Lilith's Contemplations

“I knew he was a complex figure. Intelligent yet vulnerable. Angry and lost and broken and witty.”

My pitch for the show was kind of a big, crazy, fun time adventure,” says head writer Michael Waldron. “The TVA is just an entirely new world [with] a new cast of characters, and that’s what felt most exciting about the show: building a new corner of the MCU.”

Look at this! Not a word about Loki or his character or being excited to delve into his nuance or depth or feeling honored to write for him. Nope. What Waldron focuses on is how excited he is to introduce the TVA to the MCU. Once again we have someone in charge of Loki’s character who’s more interested in other characters and feels the need to knock Loki down in order to build other characters up instead of letting them all stand on their own strengths. 

I mean really? The exciting thing about the LOKI show is the TVA and the new characters? Not Loki? He doesn’t even get mentioned at all??! It’s exactly what I was afraid of based on the other promotional material. The trailers felt like they were focusing on Mobius and the TVA as the protagonists and villain coding Loki in his own series. The trailers also focus constantly on mocking and denigrating Loki and seem to take no interest in his character and have stripped him of his trademark wit and poise and turned him into the butt of every joke. 

The trailer is framed from Mobius’s perspective rather than Loki and ironically, given the cringe inducingly bad “talky talky” exchange, he gets more lines than Loki does. And it hardly feels like Loki is even in the trailers even when he’s technically on screen because he is written and framed with such little care that he doesn’t even feel like the same character. Even the posters are brown for the TVA not green for Loki. It felt like they were using Loki as a side character to get people to watch the TVA show. 

I hoped I was wrong. But the head writer himself has seemingly confirmed it. He isn’t excited about or interested in Loki’s character. He was excited about his own creations - an adaption of the TVA and the new characters that work there. That’s where his passion lies and where the focus of the show is. And based on the trailers, in order to make those characters seem cooler he’s seemingly trying to have them constantly get one over on Loki because he can’t write well enough to just actually make them good characters in their own right.

His pitch for the show was nothing Loki specific and he doesn’t care about Loki’s character. I should’ve known from the fact that they couldn’t even be bothered to get his hair length right even though it’s picking up right where Avengers left off and they literally could’ve just googled a screen shot to match it to. 

Well. I certainly hope to be proven wrong but I’m really disappointed. This quote just confirms all my concerns based on the trailers and other promotional materials. I’m so tired of the MCU disappointing me. They promised a show about Avengers/TDW Loki. That’s all I wanted. Instead they’re giving us some generic unfunny garbage instead. At that point just make a TVA show and give Loki his own show.

But, with that being said, it’s definitely concerning. Firstly, you’re handed a character with the degree of nuance, of depth, of unresolved trauma that Loki has and the thing you find most compelling is the opportunity to write a “big, crazy, fun time adventure”? Seriously? And then there’s the similarity to the Russos violently sidelining Loki in favour of showing how much better “their” Big Bad was and TW being so excited to make “[his] version of a Marvel film” regardless of character or plot consistency. Honestly, at this point, displaying genuine enthusiasm about working with Loki specifically is a litmus test for me because there’s been a very irritating recent trend of writers/directors wanting to make their mark on the MCU at his expense. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I get that same vibe off this quote. It’s one thing to be excited to build a new section of the universe with new characters. Of course, that would be a thrill for any writer, director, actor, etc. That’s a given. But it’s another matter for that to be your primary focus in a show that’s ostensibly supposed to be about an established character, because then your intentions for those new characters are most likely going to overshadow your commitment to the established one(s), who you predictably feel less of a sense of ownership over. This maybe wouldn’t be quite so alarming if every trailer so far didn’t already feel like it were framing Mobius and the TVA as the protagonists rather than Loki. But they have felt that way and this just feels like a confirmation that we’ve been right to think that.

