Those of us who favor a certain greasy-haired, glittery-eyed Marvel antihero have been looking forward to the debut of the Loki TV series for a long time. So I was excited to see that Marvel Studios and Disney+ just released new “key art” for Tom Hiddleston’s trickster character, in the form of a poster that has some more hints about what to expect.
In the poster, Loki is wearing his jumpsuit as an apparent prisoner of the Time Variance Authority, or TVA, the folks who are responsible for monitoring the ever-growing multiple realities of the multiverse and attempting to keep temporal anomalies in check. While Loki trailers have shown Loki in the custody of the TVA, which is headed by Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius, this image is the first time I’ve been able to zoom in and see that the collar he wears reads, “DANGER—TIME DISPLACEMENT—STAY CLEAR.” He’s also centered in a many-handed golden clock backdrop that shows us further time shenanigans.
Although Loki may begin the show as a TVA prisoner, the fact that the trailer sees him gallivanting through time and space suggests that there’s a lot more happening here. In fact, other promotional images and merchandise released for Loki points to the idea that he—willingly or unwillingly—goes to work for the TVA. We’ve seen him wearing a blazer with a TVA emblem, a tie with hourglasses on it and even a TVA belt:
There’s also an official merch image that shows Loki in the same outfit (with his own classic Horned Helmet costume looming in the backdrop) and the rather ominous line, “The timeline wants to break free.”
So what’s going on? Well, my prediction for the show is that Loki is caught by the TVA and either pressured or convinced to work on their behalf to keep things ordered or to change what’s already gone awry, time-wise. If you recall, this Loki is not the Loki we saw evolve alongside Thor & Co. in Thor: Ragnarok and essentially sacrifice himself to save his brother in Avengers: Infinity War. This is the Avengers-era Loki who escapes with the Tesseract in Endgame when the Avengers go back in time.
So this Loki hadn’t made up with Thor, lost his beloved mother Frigga, had Odin acknowledge him as a son before death, called himself “Loki Odinson” again, or experienced any of the other character-changing and defining events since Avengers in 2012. This guy’s last memory was failing to subdue the Earth and being defeated by the Avengers. Oh, and he also appears to have disrupted the timeline, or started a brand new one, when he phased out of there with the Tesseract. Hence the TVA’s interest in apprehending him, and that “time displacement” warning on the collar they have Loki in.
But there’s some hope for this Loki. The character has always been more of an antihero than a straight-up villain, and the fact of the other Loki’s evolution means this Loki may be capable of rediscovering the same kind of empathy and family loyalty.
We know that the TVA will show this Loki scenes from “his” past, including a shot from Ragnarok, so maybe seeing how he changed will prompt him to work on behalf of others. We also know that he was somewhat being influenced by Thanos and the Mind Stone scepter during the events of the original Avengers movie. This doesn’t excuse his actions on Earth, but it will be interesting to see if the MCU actually plays with that plot point. Or maybe Loki’s up to his own tricks and is playing 5D chess the whole time. Whatever the plan is on the Loki show, I doubt we’ll be able to guess all of its myriad twists and turns.
Loki is a character many of us have continued to root for over the years, and if we get to watch this sometimes-villain, sometimes-hero struggle with who he is while going on a multitude of adventures, I’m game. We already know what he may in fact go back in time and act as no less than D.B. Cooper; who knows how many other surprises Loki has in store? With an actor of Tom Hiddleston’s caliber leading the way and an incredible supporting cast that features Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard E. Grant, Wunmi Mosaku, Sophia Di Martino, Erika Coleman, Owen Wilson, and many more, summer can’t come quickly enough.
Loki premieres on Disney+ on June 11, 2021.
(images: Marvel Studios/Disney+)
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