Eric Martin, writer/producer on Marvel Studios’ Loki: 7th July 2021

‘We shot all night for a week for this Shuroo run. Did take after take to get these big action beats correct. And Tom still had energy to do sprints and squats between scenes. I don't think he's human. The night shoots were a drain, so Tom brought in food trucks every night to perk everyone up.’ 

Kasra Farahani explains why the Time Variance Authority waiting room looks so much like the Breuer building, and how the inside of a Fabergé egg became an alien train carriage

By Helen Stoilas, 10th July 2021

Fans of Modernist design can find a lot to appreciate in Loki, the television series starring Tom Hiddleston recently released by Marvel Studios on the streaming channel Disney+. The stunning production is clearly influenced by Brutalist and Neo-Futurist architecture, as well as Soviet Socialist art and sculpture. Visual references can be seen from the very first episode, in which the magic-wielding god of mischief is apprehended by a universe-spanning police force known as the Time Variance Authority for “crimes against the Sacred Timeline” (stay with us).

One early scene, for example, was filmed on a custom-built set that bears a striking resemblance to the lobby of the Marcel Breuer building in New York which once housed the Whitney Museum—and now houses the Frick—while another was shot on location in the Neo-Futurist Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel, designed by the architect John C. Portman, Jr (with some monumental statues later edited into the soaring atrium). The Art Newspaper spoke to the series’ production designer, Kasra Farahani, about his inspirations for the look of the show.

The Art Newspaper: Loki's director, Kate Herron has called this series a love letter to sci-fi and you see a lot of visual homages to films like Brazil, A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. But there's also a clear influence of Modernist design on the look of the series overall. You studied industrial design early in your career. Were there specific examples of Modernist architecture and design that you were looking at when you started working on the series?

Kasra Farahani: So many, everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Breuer, to Mies van der Rohe to Paul Rudolph—you have a shot in the John Portman building—to Oscar Niemeyer. And then a lot of Eastern European, Soviet-influenced Modernism played a big part in it as well. I can honestly tell you that my first and foremost inspiration was Modernism. Part of that is because the TVA (Time Variance Authority) is a bureaucracy and I think, archetypically, so much of what we know a bureaucracy to be is that post-war, highly funded institutional look. And there's a lot of different versions of that, whether it's the Washington, DC version, like the Hoover building, or whether it's what we had in Los Angeles, where I grew up, where there's a huge amount of post-war architecture built for the population boom. Like the elementary school, middle school and high school that I went to were all mid-century Modernist.

I was also looking a lot at Brutalism and the Modernism in former Soviet states, that are heavily influenced by Socialism and Soviet architecture, and where scale is such a big driving force of the design.

The size of some of the buildings in the show are kind of overwhelming. I know that some filming was done in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, with that huge soaring atrium. You just completely get dwarfed by that kind of architecture.

Yeah, that's right. That one we used for the TVA archives because we couldn't justify building a big set, but once I scouted it, I saw that we could bring in these massive Time-Keeper sculptures at the scale you would typically only see in an exterior, which is a fantastical thing. The TVA sets themselves, which were almost entirely full 360-degree sets, were very much designed as an intentional paradox between the stoic, large-scale Brutalism form language, and the surfacing and palette and whimsical patterning, which is very much taken from American mid-century Modern. Those two things create these spaces that feel at once super intimidating and then uncomfortably inviting and warm at the same time.

That’s kind of the irony of a lot of Modernism, Brutalism especially, it had these utopian ideals of creating affordable social housing, but then a lot of the people found it really oppressive to live in.

Yeah. Modernism has been that way the whole time—it was designed to be super cheap and utilitarian and routinely it ends up being the most expensive kind of architecture. Another thing readers may be curious to know about is the TBA expanse, which is essentially the view outside some windows.

That futuristic cityscape you can see….