One of the weird/interesting/annoying things about being involved in the Loki fandom is how often our treatment—both by Marvel and other fans—winds up mirroring Loki’s experiences in-universe. And to me, this feels like yet another extension of that. I would almost compare it to the experience of Loki feeling like an outsider his whole life and then having that ‘ah-ha!’ moment when he learns he’s actually Jötun. That moment of “oh, so I’m not crazy. I haven’t been imagining you treating me like a leper all my life. Good to know.”

When asked what he would do as Loki’s therapist, he said he would try to convince Loki that actually, he is loved by his family, and he would try to make Loki consider their perspective (implying that this has never occured to Loki himself). He would tell Loki “your father actually kept you alive” as a way of showing him he doesn’t need to feel so hurt. He has said almost as a refrain that “there is no Loki without Thor, and there is no Thor without Loki” (which fits together well with Mobius feeling like a kind of stand-in for Thor in terms of what his relationship is to Loki). When asked what he thinks Loki wants, he said that he doesn’t know, and Loki probably doesn’t know either, because: “He’s become so accustomed to occupying opposition. Whatever the status quo is, he’s opposed to it.” He’s talked about TR as a beautiful reconciliation between Thor and Loki. And when asked where he’d like Loki’s arc to go next (I think this was during press for TDW), he said the only thing he could think of was that it would be fun if Loki ran a nightclub in the 70’s.

People in this fandom often talk about how “Tom truly loves Loki more than any of us” and “Tom is Loki’s greatest defender”. That may be true from his perspective and that of many fans - both of which I respect, even though I find them harder and harder to understand. But if you look at what Tom Hiddleston has said about Loki over the years, the above interpretation of the trailers is consistent with what we might expect him to be happy with. Sure, he probably needs to just give lip service to whatever production he’s been part of as part of his obligations as an actor. But he really shows no signs of not meaning any of the above. Especially because a lot of it is from before the TR retcon, so he wouldn’t ‘need’ to say those things to support the narrative of the movies he was promoting. He’s been pretty consistent in expressing an understanding of Loki that the kind of show we’re fearing would fit right into.

The journey I’m undertaking as a fan right now is trying to reconcile that with being a fan of Tom Hiddleston. Because I can never be happy with it. I can never see it as a good or healthy approach to depicting a profoundly compassion-starved character. It makes me angry and sad. But I also don’t want it to make me a Loki anti or Tom Hiddleston anti the way I’ve turned into a Marvel anti over the course of TR, Infinity War and Endgame. In part because I’ve always known Tom Hiddleston as an actor who takes his characters really seriously and never half-asses them or deliberately screws them over. I know he pours his heart into his work and would never want to disrespect his fans or their experience. But it’s such a weird experience to deeply respect someone who’s also making something that feels very hurtful. And with which he has shown no signs of disagreeing.

I’ve noticed some of these red flags too over the months, but I’ve told myself not to make any conclusions before seeing the series. However, I think there is now enough information (from footage and interviews) to at least support some uncomfortable questions.

@everything-you-feel-is-real Your analysis of Tom’s position is painfully on point. As much as I love him, indications are that he may have lost track of Loki as much as those around him.

I’m afraid it’s possible that Tom may have made the mistake of following the Chris Odinson “acting” methodology: transforming the character into himself rather than transforming himself into the character.

This is tragic, because Tom’s a true artist of acting and filmmaking. He’s deeply talented; a refined and nuanced performer. Tom approaches his characters with profound respect and compassion. There are so few people who can so convincingly slip into an entirely different identity. I mean—in Tom’s original portrayal of Loki he stole major scenes from Anthony. Friggin. Hopkins. That Loki and this Loki from the series look nothing like each other.

There are countless “actors” who only play an idealized version of themselves, and succeed based on their personal magnetism (enhanced by all the clever tricks of filmmaking). They aren’t actors so much as movie stars.

Tom has always been an actor first. Why change now? Well, I’d guess the popular success of Ragnarok might have made a deep impression.

I’m not sure he’s lost track of Loki over the years, though, because some of these quotes are from the earliest movies, and I don’t remember him contradicting anything he’s said in the past. I think it’s more that he’s always held a view of Loki that isn’t violated by TR or any subsequent content.

