Loki: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Marvel’s New Show

After successfully conquering the TV world with WandaVision, and garnering mixed-positive feedback for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Kevin Feige’s Marvel universe is moving to Wednesdays on Disney+ with its new show, Loki, on June 9. Like the other Marvel Disney+ shows before it, Loki will try to satisfy both die-hard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and newcomers who don’t know a shield from a S.H.I.E.L.D. This article has something for both. 

If WandaVision was an examination of grief through the lens of classic American sitcoms and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier attempted to examine American identity through the lens of buddy action-comedies like Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour, and 48 Hours, Loki is a time-hopping space adventure that wonders if someone like Tom Hiddleston’s wildly popular villain turned antihero Loki can change his mischievous ways. In a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast, series writer Michael Waldron revealed that the influences behind Loki run the gamut from his old job at Rick and Morty to prestige TV like Mad Men, The Leftovers, and Watchmen, and feature films like Blade Runner, Inglourious Basterds, Before Sunrise, and Catch Me If You Can.

As with its other shows, Marvel and Disney+ have produced new installments of Marvel Studios Legends that act, essentially, as a “previously on” for those hoping to refresh their memories before watching Loki. But because there are no legacy characters, that we know of, appearing in Loki outside of Hiddleston’s god of mischief, there are only two videos, and the second one focuses on the infinity stone Loki stole in Aveng—you know what? Don’t worry about it. 

Instead, try our own primer, which should be helpful for both those who have never seen a single Marvel movie and those who don’t mind a little extra homework. For the latter: Toward the bottom of this article, you’ll find some comic book recommendations as well as some advanced speculation on what we might expect from this new show. Every week of Loki’s six-episode run, Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast hosts Richard Lawson, Anthony Breznican, and Joanna Robinson will also be breaking down the latest episode with both beginner-level and advanced analysis. A preview episode is up right now, in case you want to get started. 

But if even those podcasts and the helpful Legends recaps leave you wanting more, feel free to start out by learning the basics below. 

Who Is Loki? You don’t have to be a comic book fan to know the answer to this one. According to ancient Norse mythology, Loki is a trickster god. Or, if you prefer: the god of mischief. When Marvel comics decided it wanted to dabble in Norse mythology with the thunder god Thor (You’ve heard of him, right? Big arms?), Loki came along for the ride. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of events, Loki is the adopted brother of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. If Thor is the type to be captain of the lacrosse team, Loki was always more of an indoor kid. 

The truth about his adoption is something Loki learned late in life. It created a tremendous chip on his shoulder, destroyed his relationship with his adopted father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and put a strain on his relationship with his beloved adopted mother, Frigga (Rene Russo). 

Frigga taught Loki (largely illusion-based) magic, which manifests in Loki’s signature color: green. His weapons of choice are his magic, a pair of daggers, and his lying tongue. He has a massive horned helmet that Hiddleston somehow, against all odds, manages to make work. 

Loki has gone on a real journey over the course of several films, from the big bad in The Avengers (2012) to a noble, self-sacrificing hero who died at the hand of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Hiddleston’s massive popularity with audiences has allowed Loki to escape death, resulting in one of the more complicated and nuanced emotional journeys in all of the MCU. But you know what? That journey doesn’t matter that much, because…

When Is Loki? This is a show about time travel, which makes this answer a little complicated. Basically: Because Loki died (again) in Avengers: Infinity War, the bright minds at Marvel cleverly used the time travel plot of Avengers: Endgame (2019) to journey all the way back to a less developed version of Loki (with way worse hair). So the Loki we will be watching on this Disney+ show is the Loki from 2012’s The Avengers, meaning he has not gone through any of the character development fans have been watching over the past decade of films. He popped out of that movie right after trying to engineer a sort of alien 9/11 on New York. Not great! His escape from the timeline might also cause some continuity issues, which brings us to…

Where Is Loki? This is where things get a little complicated but also pretty fun. The Loki series is set inside the world of something called the TVA, or Time Variance Authority. Don’t worry even a little bit if you feel confused here; the Loki premiere spends plenty of time explaining the rules and regulations of this place.

Here, though, are the basics: The TVA is a futuristic bureaucratic organization tasked with cleaning up messy timeline shenanigans due to the aforementioned time travel. In the MCU, when a timeline is messed with, that timeline splits off into its own reality. As you might imagine, this makes things complicated. Loki escaping from a 2012 film a full six years before his date with death in 2018? Messy. In other words, Loki enters the show, and the TVA, as a time criminal. (Fun, right?) The TVA was created in the future, but it exists outside of time. But I’m not sure you really need to worry about that yet. 

There are various roles occupied by employees of the TVA, including judges, administrators, and time monitors. Some familiar faces round out the cast here, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing Judge Ravonna Renslayer, Owen Wilson playing an administrator called Mobius M. Mobius, and Wunmi Mosaku and Sasha Lane as Time Monitors B-15 and C-20. The Good Place’s Eugene Cordero also shows up as a TVA office drone, and a fun animated character called Miss Minutes is played by someone sure to excite fans of voice acting. 

The TVA was created by three enigmatic figures known as the Time Keepers. More on them in the Advanced Section. 

Why Is Loki? That’s something we’ll all probably have to figure out together, as the show’s six episodes roll out on Disney+. But taking a closer look at some of the inspirations cited by head writer Michael Waldron might give us a road map. The futuristic noir influences of Blade Runner are kind of a no-brainer, but what about Before Sunset and Inglourious Basterds?