Yeah. They had very strange and unique parameters to try to design that. The TVA exists outside of the physical world—so there's no weather, there's no roofs, there's no difference between interior and exterior, there's not necessarily even gravity in the way that we know it. But there are these meandering colonnades that we took a lot of inspiration from Brasilia—and obviously a lot of the super cities that were drawn in comics. But also there's some really beautiful conceptual sketches that Frank Lloyd Wright did of a version Los Angeles in the early 20th century that had Roman-like colonnades and plazas and a lot of that fed into what the TVA expanse is.

You mentioned all the sets you built for Loki, especially for the TVA. There's two that where used a lot. The Time Theater, where so much of kind of Loki’s personal story gets told, and looks like its straight out of the Barbican in London, with these huge colour-coded directional numbers on the walls. And then there's the Miss Minutes waiting room with those circular lights that looks almost exactly like the lobby of the Breuer building in New York—to the point where I reached out to the museum to ask if you’d filmed there. You even got the silver-tipped light bulbs right.

We were very inspired by that, but it's different in some very subtle, but for me, very important ways. Number one, the size of the bulbs is much smaller, they were manipulated to create eyeballs, basically. Another important difference is that in the Breuer building, they have these dishes hanging in space, whereas in ours, they're negative space, there's a solid ceiling. It creates a matrix of eyeballs peering down, like the always-watching Time-Keepers. And maybe the most important difference is that the ceiling is slammed down—you know the cheapest apartment you can go into has an eight-foot ceiling, this is six inches shorter than that, and our actor is about six-foot-three. The idea was to create a sort of trash compactor feeling in this claustrophobic space with this matrix of eyes, watching as all of this is happening. 

The time theater was for me very inspired by Pier Luigi Nervi.

I liked that waffle coffered ceiling you have in that room.

Thanks. We were very happy with it, and it created this kind of forest of light columns which helps set the neo-noirish, interrogative nature of the space. And the unnecessarily large super graphics that you mentioned are a very Paul Rudolph sort of a thing, he did that in his building too, and I love that.

For me, it’s very important not to reference a set design from other films, that why I reference architecture, painting, photography, these other art forms, more than anything else, because inevitably when you’re working in archetypes, there’s a lot of overlap.

And as Loki goes into different times and locations, you get a completely different design environment in those places. There’s a scene on a train car, that has a very Art Deco look.

That was inspired by the inside of a Fabergé egg, Art Deco meets Alien.

And when you finally meet the Time-Keepers in the most recent episode, it’s like they're in a pre-Colombian pyramid or a ziggurat.

I was looking at Indian stepwells, this almost fractal quality with these descending stairs going into one another—but we imagined them going out every direction, with an Escher-like quality, like they are tessellating themselves to infinity.

I read on Twitter that you literally bought a bowling alley from Omaha and brought it to Atlanta to create Loki's Palace in the Void in the last episode, which is this crazy, surreal, amusement park, junk yard-like place.

We bought the floor of a bowling alley, everything else we built. That was a lot of fun because the script gave us a lot of runway. The proposal was to do this bowling alley because essentially everything in the Void has been discarded from time, and more things fall into it and accumulate and so you end up with these strata. I liked the idea of like a bowling alley that's been smashed over your knee or something. The net effect is when you first enter, you have all these lane lines pointing down at this throne, which was supposed to be stolen from a mall Santa. And then there's these crazy alien plants that are growing through it that have taken parasitic hold of the place. In many ways, I think its a narrative microcosm of the Void itself, which is like a salad bar of these disparate aberrations slammed together. Things like the bowling alley all have these micro-narratives that we in the art department have come up with to help flush out the design and make them specific. For example, there's portraits on the wall of like bowler of the month, and they’re not quite human. It's not in the episode, but those things are important for us in the art department.

At the very end of the most recent episode, we get a glimpse into this city that Loki and Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino) are walking into. Can tell us anything about what inspired those scenes, what we're about to see?

'Loki' production designer made the Void set specifically so Tom Hiddleston could do his warm-up exercise

Jacob Sarkisian, 13th July 2021

"Loki" production designer Kasra Farahani said that the weird and wonderful set of The Void was specifically designed to enable Tom Hiddleston to do his warm-up exercise routine every day, which consists of running around the set.

