‘Loki’ Head Writer Explains Why Loki Had to Be the Show’s Villain

Every Marvel project has to have a villain. After all, a protagonist is only as captivating as their antagonist. The best bad guys always bring something out of the heroes—and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has long been a perfect example of such a villain. He’s such a threat that his attempt to conquer Earth pulled the Avengers together—and Hiddleston’s performance made us kinda root for the bad guy. But what happens when the bad guy gets their own show? Who is antagonistic enough to antagonize the antagonist? That’s the conundrum that head writer Michael Waldron had to tackle while crafting Disney+’s Loki.

Ahead of its debut, we all thought we knew Loki’s premise: the series would follow the God of Mischief as he jumped from one moment in history to another, fixing some things and messing up other things. After watching the premiere, we now know that’s only partly true. Loki will be time traveling as a temp for the Time Variance Authority, but he’s only working on one case. He’s been tasked by Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) to track down a vicious killer that keeps murdering every squad of hunters they come across. Mobius is asking Loki… to track down Loki.

We asked Michael Waldron how he came up with that twist, and what it means in the grand scheme of the series. “That was another very early on decision—as early on as in my pitch process, and then really defined by our writers,” Waldron told Decider. “The most compelling version of this show was going to be to lean into the crime thriller aspect of it. This is Loki hunting Loki. If you’re doing a multiverse show, that feels like the fruit that you want to taste, so that was what we chased. I really wanted [the show] to be about Loki self reflecting in a way that he’d never been able to do before. What better way to do that than with an actual reflection of yourself?”

Just because we now know Loki’s hunting Loki doesn’t mean the show’s out of mysteries. There’s still the matter of who this bloodthirsty Loki is. The trickster has taken a number of forms in the comics over the decades—so could this be how Loki introduces Kid Loki and further teases Young Avengers? Or are we going to get twice the Hiddleston in this series moving forward? We’ll have to wait a week (and possibly longer) to answers to that question.

New episodes of Loki premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+.

Stream Loki on Disney+