About Loki Season 2 – TV Series

Loki Season 2

The second season of the American television series Loki, based on Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name, sees Loki working with Mobius M. Mobius, Hunter B-15, and other members of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) to navigate the multiverse in order to find Sylvie, Ravonna Renslayer, and Miss Minutes. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. The season is produced by Marvel Studios, with Eric Martin serving as head writer and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead leading the directing team.

Tom Hiddleston reprises his role as Loki from the film series, starring alongside Sophia Di Martino (Sylvie), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15), Eugene Cordero, Neil Ellice, Owen Wilson (Mobius), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Renslayer), Tara Strong (Miss Minutes), and Jonathan Majors, all of whom reprising their roles from the first season. New additions to the cast include Rafael Casal, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Ke Huy Quan, and Richard Dixon. Development on a second season had begun by November 2020, and was confirmed in July 2021, with Martin, Benson, and Moorhead all hired by late February 2022. Filming began in June 2022 at Pinewood Studios and concluded in October. Dan DeLeeuw and Kasra Farahani were revealed as additional directors for the season in June 2023.

The second season debuted on Disney+ on October 5, 2023, and ran for six episodes until November 9, as part of Phase Five of the MCU. The critical reception was positive, with praise for its conclusion, its musical score, and Loki’s character arc.

Loki

STORY

Episodes 01

“Ouroboros”

In the past, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) attempts to apprehend Loki while he is uncontrollably warping across time in their headquarters. In the present, Loki reunites with Mobius M. Mobius and warns him of the threat posed by the many variants of He Who Remains, the TVA’s creator. Concurrently, TVA General Dox has several TVA hunters arm themselves, ostensibly to find Sylvie, who caused the Sacred Timeline to branch after killing He Who Remains. Loki and Mobius meet TVA technician Ouroboros, who deduces that Loki is “time slipping”, a phenomenon possibly caused by branching timelines dangerously overloading the Temporal Loom. To save Loki, Ouroboros instructs Mobius to approach the Temporal Loom with the Temporal Aura Extractor device to extract Loki from the time stream as Loki prunes himself. Loki time slips to the future, where the TVA is being evacuated as the Loom goes critical, he encounters Sylvie before he is pruned by someone at the last minute. In the present, Mobius successfully pulls Loki from the time stream, and they set out to find Sylvie. In a mid-credits scene, Sylvie enters a branched timeline in Broxton, Oklahoma, 1982 and visits a McDonald’s restaurant.

Episodes 02

“Breaking Brad”

Loki, Mobius, and Hunter B-15 find and capture Hunter X-5 in London, 1977 on the Sacred Timeline, where he lives as film actor Brad Wolfe. Under interrogation, he admits to abandoning Dox’s mission and reveals Sylvie’s location. Meanwhile, Ouroboros attempts to repair the Loom to safely accommodate the branching timelines, but discovers he cannot access it without help from the missing Miss Minutes or He Who Remains’s aura. Loki, Mobius and Wolfe travel to Oklahoma and find Sylvie working in a McDonald’s. Loki tells her of their encounter in the TVA’s future and asks for her assistance to figure out what would happen, but Sylvie refuses to involve herself with the organization. After Wolfe proclaims the group is in mortal danger, Sylvie enchants him, forcing him to reveal Dox’s plan to simultaneously destroy the branching timelines with reset charges. Sending Wolfe back into custody, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie capture Dox, but her plan has largely succeeded and some of her loyalists have escaped. As TVA receptionist Casey tracks the rogue Ravonna Renslayer’s TemPad on one of the remaining branching timelines, Sylvie declares that the TVA is rotten and returns to McDonald’s with He Who Remains’s TemPad in her possession.

