Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is “more Loki than you’ve ever seen” when the time-meddling God of Mischief returns in his own Marvel Studios original series, teases producer Kevin Feige. After escaping through time and space with a stolen Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, creating a branched reality spinning out of the Battle of New York in 2012’s The Avengers, this “Variant” Loki is immediately arrested by the Time Variance Authority: a bureaucratic organization tasked with protecting the “sacred timeline” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Facing deletion from reality unless the trickster helps capture an even greater threat to the Multiverse, Loki is forced to work with TVA Agent and Loki expert Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson).
“Loki’s a mercurial shapeshifter who seems to present one thing on the external when there’s perhaps another thing going on in the internal,” Hiddleston told TV Insider about circa-2012 Loki. “He’s always worn many masks.”
This isn’t the Loki who met his noble end defying Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Avengers: Infinity War — this is the Loki who failed to defeat his adoptive brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the newly-assembled Earth’s mightiest heroes when invading Earth at Thanos’ behest in The Avengers. And like The Avengers, where the master manipulator found himself behind bars, Loki finds himself powerless when he’s dressed down in a TVA-branded prisoner’s jumpsuit.
“You can take his scepter away, you can take off the cape and the fine Asgardian leather and literally put him in a button-down shirt and pants, and he’s still Loki — he’s more Loki than you’ve ever seen,” Feige said. “And that’s not just because Tom Hiddleston looks good in any clothes at all, but he does.”
Called on to help stop an even greater threat making their own mischief in the timeline, the reluctant recruit is saddled with the mustached Mobius, who Wilson says has the “highest academic honors in the studies of Loki.”
“It’s a little bit of a chess match to gain Loki’s trust, but in that shared endeavor, there’s an interesting dynamic,” Wilson said, comparing the relationship to “Nick Nolte getting Eddie Murphy out of jail in [the 1982 movie] 48 Hrs.” Feige expects Loki and Mobius to be “one of the most popular pairings we’ve ever had at Marvel” when the series from head writer Michael Waldron and director Kate Herron premieres Wednesday, June 9, on Disney+.
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