Speaking to Insider ahead of the Disney+ show's sixth and final episode, Farahani described the versatile set he and his team made for The Void, where they shot for around seven days, as seen in episode five.

"We built a giant chunk of terrain for The Void ... [and] then swapped in different elements," Farahani said, noting that the set was used for multiple locations within the story. "The giant heads were there one day, the bus shelter where he arrives was there one day, the pile of trays was there one day, and the missile was there another day, and the telephone poles."

The designer, who also served as art director on "Thor" and "Captain Marvel," as well as the concept artist on "Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2" and "Black Panther," said that during filming Hiddleston needed to be able to "really run" on set as his character, Loki, had an action sequence.

"Tom is an excellent runner and his warm-up before coming to set every day is to run around the set really fast a bunch of times," Farahani said. "And so we needed to specifically curate a piece of this terrain to facilitate how fast he wanted to run through this [warmup routine] and that scene."

Farahani described The Void set as "a series of Easter eggs," noting that fans had picked up on a lot of them — including the Polybius arcade game, the Thanos-Copter, the Yellowjacket helmet, and the head of the Living Tribunal statue.

The former of these Easter eggs, the Polybius arcade game, lies in residence in the Loki variants hideout — the bowling alley. But it wasn't always going to be a bowling alley, with the script for the show not specifying exactly what or where the hideout should be or look like.

"It was described as a subterranean temple is all it was," Farahani said. "We liked the idea of a bowling alley because it's buried as strata among all the other deleted realities. We could have it be fractured — almost like you took a bowling alley and broke it over your knee a couple of times and therefore have all these lane lines."

"So when you first enter, the lines point down at this throne area and we thought it would be funny to have a throne that was actually a Santa Claus in a shopping mall that they raided from yet another reality and brought here [to the bowling alley]," the designer continued.

"And then there's the weird alien vines growing through this bowling alley from yet another reality that was perhaps deleted and they're invading each other. In many ways, that set is meant to be a microcosm of the void generally, which has all these different aberrant realities deleted and slammed together."

Farahani said that not all Easter eggs have been found just yet. There are some more "cryptic" eggs that are yet to be found, but he refused to let on exactly what they were.

Every Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series to date has had its own distinct look and feel, from the sitcom-derived pastiche episodes of WandaVision all the way back to the grim-and-gritty, dimly lit street narratives of Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Marvel’s Loki has been one of the MCU’s more distinctive-looking series, though, from the dimly lit, industrial-brown corridors of Time Variance Authority HQ to the vivid neon city of Sharoo on the doomed moon Lamentis-1.

Series director Kate Herron confirms that some of these designs were directly inspired by classic science fiction, while others were more personal experimentation. We sat down with Loki’s cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, to break down what went into designing some of the most striking and memorable sequences from the series’ first three episodes.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

EPISODE 1: TIME THEATER INTERROGATIONS

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Kate [Herron]’s sensibilities led me to get the job in the first place. We shared those sensibilities, around noir films and more moody thrillers, so we were already on the same page as far as lighting and tone. So when it came to the Time Theater, Kasra [Farahani], the production designer, did a fantastic job of creating a space that had a lot of opportunity to feel textural and moody, and create symmetry. I’m big on symmetry. I like to frame center-punched, keeping in mind the architecture of the room, and framing for the architecture and the people at the same time. Stanley Kubrick does that very well. A Clockwork Orange obviously came up in our discussions. Some of our main references were David Fincher’s Zodiac and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and the original Blade Runner, in terms of creating spaces that feel strong and weighted, with the people in them placed in a way where the conversation feels very heavy, so you’re paying a lot of attention to the lines, and where your eyes are drawn.

We did some lighting changes above, in the Brutalist ceiling. The lights move, so when we’re cutting back and forth, you see the lights change on the actors. We’re trying to time those movements to the dialogue. The editing was fantastic with that scene. We shot a good amount of coverage, and [series stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius] play in that space a lot. So we’re trying to always keep it interesting, every time they go back there, changing up the lighting and the projections. That’s probably one of my favorite spaces in the show.

