, unpredictable".
Sounds like someone else I know.
I was just thinking it sounds
like someone I know.
We always had the Time-Keepers
as kind of this big, omnipotent threat,
antagonistic force in the TVA.
But as we were writing the series,
we realized we probably need
a more on-the-ground threat.
And that really took the
form of Judge Renslayer.
You ridiculous bureaucrats will
not dictate how my story ends!
It's not your story, Mr.
Laufeyson. It never was.
Judge Renslayer, played
with such poise, and
authority, and power
by Gugu Mbatha-Raw,
is the TVA's Chief Justice.
Hey!
I loved the dimensions of Renslayer.
I felt like people who know
the comics know who she is,
but she's never been
interpreted before, you know.
So, there is a sense that you
are really getting to create her.
And I just love the depths that she has
and the layers that she has.
And I think that she's powerful.
She's well respected.
She's worked her way up.
There's our Variant.
I don't think I've ever played
such an authoritative character.
You know what would happen if
we didn't prune the Timeline?
- What?
- Chaos. Death.
Free will?
Free will?
Only one person gets free will.
The one in charge.
We are here in my office
Uh, Ravonna Renslayer,
Judge Renslayer's office.
Uh, and this is This
is an incredible set.
And obviously we can't
fully see right behind us,
but between the Time-Keepers right here,
um, there's an amazing view,
um, of the whole of the TVA.
And it's really, um It's
really a powerful space.
I love it. And it's got that
mid-century warmth to it.
I really feel like I've bonded
with the space.
We all just knew
we wanted to build sets.
The TVA just lent itself to a
tactile, real, grounded feeling.
You wanted to see the rings
of coffee on papers and desks.
And like, to do that, you just
You have to build the world.
For the record, this really does feel
like a killing-me kind of a room.
You wanna have this kind
of Big-Brother-is-watching vibe
with the TVA, that the
Time-Keepers are always watching.
And it has this beautiful, big
statues of the Time-Keepers,
'cause they are gods, essentially.
But I love the idea of marrying that
with the Mad Men aesthetic,
because, you know, we think that
they're good guys, and it's stylish.
Home sweet home.
I thought there was no magic here.
There isn't.
We talked a lot about
fun sci-fi bureaucracies,
things like Defending Your
Life, or Beetlejuice,
or Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
They've all been great touchstones
for this massive organization
that feels kind of stuck in the
past, in that it's very analog
There's a lot of paper,
a lot of older machines.
But also do this amazing, huge job of
controlling all of time, basically.
Is this the greatest
power in the universe?
Autumn, our director of photography,
is doing an amazing job.
Painting with light and making
things feel very cinematic,
very moody, and very cool.
Mischievous scamp.
The world that the production
designers created
and kind of Kate's come up
with is very unique for Loki,
and it has a lot of texture.
And I like to kind of
bring that to the space
with lighting and lens choice.
And, you know, I want it to not
be too sharp and too pristine,
so it feels like it could
have been shot on 35.
And that's important to me,
and I think everyone was
kind of on board with that.
Swinging for the fences!
The TVA is radically different
than what we've seen so far in the MCU.
It's heavily kind of influenced by
mid-century Modernism and Brutalism,
with a strong dose of
Kafka-esque humor mixed into it
and bureaucratic kind of chaos.
Wish I could say I was surprised.
Yeah, I wish you hadn't interrupted us.
- Me? It's my fault?
- Look, he can't have gotten very far.
Split up!
Some of the architecture
and the design are circular.
I suppose it's the idea
of how we think of time.
Time does exist in circles.
Clocks and watches are circular.
We talk of the years and the seasons.
We speak of seasonal cycles, and
we think of time as a kind of
it's something that rolls along.
Take a ticket.
In some ways, that
is one of our simplest sets.
And yet it's a lot of people's favorite,
and it's sort of the funniest.
The idea is that it's
like a very oppressive,
compressed but trash compactor box.
Standing in this room now,
the ceiling is incredibly low,
and there are all these lights.
