Producer and Marvel Creative Executive Kevin Wright Talks 'Loki' Season 2
Moviefone speaks with producer Kevin Wright about 'Loki' Season 2. "We thought we'd make it even harder on ourselves this season by doing time loops."
Premiering on Disney+ beginning October 5th is the six-episode second season of the popular Marvel series ‘Loki.’
What is the plot of ‘Loki’ Season 2?
Following the events of ‘Loki’ season 1, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds himself in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius (Owen Wilson), Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous multiverse in search of Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), Judge Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) and the truth of what it means to possess free will and glorious purpose.
Who is in the cast of ‘Loki’ season 2?
- Tom Hiddleston ('Thor') as Loki
- Owen Wilson ('Paint') as Mobius M. Mobius
- Sophia Di Martino ('Yesterday') as Sylvie
- Gugu Mbatha-Raw ('Motherless Brooklyn') as Ravonna Renslayer
- Wunmi Mosaku ('Alice, Darling') as Hunter B-15
- Eugene Cordero ('Kong: Skull Island') as Casey / Hunter K-5E
- Rafael Casal ('Bad Education') as Brad Wolfe
- Tara Strong ('The Secret Life of Pets 2') as Miss Minutes
- Jonathan Majors ('Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania') as Victor Timely
- Ke Huy Quan ('Everything Everywhere All at Once') as Ouroboros "OB"
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Producer and Marvel Creative Executive Kevin Wright about his work on ‘Loki’ season 2, the show’s time-jumping, if Loki is truly a hero or a villain, Loki and Mobius’ relationship, Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson’s on screen chemistry, introducing Victor Timely, and setting up Kang’s variants for other MCU projects.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.
Moviefone: To begin with, season 2 of ‘Loki’ deals with the concept of time and you also play with time within the story. Can you talk about plotting the second season and the challenges of playing with time?
Kevin Wright: They are immense. We thought, "Hey, we made a show about timelines and multiverse in season one. We're going to make it even harder on ourselves this season by doing time loops." It was something we decided really early on, Eric Martin, our head writer, and myself. It was really appealing. Eric had said jokingly early on, but also seriously, "We can land this. It's going to be messy for a while because we've got to take apart the engine and plant flags in various places, but we can get there. It's just going to take a lot of refinement and fine-tuning." It was an exciting proposition because we didn't want to come back and just repeat season one. We knew we couldn't come back and play the hits, and we knew that the audience was on board for the weird timey stuff in season one, and that if we are smart about it and we make it digestible, they'll be on board for this too. The trick was just always make it as serviceable as possible so that we can tell our character story. If it doesn't get in the way of that, if it ever starts feeling like homework, or it's confusing and not intriguing, we've got to recalibrate. So that was always the baseline for us.
Related Article: TV Review: 'Loki' Season 2
MF: One of the questions season 2 asks is: Is Loki truly a hero or a villain at his core? What is your personal opinion?
KW: I think to ever be the best version of yourself, you have to embrace all aspects of your past. Loki has a lot of things in his past that I'm sure would be seen as villainous. He's been an anti-hero. He's played completely in that gray. He's had redemptive arcs. I think what we liked was putting him on the path to heroism and seeing if this character could get there or if it becomes too hard, if he backslides, or if he's going to make the right choices. Because heroism gets very tough if you're put in a position where maybe you have nothing to gain from it. So to me, it was about, could this character ever be the best version of himself because we all see the promise, and it feels like the audience is always rooting for him to get there. That was fun to build into the narrative itself.
MF: Can you talk about Loki and Mobius’ relationship in season 2 and Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson’s on screen chemistry together?
KW: It's unreal what the two of those have captured. Look, I think the exciting thing was, people really liked them in season one, and it makes it very easy then to continue on to not only the detective work but the further exploration of these two characters. The great thing in season one was, Mobius disarms Loki in that first episode in the time theater by saying, "I see what you are. I'm not judging you. Let's have a conversation." He was very accepting in a way that I don't think Loki ever had, and it allowed us to kind of get this version of Loki that we hadn't seen before. So it just felt natural that we could continue to do it this season. But also that Loki hopefully could start disarming Mobius so we could learn more about him and what makes him tick. So for those guys, I'm sure every one of our writers would say it's a joy to write for them. So it's about giving them meaty things to dig into because they're going to bring so much of their own to it, not just in performance, but character, dialogue, and everything. They take it and run with it.
MF: Finally, can you talk about the challenges of introducing He Who Remains last season, as well as Victor Timely this season, and setting up the different variants of Kang for other future Marvel projects?
KW: I think for us, it wasn't a challenge. I think the fun thing was, we knew we wanted to do Victor. Victor was an idea that we were trying to get into season one, and it was just never going to be able to fit because there's too much story. But it was exciting because the last thing we're hearing is that war's coming. All of these terrible things are happening, and then the most unexpected version of this guy pops up, and he pops up in the past. That was exciting. He was going to be an eccentric. I think for us, we were like, "Are we going to be allowed to do this? Do we have to go further and do the scary version?" It was nothing but embraced because I think it just allows for that much more dynamic storytelling going forward that this guy can be anyone. He can pop up in any form. That's what gets exciting about it.
Other Movies Similar to ‘Loki':
- 'Thor' (2011)
- 'The Avengers' (2012)
- 'Thor: The Dark World' (2013)
- 'Thor: Ragnarok' (2017)
- 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018)
- ‘Avengers: Endgame' (2019)
- 'The Simpsons: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki' (2021)
- 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021)
- 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' (2022)
- 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' (2023)