The former makes me wonder if there might be some romantic element to this Loki series. Surprisingly, Hiddleston’s Loki has never had a love story in the films outside of the fraternal one he shares with his brother. But it might just be that both Sunrise and Basterds are a reference to what Waldron calls “long scenes of dialogue and tension building.” Loki does like to talk. 

In his recent appearance on Still Watching, Waldron also outlined what critically acclaimed prestige shows like The Leftovers, Watchmen, and Mad Men have to do with Loki. Some of the homages are overt: real-life unsolved mystery man D.B. Cooper, a figure familiar to Mad Men fans, showed up in the Loki trailers. But the vaguely mid-century modern design of the TVA coupled with Loki—a difficult man who, like Don Draper, is on a journey of self-discovery—add up to much more than an Easter egg or two. 

But the biggest reference point for Loki may be the 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks film Catch Me If You Can. The cat and mouse game between Hanks’s FBI agent Carl Hanratty and DiCaprio’s con man Frank Abagnale Jr. has clear parallels in Wilson’s TVA agent and Hiddleston’s inveterate liar Loki. But the comparisons, including the unlikely familial bond that blossoms between the two in Catch Me If You Can, may go even further than that. Is this a show about daddy issues? You know what? In a way, it is.  

Okay, but Should I Actually Watch Any of the Movies Loki’s In? Fun fact: Tom Hiddleston has appeared in six Marvel movies—Thor (2011), The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame—and all but the last two were directed by different people. Since the last four all technically take place after Loki pops out of the timeline to appear in his own Disney+ show, that just leaves two options. You don’t really need to watch either—but if you want to get a much better sense of Loki’s complicated relationship with his brother and father, you should watch Thor. If you just want to have a rip-roaring good time while getting a better sense of who Loki is as a character, make it The Avengers (2012). 

And that’s really all you need to know. All the rest is gravy. 

Advanced Reading 

So you’ve seen all the movies and knew all of that stuff up there and are ready for more? Let’s do it. 

Okay, Really, Which Movies Should I Rewatch? Rewatching the Loki/Odin dynamic in Thor is probably a good idea, but other than that I’m not sure you should worry too much about the movies. Maybe watch some of the Loki scenes in Thor: The Dark World? It really is his best hair.  

Head writer Michael Waldron cites the Dark World moment above, where Loki learns that he’s partially responsible for his mother’s death, as particularly illuminating. “Tom’s performance is so tremendous and it just betrays nothing on his face,” he says. “It’s just that simmering rage and that heartbreak. That’s the character to me, he’s not going to let anybody see what he’s feeling but he is feeling deeply.”

What About…Other Lokis? You may or may not remember that in the comics, Loki shows up in a number of different guises—including as Kid Loki and Lady Loki. The latter aspect has given the character Loki an interesting gender fluid and pansexual aspect. (The pansexual part is canon.) There are rumblings that we will see these alternative Lokis in the series, but only time (travel) will tell. Richard E. Grant and Sophia Di Martino are confirmed cast members in mystery roles.  

Okay, So Which Comics Should I Read? Waldron recommends the Kid Loki comic Journey Into Mystery #622–630 (2011) by Kieron Gillen. Based on the trailer moment above, the 2016 Vote Loki run by Christopher Hastings and Langdon Foss might be worth your time. And if you’re curious about Lady Loki and all she has to offer, check out Thor #600–601 (2007) by J. Michael Straczynski.   

Looking Forward With Loki: We know by now that all these Disney+ shows and MCU movies are tangled up with each other. Going forward in the MCU, the TVA might actually prove fairly valuable in pruning and cleaning up continuities that get too complicated to follow. But for now, let’s look at how Loki might feed into some future projects. 

• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (March 2022): This is an easy one. Michael Waldron, the head writer of Loki, was tapped to write the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel as well. This, he said, meant that any confusion he created with the timelines in Loki became his to rearrange in The Multiverse of Madness: “Yeah, we’ll leave that for the next writers,” he remembers thinking. “But then you do that on Loki, and you find yourself writing Doctor Strange—and you have to clean up your own mess.”
• Thor: Love and Thunder (May 2022): Fan-favorite Jaimie Alexander is rumored to reappear as Lady Sif in Thor: Love and Thunder, and some fans are hoping she’ll appear in Loki as well. No confirmation either way, but it would be very strange to not have these two story lines intersect in some way.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (February 2023): Waldron said that he was in close contact with friend and Ant-Man 3 writer Jeff Loveness when Loveness was writing the script for this upcoming quantum-realm adventure. Some fans wonder if Loki and Ant-Man 3 will be connected by the time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). Kang is confirmed to appear in Ant-Man 3, and comic fans know that Kang’s love interest is none other than a woman named Ravonna Renslayer, a.k.a. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Loki character. Will Majors make an appearance in Loki? Has he already? Is he actually one of the three mysterious time keepers we keep seeing crop up in statue form in the trailers?
• Young Avengers: If you’ve been following these Disney+ Marvel threads closely, you are already aware that the shows appear to be seeding the universe with a number of young heroes who may one day form a super team known as the Young Avengers in the Marvel universe. (See: Wanda’s fast-growing twins in WandaVision, Elijah Richardson as Eli Bradley in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hailee Steinfeld in Hawkeye, Iman Vellani in Ms. Marvel, Dominique Thorne in Ironheart, Xochitl Gomez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness…the list goes on and on.) Who should we have our eye on in Loki? Why, Loki himself, of course. In the comics, Kid Loki joins the Young Avengers. Wouldn’t that be something to see?

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