It feels quite claustrophobic.
And you just wanna get out.
The ceilings are 7'6'.
Even in a pretty humble apartment,
you typically have 8-foot ceilings,
so there's six inches less headroom.
So it feels like it's kind
of crushing down on you.
And then, obviously, as you
know, the ceiling is covered
in this sea of illuminated
circles of white, reflected light.
And inside of each circle,
there is a bulb that has a chrome tip
at the bottom and shines light up.
And so, if you look at it,
it looks like a sea of
eyeballs, essentially.
And, you know, there's
all the stanchions
and the kind of nylon ropes
that are corralling them like cattle,
immediately stripping them
of any kind of free will.
Thanks for visiting the TVA.
Don't hesitate to let us
know how we're doin'.
We interestingly have
a lot of hierarchy
across the whole story.
Like the TVA, in its
design, for example,
you have Minutemen,
Analysts, then Judges.
But that's reflected in
the design of the TVA.
We have these kind of Shining
Overlook-style corridors
that are endless and go on forever.
But we have the security level,
and the management office level,
and then the level where Renslayer is.
And I think that that
was really key as well,
was making it clear that the TVA,
even in the design and the architecture,
had this kind of feeling of hierarchy.
We really worked hard to develop
class systems in this show.
So we just created all
this different ranking.
So basically, the Hunters
have solid black uniforms.
All the Minutemen, all the
sort of enlisted, have,
what I call the harlequin pattern,
where everybody's, from side
to side, it's a contrasting panel,
and it switches around on each person.
So sometimes one panel is
lighter on the right side.
On the other person, it's
light on the left side.
On an another, it's light on the front.
So that it played with the
concept of time and space.
If you see a Loki, prune it.
The bad Loki, preferably.
It is kind of meant to
feel that this organization
sort of strips you
of your individuality.
And the only things that I
did do were scarring marks.
Like B-15 has the amount of kills
she's scratched in
numbers on her helmet.
She's a badass. She's
proficient physically.
And, um, she's strong.
She's dedicated and loyal.
Your Loki jumped me.
I told you he wasn't to be trusted.
When we were casting, Wunmi
came in, and it was just like,
"This is it. This is the character".
We talked a lot about
religion and faith.
And when people have crisis of faith or
like an epiphany or an awakening
and everything changes.
I looked happy.
What now?
She brings this warmth to the character,
but then she is our most badass.
Honestly, she's like
an action hero, right?
It was such an exciting
moment to be, like,
bring this really awesome
woman to the MCU.
I really was excited about
doing the stunts and
doing all of that stuff
'cause I've never really
done that stuff before.
A huge part of it was
just being comfortable
with a weapon like the Time Stick,
where you turn it on,
and you snap it open
and twist it, and the light goes on.
It's orange when you
want to prune something.
You almost hit me!
And then we have the TemPad, which,
it looks like a mobile phone,
a gold mobile phone.
And you can call up a Time Door.
So that's what we'd use
to get to the new branch
and back to the TVA.
The technology that they're using
needs to feel like it's not,
it's not futuristic,
but it's not archaic.
It needs to be this kind
of ethereal place in time.
Because the way that it
was written and described
in the script from the writers was
that it was a glassy time door,
it instantly kind of started
to all click into place.
Sir
And one of the things
that really inspired us
for the Time Doors was
David Lynch's Dune,
when they're practice fighting,
and they have these kind
of shields over them.
And we did a camera test shoot,
and we shot an element.
And instantly I jumped into literally
lookdeving this element out.
And we lookdeved out probably
a good 150 different designs
before we landed on something
that everyone really liked.
Fancy technology.
Threatening interrogation tactics.
Seems you and I are
in a loop of our own.
Yeah, the Time Theater's where
we really broke the back of this,
the early part of our shoot.
And there's such a huge
and hugely important scene
that takes place in it.
Do you enjoy hurting people?
It's a simple question.
Do you enjoy killing?
I'll kill you.
