Between the temporal looms, time slipping, talk of variants and more, the second season premiere of “Loki” this week threw a lot of technobabble at viewers.
Some may have issues following just what’s going on, especially as much of the season’s mysteries are slow-burn reveals. Don’t worry though, confusion is part of the intent according to executive producer Kevin Wright.
In a new interview with The Wrap, Wright says the point is to never share too much with the audience – thus allowing them to work out possibilities on their own and without confusing them with too much detail.
Thus the approach became about keeping it simple and “more often than not, it was about removing lines” than anything else in order to straddle “the line between intrigue and confusion”. He says:
“If you explain too much the audience has – it feels like they have to carry it. The thing that was always most important to us was – we are taking big concepts, we’re getting into time loops, and timey-wimey stuff starts happening big time in this – but it was always about how simply, when needed, can we explain that in a line or two of dialogue, that audiences go ‘OK, that kind of makes sense. I’m gonna put that in the back of my brain as it keeps moving on’.”
Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, who have done their own fair share of dimension and time-twisting work with films like “Synchronic” and “The Endless,” helped out on that front.
The episode ended up being full of Marvel easter eggs from the Temporal Loom’s door being an obvious homage to X-Men’s Cerebro, to the inclusion of a podcast audio clip heard in the “Moon Knight” series, to Sylvie’s cameo in Broxton, Oklahoma – the same place where Thor created a new Asgard in the comics.
The show’s second season is now airing new episodes airing Wednesday from 6pm US-PT on the Disney+ service.
