Before ‘Loki’, Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston Time Traveled Together In ‘Midnight In Paris’

Maybe the best part of Disney+‘s Loki isn’t the return of Tom Hiddleston‘s Loki or the countless Easter eggs strewn throughout the series premiere. It’s the long-awaited reunion of time-traveling buddies Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson. Sure, Loki marks the debut of Wilson’s Agent Mobius, but this isn’t the first time Hiddleston and Wilson have bonded over the weird and wild wonders of time travel. The two actors first worked together in 2011’s Midnight in Paris. And while that utterly charming movie might now be unwatchable (thanks to the whole, you know, Woody Allen of it all), it still gave us the delightful first meeting of Loki‘s Hiddleston and Wilson on screen.

Disney+’s Loki picks up one of the few major loose threads left by the MCU blockbuster Avengers: Endgame. In that over-stuffed spectacle, the Avengers left alive after Thanos’s snap finally come up with a plan to undo the damage done by the Titan. They are going to go back in time, collect the Infinity Stones from various points in Avengers history, bring them back to the present, and snap all their lost loved ones back to reality. Of course, a plan this complicated goes awry. The Loki of 2012 steals the Tesseract and escapes his destined imprisonment. However he winds up right in the path of the TVA, or Time Variance Authority, a group dedicated to pruning “Variants” and their errant timelines from existence.

It is here that Loki meets Agent Mobius. The two circle each other and spar with quips. Mobius seems to be the first person with the jump on Loki, and it’s honestly delightful to watch. Mobius isn’t driven by avarice, like the Asgardian god, but curiosity. As these two mismatched characters, Hiddleston and Wilson have an instantaneously chaotic chemistry. Loki is known for his unpredictability and Wilson has long established himself as an actor thrilled to take the surprising approach to scene. Indeed Loki and Mobius, Hiddleston and Wilson…both are matches made in erratic heaven. However this isn’t the first time the duo has shared the screen in a time travel caper.

Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston both appeared in Woody Allen’s then-beloved 2011 romantic comedy Midnight in Paris. The film followed a contemporary American writer who was struggling with finding his voice as he traveled with his girlfriend Inez (Rachel McAdams) to Paris. While Wilson’s character, Gil, is a successful screenwriter, he longs for something more authentic than the materialistic lifestyle Inez is drawn to. One night, while wandering the streets of Paris alone, Gil travels back to 1920s Paris. There he meets a parade of his artistic heroes including Corey Stoll’s Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates’s Gertrude Stein, and the scene-stealing married couple of Zelda (Allison Pill) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston).

It can’t be stressed enough that the most enchanting part of Midnight in Paris is its recreation of the world Hemingway captured in his memoir, A Movable Feast. (Seriously, someone make THAT movie, stat!) Hiddleston’s Fitzgerald immediately welcomes Gil into this world and takes him seriously as a writer. Though their screen time is fleeting, Hiddleston and Wilson’s chemistry was palpable. And it seems a real life friendship also flourished, if at all evidenced by their reunion in Loki. Or the fact that Hiddleston would go on to peddle a sweet impersonation of Wilson for years to come.

But again, Midnight in Paris was Owen Wilson’s movie. (Well, it was Woody Allen’s movie.) It didn’t take full advantage of the chemistry between a young British actor on the rise and its movie star leading man. Disney+’s Loki however does! And the show is all the more enjoyable for it. It is Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson’s chemistry that propels the mountain of exposition that kicks the series off, and it’s that chemistry that’s going to keep fans tuning in every Wednesday for the season’s run.

Where to stream Loki

Where to stream Midnight in Paris