Loki head writer Eric Martin on the God of Mischief’s new role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the season 2 finale.
MAJOR SPOILERS for Loki season 2 finale. Well over a decade after Loki’s introduction in Thor, the Asgardian’s tale has come to an end… or has it?
The recent finale of Loki found the character destroying the Time Loom and rejuvenating the dying branches into a new structure resembling Yggdrasil. He then accepts his role as God Loki, overseeing all the branches in solitude at the end of time. Loki head writer Eric Martin spoke with Deadline about the character’s new role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the road it took to bring him there.
“Going into Season 2, it felt like an opportunity to bring gravity to the series to step up a level, because we marched up the line and got to the man behind the curtain and the stakes got extremely high at the end of the season. Let’s keep climbing. Let’s keep building that,” Martin said. “The idea was always Loki would finally get his throne when it was the last thing he wanted. And like Atlas, he’s burdened with this purpose and his purpose is holding all of time together. He has replaced the Loom. He’s become so powerful that he alone can hold time together.“
Martin continued, “I want to make it always as difficult as possible for our characters. The harder the journey, the more valuable the victory. The more satisfying the conclusion. I wanted to take Loki down 30 miles of rough road, like let’s make this hard. Because if we are going to level him up to be this capital G God, he has to earn that. It has to actually be plausible in the way that he is now incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly powerful. But what time gives us all is wisdom. He’s now incredibly wise. He has lived so much. It felt absolutely necessary to run him through that wringer because of all of that.“
When it comes to Loki’s future in the MCU, it remains to be seen how he will be used, and executive producer Kevin Wright isn’t entirely sure. “I’m not just being coy. I can’t tell you how other people will pick this up, because we just haven’t had those conversations,” Wright said.
Wright added that he hopes there will be more conversations between the producers of all the Marvel projects going forward. “There is going to be a stronger emphasis trying to make sure everyone is working from the same sheets, the same script,” he said. “I think that is partially trying to get these writers on the Loki side, who had been living in this world, to maybe hopefully populate into other projects so they can help with that, or just better conversations among producers internally,” he said. “We’ve told almost 12 hours of Loki‘s story with the hope that they would come to us a little bit and go, ‘Hey, does this align with what you’ve been doing?’ It will probably help us out tremendously.“
The season 2 finale of Loki attracted 11.2 million global views over three days, which is a 3% increase over the season 2 premiere.