Tom Hiddlestonsat down with Collider’sPerri Nemiroffat theToronto International Film Festivaltalking about his upcoming filmThe Life of Chuck. Hiddleston stars in the horror alongsideKaren Gillan(Guardians of the Galaxy) andDavid Dastmalchian(The Suicide Squad). Hiddleston plays the title character, Chuck Krantz, in the film based on theStephen Kingshort story. While talking about the upcoming horror, Collider also got to ask Hiddleston about one of, if not his most well-known roles as the God of Mischief, Loki, in theMarvel Cinematic Universe. Hiddleston played Loki in several Marvel projects including the first threeThorfilms alongsideChris Hemsworth.
Loki also got his ownDisney+ show for two seasons, the latest of whichaired last year.. The show gave fans a proper introduction to the Time Variance Authority or the TVA. The TVA was most recently seen in the blockbusterDeadpool & Wolverine. As far as fans (and possibly Hiddleston himself), theLokiseries ends with the two seasons. The series was the first (and currently only) of the 2021 Disney+ shows (WandaVision,Falcon and the Winter Soldier, andLoki) to even get a second season.
Nemiroff asked Hiddleston about the end of the series, and which part of it helped give him a sense of closure, but also asked what he’d like to do, given the chance to return for Season 3. “[W]here we ended at the end of Season 2 ofLoki, I really feel like the spiritual confrontation was complete,” Hiddleston explains. “[Loki] understood through the gift of his connections with Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and his friends at the TVA that sometimes purpose is more burden than glory, and he gives himself for his friends.”
Loki Confronts Himself as An Antihero
When creating the television showLoki, Hiddleston says, “we knew we were going to do something different and something separate from everything else I had done before that, and that was very exciting,” Hiddleston explains. “[B]ut also with great respect for those things that had come before, the threeThormovies and theAvengersmovies that I was in. We were creating this world of theTVA, an institution that claims to govern the order of time, andwe knew we wanted to confront this antihero with himself.” The Loki seen in the Disney+ show, is a variant of the Loki captured at the end of the firstAvengersmovie. Instead of being taken back to Asgard for his punishment, he gets a hold of the Tesseract and disappears (thanks to actions inAvengers: Endgame.)
“The whole 12 episodes, or two seasons, our theme was going to be identity and self-discovery, and taking that kind of iconic line from Avengers — “I’m Loki of Asgard. I’m burdened with glorious purpose,” — and investigating that.” Hiddleston had a chance, essentially, to go back in time, to the mindset that anAvengersera Loki would still be in, rather than working with how he’s changed over the course of the Thor films. Loki is also almost immediately confronted with his own mortality, seeing his death at the beginning ofAvengers: Infinity War.“What is purpose, and is it possible to redefine, reinvestigate, rediscover, or reinvent his sense of purpose?”
Through the journey Loki takes over the course of the series, Hiddleston says “there’s a kind of closure, and the broken soul that he started with in the very firstThormovie is healed because he’s always been a character who doesn’t belong, and finally, he finds a place to belong, and people to belong to.So, I felt very happy with the conclusion of that.” With that being said, if the series gets an additional season, Hiddleston says the sky is the limit with possibilities of Loki as a character. “He’s a character who’s been around for almost 3,000 years,” Hiddleston explains. “[A]nd he represents unpredictability, boundary-crossing, disruption, and the question mark. So I feel like if I ever got a chance to play the character again, there are 1,000 things I haven’t done. He’s constantly changing, as are we all.”
You can watchLokinow on Disney+. Stay tuned to Collider for more from the Toronto International Film Festival.
Loki, the God of Mischief, steps out of his brother’s shadow to embark on an adventure that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”
Watch on Disney+
