The Ringer-Verse - Tom Hiddleston and the 'Loki' Team on Challenging a God Who Knows Everything

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

The Ringer-Verse presents a special audio feature written by Charles Holmes for The Ringer. In it, he talks to Tom Hiddleston and the creative team behind 'Loki' to discover how they’re charting the next phase of the God of Mischief’s story. You can read Charles's article here at theringer.com. Produced by: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In an alternate timeline, what other character from the MCU do you feel like you? Like, I could have played that character. I could have done a good job. An alternate timeline. My goodness. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trimfaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks.

followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.

Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiator.com. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predict the spread, total points, and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25 bonus.

Offered by Fandul Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Bonus is non-withdrawable and expires seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduel.com slash predict slash bonus offer dash terms. Into the ringerverse, my name is Charles Holmes. I'm one half of the midnight boys with Van Lathen. And right now, I'm sharing with you a little podcast version of an article I wrote for the ringer.com. I got called up by Mallory Rubin, she said Charles. Tom Hiddleston and the team behind Loki have agreed to

talk to you about how they're charting the next phase of the god of mischievous story. So right now, I am proud to present a feature for you. It's entitled How to Challenge a God that Knows Everything. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is on a philosophical bender. That's what happens when the narrative guardrails that connect 23 movies disappear. For 13 years, Kevin Feigy was a mason and his magical McGuffins were the bricks that made up the most extensive interconnected movie universe in Hollywood history. Whether it was a time-displaced war veteran, a talking raccoon, a great color dictator, every Marvel character was on a quest for the same thing at some point in their story, the Infinity Stones.

These six different rocks could warp reality, rewind time, and most dramatically, wipe out half the universe's population. It was epic, silly, and the bane of Martin Scorsese's existence. So when the first episode of Loki effectively turns the Infinity Stones into a meta-punch line, it's jarring. Loki, Thor's brother, the Asgardian god of mischief, and perennial anti-hero of the Marvel universe, is apprehended by the time-variance authority.

The organization is a bureaucratic police force role by godlike beings called the timekeepers tasked with preserving the sacred timeline. Inevitably, Loki gets suspicious and opens a filing cabinet only to see the stones he spent numerous movies chasing after, powerless, and collecting dust. Oh, we actually got a lot of those. Some of the guys use them as paper weights. Some of them. The moment is the most accurate representation of the beautiful futility of superhero storytelling,

a medium of unending stories, multiverses, and multiple timelines. It's a landscape where the person or object or thing you were promised was the most powerful force in existence can be retconed at any moment. That pivotal scene in Loki's first episode arrived after the series head writer Michael Waldron and his writer's room saw an early cut of Avengers and Reckxicon. game. That bit with the Infinity Stones is in a way, our way of saying, you know, that's the past. Now we're in the future. With Loki, you know, this is a guy, nothing is more tantalizing to him than power. And so to see, holy shit, infinity stones are just paperweights in this place. What does that mean

about what this place is? Conceptually, Loki is far from a simple premise. It's a time travel procedural that's as existential as it is comedic. Themes fly as loose and fast as the dialogue. Is anyone truly good or evil? Does free will exist or are we all imprisoned by destiny? What does it mean to believe in something higher than ourselves without any proof? But without the looming presence of the apocalyptic jewels, the characters of the Disney plus slate of MCU TV shows are left to contend with less cosmic challenges like grief, race,

And now with Loki, matters of identity. For six films and two decades, Loki fought against the corporeal, but as a story draws to a conclusion, the god of mischief must go to war with the past, the future, newfound powerlessness, and a universe that's ready to move past. As a character, Loki operates like a prism. His existence and sole purpose is to illuminate the virtues and pains of other characters. It doesn't matter if it takes Chris Hemsworth four films to perfect his portrayal of Thor,

when the God of Thunder's mere opposition to Loki's over-the-top selfish and arrogant behavior says it all. So when Loki flips the dynamic and puts the part-time villain, full-time anti-hero in the role of the protagonist, and puts Mobius, the seemingly all-knowing time detective played by Owen Wilson, in the role of the foil, it fundamentally changes the core of the character. spoke with Tom Hiddleston about the difference between acting beside Hemsworth is Thor and Owen Wilson's Mobius. Chris, he and I were cast pretty much on the same day at the same time in our lives. And we felt like we knew we were playing brothers and brothers are emotionally involved with each other

and they get caught up in each other's different emotional journeys. Whereas Mobius is detached and he can stand outside all of that and commentating. on it and offer an opinion without judgment, whereas a family member is always going to be kind of drawn into the emotional drama, I guess. Whereas he's like, it's okay, I'm here, I'm listening. Head writer Waldron has a more blunt assessment. Tom can't be the only one who talks. Loki and Mobius's relationship lies somewhere between epic space bromance and opposing forces

of nature. The show unravels what happens, when the chaos of a god meets order incarnate. Even as the time variance authority physically defends Loki by taking away his magic, equipping him with a temporal doll collar, it's a Mobius that dresses him down with a series of one-liners.

