We are now in the second year of Marvel Studios’ Disney+ era and, while fans are currently trying to figure out the ending of the latest episode of Moon Knight, one of the best Marvel shows of last year was Loki.
Fans were skeptical of how a series centered around this mischief-filled character would turn out. However, it ended up being one of the most creative and emotionally impactful stories out of all the Disney+ series thus far. It also turns out the creator and writer of the series, Michael Waldron, was a bit confused about how the show would work in the beginning too. In an interview with The Playlist, Waldron broke down how the series came to be and what influenced their approach while promoting his latest project Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
When talking about how Avengers: Endgame affected Loki, Waldron said:
“I remember I pulled off into a parking garage in Burbank, so Kevin Wright, our producer, could call me. And this is in November before Endgame came out. So he could call me and tell me what happened in Endgame, so I could know. Because I was like, ‘How is Loki alive in the show?’ How was there even a show? And so he called me, and he was like, ‘So, Endgame is a time heist.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ And it’s perfect.”
Waldron went on, joking, “I’m in a parking garage. I was like, ‘Somebody’s going to shoot me.’ So they had the idea that Loki was going to escape with the Infinity Stone and land at the TVA and run afoul of the TVA. But that was really it.” With the basics in hand, Waldron realized he had a lot of ground to play with when crafting Loki. He continued, saying:
“What that meant, what kind of adventure he went on, even what the TVA was, as an entity within the MCU and how we would adapt that from the comics, were all up for grabs. And so that’s when I came in and kind of pitched this Blade Runner-esque story about Loki being pulled in by the TVA to catch a variant of himself.”
Waldron would then talk about how Endgame made the MCU’s idea for time travel and the multiverse one and the same saying, “‘We’re really making a multiverse show, more than we’re making a time travel show.’ The TVA shifted to like, ‘O.K., these guys are actually guarding against a multiverse.’” He elaborated on Kang’s involvement in the show saying:
“He Who Remains is just kind of an old creepy guy in the comics, and I pushed and Marvel was very receptive to it, the idea, this should be a variant of Kang. Because I knew Kang was coming down the pipe as a villain in the MCU and it just felt too delicious to not have him intertwined in our time travel story somehow.”
It is very interesting to hear how the events of Endgame paved the path for Loki and how the multiverse has effectively replaced the idea of time travel in the MCU. Marvel is generally ten steps ahead of everyone else and hearing how early on Kang was in discussions for as the new big bad of the MCU should get any fan even more excited about this franchise’s future. Both Endgame and Loki now seem like a lifetime ago, but it is always fun to be reminded that their ripple effects are still being felt to this day in the MCU. Following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the multiverse is effectively broken — only making problems worse for characters like Doctor Strange.
Hearing Waldron’s first-hand experience with crafting some of the best (and most anticipated) Marvel content from Phase 4 is certainly exciting. Without writers like Waldron, the multiverse boat definitely would have sunk by now.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on May 4, and we can (hopefully) expect Loki Season 2 sometime in the not too distant future.
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