Name: Tom Hiddleston reflects on Loki Season 2 and Loki's incredible journey (EXTENDED INTERVIEW)
Uploaded: 2024-09-21T17:17:34.000Z
Duration: 12 min 46 s
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The most thrilling aspects of making Loki season two was actually the atmosphere that was created of creative collaboration with everyone on the team.

Kevin Wright, our producer, production designer and director of episode three, and Dan DeLue, our director of episode two, Eric Martin, the head writer, Catherine Blair, on the writing team, Michelle Blood, another producer, and the cast, Owen Wilson, Sophia DeMartino, Kihui Kwan, Wimmy Masaku, Eugene Cordero, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the entire team. There was a sense of - we synchronized watches, we all made sure that our imaginations were pointing in the same direction, and from start to finish, there was never a day where somebody didn't have a great idea, and the idea could come from anyone.

And that's why I want to just salute, just pay my respects to this extraordinary team, to the Loki family, because it felt like a very live atmosphere, that anyone could have a good idea at any time and suggest it, and it would go into the mix, and we put it into the script, or we put it on camera, and that sense of liveness, that sense of a set that felt very alive, very receptive to new ideas, is what you want in any creative process. You never want it to feel like it's set, it's planned, and then you just execute the plan, because actually, the camera is interested in life, it's not necessarily interested in planning, and that, this atmosphere was created by our lead creative team, it's something I just feel extremely grateful for, because I think it's created a real cohesion to the vision of the show, and I felt like we were all instruments in an orchestra, and we knew what music we were playing, and it was a very unusual and very fulfilling experience on set, so my hats off to them, our directors, our producers, and our wonderful actors, performer, and possibly also as an audience member, to inhabit a character, or to watch a character play out an arc over many years in film and television, and it felt extremely meaningful to me, and has felt like an unusual honour to get to play Loki for this length of time, every iteration has been interesting, the ancient mythological inheritance of the character has such depth and breadth and profundity, and the thing that I felt found so fulfilling about it on this particular occasion was, I believe that season two and the finale contains echoes and resonances of every single version of Loki that I had played, and he's introduced in the first Thor movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh and written by Don Payne, as a young prince, a younger brother, who is wrestling with his sense of belonging, his sense of identity, and his place in the world, his purpose, if you will, he's broken-hearted, and that heart hardens into something vengeful and angry, and then in Avengers, he comes down to earth, and he says to Nick Fury, played by Samuel L.

Jackson, "I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose", and that purpose is arrogant and hubristic and entitled, and across six films you realise that there was no glory, it was inglorious, it all came to nothing, it was a fallacy, it had no meaning, and ends in sacrifice, and in the first episode of season one of the show, Mobius reveals to Loki how meaningless and baseless that entitlement to glorious purpose was, but his connection with Mobius and his connection with Sylvie gives him a second chance to rethink and redefine his sense of purpose, and then you find the character at the end of the story still engaged with ideas of belonging, still engaged with a sense of identity and a sense of purpose, but those are infused with a new kind of humility, and the broken soul from that first Thor movie has gone on such a journey in his lived experience and in his heart that he's able to heal aspects or fragments of that broken soul and redefine it for himself, and I hope that redemption is meaningful for the audience, it certainly felt meaningful for me. Loki in season two is confronted immediately by problems, by anxiety, by crisis.

At the end of season one, Sylvie kills He Who Remains, that was her mission, that he was a tyrannical force who was constricting free will and limiting life, and she knew she needed to remove him so that free will could thrive, that she could have a life, but what it's done is it has unleashed chaos in time, so there are many, many multiplicitous and multitudinous realities, a multiverse is born and it creates a problem, it creates a problem for the TVA, it creates a problem for Loki, because in his mind the consequences of Sylvie's actions are going to lead to a terrifying and cataclysmic war where everything will be destroyed, so he's got this extraordinary interior propulsion to solve the he's also finds himself displaced in time, so he's lost his anchor in time and he's time slipping, so he's moving from past, present and future and between these different time zones, but in the same place, and so he's just extremely stressed basically, and he has to chase down solutions to his problems, but he's also on the way trying to make things right, he's trying to make better choices, he's trying to redefine his glorious purpose, I think it gives him a new clarity, a new and interesting point of view, Loki in season two is more humble, more sincere, more open, more curious and more resolute, I think there's a resolution in him that will not be bent, will not be corrupted, I think. Now that the season two finale of Loki has aired, I feel in the performing of it, in the planning of it, in the developing of it, in the writing of it, that Loki's sacrifice was wholly appropriate and for me personally very moving.

You've got a character who for as long as he's been around has been driven by self-interest, isolated largely by himself, on the surface charismatic and charming and playful, but on the inside, defensive and vulnerable and hurt and alone, and someone who's never felt like he belongs anywhere, and so rather than live in the vulnerability of not belonging, he tries to fashion the world so that it belongs to him.

It's full of drive and he's at the centre of it, and I think the journey he goes on across season two is that through his connection with Mobius and his connection with Sylvie, Mobius as a friend and a guide, Sylvie as a mirror that reflects and challenges him, and all these his other friends B-15 and Casey and Obi and his experiences in the TVA, they have opened up his heart and mind to the possibility of trusting this character who can never be trusted, who's not worthy of being trusted, and suddenly he feels he belongs, and that to me is a journey of humility and acceptance, and the idea that somebody who once arrived and said he was burdened with glorious purpose, that he was entitled to it, that it was all about glory, that by the end he understands that purpose is about selflessness and generosity and love, and that he has a purpose that can help others live.

I just found it, I hope, it had a poetic resolution that I found extremely satisfying, and I hope that the audience feel that too, and that it resonates with them.

 I think we can all connect to it, I think we all need to feel in charge of our own lives, we like to, we all understand, I hope, that we can rewrite the story, that we have the free will to make the choices which add up to the that, and it's Loki who's asking those questions to me is fascinating.