Here's what Mobius says to Loki with almost a loving exasperation. I guess I'm wondering why does someone with so much range just want to rule. In one interrogation, Mobius does what the Avengers never could. He makes Loki's glorious purpose as hollow as a drawer full of Infinity Stones. More specifically, Loki's director, Kate Heron, sees Loki and Movis's relationship as a chess match.

The sex education director merely had to let the two actors work. Has Loki met his match? Has he not? And I think we do see that he clearly has met someone on his level. And we did a lot of rehearsal with both Tom and Owen, and it was really just getting the rhythm of the scenes right. You know what I mean? It was almost like kind of filming a mini play for some kind of episode. So Tom is like a classically trained actor,

has done a lot of Shakespeare, and then you're putting him in a scene with Owen Wilson, who's like this indie darling and, you know, did bottle rocket and all these amazing comedy films, obviously. And I think it's just they have such different approaches to acting, which is why I think it's so electric seeing them on screen, screen together because I think they really brought that to their characters as well. Loki's character arc within the TVA is like watching a Norse God smoke weed at a lower

arts college and ponder life in a way you only can when you have unlimited time on your hands. Hidlstein doesn't sound exhausted at the thought of once again recreating a character he's played for a decade. The 40-year-old actor instead looks rejuvenated. Loki's been around in human thought for hundreds if not thousands of years. He's been around in 60 years of of Marvel Comics, and I knew that there was no way in the space of one movie, the first Thor film, that I was going to get to touch on all these different aspects. You know, Loki inside the TVA, it strips him of all the things that are familiar. Thor is nowhere to be seen. Asgard is far away. He's stripped of his status and his power,

and he has to ask what remains. What remains of Loki? Who am I? Without all the things that I know. Loki is as much a story about the fluidity of identity and purpose as it is the ins and outs of time travel. In the first episode, after discovering the TVA knows how every moment of his life will unfold, Loki is like a petulant child. You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends.

I spoke with Waldron about what it took to craft this scene. We started out just trying to define the broad emotional arc for Loki in this show. And then as you dig in, you're writing the individual episodes, you realize more and more, wow, we can tackle these questions of, you know, free will versus destiny and everything. We can go there in this show in a way that feels organic. And what better character to sort of run his mouth about that stuff.

To Loki's director, Heron, the existential bureaucracy and questions about identity aren't far from her life. At one point, she used her former life as a roving temp to explain not only the on-screen aesthetics of the time-varying authority, but also to note that they're an organization that's not in the future, but not in the past. The description is also fitting

for the show's time-varying protagonist, the future of Hildleston's betrayal as the god of mischief, and the future of the MCU. I've always been really drawn into stories about identity and finding your people or your place in the universe and will Loki always be defined by his past actions or is there room for growth and change? And I think that's something that's very human.

I think that's something that as people were always like, yeah, like I've made a mistake, can I move past that, can I change, or will I always keep making the same mistakes? Soon the MCU will be filled with a new generation of gods, captains, and intergalactic heroes. So it's fitting that the deconstruction of one of Marvel's original deities, the same one responsible for the adventure, and ending phase one

is meant to leave room for something new. For audiences, Tom Hiddleston's feature as Loki is merely one uncertain timeline of many. I ask Hittleston

to re-examine one of the most pivotal moments of his career. Do you think you were destined to play Loki, or was it free will? I'd like to think it was free will,

but maybe it was somehow predetermined. Maybe somebody's up there pulling the string. you know, do we have any agency over the choices we make, or are we somehow rolling along tracks that have been laid out before us, either by our parents, our society, our genetic inheritance? God knows, you know, is there some TVA up there somewhere

watching with amusement as we stumble through our lives? Then before he exits, Hiddleston turns and smiles, Loki is a series that asks a lot of its protagonist and just as much of its audience. Hiddleston admits it's a big question. Then as if he's seated in front of Mobius, he asked me, What do you think? This article was written by me, Charles Holmes,

and produced by Steve Alman. You can read more stories like this at the ringer.com.