What, like you killed your mother?
He and Mobius in the Time Theater,
it's two people talking
for 30 pages about identity
and philosophy, and
life, and it's thrilling.
I can't believe you were D.B. Cooper.
I was young, and I lost a bet to Thor.
Obviously, when you're working
on a Marvel production,
there's a lot of secrecy, right?
So not everyone has a script.
And I remember filming
on the Time Theater,
Owen and Tom are looking at a
stage, but there's nothing on it.
So, the stage is paused
on the Avengers on stage.
And then Loki gets up. He
sets down the Time Disk.
Me and the editors have
kind of cut together, like,
"Okay, we think this is a good
moment to play, or this moment".
Let's go from the top of that clip,
just so we get the timing on it.
All right. Let's reset. Let's shoot it.
There were points
where the crew were like,
"Okay. This is two guys in a room,
and they're looking at a wall.
And Kate and Tom seem to have
a groove for what's going on".
'Cause I'd say, "Now it's Dark
World. Or now it's Avengers".
So, I've gone back to the
same clip of Mum dying.
This is where the reaction
goes on my own now.
What was really
beautiful about it was that,
filming that, some of the
crew were probably, like,
"Okay, this is very strange".
But they still threw their
heart and souls into it.
And I think it was a real
unifying moment for everyone.
And also, beyond that,
just seeing Owen and
Tom's chemistry on screen.
It was incredible.
And, like, it kind of
began this chess match
that both those characters really
play across the whole show.
A fugitive Variant's been
killing our Minutemen.
And you need the God of Mischief
to help you stop him?
That's right.
Why me?
The Variant we're hunting is
you.
I beg your pardon?
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend".
And Loki is, by far,
his own worst enemy.
In the 11 years of playing
him, over six films,
spanning 13 hours and 50 minutes,
he has fought his
brother and his father,
Frost Giants and Elves,
Avengers and Titans.
But I can say with complete certainty
that Loki's biggest battle has
always been within himself
until now.
If this show was about Loki
learning to love himself,
a key way to help him arc and
learn to overcome those things
is to have somebody that's gonna come in
and challenge those
views in the first place.
This isn't about you.
Right.
Sophia plays a character in the comics
that was known as Sylvie Lushton.
She was an apprentice of Loki's
and sort of someone that he
groomed to be a great sorcerer.
Our version in the show is basically
another version of Loki himself.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
- You trying to enchant me?
- No.
- It won't work.
- Why? Because you're a magician?
No, because my mind is too strong.
What really intrigued me
about the story was that
this was a female variant of
Loki who was a lot more in line
with The Enchantress character
that we know from the comics,
but also, in a sense, a complete
re-imagining of The Enchantress.
I thought there was something
interesting in that.
Like, taking these two
kind of identities of Loki
but doing something different.
- Keep it together.
- It's gonna be fine.
She's another version of him in
the unlimited universes
um, that are around. And there
are many versions of Loki.
So her nexus event
pulled her away from
her Loki life in Asgard,
and so she's been living a
parallel life the whole time.
And it hasn't been great for Sylvie.
We still needed cues
to her being a Loki.
But she needed to feel armored in a more
lost-and-found sort of way as well.
Sort of as if she was picking up pieces
along the way in her hideout.
It's as if Sylvie needed to feel
as though she was trying to recede
into these worlds a little bit,
but also be badass, tough, and armored.
They've borrowed things from Loki.
Sort of the gold shape around the neck,
and the leather, and the cape.
The green circles on
On the arms are The
green is for Loki, obviously.
And there's little bits of
Enchantress there as well.
We really wanted it
to be super practical.
Something that you can fight in
and that Sylvie could be on the run in,
rather than high heels and a leotard.
Such a gift of a character.
I get to just be this absolute
badass who's really angry,
and fight all of these guys.
Something that was really fun
in looking at Sylvie
and her fighting style
and looking at these little
differences between her,
you know, being a
female version of Loki,
what makes her different?
And it's the nature and nurture.