The why of that is an interesting question that I’ve been trying to phrase an answer to for like two hours now without any luck. I have so many thoughts on it that they keep bumping into each other and falling over helplessly ^^; (I think I’ve written-then-immediately-deleted like 8 pages worth of confused meta by now)

As far as losing track of Loki, I think the problem is that he’s always held a mixed view of the character but the shallower(?) aspects have begun more and more to overshadow or outweigh his “defense” of him. The emphasis has become increasingly focused on Loki being fun and chaotic and charming (is that what I’m supposed to be seeing in these trailers? Because uh… I’m not) to the detriment of dealing with Loki’s trauma in a satisfying or meaningful way. And I think there’s a further issue in that Tom is excellent at exploring a character’s underlying psychology in order to give them more depth and nuance, but simultaneously, he’s kind of… well, dumb when it comes to the issue of mental health. I mean that with no disrespect, but as illustrated above, he’s said some very (I’m sure unintentionally) invalidating things about Loki’s struggles. He recognises that Loki’s “villainy” comes from a place of genuine pain, but he appears to have no practical understanding of how to resolve that pain. When I watched that “if I were Loki’s therapist” interview, all I could think was, “dear god, please do not ever let this man be anyone’s therapist.” Again, I have enormous respect for Tom. I’m not judging him. This is just not an area where he excels.

I remember when I first saw Tom’s acting as Loki and then saw him in interviews. I was so struck by how, by his own admission, he hadn’t been through anything like what Loki went through, and yet he portrayed it flawlessly. I had never seen that before and haven’t seen it since, to my knowledge. Usually people who haven’t been through it can’t depict it accurately, and they certainly can’t talk about it as anything other than immaturity, malice, laziness, or some other accusation of inherent lowliness. It gave me such hope to think that if he could reach all the way across the human condition like that, maybe people in general could reach each other across such vast distances in real life, too. And us ‘Lokis’ wouldn’t have to huddle together in a corner and shut everyone else out to keep from getting well-meaningly (or not well-meaningly) invalidated every time we opened our mouths.

But I guess he never reached all the way into Loki, only some of the way. Which is still impressive, since he’s the only person from ‘the other side’ that I know of who’s gotten that far. What I wouldn’t give for a chance to give him an hour of my personal tedtalk on Loki’s trauma and see what that did to his perspective on the character. To see whether it would fundamentally change his ideas of what makes sense for Loki’s arc, or if he would just respectfully disagree.

I look at these trailers and I don’t see Loki at all, just Tom with back hair. It’s partly due to the plain (and ugly, ugh) human cloths and Tom’s actual hair instead of a decent wig like in TDW, but for the most of it it’s just Loki’s whole demeanour that is wrong. No elegance, no grace, not cool sarcastic comeback event after a bad turn of events for him (now it’s all very theatrical), no sly smile and/or menacing/powerful look in his eyes etc.  I remember watching TDW and being completely mesmerised by Tom’s acting (or rather seeing only the god of mischief, no Tom at all) and now that’s no long the case, not by a long shot. 

So maybe the Thor-Avengers-TDW Loki was in fact Branagh’s creation. Tom built on it definitely but it’s more Branagh’s Loki since he laid the bases of it. The other directors just went along with it since Loki wasn’t their primary concern and din’t feel the need to change him much. Then came Waititi and he had a whole other vision of Loki that Tom accepted. Maybe it was more in sync with what Tom wanted to do, or the studio simply made it very clear to him that the dark Shakespearean Loki wasn’t coming back that thing had to be lither and funnier. Tom is a professional and even if he preferred the fist version he surely would have found a way to accept this and make way to this new Loki. Let’s not forget that Tom has said (on more than one occasion I think) that he’s like to do more comedy but was never offered any. So TR and now Loki were he’s chance to do that and even if it’s not the Loki as we knew from the first moves it’s something he can be happy to do for that reason. To me, though, it still doesn’t explain why I don’t see Loki at all when I look at the trailers (it felt more like Loki even in that awful death scene and that was ooc) but it might explain why Tom is so happy about this series and the tone of it. 

