Due to the ongoing 2023 SAG-AFTRA Strike, the Series' actors were not allowed to promote the premiere of Season 2. This also included the Hollywood Premiere Event for Season 2, with the entire cast being absent for the event. A new contract was finally reached on November 8th, just one day before the Season 2 Finale.
The season two finale of Loki coincided with early previews for The Marvels (2023) on November 9th, 2023. This led Marvel's Instagram page to jokingly post an MCU permission slip form to excuse fans from work and school early.
In addition to playing the L1130 Variant who serves as the show's protagonist, Tom Hiddleston also plays the Sacred Timeline Loki (who appears in the D.B. Cooper memory) and the President Loki Variant in "Journey Into Mystery".
All three of the Time-Keepers are voiced by Jonathan Majors, who also plays He Who Remains in the season finale. He later goes on to portray Victor Timely in Season 2.
Acting in the Dark: Showrunner Michael Waldron was given very little guidance in how to write the show to correspond to plans for the franchise's future, simply being told to make the best show he could however he wanted, and they'd try to organically work it into later entries (much like how most comic books are written).
Michael Waldron said in an interview that Loki explaining the difference between illusion projection and duplication casting in "The Variant" was inspired by Tom Hiddleston's "Loki Lecture" to the crew where he did the same.
Jonathan Majors had a major hand in shaping Victor Timely's character, incorporating the character's social awkwardness mixed with his intellectual prowess into his portrayal. He further based his depiction of Timely on the real-life 19th century inventor Granville Woods, who held over 50 patents and was highly respected within the African-American community.
Adored by the Network: Disney was so impressed by the show's success despite its unusual Wednesday release schedule that after just two weeks, all future Disney+ original shows' release schedules were changed to that day. When the show dropped the last episode of Season 1, it revealed that, unlike the other Disney Plus shows, it was getting a second seasonnote For comparison, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier only got one season each, with their storylines set to continue in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Captain America: Brave New World respectively., testifying to its massive success. In 2023, Loki would become the first Disney+ original show to receive a physical release, with Marvel beginning to sell Season 1 on Blu-ray and UHD nine days before the Season 2 premiere.
Ascended Fanon: After the release of Avengers: Infinity War, a lot of fans theorized that Loki did not actually die at the hands of Thanos but rather escaped after casting a very realistic illusion due to fans noticing that Loki used his left hand to hold his dagger when he always used his right hand in all of his other appearances. Fans also speculated that a piece of debris that looked like it was moving in the background was the real Loki watching his illusion die before he escaped. In the series, "main" Loki did die, but Classic Loki is a Variant who escaped that exact way.
Shortly before the show's premiere, the producers said that they were well aware that millions of people would spend the week between each episode nitpicking its time travel logic, so they made sure the whole thing made as much sense as they could possibly manage. This includes tweaking the notoriously confusing time travel rules from Avengers: Endgame, with the explanation that Bruce didn't 100% understand how it actually works.
Apparently the writers were aware of the online criticisms about the first season, namely the inconsistency with the main character's power levels as opposed to what's shown on earlier MCU films. This series' Loki apparently struggled with what seemed like human-level opponents while the movie Loki defeated Captain America with ease! Hence the second season remedied this by clearly portraying Loki with superhuman attributes (outside of his newly found time-slipping abilities of course) - He easily caught up with Hunter X-05 who was running away, liberally cast illusion spells, and in the finale he was seen approaching Temporal Loom without a protective suit before using his magic to destroy it.
Richard E. Grant had always wanted to act alongside Tom Hiddleston due to their remarkable similarities in appearance, and had thought the opportunity for them to be a father-son duo had passed after Hiddleston's career took off. Upon being offered the role of Classic Loki, Grant recognized it as the next-best thing, and so accepted it.
Ke Huy Quan had been following the MCU for many years before being asked to portray Ouroboros in Season 2 of this show. His passion for the franchise, combined with his interest with O.B. as a character, caused Quan to immediately accept the role without any hesitation.
The Cast Showoff: In "The Variant", Loki gives a speech in Latin to the people of Pompeii. Tom Hiddleston studied Latin while he was at Cambridge, and so utterly nails the pronunciation. "Lamentis" includes a scene of him singing in a mix of "Asgardian" (which is actually Norwegian) and English, allowing Hiddleston to show off his singing chops.
Creator Backlash: Head writer Michael Waldron admitted in 2022 that he regretted making the multiversal rules so rigid for this show, as it made it significantly harder to keep his work on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness consistent with what was established here.
The Danza: Eric the bartender in "Science/Fiction" is portrayed by Eric Colvin.