Bam. Push down.
Loki grew up in a palace,
and he's very balletic,
the way he fights.
It's very graceful and very beautiful.
Whereas Sylvie, she's
had to be on the run
and live and grow up in an apocalypse.
So, I always think of her a bit like
a feral cat, the way she fights.
You almost expect her to bite someone.
You see her at some
point take off her horns
and put them in someone's face.
Whereas Loki, it's very,
like, big arm movements.
Loki has this matador style of fighting,
where everything is about
a kind of elegance
and a kind of showmanship.
And fight!
We're actually trying to
build on everything I've done,
but make it even more
graceful, I suppose. If I can.
It's another mechanism
for story. It's very cool.
Hey! There it is.
Once you take away all
the action and spectacle,
our story is about identity
and someone finding
their place in the world.
- You're not a serious man.
- You're right. I'm a god.
You're a clown.
In Episode Three, in Shuroo,
this is a really big moment for
Loki and Sylvie in their journey.
They're actually working as a team.
We have to get on that ark
and make sure it takes off.
How?
We go around.
Loki and Sylvie have
to run through this town,
and the stakes are very high.
And the scene has to have
an enormous amount of
momentum and propulsive energy.
And Kasra built a town.
He just built the town on the backlot.
Shuroo was a set and a set piece
that from the early days, we
planted the flag and said,
"This is what it's going to be.
And we want it to be big.
We want it to be practical.
They need to be able to
run through this city.
We have to build the city".
Shuroo, where we are now,
has some of the archetypical
visual elements of a frontier town,
but has some elements that
are completely different,
from what we've seen on Earth
and completely different
from any other alien worlds
that have been established
so far in the MCU.
The scenes are all at night, and
you gotta check it out at night.
There's a lot of black light paint,
so the finishes, as you see them now,
are quite different than where
they actually end up being.
There's a quality where the architecture
itself becomes light sources
because there's these
elaborate, painted patterns
that are interactive with light on them.
And so, it's almost, like,
floating, glowing patterns.
Do we trust each other?
We do and you can.
Good.
So, we walk up, we walk
through this tunnel
and into the city of Shuroo. Follow me.
Ta-da!
Which is, I have to say,
the most amazing One of the most
amazing sets I have ever been on.
I mean, it's been This has
all been built on the backlot,
here in Atlanta at the studios.
Uh, it's all been lit and painted
so that it glows in the dark.
Uh, it didn't exist before.
And even on a Marvel project,
I've never been on a set
this size, I don't think.
The scene here is being shot as a oner.
And so what's required to do that
is essentially a set that is
360 degrees photographable.
So, every surface has to be designed,
and built, and set decked.
Big part of it was not building
any more set than we need.
It's really doing a lot of
planning in the early phases.
Kate worked with previz
and storyboards quite a lot
to figure out exactly
how much we needed.
So that was a huge part to making sure
the resources were utilized well.
Kate and I have probably been
working on this for about a year
when we first met,
and started our prep in
Los Angeles at Disney.
There are cuts in our sequence,
but we wanted the audience
to feel like it's one shot.
So, we have stitches that transition
us from one shot to the other.
But the way that we filmed
them, we hide them
so that they feel seamless,
so you feel like it's one
shot from start to finish.
I think it will be eight or nine
sort of stitches in the oner.
But essentially, we come
through this thing.
And behind me, you see
In the show, you see this
enormous crowd of people.
And at the very, very end of
this street, up in the night sky,
is the docking point for this ark,
this ship that is potentially leaving.
And these meteors are
crashing into the buildings,
and the buildings are falling
down, and it's mayhem.
People are running and screaming,
and trying to get on the ark.
And there are guards who
are trying to stop them.
So, to have the two of us,
to have Loki and Sylvie,
myself and Sophia, have
to get through this,
just creates an extraordinary,
dynamic momentum.
And it's so exciting that at the moment
that Loki and Sylvie actually connect,
that it finishes at the end of this
extraordinary piece of action.
