Making of ‘Loki’ roundtable panel with 6 Emmy contenders: How the Season 2 team crafted that bittersweet ending [Exclusive Video Interview]
While Season 1 of “Loki” was still in production, there were already early discussions about a second season following Loki (Tom Hiddleston) navigating the Time Variance Authority and the multiverse. Eric Martin, who co-wrote the Season 1 finale, was elevated to head writer for Season 2 and knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in the second installment.
“The big idea for Season 2 started with just taking Loki from a lower-case g god to a capital G God,” Martin tells Gold Derby at our Making of “Loki” panel alongside directors and executive producers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, costume designer Christine Wada, visual effects supervisor Christopher Townsend, and production designer, writer and director Kasra Farahani (watch the exclusive video interview above). “And it was always going to be that journey that’s let’s level him up but do it in a way where he’s gonna get that thing he’s always wanted, but it’s not going to be that thing anymore. He’s going to have found something else and make it that sacrifice.”
Martin regrouped with many of the Season 1 creatives, including Wada and Farahani. The latter co-wrote and made his directorial debut with the third episode, set primarily at the Chicago World Fair in 1893. But for his day job as a production designer, Farahani, an Emmy nominee for Season 1, wanted to add more history to the TVA as he created new sets, including O.B.’s (Ke Huy Quan) Repairs & Advancement workshop and the Temporal Core. These are the oldest rooms in the TVA and needed to feel that way with a bluer and colder aesthetic than that of Season 1’s vibrant orange sets.
“A lot of the story ended up taking place on what we sort of imagined as the systems level — think of it as the foundation of the TVA. If what we saw in Season 1 is the house, a lot of where we spend our time in Season 2 is the foundation of the house. And it’s like the Temporal Core, which is essentially the heart of the TVA. O.B.’s workshop, the R&A, which is kind of the circulatory system of the TVA. It keeps information moving and repairs and keeps things on wheels,” he explains. “And so the thought was those parts of the TVA would’ve necessarily have to have been built first. It made sense that if the predominant look of the first season was kind of in its bye-bye mid-’60s look, that the systems level would kind of taken on a Cold War era palette and architectural vernacular. Also, it wanted to feel sort of more like the basement and that was reflected in the weight of the architectural choices and materials that we were using. So hopefully it still feels part of the TVA and related but kind of a cruder and earlier version of the TVA.”
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Benson and Moorhead, who directed three episodes, were new to “Loki” but not to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having helmed two episodes of “Moon Knight.” They were doing additional photography on the Oscar Isaac-led series when Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige asked if they’d like to do Season 2 of “Loki.” “He said this thing that really stuck with us when we held him to task for it, which was, ‘Well, we’ve never done a Season 2 before. This would be the first Season 2 of any Disney+ show and there’s no reason to do it if we don’t do it completely different, if we have nothing new to say,'” Moorhead recalls. “And that really excited us. We loved Season 1, but part of our independent film upbringing has been kind of going left when people go right a lot of the time, so it really excited us that we were able to reinvent a lot of the visual language in terms of the camera and the lighting and all of that.”
One of the new visual language elements this season was threads and strands. People and objects are spaghettified when exposed to temporal radiation. Townsend, who joined the show in Season 2, says the goal was to create a lo-fi, analog feel with the effects. “We had a joke that we were Team No Glow,” he shares. “So much of visual effects that we see is very glowy. So we strived and tried to reduce that and relying on those effects and those looks as much as possible. And keeping it very tangible and always thinking about making things feel physical.”
The exception was in the pivotal scene in the finale, in which Loki sacrifices himself to give his friends free will. He destroys the Temporal Loom before regenerating the timelines and tying them together as he finally ascends the throne he’s always craved. “We pushed the limits of that, but we also felt that it was an earned moment in the series that we could do that,” Townsend adds. For that big moment, Wada, who was Emmy-nominated for Season 1, eschewed the usual elaborate armored Loki costume for a more loose, comfortable look in a silk cape as the God of Mischief has finally found his glorious purpose. “I think the No. 1 goal was to achieve this organic feeling to that costume so it really brought home that idea of him becoming more humble,” she says. “It really couldn’t be like armor. I think we’d always seen Loki through all his stages present armor at final stages of his arcs of these stories, so it was really important that it felt godly but not egomaniacal and that it felt organic but like a king’s robe.”
Martin views the two seasons of “Loki” as one complete book. And if this is the last time we see Loki in the MCU, it’s a bittersweet perfect ending. “Early on, as I was telling Tom the direction of it, he pulled me aside and was like, ‘OK, well, don’t hold back. Just go as far as you can. Whatever you put on there, I can sell it.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, Tom, I know. I know you can do that. That’s why we’re doing this because you can sell whatever we’re gonna do here.’ But really it was all about building to that sacrifice and doing it in a way that felt both surprising but inevitable,” Martin says. “It was just getting him to that place of making that sacrifice and sacrificing the exact thing he wants so that everyone else can have their lives. And then you finally give him that throne, the thing that he used to want and now it’s more of a burden than a glory.”
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