So much same. When I first looked up the actor who played Loki on IMDB and then searched the name on Youtube, it took me like 10 minutes of confused googling to accept that the person I saw in the interviews was actually the guy who played Loki. His whole vibe was just so different that I couldn’t believe it despite him having 100% the same facial features as Loki. That was always such magic to me. My brain still stores the concept of Tom Hiddleston and the concept of Loki in different compartments. I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes shot from Thor Ragnarok where Tom didn’t have his wig on, and even though I’d been in the fandom for years, still for a moment I thought, “Why is Tom Hiddleston there, where’s the guy who plays Loki?” It’s so cringe to me that that just doesn’t happen for me with any of the content we’ve seen in the trailers. Even with all the armor on, it’s just Tom Hiddleston dressed up as Loki for some reason.

I couldn’t agree more with the rest, though. This is exactly how I’ve felt about Loki both in the trailers and over the course of the MCU. I couldn’t have put it into words better. This will make me sound like a kook who doesn’t realise Loki is fictional, but when I look at him, I don’t see a character played by an actor named Tom Hiddleston. (In fact, similar to @everything-you-feel-is-real, I literally can’t see Tom when I look at Loki or Loki when I look at Tom. Believe me, I’ve tried and my mind just can’t make the pieces fit). When I think about Loki, I think of him as if he were an actual person, with real motivations and thought processes and mannerisms distinct from that of Tom or even of the writers. It actually takes effort for me to frame him as a character rather than as a person. And… that’s no longer true in this series. That’s what makes it so jarring. In the trailers, I truly do just see Tom Hiddleston with black hair. I see Loki cosplay, and not even necessarily good cosplay. I’ve never had that issue before, not even in Ragnarok. Certainly not to this degree. And it’s somehow worse than that, actually, because it’s not even just Tom Hiddleston with black hair; it’s Tom Hiddleston with black hair doing such a cringeworthy acting job that I experience secondhand embarrassment with every trailer. Is he being overdirected? Have we simply found the one genre that Tom is not phenomenally talented at? What is it? I don’t know. I just know that I barely find it watchable.

And yet it doesn’t usually feel like that. In past movies, even in Ragnarok (which definitely characterized and framed Loki differently from earlier films), I saw various iterations of Loki. I didn’t see Tom Hiddleston in a wig on a movie set. Obviously I know it’s fiction but I was able to immerse myself in the story. Those movies brought Loki to life so I saw Loki.

In all the footage I’ve seen from the TV series I can’t immerse myself at all. I just see someone pretending to be Loki and not even that convincingly. I see Tom Hiddleston. I see actors on a set. And because of that I can’t emotionally engage with the story. And I certainly can’t accept it as new Loki content.

I also agree Loki was created through collaboration and Tom definitely was a part of that and it’s really pointless to speculate about what exactly went wrong here. Certainly a lot of people were involved in this production - including Kevin Feige. It’s not like everyone else was trying to make something super serious. And having a writer who characterizes Loki as “proper and pompous” and an “ass” and who therefore writes him that way can’t have helped. 

But certainly in addition to a bad script the performance rings false and even if you view it by-itself without the context of the previous movies it feels cringey somehow. I’d say maybe Tom is just bad at comedy except I’VE SEEN HIM DO COMEDY. AS LOKI!!! Loki’s hilarious. Watch the whole scene where he and Thor are escaping in TDW. It’s really funny and Tom’s comedic timing and delivery and use of expression etc. makes it that way. It’s one of the funniest bits int he MCU imho. Same for a lot of other funny Loki moments in Avengers and TDW. So I know he can be funny. And I know he can be funny as Loki. 

Was Tom over-directed or under-directed? (Edit: Given how utterly unqualified Kate has shown herself to be in her interviews, and that Tom has no problem playing Loki live without a director to help, I lean towards “over directed”). Could he not figure out what to do with a subpar script, was he under pressure from the higher ups, is this just what he wanted to do, or is this what he thought audiences wanted? There’s no way to tell. Certainly no one involved in the production will ever criticize it as their contracts forbid it so we won’t ever know. 