Do you think that what
makes a Loki a Loki
is the fact that we're destined to lose?
No.
We may lose.
Sometimes painfully.
But we don't die.
One of the writers in our
writers' room, Elissa Karasik,
she came in with a real strong POV
that it should run at
that love-story thing.
And it was something
the whole writers' room
got behind from day one.
Not bad.
You know, it's so chaotic to fall
in love with a version of yourself,
but at the same time, it's such
a bad idea and so mischievous,
it's, like, of course Loki would
fall in love with himself.
But he's also a character that,
I think, needs to, you know,
get past his demons
and find the good within himself
to be able to go on
that redemptive journey.
So at the heart of it,
it is this love story,
and you never fall in
love at the right time.
The nice thing about it is that
Crater Lake is where these two
characters really come together,
and they realize there's
something deeper going on here.
You know, in life,
we all go through struggles,
but we can't do it alone.
And if we have people we can trust,
it lightens the load,
and it gladdens the heart.
And I think the relationship
between Loki
and Sylvie is about that connection.
That they learn, each of them,
to care about the other.
What a incredible seismic narcissist.
You fell for yourself.
Her name was Sylvie.
Ah, Sylvie.
Lovely. How do you spell that?
Is that with an I-E or just an I?
Is she alive?
For now.
People in love often
speak of time stopping
when they first catch that
jolting glance of their paramours,
as if our brain, perhaps even
the universe, is telling us,
"Your life is forever changed".
"Sear this moment into your memory".
So much is forgotten
and discarded every day.
A password, an acquaintance's name.
Our inability to control
what stays and what goes
is a constant reminder of the
fallibility of the human mind.
Objects in the rear view are often
much smaller than they appear,
and they get smaller
and smaller each day.
But as we march forever onward,
we will inevitably arrive at
one of those defining moments
where clarity arrives, followed
quickly by more uncertainty.
What we do in this moment
can often define our lives
in ways we never dreamed of.
What is it?
Sylvie finally gets to the Time-Keepers.
And then she finds herself
in a fight with Renslayer.
That was a really fun scene.
It's like, "Oh, wow!
This woman can fight. Ah!"
"Sugar. Maybe I've met my match here".
This time I finish the job.
It's really the first time that we
get to see them both together.
They have such different
styles, I think,
because Renslayer came up
from the military
background as a Hunter,
and Sylvie really did have this
street-wise fighting style.
The stunt team and the fight team
are really careful as well
about making sure the fights
make sense with the story.
And we make sure that the
The scenes work as scenes
without any fighting
and then, sort of add the fighting in.
I think it does make sense to go back.
- Yeah.
- Even though it's less aggressive,
- but she's coming forward.
- Yeah.
- Also
- Keep the counter step.
- It's a good counter step.
- Yeah.
In a musical, you sing
when you don't have the words
to express how you feel anymore.
When you get to that
point, you start singing.
With this, it's like, when
you don't have the words
to express how you feel anymore,
we fight.
For Renslayer, it's kind of
a fascinating arc to go from
this very, very sort of straight
perception of the world that she has
to it sort of all crumbling
before her eyes.
Did Judge Renslayer really
feel betrayed by her beloved TVA?
Why don't you come back out
and we can talk about it?
When I pitched The Void,
my thought was it's meant to be
this barren wasteland where the TVA
sends everyone, and it's rubbish.
It was so weird 'cause
I was on set, obviously,
and we're in this countryside.
And it's gray, and it's miserable.
And I was like, "Oh, my God.
I've pitched England".
But it really did remind me of it.
It was quite strange. Quite a lot
of our cast and crew are British.
We were like, "Yeah, we
feel like we're home".
What I really wanted to
feel in The Void was,
it's this place where it's
like an overgrown garden.
We have all these weird structures.
Like, we have a boat on land,
and you see all these kind of strange
things that have been deleted
that shouldn't exist in time.
We had a lot of fun with Easter eggs
and sprinkling in stuff
that shouldn't be there.
