Tom Hiddleston says he’s a “temporary torchbearer” for Loki
However, the God of Mischief's Disney Plus series will be back for season two
Aux News Tom Hiddleston
While the first season of Loki on Disney+ closed with an immediate confirmation of the adopted Asgardian’s return in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, maybe don’t get your hopes up for a season three. As reported by Variety, star Tom Hiddleston referred to himself as a “temporary torchbearer” for the character, whom he has been portraying since 2011's Thor.
“It’s a great role,” he said. “It’s an archetype, the trickster god, the agent of chaos. I’m just here interpreting that for the time being. Loki has been here for centuries and will be here for centuries more and I’m just stepping into that silhouette for now.”
The actor was participating in a Loki panel for the Royal Television Society alongside co-star Sophia Di Martino, director Kate Herron, and writer Michael Waldron, who noted that he originally wrote a scene where Di Martino’s character Sylvie kicks a laser-shooting armadillo like a soccer ball.
However, in a Q&A last year, Hiddleston also said he would “absolutely” play the God of Mischief for the rest of his life, and Loki is the only live-action Marvel series on Disney+ guaranteed to receive a second season so far.
The concept of legacy characters was previously established in the MCU, with Steve Rogers notably passing the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson in Avengers: Endgame. Wilson’s own successor for the Falcon title, Joaquin Torres, was introduced in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.
Loki, of course, showed us an absurd array of variants of its titular character, including Sylvie and the immediate fan favorite Alligator Loki. While the Tom Hiddleston iteration eventually parts ways with his deeply chaotic peers, it seems unlikely that we’ve seen the last of Jack Veal’s Kid Loki, as other Marvel properties such as Hawkeye and WandaVision have added more youthful characters that appear destined to assemble as a live-action version of the Young Avengers or Champions.
56 Comments
Sounds like he wants his future roles to be a bit more low key.
Seems like a fair contemporary update to the old classic:
Plus I doubled AV Club’s coverage of Yellowstone.
That show is such stupid fun. I can’t believe they couldn’t spare someone to cover it on an episode-level basis, especially given some of the shows that do get attention.
I’d be curious to learn how the weekly recaps come about. Like is it a “you need to cover this show and that,” or like a “we’re covering a cable show, an HBO show and an Apple show, someone needs a Hulu show.” Or is it writer’s choice: “I’m watching this anyway and so this gets a recap” thing.I’m just stumped that the Elizabeth Holmes Hulu show gets a weekly. Baffling.
I’m guessing writers pitch the coverage and get a go/no go from the editor. The coverage seems too random to be based upon viewership.
That sounds right.
…?
I see what you did there.
This is the sort of pun I look forward to on a Thorsday.
Your pun ragnarocks!
This friggin’ guy . . . .
A swing and a miss, chief.
Sounds more like this scab either can’t read what the interview says, or agreed to write the article regardless.
Well yeah, now that theyre introduced the “variant” concept, anyone can play Loki.
Except Ben Affleck.
Well he’s already been Batman, Daredevil, and George Reeves as Superman. He’d have to be a real greedy bastard to try for Loki, too.
Don’t forget Dogma, where he literally played Loki’s *best friend*.
I think you underestimate how much he spends on booze.
Chow’s a scab hired by scabs. It’s unfair to expect her to have read the interview.
Are there any characters they are NOT planning on swapping out with a more ‘diverse’ version? Hey, I’ve got an idea! Real representation happens when storytellers create new interesting diverse characters. Slapping a blonde wig and tits on an established character is pandering plain and simple. Personally, I feel that the new Black Panther should be an overweight Latinx transgender little person with that blue hair liberal arts college dyke haircut.
Of course he is, Marvel characters are decades old, and Norse characters are centuries old.
Yep, that’s how I read it too. It doesn’t sound like he’s talking about how long he’ll be playing the role, but acknowledging that the character of Loki is part of a grander tradition than Marvel.
The thing about Loki being a shapeshifter is that if Hiddleston wants to retire they can re-cast him with anyone. Or they could say the new Loki is a variant.There are also other ways Loki’s re-casting can be explained in-universe…
It’s a good statement from him. I didn’t interpret that as him being ready to leave the role behind anytime soon, just that “Loki” as a concept and character is much bigger than him and he won’t always it. Might be something good for the fans to internalize in case he ever does get tired of the part and wants to do something else. There’s this weird resistance to recasting people these days without having some dumb lore explanation for why they look different now.
Seconded. Nothing in that quote should be interpreted as applying to the future of Hiddleston playing Loki, unless you were wondering if maybe he’d always played Loki, and always would until the end of time, in which case, sorry, yeah, he probably will stop playing Loki at some point prior to his death.
Sez you, haven’t you seen Peter Cushing reprising his role of Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One years after his death?