Deleted Scene: The Blu-ray features two deleted scenes:
As part of Mobius's Time-Theater showcase for the first episode, there is a flashback to a time when Thor has somehow “disappeared.” Loki announces to the gathered Asgardians that he has likely died and that he is now the crown prince and future king. Then, Thor shows up in frog form, furious that Loki has transformed him, and he sucker-punches Loki with Mjolnir. Writer and producer Eric Martin explained in a tweet that it unfortunately had to be cut due to pacing issues.
In a scene set between Loki and Sylvie’s Nexus Event and them being led to their Time Theaters, Loki holds Sylvie hostage. He takes credit for having caught her, and assures Mobius that he is still on the TVA’s side. Sylvie breaks free and tries to attack Renslayer, but is subdued by B-15, and despite Loki’s assurances, Mobius orders the Hunters to arrest them both. It is left ambiguous whether Loki is actually betraying Sylvie in the scene or if it is just a ruse to save both their skins.
For years, fan scuttlebutt has made a half-joke out of Phil Coulson's resemblance to D.B. Cooper, and memes abounded for the duration of his show's run asserting that Coulson was Cooper, operating incognito for some sort of S.H.I.E.L.D. Time Travel mission. The final season of Agents actually did involve time-skipping through the 20th century, but the opportunity to fulfil the concept came and went unused. Now, the MCU seems to finally be interested in integrating the legend, albeit with Loki, instead.
Episode 2 has Loki briefly hold up a TVA mission to lecture everyone on what the Variant might do, which looks for all the world like what Tom Hiddleston's stint as consultant to the showrunners and cast members (dubbed "The Loki Lectures" in interviews) would have looked like.
Dyeing for Your Art: Tom Hiddleston grew out his hair and dyed it black once again to play Loki. This marks the first time since the original Thor that he's played the role without a wig or hair extensions.
According to director Kate Herron, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios himself was the one who proposed to use the song he liked, "If You Love Me" by Brenda Lee as a love theme for the show. They ended up playing it over the end credits of episode 4, inserting it between the scene of Loki getting pruned while attempting to confess his feelings for Sylvie and Loki waking up in the Void. The two scenes were initially supposed to follow each other without any interruption.
The script for episode 5 initially had all Loki Variants coming to help enchant Alioth because they could not stand one of them being better at it than the others. The scene that made it to the final cut was pitched by co-executive producer Kevin Wright, who suggested that Loki and Sylvie should hold hands and find strength within each other to subdue the creature instead.
Kevin Feige was also the one who proposed to use phrases from various MCU films and shows to illustrate the Sacred Timeline in the opening credits of episode 6.
Michael Waldron was worried that episode 1 contained too much dialogue for Marvel Studios' taste and told Kevin Feige that he could cut some of the dialogue between Loki and Mobius, but Feige answered that he'd actually like to have even more of it.
Follow the Leader: At one point Loki is kept in a time-loop that replays a painful memory of Loki over and over and over again. Just like Hell as seen in both Lucifer (2016) and Preacher (2016).
God Never Said That: When composer Natalie Holt was asked in an interview about the soundtrack, she mentioned that Sylvie's theme was partially inspired by Loki's relationship with Frigga. This caused fans on the opposite side of the Ship-to-Ship Combat from Loki/Sylvie to accuse the relationship of being mother-son Parental Incest. It got to the point that Natalie Holt had to clarify it in a second interview, explaining that her words were misconstrued, and that it was not a literal description of Loki and Sylvie's relationship, but rather that Frigga was the one positive relationship with a woman Loki had before meeting Sylvie.
Inspiration for the Work: Director Kate Herron based the TVA's bureaucracy on her own experiences working in admin offices as a temp. The show's style was also based on her love of the Science Fiction and Film Noir genres, even imagining Agent Mobius as a detective-like character when pitching the character.
Mobius M. Mobius is an employee of the TVA who is presented as knowing everything about Loki and his entire life story backwards and forwards. By contrast, Owen Wilson wasn't super familiar with the MCU or Loki's story when he joined the show, having to attend "Loki School" hosted by Tom Hiddleston himself in order to get caught up on everything that had happened to the God of Mischief thus far.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: In August 2023, Marvel announced that the first season and the corresponding Assembled episode would come to Blu-ray and UHD in September. The sets include Steelbook packaging, cards with concept art, and some previously-unreleased extra features, including two deleted scenes.
Lying Creator: Jonathan Majors, who would go on to play Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was asked about whether he would make an Early-Bird Cameo in this show due to the time-traveling premise. His answer implied the negative. It turns out he did make an appearance in final episode as He Who Remains, which in the MCU continuity is a Composite Character with Immortus; and his likeness as Kang the Conqueror (which himself is a variant of He Who Remains) appears in statue form just before the episode ends.
