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Loki Director Kate Herron Takes Us Inside the Timey-Wimey Influences of the TVA

When confronted with a bureaucratic group of time guardians who are part church, part cop, and all outside known time, where do you even begin to start framing that as a setting for a television show? For Disney+ and Marvel’s Loki director Kate Herron, the answer was simple: throwback to iconic sci-fi hits, with a bit of a personal twist.

“I think when I pitched the studio, I loved the idea of making the whole show this big love letter to sci-fi,” Herron told io9 on a recent video call about her approach to bringing the Time Variance Authority out of the pages of comic books and into a feasible reality for Disney+. “I love sci-fi, and with the TVA, specifically, I drew from quite a lot of places—Metropolis, Blade Runner, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy... Southeast London has a lot of Brutalist architecture, around where I grew up. I was really intrigued with putting that in the TVA, to represent these almost gods of the Time Keepers, but to match that with Mad Men—this sort of midwest style, because they’re heroic, and I thought that was a really interesting mix for me.”

But beyond cultural influences, Herron wanted to bring a human feeling to the otherwise kooky and esoteric vibe the TVA has in Loki. And what could be more endearing about an extra-temporal faction that rules the sacred timeline with an iron fist? The fact that they’re also mostly just a bunch of pencil pushers. “[I wanted to] also be bringing in realities of my own experience just working in an office and being a temp,” Herron said. “I remember the technology—a computer I used to work in was so old and they were like, ‘Well, it’s not broke so we’re not going to buy a new one!’ I thought that felt very bureaucratic and went, ‘Well, the TVA is outside of time and space—they’re not in the future or the past—so, maybe it could have this retro-futuristic Brazil kind of vibe.’ Eighties technology is bit more clunky and needs updating, I think it was very fun in that sense, just for the overall style of the place.”

Gif: Marvel Studios

“Beyond that I was working with my team to build upon these ideas. I definitely drew from the comics in terms of, like—they have these amazing images of desks going on into infinity, so we definitely brought that into the design, as well,” Herron continued. “For me, something that was really important to make it feel like a real, living space was... I love movies like Eternal Sunshine and Scott Pilgrim, that are very heightened and fantastical that use a lot of practical sets. And I love doing long takes, so like we’ll see in the first episode, Loki and Mobius step out the elevator and they walk down this really long hallway where they go in the first episode, and I thought [of] something me and my DP, Autumn [Durald, Loki’s Director of Photography, said], ‘Let’s just make this one practical set’. And I think that helped really add to the reality! I’d say a lot of our show is a heavy mix of practical and heightened visual effects, which I think gives the TVA a level of reality, really.”

Part of Loki’s first episode that leans a bit more into that heightened side of the TVA is two brief bits of retro-looking animation, presented as Loki’s guide to just what the Time Variance Authority does with its detainees. One is a simple guide video, the other is a bit kookier, and an ongoing feature in the show: Miss Minutes, an anthropomorphic cartoon clock with a go-getter attitude and a Southern drawl, brought to life by voice acting legend Tara Strong. For Herron, translating the idea of these animations for the show (and, in Miss Minutes’ case, bringing her to life beyond the 2D plane), required balancing those classic inspirations with the need for these moments to be ours—and Loki’s—introduction to this strange new world.

Disney recently unveiled its slate of upcoming animated films, including a brand-new musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Charise Castro Smith, and Zootopia’s Jared Bush and Byron Howard. Encanto might be coming just a few years after Miranda’s previous work with Disney on Moana but it’s a whole new experience for him.

In an interview with io9, Miranda shared some of the first information about Encanto, a Disney animated musical that “takes you to Colombia, where a magical family live in a magical home.” He said what’s unique about this film is, instead of being about one or two heroes who leave the nest to seek adventure, the “intergenerational family” in Encanto is a key part of the story. They don’t disappear the moment the plot arrives to take someone on a grand quest—something we’ve often seen in Disney animated movies like Moana, Onward, and Inside Out.

Miranda said the team’s goal was to create a family-friendly story that’s actually about a family, and he said that’s been a blast to write. “One of the things that we really kind of all talked about—all the creators, Charise and Byron and Jared and I—we were like, ‘We really want to tell a family, an intergenerational family story with all the complexity that brings,’” Miranda said. “So often when you get into story mode, it turns into the hero and the quest—and you lose characters, then you lose complexity because everything becomes the quest. And I think what’s been thrilling about this is, since that’s been our mission statement, it’s been really fun to sort of write, you know, musical family dynamics in a really fun and complicated way. I’m really excited for the world to finally see it.”

The project—which is set to be Disney animation’s 60th feature release—has been loosely in the works since 2016, though it ramped up more recently and Miranda’s been part of it since the very beginning. It looks to be his most in-depth contribution to the Wonderful World of Disney so far. He even got to go on the research trips to Colombia.

Miranda told us how being involved from the start—unlike with Moana, where he was brought in to write the music after the film was well underway—has given him a chance to connect with (and influence) the plot in a new and exciting way. “The biggest difference is that I’ve been able to be sort of in since the ground floor. With Moana I was kind of the last guy hired. And they were really a couple of years into the development of the story before I started working on it,” he said.

“[Encanto’s] been really fulfilling to have worked on. It’ll be three years by the time the movie comes out,” he added, “And I’m still writing! Like, as soon as I hang up with you, I go back to work on those songs.”