Why would he not, in his moment of triumph?
Scabs gonna scab…especially when their scab mentors (Tenreyro, Barsanti, and Plumberduck) are Pathetic hacks.
It’d also be good for scabs to read and understand interviews before writing Newswires.
To be fair, Loki was also the only Disney+ MCU series written to have a second season. Wandavision and Falcon and Winter Soldier very much felt like limited run series leading into new movies. I have not finished Hawkeye yet to chime in on that.
Hawkeye feels like an extended DVD extra/short. The stakes are lower than in the movies he’s been featured in (even if proportional to his abilities), the production value is a bit hokey, and the characters introduced could easily never show up again. The fact that “it’s X days until Christmas…” is a plot device also gives Direct-to-DVD/Fanfic vibes.
All that to say, I did enjoy myself and would watch more – it’s just not as important to canon/understanding the characters as say Wandavision.
Hawkeye was designed to spin up Kate Bishop and Echo, and I think Steinfeld’s Bishop was well-received and will undoubtedly have an MCU future. But my understanding is the original plan was she would start off in other projects, not Hawkeye/Bishop-titled projects.I guess they could reconsider, but that original plan is fine with me. In fact, whatever gets Steinfeld’s Bishop and Pugh’s Belova back together at a dining table would be an auto-greenlight for me.
The upcoming She/Hulk and Moon Knight series have been confirmed to be produced under the idea of multiple seasons, but recently Oscar Isaac said Moon Knight was a limited series so who knows on that one. Also What If…? is getting another season and confirmed to be canon due to the events in Loki. Other than those though most have been officially called miniseries. They almost act like those prequel comics Marvel would sell right before a new movie came out that filled in the gaps between films. Good stories that are mostly set up for things to come.
How is “the concept of Loki has existed for literally thousands of years and I’m just his latest face” a newsworthy statement
Writer: “Slow news day. I mean, there’s nothing else important happening in the world. Right, guys? Huh, ‘turn on the news’? OK, but I don’t see what that has to do with…OHHHH…”
Whoever is still working at AV Club is probably reaching for anything at this point, given that 7 AV Club staffers resigned effective yesterday instead of being forced to take big pay cuts to move to LA. I’m guessing that whatever newbies hired to undercut the longer-tenured union employees are simply scrambling to produce any kind of content today.
You’ll notice a LOT of recycled material right now. I narrowly avoided commenting on a two year-old article by coming across one I made at the time it was first published.
Were you about to yell at yourself for getting it all wrong before you noticed?
I contain multitudes.
Katie Scab has me happy that Tenreyro and The Neckbeard had me grayed.
Don’t be shitty to the people still working here. It’s not their fault – the union did its best to get a fair deal on a terrible thing that company management is doing.
Yeah, you’re right. Not my best internet moment. If Kinja allowed for deletions, I would.
Not sure how Hiddleston being a “torch-bearer” for Loki has anything to do with there being more than two seasons; my first thought was that he meant that future seasons would focus on different Variants. Such a weird takeaway from that comment.
Wilson’s own successor for the Falcon title, Joaquin Torres, was introduced in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.Is that official? I know that he got the old EXO-7 rig, and that he’s the new Falcon in the comics, but I’m wondering if he’ll actually show up in Cap4.
I think showing him as backup (and fanboy) to Sam, and then that scene where Sam gives him the old wings clearly sets him up to reappear in future projects as a new Falcon, but I could be reading too much into it.
Malcom Spellman wrote F&tWS and is writing Captain America 4, so there’s a very good chance he’ll keep utilizing some of the supporting characters he already introduced in the show. However neither Feige or any of the Marvel PR has highlighted the “next Falcon” in any way so if Spellman or any other future writers decide there’s nothing really to do with that character then his appearance in F&tWS will just remain a nice easter egg for fans.There have been soooo many legacy/young characters put into play in the past year/near future that I think Torres is pretty low on the priority list. I mean they’ve got Kate Bishop, Yelena Belova, Billy & Tommy Maximoff, Kid Loki, Eli Bradley, Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, America Chavez, Riri Williams, and Joaquin Torres… if they feel any of those characters need to be cut loose I think Torres is probably first on the chopping block.
No disagreement from me here. But we never know with Marvel. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Like you said, at the very least it’s a nice little easter egg.
i was disappointed that it led into a season 2 so i HOPE we don’t get a season 3 and it has an ending.
Yeah he knows the character has existed for hundreds of years outside of this one IP. This means fuck all else…
Is there a good website that does what this place used to do?
If I win the lottery I’m hiring back everybody.
Haven’t heard from him in a while. He must have just finished his inventory of his garage and basement to make sure he didn’t have any of Taylor Swift’s old scarves or mittens before he felt safe to come out of hiding.