Not a specific date, but rather a specific weekday. Rather than weekly releases on Fridays like previous big-budget Disney+ shows (i.e: The Mandalorian, WandaVision), Loki is released on Wednesdays starting on June 9th. Wednesday is considered "Wōden/Odin's day" in Norse mythology, who happens to be Loki's adopted father. Wednesday is also the day when new comic books come out, make of this what you will.
Additionally, Loki has a tendency to screw around with the established order of things, his being the first series to not follow the standard Disney+ release schedule just makes too much sense (even if it wasn't always meant to be that way). In fact, because the viewcount for the premiere of this show was higher than anything on Disney+ previously, Disney actually switched up their schedule so that all of their shows will release on Wednesdays instead of Fridays.
Milestone Celebration: The series premiered in 2021, ten years after the release of Thor, which was the debut of Loki in the MCU.
Missing Trailer Scene: The trailers for the series included a shot of Loki standing in front of the throne of Asgard and another of him in Tony Stark's penthouse saying "Glorious". According to post-series interviews these scenes were supposed to appear in the first episode but were cut for pacing reasons.
In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Loki is voiced by Wesley Santana instead of Reginaldo Primo, who voiced him in the movies, because the latter developed an anxiety disorder and is taking time to recover.
Also in the Brazilian dub, Guilherme Briggs doesn't voice Mobius on the second season. He moved to Teresópolis, away from Rio de Janeiro (although being in the same state) and prefers to dub remotely via a home studio, but Disney subsidiary in Brazil priorizes presential dubbing in their associated studios. Mobius's new voice is Rodrigo Andreatto.
Playing Against Type: Owen Wilson is typically known for playing laidback everyday guys who wouldn't stick out much in your average romcom. Here, he plays a mysterious government enforcer/employee who takes his job quite seriously (although he still has some comedic elements of Wilson's usual personas). This is highlighted by Wilson changing his hairstyle and mannerisms to be significantly different from his previous roles.
This isn't the first Marvel project Ke Huy Quan and Kevin Feige have been involved in. Back in 2000, Quan had served as a stunt rigger, assistant fight choreographer and translator on the first X-Men movie, with Feige serving as a producer on that same film.
Kate Herron was a longtime X-Men and Loki fan in her childhood, and was very enthusiastic at the prospect of being involved with a solo series centered around the God of Mischief. Despite having little experience prior to becoming director of the show, Herron's 60-page pitch was passionate enough to catch Marvel's interest and now she gets to direct and executive-produce a series starring the character.
Ke Huy Quan was a huge fan of the first season of this show, and so was nothing short of ecstatic to get to join the cast for Season 2. In turn Tom Hiddleston was a huge fan of Quan's work, making both him and Sophia Di Martino very happy to collaborate with him on this show.
Release Date Change: The show went through a few of them all relating to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The first one was due to it causing filming to shutting down in March of 2020 with only 2 months of footage shot, eventually resuming in September and concluding in December of that year. The second delay was made only two months after Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige promised that the series would premiere in May of 2021 during Disney's 2020 investor day event, when it got delayed another month to June 11th. Its last schedule change eventually lead it to premiere on June 9th to avoid direct overlap with Black Widow (2021), a couple days earlier than expected, causing it to become the first tentpole Disney+ original series to have its daily release schedule not fall on a Friday since its launch back in 2019.note A few individual episodes of shows on the network have aired on irregular days - namely all of the Disney+ launch episodes, an additional episode of The Mandalorian (to avoid overlap with The Rise of Skywalker) and the finale of The Clone Wars and the premiere of The Bad Batch (to celebrate "Star Wars Day"), but this is the first show to air consistently away from Friday.
After being absent for eight years, Jaimie Alexander reprises her role as Lady Sif in a cameo in Episode 4.
Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as Thor, or rather the Frog version of Thor, for Episode 5, albeit uncredited.
Separated-at-Birth Casting: Richard E. Grant resembles Tom Hiddleston enough to play an older version of him. According to Grant, he and Hiddleston had joked they should play father and son in a project prior to casting for Loki.
Sequel in Another Medium: The story of the Loki from 2012 that fled with the Tesseract in the theatrically released film Avengers: Endgame continues here, in a streaming series.
Series Hiatus: The show experienced a lengthy hiatus of nearly 15 months between Season 1 and Season 2.
