Loki: the latest news and reviews for the Marvel show on Disney Plus

When special effects studio Digital Domain was approached by Marvel to work on an episode of Loki, there was one sequence in particular that was exciting: the chance to destroy an entire planet.

The third episode of the series is set on the moon of a planet called Lamentis, which is about to collapse on itself, taking the moon with it. As Loki and Sylvie wander the desolate, purple landscape, meteors pound the ground around them. This all leads up to a crescendo when they reach a small town, which is battered by debris as the planet rips apart.

Loki did something remarkable: it made me forget about the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. The entire conceit of the MCU is that every story, whether it’s a blockbuster movie or a streaming television show, is in service to the greater narrative arc. You’re not just watching what’s happening to the characters on-screen, but also hints of what comes next. Loki doesn’t get away from that entirely, particularly with its conclusion that sets up the universe’s next big villain. But like the variants who inhabit Loki’s world outside of time, the six-episode first season carves out its own timeline — a few of them, in fact — making it perhaps the most standalone part of the MCU to date. You can enjoy it as part of the all-encompassing cinematic universe or as what it truly is: an excellent piece of science fiction.

As time goes on, mobile devices have grown ever more powerful in their function: what were once simple communication devices or multimedia players have turned into tiny pocket-sized supercomputers that are jam-packed with features. And nothing exemplifies this trend more than the TVA TemPad, which packs in temporal tracking and manipulation abilities that give the most ordinary of owners powers that surpass even the mightiest of heroes.  

Spoilers for Loki’s first season ahead

Disney’s Loki TV show is getting a second season, according to a scene appended to the sixth and final episode of its first season. The confirmation, first spotted by Variety, comes mid-way through the episode’s credits at the 42 minute and 48 second mark, when a stamp appears on screen which simply reads “Loki will return in season 2.”

Loki is the third Marvel show to have premiered on Disney Plus, and the first to have had a second season officially confirmed. WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen has confirmed that the show, which premiered in January this year, isn’t due to receive a second season. Meanwhile it’s currently unclear whether The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will return for a second season, especially given the show leads neatly into the upcoming fourth Captain America movie.

For me, watching Loki has meant pausing each episode to admire the devices that keep the Time Variance Authority running — all curved silhouettes and comically tiny screens and hazy orange readouts. By the time I asked Loki production designer Kasra Farahani about the show’s prop design inspirations, I’d convinced myself that the TemPad had to be based on a Nintendo DS. It’s all I can think of whenever Mobius (Owen Wilson) flips open the little oblong compact. 

“Actually, the primary piece of research that we were looking at is, there’s this crazy image that I found of a calculator watch on a wrist,” says Farahani, when I ask him about the TemPad’s aesthetic origins. “But the calculator watch is huge, it’s like the size of an iPhone, almost... it’s basically a scientific calculator strapped to [someone’s] wrist.” 

Disney’s IP has once again fully synergized with the arrival of a new Marvel-themed Simpsons short titled “The Good, The Bart, and The Loki.” Disney very much appears to be putting that $71 billion investment in IP from 21st Century Fox to work.

The company announced Wednesday that the special will debut July 7th exclusively on its streaming service Disney Plus. Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will also voice Loki in the Simpsons adaptation.

Before she got her start working on TV shows like Sex Education, Kate Herron’s career involved temping at a lot of offices. So when she was given the chance to direct Loki, a new Disney Plus series that follows a bureaucratic organization called the TVA that controls time, she knew exactly the vibe she was going for. She describes the style as Mad Men meets brutalist architecture — with plenty of sci-fi influences. And it was her previous career that helped inspire some of those aesthetics.

“I took a lot of experience as well from my own life as an office temp, I worked in a lot of offices before I got my first film job,” she tells The Verge. “It actually inspired the style of tech. I remember the computers I used to work on were really archaic and really old. But I was working for these big institutions, and they were like, ‘Well, we’re not going to update them because they’re not broken.’ I like the idea that this organization that’s controlling time, they maybe wouldn’t have the most futuristic technology. But it works, so why are they going to change it?”

Despite a decade of playing Loki in various Marvel films, and now a TV show, Tom Hiddleston isn’t tired of the role. “There’s always something new to find,” he tells The Verge.

This week sees the premiere of Loki on Disney Plus, a six-episode series that marks the character’s first leading role. It’s a story of time travel and branching timelines, as Loki is captured by an organization called the Time Variance Authority (TVA). It mixes action, humor, and some good old-fashioned detective work, while touching on serious subjects like the nature of free will. There are also some fresh faces on board, as Hiddleston is joined by Marvel newcomers Owen Wilson, who plays a TVA agent named Mobius, and director Kate Herron, best-known for her work on the first season of Sex Education.

When Loki is first captured by an organization devoted to maintaining the purity of the timestream, it’s a bit like a trip to the DMV.

His time at the TVA — otherwise known as the Time Variance Authority — includes taking a number to wait in line, walking through a metal detector-like security device, and verifying some paperwork. But there are some differences compared to getting your license renewed. Failing to queue up properly at the TVA can result in death. And that paperwork? It’s a massive stack consisting of literally everything Loki has ever said (including the two confused words he utters while standing in the office). It’s extremely funny to watch an all-powerful deity be forced through a confusing bureaucracy — and it’s the perfect way to start off the new Loki series on Disney Plus.

Loki, the one-time Marvel villain played for over a decade now by Tom Hiddleston, is on the verge of starring in his own series. Instead of playing the scene-stealing antagonist — or, later, grudging sidekick — to Chris Hemsworth’s square-jawed Thor, the God of Mischief is finally going to get to be fully in the spotlight. It’s something that fans have been asking for since the character first made his scenery-chewing debut in 2011’s Thor — but the new show looks far more detached from the MCU than any of his previous adventures. 

Loki is a new kind of series for Disney Plus. It’s the first that intentionally feels like a capital-S Spinoff. The first two Marvel shows, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, occupied very different roles in the overarching storyline that Kevin Feige has been overseeing for the last 23 odd films.