Episodes 03

“1893”

Miss Minutes and Renslayer travel to Chicago, 1868 to secretly drop the TVA Handbook to a young Victor Timely, a variant of He Who Remains, who had arranged this before his death. They then travel to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair on this branched timeline, where Loki and Mobius arrive tracking Renslayer’s TemPad and see Timely presenting his Temporal Loom prototype. Timely then has four groups chasing him: Loki and Mobius, who need his aura to fix the Loom; Renslayer and Miss Minutes, who want him to take his variant’s place with them at his side; Sylvie, who wants to kill him to prevent his rise to power; and a robber baron and his allies wanting revenge against Timely’s fake invention scam. Timely abandons Renslayer for proposing a partnership. At Timely’s Wisconsin laboratory, he turns Miss Minutes off after she professes romantic love for him. Renslayer, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie arrive, with Sylvie gaining control. Sylvie allows Loki to take Timely back to the TVA, then sends Renslayer to the Citadel at the End of Time with Miss Minutes being brought along. They see He Who Remains’ decaying corpse as Miss Minutes reveals that she knows a secret about Renslayer.

Episodes 04

“Heart of the TVA”

Miss Minutes reveals that in the past, Renslayer commanded He Who Remains’ army; he proposed to lead the TVA with Renslayer, then had Miss Minutes erase the memories of Renslayer and other TVA employees. As the Temporal Loom reaches catastrophic failure, Loki and his allies attempt to use Timely and Ouroboros’s Throughput Multiplier to fix it. Ouroboros reveals that the source of his knowledge is Timely himself in an ontological paradox. Renslayer and Miss Minutes attempt to take over the TVA, approaching the detained Wolfe, Dox and her loyalists for help. Only Wolfe agrees; Dox and her loyalists instead choose to be crushed to death by Miss Minutes. Wolfe prunes Hunter D-90 and kidnaps Timely. While staging a rescue, Sylvie and Loki encounter his time-slipping past self; Loki prunes his past self.^[a] Ouroboros deactivates Miss Minutes and the TVA’s magic-suppressing devices. This enables Sylvie to enchant Wolfe, controlling him to prune Renslayer. Rescued, Timely restores access to the Loom, but when he approaches the Loom, the increased temporal radiation spaghettifies him before the Throughput Multiplier can be launched. The Temporal Loom explodes, and the blast wave spreads toward Loki, Mobius, Sylvie, B-15, Casey, and Ouroboros in the TVA.

Episodes 05

“Science/Fiction”

Loki survives the explosion, but everyone else has vanished and the TVA headquarters spaghettifies. Loki escapes as he begins time slipping again, taking him to branched timelines where his friends Mobius, Hunter B-15, Casey, and Ouroboros were reset to their original lives as Don, Dr. Verity Willis, Frank Morris, and Dr. A.D. Doug, respectively. Wanting to time slip to before the explosion, Loki enlists Doug’s help. With Loki unable to control his time slipping, Doug proposes Loki gather everyone present at the explosion back together, so that their collective temporal aura can send them back to the right time and place. Doug builds a TemPad using a TVA Handbook that Loki kept. Loki succeeds in gathering everyone else to Doug’s workshop except Sylvie, who has retained her memories. Refusing to help, Sylvie makes Loki admit his true motivation: he wants his friends back and fears being alone. When everything in Sylvie’s timeline spaghettifies, she goes to help Loki. However, Doug’s workshop also spaghettifies, as do Frank, Doug, Don, Willis, and Sylvie. Loki finally controls his time slipping by focusing on a person. Declaring that he can “rewrite the story”, Loki time slips to before the explosion by focusing on Ouroboros.

Episodes 06

“Glorious Purpose”

Loki time slips to the moment before the Temporal Loom’s explosion. Despite his attempts, the Loom ultimately fails to accommodate the infinite branches. Loki slips to the moment before Sylvie kills He Who Remains, who tells Loki that the Loom is a fail-safe; overloading it protects the Sacred Timeline by deleting the branches along with the TVA. He Who Remains suggests Loki kill Sylvie to save the Loom, which Loki rejects. After consulting Mobius and Sylvie at different moments in time, Loki replaces Timely in approaching the Loom. Loki destroys the Loom, magically rejuvenates the dying timelines and rearranges them into a tree-like structure, committing himself to oversee the branches alone at the End of Time. The TVA now tracks He Who Remains’ variants across the growing branches, with Mobius reporting one variant being stopped at Earth-616’s “adjacent realm”. B-15 becomes one of the TVA’s leaders. Ouroboros reactivates a now-friendly Miss Minutes and writes a new TVA Handbook with Timely as co-author. In one timeline, Timely did not receive the TVA Handbook in 1863. Renslayer awakens in the Void and encounters Alioth. Mobius retires from the TVA; he and Sylvie observe Don and his children from afar.