Shrug of God: The first episode mentions the death of Phil Coulson during the events of The Avengers (2012), but make no mention to his later resurrection in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. The fandom discussed the significance of this omission, and if it meant that the series was decanonised or not. This question was asked to Michael Waldron, head writer of the Loki series, but instead of a "yes" or "no" answer he said: "No, look, that is one other tendril of the multiverse, perhaps. I think just seeing mention of Coulson again, the very fact that it raises those questions, is exciting."
The female Loki variant revealing her name as Sylvie in the third episode is spoiled early in the foreign dub credits of the second episode, where she first appears.
Averted by the fourth episode where Richard E. Grant, Jack Veal and De Obia Oparei are not included in the main cast section of the end credits to avoid spoiling their appearance in the mid-credits scene. Their credits appear in the second half of the credits alongside the listing for Cailey Fleming who played Young Sylvie.
Kate Herron revealed in a tweet that Loki and Mobius' exchange about candy on Asgard ("Grapes, nuts...") in episode 1 was improvised by Hiddleston and Wilson.
She also said in other interviews that Tom Hiddleston improvised breaking the glass and demanding for another in episode 3, and altered Loki's final speech to Sylvie before they kiss in episode 6.
Some of He Who Remains' moments in the final episode, such as him re-enacting his variants complimenting each other, and dramatically standing on his desk at the end of his tirade, were unscripted spontaneous moments done by Jonathan Majors.
Troubled Production: Like many other TV & Film productions in 2020, the filming of Season 1 was affected by the 2020 Covid-19 epidemic. The season had only been filming for more than a month, when production was temporarily shut down on March 14 2020. Filming wouldn't resume until that September.
Jonathan Majors was not credited for voicing the Time Keepers in "Nexus Event". The end credits only list the "on set readers" for the characters.
Chris Hemsworth's brief few seconds voicing Throg is not listed in the credits of the episode where the character appears.
Voiced Differently in the Dub: In the original English language airing, Miss Minutes is voiced by Tara Strong, who voices her with a very informercial-like tone with a southern drawl. However, in most other languages she is given an energetic cutesy voice, most notably in the LatAm Spanish dub.
Long before this show came to be, Kevin Feige had an idea for a Loki short film that would've had the God of Mischief partying at Studio 54 in The '70s, along with some concept art of him riding a horse. While this idea didn't go anywhere, the series would reveal that Loki did visit Earth in 1971 as D.B Cooper.
Director Kate Herron revealed that Miss Minutes was initially going to pop out of the presentation that Loki watches in the first episode and interact with him. This ended up being repurposed for the show's second episode instead, as Herron felt that the sequence was "too crazy" for the series' premiere.
In a post-series Twitter thread, writer Eric Martin revealed that they originally wanted to develop Ravonna Renslayer, and her relationship with Mobius M. Mobius further, but the COVID-19 hiatus forced them to change their plans. Martin also revealed that a few scrapped ideas for Loki and Sylvie's scene in the Citadel at the End of Time involve them fighting "a series of the greatest warriors across the timeline", and walking by a vast display room where huge amounts of time-displaced artifacts are kept.
Originally, He Who Remains was supposed to be an entirely separate character unrelated to Kang the Conqueror. However, the producers liked Jonathan Majors so much that they also cast him as Kang and rewrote He Who Remains to be one of that character's variants.
Concept art shows that Rocket Raccoon was planned to make a cameo appearance as a variant while Loki is being transferred through the TVA during the first episode. The line was also suppoosed to be significantly more crowded with random people and aliens, but it's practically empty in the final product due to COVID issues restricting how many people could be on set.
There was going to be a scene of Throg delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to Loki as payback for the latter transforming him into a frog, but it was cut due to pacing issues. Mobius would have shown it to Loki as part of Loki's "life reel" but since this humorous scene would have come right before Mobius showing Loki his mother's death it would have been too strong of an emotional detour. The scene was later included as a DVD extra for Season 1's physical release, albeit with unfinished CGI.
Initially, Sylvie was going to go on a rampage after breaking into the TVA in Episode 3, killing almost everyone there before being stopped.
Concept art of Alligator Loki shows that his design was originally going to make it much more obvious that he was a Loki by having him wear a version of the green Asgardian leather outfit that L1130 wore at the beginning of the show.
Loki's realization of how powerful the TVA is was originally going to take a lot longer to manifest. This would've come in the form of a long montage where Loki would've visited different time periods, had a lot of sex with men, women and aliens, collected all the Infinity Stones and stood and making it to the throne room of Asgard before realizing what he has isn't real, and returns to the TVA to talk to Mobius honestly.
There were a few drafts of the script that showcased Mobius's past life before being recruited into the TVA, but it ended up not making the final cut due to everyone in the show deciding that they didn't really know what it was yet. Season 2 would revisit this concept in its fifth episode, where it's revealed that Mobius used to be a man named Don who sold jet skis in 2020s Ohio.