There's meant to be this kind of sadness
and this kind of lack
of life about the place.
But there are some things in The Void
which have learned to stay alive.
And they've managed to
make a life in The Void,
if that's even possible.
And I can introduce you to
them if you like.
So when I got a call to do it,
I said, "Well, what is it?
"Is it to play an older version of Tom?"
That's what I assumed it was.
They put it much more delicately.
They said, "No, you're
playing Classic Loki".
So I said, "So it's in the green
Lycra bodysuit, with muscles".
They said, "No, you're not
gonna have the muscles".
So I'm very distraught that,
having had been born
without any, as you can see,
that I thought I would finally
I would finally get to wear
a green Lycra suit
with built-in muscles.
But that hasn't happened.
But I've got everything else.
The horns, and the cape, and
the, you know, the boots.
When I knew there was
gonna be this character,
- there are, obviously, all these Lokis
- Old.
No, no. It wasn't
just old. We literally,
there's only one person we
thought of. And it was Richard.
If we If you'd said, "No",
I don't know what we
would have done, really.
- 'Cause it'd be
- You would've gone to
No. No, no. It was
In fact, even in the concept
art when we were drawing it,
it was drawn with Richard's face.
It was like a wish fulfilment.
- Here we are, livin' the dream.
- Good.
I'm livin' the dream. You may not be.
- I am in the dream.
- You're saying that
- 'cause the cameras are rolling.
- I'm living in the dream.
Well, thank God that
Loki has a sense of humor.
And thank God that the MCU
has a sense of humor
because it was just feeling
like you could go really
to all corners for inspiration.
In so many ways I kinda thought,
there's no acting required
because the costume does it.
I mean, it's so massive, and I'm 6'6".
But then the boots that I have
have, like, two inches
on it, so I feel
I'm probably 6'8" in it already.
And the shoulders are out here.
I betrayed you, and now, I'm king.
My army, my throne.
Something from the comics
that I love about Loki is, like,
he has been all these different
personalities, you know.
In the early comics,
he was very villainous,
but then you have the very different
Kid Loki in the later comics.
He's been like a unicorn.
He's been President.
I feel like I'm having
an identity crisis.
It was fun. It was weird.
We were able to create all of
these bandit versions of Lokis.
They all got different nicknames.
They were, like, Glamshades Wolfie,
which was kinda
based originally of, like,
sort of a tribal leader. Like a shaman.
And we had Poky Loki.
It was just another play on
In-Prison Loki. Bicycle Loki.
These are bicycle handlebars,
which I think is very creative,
and you could probably try to make,
to recreate at home, if you so choose.
It was endless.
Why the hell is there
an alligator in here?
Alligator Loki is wholly
invented by Michael Waldron
in the first pitch he
ever came to us with.
I'll tell you, for every
really dumb idea
like that that made it in,
there's a hundred even stupider ones
that these guys had
to pull me back from.
That's alligator for growling and
saying "liar" at the same time.
I remember sending a note to
the VFX team from our team,
which was basically like,
"We want to have an alligator
that's very handsome
with beautiful eyes".
And I was like, "What is this job?"
Alligator Loki was a very unique
character because of the fact that
sometimes the physics
of a real alligator
are not taken into consideration.
Things like picking him up for instance.
Well, picking up an alligator
is a very, very strange thing
because alligators' spines
only kind of bend a certain way.
So we were working with ILM on this.
They found a piece of reference
that was one of the best
references I've ever seen.
It's this alligator called Wally,
and he is a support alligator.
He's absolutely amazing.
So we used this reference
to make our alligator, based off
of this particular Wally alligator.
It can't just be an alligator.
It can't be something that's
like, "That's just an alligator".
We really wanted it to give
that kind of cheeky Loki grin
or that mischievous look to him.
So, we based our alligator off of
as much reality as we possibly could.
Inside The Void is a living
storm that consumes matter.
You can think of the biggest
storm you've ever seen.
Thunder, lightning, dark clouds.