And it doesn’t really matter. As a viewer I care about results. And the result is that I don’t see Loki. I see an actor doing a bad imitation of him. 

Exactly, @lilithscontemplations! I thought just the same.

But the thing that made me cringe repeatedly during the series is that several other people do give off a lot of Loki vibes! Sylvie for example. And President Loki! And that makes me so furious! They knew how to make a good impression of Loki. They just decided against it. The show even includes some meta-aspects I would have loved if it wasn’t tainted by this utter catastrophe that was TVA-Loki’s portrayal. I mean, look at this:

Its a good portrayal IMHO. I can even hear him talking. But this?

When I first saw it I was like watching Loki transform into Tom.

Or this:

I can’t see Loki in this. I just can’t. It’s Tom with a different hairstyle.

But my criticism on the directing isn’t limited to the portrayal of Loki. It’s just where the problem is most painful. But the TVA itself? Miss Minutes is well done, I’ll admit that much. She communicates the proper amount of eeriness.

But Portraying Möbius as an Angel right before he gives the order to prune the timeline including the child with the kablooey? We are supposed to see him as the good guy here?

So it doesn’t matter he’s sending those people to their deaths? The whole portrayal of Mobius being the good guy while he tortures Loki? I would have preferred Mobius being shown ambiguously. He could have been shown to steel himself before going into the questioning. Or to struggle with ordering the pruning of the child!

Going for the Angel symbolism while making him commit atrocities is sending mixed signals at best. (At worst, it’s fascist propaganda). The whole ‘therapy misconception’ is due to this unclear messaging! People were seeing those interrogations and subconsciously realized they weren’t shown as something bad. So, they had to be good, right? I can only speculate they were afraid people would not like him if he did anything wrong in his life, ever, so they hesitated from giving him a darker beginning and subsequently a redemption.

You folks are right, there's no use speculating on how Loki came to be and who contributed the most in his creation and evolution. However I do stand by my statement that Tom does like to play this Loki. Does he prefer a bit the Shakespearean one? Maybe, who knows, Tom would never say it on record anyway, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't object to this one at all. He seemed to have so much fun on set and in interviews that I can't believe that anything about this project bothered him much. Yes, I know he is always good at parsing everything and everyone but he just seems so genuinely relaxed and happy that I can't believe he's faking any of it. Just to be clear, I don't blame him, nor do I consider him responsible for the show we got. Movies and series are always team work and a lot of people are always responsible for both a good and a bad outcome and I think as an actor his contribution to the overall tone and story was minor if any. I am a bit disappointed, probably because of all those old interviews where he spoke of Loki with such enthusiasm and sympathy that I truly believed that's his an my ideas of Loki were similar. I guess I was wrong.

@iamnmbr3 Yes, Tom can do comedy and I've especially heard his comedy-timing being praised more than once. We see it in some of his movies but also fans who had the chance to see him perform live on stage said that he is very good at it. (And let's not forget that little promo gem for TDW by Comedy Central with the 3 little kids). However it all depends on the director/writer. If they want that kind of more sophisticated comedy in their movie/series/play Tom will deliver brilliantly. On the other hand if they want something with more gags it seems Tom will take inspiration from his favourite comedy which is Ace Ventura (he said it on more than one occasion). It was a bit surprising to me that someone who likes and praises Shakespeare so much can also like slapstick comedy a lot but Tom has proven more than once that he has a vast range of very different interests, lol (he also once mentioned a German comedy he liked and whose name I can't recall bit I checked the trailer back then and it seemed to also be some kind of very cringe "funny" movie).

