This post contains spoilers for Doctor Strange 2.
The moment the season finale of Loki streamed last summer, The Hollywood Reporter made an exciting announcement: Tom Hiddleston’s Loki was expected to make a cameo appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Soon, there was another rumor claiming that Owen Wilson’s Mobius and Sophia di Martino’s Sylvie would also be appearing. After the wait was finally over, though—and half a dozen other characters actually did cameo in Doctor Strange 2—Loki and friends were nowhere to be found. What happened?
A new interview with Michael Waldron, who penned the scripts for both Loki season 1 and Doctor Strange 2, sheds some new light on the question.
“This movie was already handling a lot”
In a recent interview with Variety, Waldron revealed that, although he would have loved to connect Doctor Strange 2 to Loki, it just didn’t feel necessary. Here’s what he said:
If it had been necessary, I think we would have [connected Loki to Doctor Strange 2]. But as it was, it felt, even to me, like we were just reaching. Nothing would have made me happier than to get to write dialogue for Tom or Owen or Sophia. But it felt like this was a story happening separate of that TVA purview. And that might have complicated things. You know, this movie was already handling a lot, and that might have just confused things even further. So I think we were okay without it.
Waldron’s choice of words is interesting. He says that “it felt … like we were just reaching,” which seems to imply that a Loki connection or cameo was part of the plan at some point. Could the Hollywood Reporter rumor have come from an early draft of the script, or a leak from the writers’ room?
Another interesting question is the 35 minutes of footage that were cut in order to bring the movie down to its very trim runtime of 125 minutes. We know that Marvel will be including at least a couple of deleted scenes when the movie is released on DVD, but could some of that deleted footage have contained a Loki cameo? Maybe. Tom Hiddleston recently made some intriguing comments about his involvement in future Marvel projects. In an interview with Total Film, Hiddleston claimed to have no idea what movies he might appear in:
“I’m living in a question mark … It’s all unknown. You know, I used to think that I could predict these things, but I literally have no idea. And I’m not even doing an Andrew Garfield! I just don’t know.”
Assuming he’s truly not pulling a Garfield, it could be significant that Hiddleston doesn’t know what he’s appearing in this late in the game. Doctor Strange 2 is out, and Thor: Love and Thunder is fast approaching. Marvel actors often film scenes without knowing which project they’re for, so it’s possible that Loki footage exists, but wasn’t used in Doctor Strange 2. (And could even appear in Thor: Love and Thunder!)
One Cameo Too Many?
Although Loki fans (including the one writing this article) were disappointed to see that the rumor wasn’t true, you can’t deny that Doctor Strange 2 was already full to bursting with cameos. We got the entire Illuminati (the Earth-838 version, that is), with Captain Carter, Black Bolt, Professor Xavier, Reed Richards, Baron Mordo, Maria Rambeau as Captain Marvel, Clea, Billy and Tommy, and Pizza Poppa, who brought a certain gravitas to the film. Cramming Loki (and maybe even Sylvie and Mobius) into the movie might have just felt like too much, especially considering that the narrative would have had to explain the TVA in order to make the cameos make sense.
Then again, perhaps including appearances from characters the audience is already invested in, instead of introducing a bunch of new characters only to kill them off a few minutes later, might have led to a more interesting storyline. Part of the reason the MCU is so beloved is that over time, the movies and limited series come to feel like one gigantic soap opera: We get to see characters we’ve come to love in their separate storylines come together and bounce off of each other. How much fun would it have been to see Doctor Strange and Loki re-meeting each other, or seeing America and Sylvie interact?
In any case, Loki fans won’t have to wait too much longer to see more of the God of Mischief. Loki season 2 starts filming on June 9 in London, meaning a probable 2023 release.
(featured image: Marvel Studios)