And the storm is called Alioth.
I love monster movies.
And trying to tackle a monster
where we kind of give little
tastes and teases of this creature,
but we don't kind of show him off
completely until the big showdown.
'Cause I love Jaws,
and I think something really
effective about that film is that
you get peeks at the shark,
but you don't completely see it
until the big finale on the boat.
And I think, for us, we were really
inspired with Alioth by nature,
and nature can be terrifying.
While they were pitching the story,
I literally was like, "Hey, guys,
could you give me one second?"
And I jumped on Google.
And I'd seen a documentary
on volcanic eruptions,
and pyroclastic flows, and
just absolutely beautiful, uh,
thermal lightning inside
these pyroclastic flows.
So, I got the job,
and then the first thing that I said
as soon as I had boots
on the ground was,
"We need to start
lookdeving this character".
We put together this absolutely
fantastic kind of package
that had a very, very
short animation of Alioth
in what I envisioned him to be.
Come and get me! Come on!
The main thing with Alioth is that
even Kid Loki describes, as he says,
"He's a shark, and we're
in his tank, basically".
I think that was the key thing with
Alioth, is that he's a predator,
and he's just there to eat.
And it's great 'cause the TVA are just
throwing him loads of T-bone steaks.
"It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times".
It also happens to be the end of time.
In the final episode of Loki,
after jumping from New
York to the Gobi Desert
to the TVA to a Renaissance fair
to Pompeii to Roxxcart to
You get the idea.
- Long, strange trip and all that jazz.
- Ow!
After all the space-time shenanigans,
our heroes arrive at their destination.
The end of the road trip
where you get out of the car,
stretch your legs, and continue on,
barely pausing to reflect
on the journey behind you.
It's a refreshing change to go
into the final act of a story,
where Loki is neither leading
an alien horde into battle
nor knifing a loved one in the back.
Usually in Marvel, the
third act of the story
is obviously, like, a massive battle
and a huge, amazing spectacle.
And I feel like our Episode
Five of Alioth is sort of
almost like a traditional
third act of an MCU story.
Whereas I loved in Episode Six
that it was actually
more within our show like,
"No, we're gonna sit down, and
we're gonna have a conversation
about all these questions
we've put forward to you guys
over the last six hours".
After a very long journey, Sylvie
and Loki are able to discover
that the TVA had an architect.
At the end of time, beyond The
Void, beyond Alioth, is a doorway,
and through the doorway is a Citadel.
The Citadel is essentially
uninhabited and abandoned.
But there is one solitary
light on in the window,
and that light is illuminated
by He Who Remains.
I was really inspired by the idea
of this kind of manor house
like Sunset Boulevard or Grey Gardens.
These basically big, ornate houses,
but there's a loneliness to them.
Then something that
Kasra came up with that
Which I thought was so inspired,
was that the Citadel's actually carved
from the rock of this asteroid,
which I think gives it such
a beautiful, unique look
with the gold veins running
through this black kind of rock.
I really wanted the Citadel
to feel like it had big scale,
because it only added to He Who
Remains' loneliness and isolation,
and, like, what lengths
he's gone for basically
to protect himself from himself.
The Wizard of Oz was a big touchstone.
It's somebody who is
looming large over the story
and is the driving force of the mystery
of finding the man behind the curtain.
And hopefully being surprised by
what you find when you finally
get a peek behind the curtain.
This is wild.
Once you see behind the curtain,
everything is changed.
And so, I think, for that role,
it's so exciting for an actor then,
like Jonathan to come in,
and live this character
and get to do it.
Because, while they're only here
for maybe 30 minutes of this series,
it feels like they are just in the
DNA of the entire run of the show.
I'd try to explain what I'm capable of,
but we don't have the million years
it would take for you to understand.
Some cultural pop references were,
of course, The Wizard of Oz,
Sunset Boulevard, Citizen Kane,
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
The archetype of the wizard
and what happens to him
when he gets bored, you know?
And he becomes a trickster.