@alwida10 I agree, we do see glimpses of original Loki in other variants. I think that Classic Loki had a few moments too. Sylvie really bugged me though. She has in fact been given quite a few "Loki" lines and moments and moves and even his clothes ffs (can I just say how salty I am that Loki didn't get to wear his asgardian costume, not even once!) but I just didn't get any Loki vibes form her despite that she was given more Loki attributes than anyone. For the most part that character felt to me like a delusional human believing they are Loki so much they even wear the original Loki cloths. As @iamnmbr3 said it all feel like very cheap cosplay. I fact in many moments I felt like I was watching an early, completely unpolished, rehearsal for what was supposed to be the Loki series, you know the type of rehearsal where they just try to see what are the best angles, if they have memorised the choreography and stuff like that without really trying to deliver the lines right.

Where was his rebelliousness, his defiance, his "fuck you" to the rules and their enforcers?

Where was his desire to wreak havoc and chaos just because they dared to chain him?

Where was his malicious compliance? Where was following the letter of the law, but not the spirit?

Where was the manipulation? The lies so sweet they sound like the truth? The wordsmith so talented that he could turn anything to his advantage?

Where was the resourcefulness? The determination to escape? The dagger in the dark?

It's funny I thought that as time passes by my disappointment in the Loki series would dwindle and I'd just stop caring about it and forget I've watched it. But turns but it's the opposite. I find myself craving to rewatch the show because... well because that's just what I used to do with all Loki content;. even with Gagnarok, there were a some good Loki moments that I loved to rewatch over and over. Now I think of re-watching the series and just get mad becasue I know I won't find anything I like there. Or maybe 1 or 2 scenes at best but not sure I have the strengths to search for those few moments amongst everything else that made me cringe and roll my eyes or flat out scream WTF?!

So basically I not only feel robbed of original Loki but of all the fun and enjoyment I would have had for a very very very long time rewatching and analysing those 6 hours of Loki footage. I must say I envy a bit those fans who loved the show, they are now doing exactly that.

And I would have been happy if they had just thrown us a bone and left that King Loki/original Loki bit in the series instead of cutting it out at the last moment. They must know there are fans who loved and miss that Loki, why not give us something?

@sakurawishes-study asked: Which Loki line does Tom Hiddleston like the most?

Check out Tom Hiddleston’s full Answer Time right on over here.

Going by this I can only conclude that Tom is perfectly OK with this new Loki variant. I guess it makes sense that the outstanding actor that he is will always be seeking new challenges and different roles to play. And in a way this was a unique opportunity for him to play the character he become famous for in a completely different way. Reinvent it or reboot it if you will. Instead of the dark, intense and complex version, play a lighter and... idk, more straightforward kind of Loki? I don't like this version so I can't really find the right words to describe him without going all negative about him and ultimately it doesn't matter.

With this answer my last hope of seeing the original Loki is gone. I'm a bit sad about it as I truly think it's one of the best movie (including TV too) characters that was ever been written but I'm still very grateful that we got that great Loki trilogy (that's what I call Thor1/Avenges/TDW because... well it's mostly about Loki in fact, regardless of the titles) and that Loki there got his fantastic ending: sitting on the Throne of Asgard, free of Thor and Odin, finally in a position to prove him self worthy to the people of Asgard (and the 9 realms) and to himself. It's just perfect <3

This beyond frustrating. I feel like I'm being labelled a leper and pushed into some kind of ghetto. What no one can disagree on what we're being served as entertainment? We're supposed to be super-excited and thrilled by everything otherwise there is something wrong with us and we must be removed from view and society?

This is so messed up.

I can understand that one doesn't like a stranger that feels very differently about a series/film (Loki in this instance) coming in his post to say things they don't agree at all on but why the hell must one feel obligated to label their own posts as negative? It feels like I'm being push into a bad category of unworthy people becasue I don't agree with the general opinion.

We having to use tags "anti" because of some courtesy? Well, then how would those people feel if they "had to" put some tags for our fandom courtesy? ;) Just an example: tagging all posts with Ragnarok etc. or the series content as "non-canon MCU" or "non-canon positive"? 😋

And yes what courtesy? I might also like to see my dash free of all the endless gifs of Loki being an under-powered clown variant. How about #Inferior Loki or #clown Loki variant