"Journey Into Mystery" initially had all the Loki Variants coming to help enchant Alioth because they could not stand one of them being better at it than the others. However, co-executive producer Kevin Wright suggested that Loki and Sylvie find strength within each other to subdue the creature instead, with only Classic Loki joining the effort to stop Alioth in the form of a Heroic Sacrifice.
Episode 3's beginning was initially going to be a Battle in the Center of the Mind between Sylvie and the TVA (who would've put up mental defenses in Hunter C-20's mind to prevent her from remembering her past life), which apparently would've involved a laser shooting armadillo. It was eventually scrapped because Kevin Feige felt that the scene was too much, even within the context of the show.
The show was initially only going to be one season, much like its fellow Marvel Disney+ shows, before Kate Herron convinced people that it should be renewed for a second one (though without her involvement).
Miss Minutes was originally conceived as having more of a Siri-like voice, before Kate Herron decided that her Southern Belle accent was more friendly and interesting.
An early draft of "Journey Into Mystery" was going to introduce a "Loki Variance Authority" within the Void, which would've had L1130 Loki fighting with several other Lokis to heroically confront Alioth which would've ended in a spectacular failure.
Giancarlo Esposito was in talks to portray a Loki variant on this show, but he ultimately was passed on it. Esposito has noted that losing the role did make him more interested in joining the MCU on the film side however.
Season 1 was originally going to have a much happier ending, with Loki going out on adventures in other realms on his lonesome without the fear of Kang the Conquerer looming over his head.
Concept art shows that Loki was supposed to mess around a lot more when at Pompeii with Mobius, which would've included him snapping the neck of a slave driver.
Season 2's main storyline was originally going be about the Multiversal War He Who Remains was warning about and teased in the Season 1 finale. It was ultimately dropped, as producer Kevin Wright realized that it would be way too early to depict it, and that it would feel unearned as a result.
An early plan for He Who Remains was that he was actually going to be a variant of Loki instead of Kang. It was quickly mixed because the producers realized it would make the universe feel very small.
"1893" was originally supposed to follow Ravonna and Miss Minutes, with Loki, Mobius and Sylvie only showing up at the end, but Kevin Feige wanted the episode to follow Loki and Mobius from the beginning.
Episode 5 of Season 2 was originally drastically different but got scrapped by Marvel Studios because it felt like too much of a "big swing."
Natalie Holt originally wrote lyrics that were supposed to be sung on the final song of the series, but Kevin Feige requested that they be cut because he found them too distracting.
Concept art shows that Ourboros was originally planned to be a variant of Mobius at some point (likely referencing how Ouroboros was a temporal clone of Mobius in the comics) before Ke Huy Quan was cast in the role.
The showrunners were very quick to dispel speculation that Mephisto would be appearing in the first season, following speculation that he would thanks to a stained glass image of a Satanic Archetype in a church and the infamous amount of speculation that he would appear in WandaVision.
One of the writers, Eric Martin, confirmed on Twitter that the sword that Kid Loki gives to Loki is Lævateinn.
In the episode of Assembled dedicated to Season 1 of the show, Tom Hiddleston explicitly confirms that He Who Remains is a variant of Kang.
Director Kate Herron believes that while L1130 and Sylvie are Lokis, they're not the same person due to having entirely different experiences, so their kiss isn't considered incest of any variety.
Michael Waldron also confirmed that the Multiverse has always existed, and the TVA only prunes branches that result in a different version of He Who Remains (i.e Kang) taking over, allowing all the rest to coexist like threads of a rope. A "Sacred Timeline" is essentially a loose script written by He Who Remains and forced upon all realities.
According to his actor Jack Veal, Kid Loki is actually the oldest of the Lokis found in the void despite having the appearance of a child, due to his pruning causing him to never age.
Natalie Holt, the composer of the score for this series, states in two different interviewsnote check both the first and the second tweet that Loki and Sif slept together before he cut her hair and enraged her.
Working Title: River Cruise for Season 1, Architect for Season 2.
Write What You Know: Episode 3 reveals that Loki is bisexual. Kate Herron herself is bisexual, and she has stated that one of her goals when she joined the show is to acknowledge that aspect of Loki's identity.
to director Kate Herron, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios himself was the one who proposed to use the song he liked, "If You Love Me" by Brenda Lee as a love theme for the show. They ended up playing it over the end credits of episode 4, inserting it between the scene of Loki getting pruned while attempting to confess his feelings for Sylvie and Loki waking up in the Void. The two scenes were initially supposed to follow each other without any interruption.