Oh, my poor Loki stans. It’s been a long, long year and a half since season 1 of his eponymous Disney+ series ended, and we still have months to go before season 2. Sure, we’ve gotten some set photos and a D23 trailer that leaked for a glorious two seconds on TikTok, but otherwise things have been pretty dry on the Loki front.
Now, though, Marvel has published a book of concept art from season 1, so at least we get to pore through some of the Lokis who might have been!
The book, Marvel’s Loki: The Art of the Series, costs $60 and isn’t on the shelves at most stores, but some helpful fans have posted excerpts online. Some of the concept art shows Loki in Imperial Rome, the old west, and the 1970s. If you look closely, you’ll see that one of Loki’s original costume concepts was right out of Marvel’s Loki Season 2″>Loki: Agent of Asgard, complete with stubble on his chin.
Few of these concepts made it into the series, although some of the concept art appears in Loki episode 2, when Mobius is displaying holograms of Loki variants the TVA has caught. Plus, the 1970s setting will be explored in season 2.
Other concepts show weirder Loki variants, like pixie Loki and cat Loki.
There’s also concept art for Miss Minutes and Mobius.
Of course, concept art often points to storylines that, in an alternate timeline, would have been included in the final cut of the series, and this art is no different. What might Loki have been doing in Rome or the old west? Making mischief, no doubt.
Some of the art even points to an alternate ending to the series … which we might still get eventually.
Wesley Burt reveals an alternate ending for Loki
The book includes interviews with various crew members, including Visual Development Illustrator Wesley Burt. According to Burt, some of the costume designs were meant for the season finale, in which Loki would ride off into the sunset.
The designs were “our sendoff for Loki,” Burt says. “It was going to be his suit change at the end. He’s grown and changed, and he’s more at peace at this point. He was going to depart off onto some of his own adventures in a different realm … the [costumes] in the billowy white and black robes were both like an enlightened, yoga-practicing Loki, or something like that.”
As we know, though, things go very differently at the end of season 1, with Loki discovering that the multiversal war he tried to prevent is already on its way. Instead of taking up yoga, Loki finds himself forced to become a hero and prevent the collapse of the entire multiverse.
Of course, that’s not to say that Loki won’t still get to embark on a new adventure after Marvel’s Multiverse Saga comes to a close with Secret Wars. Will he be an enlightened guy wearing robes? Hmm. If anyone can pull that off, it’s Tom Hiddleston, but I hope Loki keeps his edge even after he helps save the multiverse.
(featured image: Marvel)