CAST

Tom Hiddleston as Loki:
Thor’s adopted brother and the god of mischief, based on the Norse mythological deity of the same name. He is an alternate, “time variant” version of Loki who created a new timeline in Avengers: Endgame (2019) beginning in 2012. He is time slipping, being pulled through time between the past, present, and future. Hiddleston said the season sees Loki “understanding himself”, having found this new Time Variance Authority (TVA) family and his “new capacity to make connections”, with the character finally finding a meaning and purpose in trying to help protect the TVA and his friends there.
Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie:
A variant of Loki who broke the timeline through killing He Who Remains in a misguided act of revenge. The season sees Sylvie working as a cashier at a McDonald’s in a branched timeline, in 1982 Broxton, Oklahoma.
Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15:
A high-ranking Hunter of the TVA. Following the branching of the timeline, she is working to reform the TVA and protect the new timelines and variants, given she has learned she is variant herself.
- Mosaku also portrays Dr. Verity Willis, a pediatrician from 2012 New York City.
Eugene Cordero as Casey: A TVA receptionist.
- Cordero also portrays Frank Morris, a famous bank robber and Alcatraz escapee.
Rafael Casal as Hunter X-5 / Brad Wolfe:
A TVA Hunter with a close connection to General Dox. Casal called Hunter X-5 “Loki’s mirror—another person who feels wronged. He’s a bit of a lost character and almost feels like an earlier version of Loki, reflecting back to him.” Director Dan DeLeeuw called X-5 “more of a straight villain, more of a heavy; a foil for Loki”. Executive producer Kevin Wright spoke to X-5’s relationship to Dox, noting it had a “maternal” quality, but questioned how much of that was because of their past lives, or “institutionalized from being in the TVA”. X-5 finds his real life on the Sacred Timeline and becomes the actor Brad Wolfe. DeLeeuw thought Casal “brought an interesting humanity” to his portrayal of Wolfe, explaining that it was his choice to become Wolfe to break free from the TVA being X-5’s reality. As well, the creative team “couldn’t resist” having a character who no longer believed in the reality of the TVA becoming an actor, given Wolfe now “puts on a perception of reality for a living”.
Kate Dickie as General Dox: A TVA general who is part of the new TVA council of judges following Renslayer’s disappearance. She is searching for Sylvie and still believes in the TVA’s mission to prune branched timelines.
Liz Carr as Judge Gamble: A paraplegic TVA judge who is part of the TVA council.
Neil Ellice as Hunter D-90: A TVA Hunter.
Ke Huy Quan as Ouroboros:
A TVA technician who works in its Repairs and Advancement Department. Described as the “quirky repair guy”, Wright explained that every piece of technology at the TVA was either designed by Ouroboros or he knows how to fix it and keep it operational. Quan felt Ouroboros was thrilled to be doing his job, despite working long hours alone in isolation. Introducing the character in the season was meant to highlight other parts of the TVA not seen in the first season to show how “massive” the organization was.
- Quan also portrays A.D. Doug, theoretical physics teacher at Caltech and failed science fiction author from 1994 Pasadena, California.
Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius: An agent of the TVA and friend of Loki. Wilson said that the season explores more of Mobius’ past and sees him struggling to accept a new reality, with the character losing some of his control and becoming more vulnerable.
- Wilson also portrays Don, a jet ski salesman and single father from 2022 Cleveland, Ohio.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer: A former TVA judge who has gone missing and has connections to He Who Remains.
Tara Strong as Miss Minutes:
The animated anthropomorphic AI clock mascot of the TVA created by He Who Remains who is in love with him and jealous of Renslayer. Humanizing Miss Minutes and exploring her human desires and aspirations was discussed early on in the season’s development. Director/production designer Kasra Farahani noted how “reductive characters” are referred to as cartoons “in a pejorative way”, and the creatives wanted to give Miss Minutes, an actual cartoon, “these super awkward and complex emotional feelings”. Natasha Arancini acts as the on-set stand-in for Miss Minutes.
Richard Dixon as Robber Baron: An industrialist who purchases a faulty invention from Victor Timely at the 1893 Chicago’s World’s Fair.
Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely and He Who Remains: Variants of Kang the Conqueror.
- Victor Timely is an industrialist and inventor in 1893 on a branched timeline who has created an early version of the Temporal Loom. He has a stutter and an awkward, timid personality, and acts as a con man selling others his creations. Discussing the contrasting personality of Timely to other Kang variants, Wright said it was “fun” to have Timely be “sort of an eccentric, quiet inventor that maybe is, like, a bit out of time and out of place” rather than the expectation of the next Kang variant to appear in the MCU to be “some sci-fi villain from the future”. Marvel Studios was excited to continue exploring Kang and his variants in the season, particularly wanting Timely for Loki, with Wright noting his inclusion and integration would be “a big part” of the season. Majors and Farahani were drawn to real-life inventor Granville Woods, whose life had many parallels to Timely’s, with Majors creating Timely’s mannerisms, physicality, quirkiness and “the specific mix of how he represented intellectual brilliance with social awkwardness, a degree of charlatanism and pathos”. Nasri Thompson portrays a young Timely.
- He Who Remains is a scientist from the 31st century who ended the first multiversal war by destroying “evil variants” of himself and created the TVA to prevent a new multiverse from forming and to keep his variants from coming back into existence.