Guys, if I was gonna
do an exploding chair,
why wouldn't I just do
an exploding floor?
And I think when we meet He Who Remains,
he's on the borderline
of those two things.
You don't really know where he's at.
And I think the ambiguity of that
is one of the wicked things about it.
You think I'm just here with you.
Whoo!
I am everywhere.
He Who Remains has lived forever.
One of the great things
I got to experience
with our costume designer is that
every piece, we decided,
was from a different place.
The cape I had on was
from the Victorian era,
the shoes are from Genghis Khan,
the pants from Mongolia, et cetera.
You just mix and match it together,
and it informs the character.
Without the me, without the TVA
everything burns.
Then what are you so afraid of?
Me.
Jonathan Majors came into this
production in our final week,
and has created something,
I think, that it will be talked
about for a long time.
- Yeah, we're dancin'.
- Very nice.
- We're dancin', just dancin'.
- Yeah.
It's absolutely thrilling.
And you could feel the energy on set,
because I think the crew knew.
Like, we're watching the flowering
of the next phase of
the Marvel Universe.
The Variant of He Who Remains,
the one he's been talking about,
the one that he's so afraid of
I'll see you soon.
is Kang.
Kang is bent on destruction.
And I'm so curious to see what
Jonathan does in the future.
I think with He Who Remains,
the objective for me
was to give me the
largest canvas possible.
And then from that, as Kang begins
to rear his head and do his deeds,
in so many ways, he has no
choice but to be in opposition
or to be different from He Who Remains.
That was the thing that grabbed
me and pulled me into the role.
The fact that Kang lives
in so many iterations.
As He Who Remains says,
"Reincarnation, baby".
You know you can't get to the end
until you've been
changed by the journey.
This stuff, it needs to happen.
The potential of a multiverse
is literally infinite.
We can already look at our
singular universe with awe.
One decision begets another and another.
We like to say
that the possibilities are endless.
But in a singular timeline,
that is simply not the case.
Each falling grain of
sand in an hourglass
changes how every other grain will fall.
We're both masters of our own
destiny and victims of circumstance.
There's simply no knowing
how things will turn out,
until they happen.
As William Shakespeare wrote
in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
"It ain't over till it's over".
Or maybe that was Lenny Kravitz.
Anyway, the future of
Loki is still unwritten,
as it is with us all.
I will be 40 years old when
Loki goes out on Disney Plus.
And I was 29 years old
when I was cast as Loki,
so it's been ten,
going on for 11, years.
It has been one of the great,
if not the greatest, surprise
of my whole life, probably.
I mean, it just It's hard to sum up.
I was a young actor,
and I felt so lucky even to have
the chance to audition for Thor.
Today was the first day that
I wore this particular costume.
Under this
My best friend.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Hello.
In all my fittings way back,
you know, four, five months ago,
I kept thinking, "When am
I gonna get the horns on?"
'Cause it's almost like the
last piece of the jigsaw
in kind of becoming the character.
And to wear this thing is,
it feels enormously powerful.
What happened to you on
Earth that turned you so soft?
To be cast as Loki
and to have that extraordinary
opportunity to make that film,
even as a standalone experience,
was more than I could
ever have dreamed of.
As Loki, I had to play the villain
and then I had to play the anti-hero.
And this time around is the first chance
I've had to see if we can really
break the mold and change him.
Why aren't we seeing this the same way?
Because you can't trust
and I can't be trusted.
I really want the fans
to feel that energy
and feel excited and inspired
about where we go next.
You know, we're here at
the end of this shoot now.
I hope we've made something that
people feel is very special.
I'd love to do one more
after this where I don't cry.
I feel very grateful that
I'm part of a project
that I think has probably changed
the direction of the MCU.
What people don't know is that
Is that Owen has basically broken
open the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That's what they call it, the MCU.
What's that mean?
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- Yeah.
So, the whole interweaving
web of all the movies.
They're all stitched together.
They all reference each other.
And Mobius has cracked it all open.
It's true.