PRODUCTION

Development

Loki star Tom Hiddleston and executive producer Kevin Wright began having conversations during production of the season one episode “Lamentis” regarding “how this world could build out” to “dive deeper into it”. Development on a second season had begun by November 2020. In January 2021, the first season’s head writer Michael Waldron signed an overall deal with Disney which included his involvement in the second season of Loki. Marvel Studios producer Nate Moore, who served as an executive producer on the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, believed Loki had “really irreverent and clever and cool” storylines that lent to the series having multiple seasons rather than being a one-off event. The second season was confirmed through a mid-credits scene in the first-season finale, which was released in July 2021, and Hiddleston said “deep discussions” about the second season were already underway. First season director Kate Herron said she would not return for the second season as she had always planned to only be involved for one season, while Waldron said it “remain to be seen” if he would be involved.

In February 2022, the directing duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead were hired to direct a majority of the episodes for the second season. They previously directed two episodes of another Marvel Studios series, Moon Knight (2022), which went so well that the studio wanted them to work on other projects and they were quickly chosen for the second season of Loki. Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige had approached the duo while they were working on additional photography for Moon Knight to have them meet with Wright and Hiddleston to discuss coming on board for the season. Eric Martin, a first-season writer who took over some of Waldron’s duties during production on that season, was set to write all six episodes of the second season, with Hiddleston and Waldron confirmed to be returning as executive producers. Benson and Moorhead were excited to approach another character in Loki who, like Moon Knight‘s Marc Spector / Moon Knight, was defined by being an outcast and had “complexity in being outcast”. Pre-production had begun by the end of April 2022. Dan DeLeeuw, a visual effects supervisor and second unit director on several MCU films, and season one production designer Kasra Farahani were revealed as directors in June 2023; they each directed one episode of the season, with Benson and Moorhead directing the other four. DeLeeuw was chosen to direct given his past work directing second units for Marvel Studios, as well as his approach to character in the visual effects reviews of season one, and Farahani, being a writer and director, was chosen because he “really understood the world and helped build it”. Wright said both “were steady hands who knew this world and these characters”. Executive producers for the season include Marvel Studios’ Feige, Stephen Broussard, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, and Wright, alongside Hiddleston, Benson and Moorhead, Martin, and Waldron.