And then the acting, obviously — they’re riffing off each other, and you’re in the room with them and feeling the energy. It was very exciting. That scene was up front in our schedule, so Owen and Tom were getting to know each other in general. We got to watch that happen before our eyes, and it was very comical.

One of the most noticable things about that space is the harsh, rectangular overhead spotlights — Tom Hiddleston starts his interrogation under a spotlight, and when he gets angry, he moves himself back under it. How did you discuss that kind of blocking and framing?

The thing with Tom is, he’s a genius. He’s just a fantastic actor, The amount of things I could say about how amazing he is on set, and character-wise, the list goes on and on. You can introduce marks and let actors know where you’d like them to be for a shot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where they’ll go. Some actors like to be more freeform. But with Tom, I wouldn’t have to say “Stand under that light.” He just knows, and he’ll play off that because of the space. He walks in, sees how it’s lit, knows our agenda, and uses that in the character.

So there were certain moments where he asked, “Is this what you’re thinking?” or we would have a discussion. But mostly, he uses the environment around him to tell the story as well, and he took in that lighting as part of the character. Actors know how they look in certain types of light. He’s very good at that. So he played with that in that space, for sure.

When we pull back and take in the whole room, the lighting feels punitive — the striped shadows are noir-movie standards, like light coming through blinds, but they also feel like prison bars. Is that something you discussed?

We never talked about prison bars, but in designing that space, Kasra was thinking about what that space was — being arrested, and being judged. It’s a claustrophobic space. Loki is slightly free to communicate and move around, but the walls and ceiling are concrete, there’s this fake light coming in, because obviously, in the TVA, there’s no day or night. You can see the light moving above, but there’s no sun there. It’s just moving at certain moments.

I had an idea, after seeing the latest Blade Runner, where Roger Deakins moves the lights around: Why don’t we have the lights move? It’s not easy to have big tungsten light sources above a ceiling set move like that, because it takes heavy motors. But my gaffer and key grip are amazing, and they figured out a way we could move the lights without causing shadows between each of the sections of lighting. It looks all like it’s moving at the same time. That took a lot of thought, getting those lights to move, and not just creating shafts of light that fade in and out. I think it helped a lot, because it’s very subtle. You’re only going to see it as they’re sitting. You’ll see sometimes the light moves from Owen’s shoulders into his eyes at the right moment, when you get lucky in the edit, and catch it at the right moment. It was great to have the resources to actually do stuff like that.

EPISODE 2: THE ROXXCART VARIANT PURSUIT

I’m a fan of green. If we’re designing a clinical environment, or a shopping mall, and we’ve got overhead fluorescents, I like to use cool white fluorescents that have kind of a green kick. I’m a big David Fincher fan, and there’s an undertone of green in his setups that I appreciate. So Roxxcart is a bigger shop that is now closed down, and Kasra outfitted it like a big-box Costco-type place? That wasn’t a full set — we went to this big warehouse, and he made it feel like that kind of store.

Above the space where we shot in, there were a bunch of fixtures. We completely removed those and put in our own tubes. They were RGB, and we could fade them and turn them off and on to our liking, flicker them, make them red when we wanted. When they’re cool white, I appreciate that green kick. I did a lookup-table color correction as well, to give it that tone. It’s meant to be clinical, but make you feel like you don’t know what’s at every turn. And we’re keeping lights on or off depending on which way we’re looking. Kate was a big fan of that space being very dark, with pockets of light. Our antagonist is supposed to come out of the darkness as people change identities.

We’re also trying to make that space look bigger than it actually was. We’re creating depth with light. That was a bitch to shoot — we had so much rigging. My team was amazing. If you go into a space like that, a Target or something, you’d think “The lighting here is not that big of a deal. It’s just overheads.” But being able to control all those overheads and make them different colors and flicker them takes a lot of rigging, with a dimmer board and the programming. In the editing afterward, it really does feel like a space that’s a lot bigger than it actually was. The red sequence is one of my favorites, for sure.

The camera is below waist level a lot in that sequence. What are you communicating there?

I always like to shoot low! It’s just how I see things. Some of my favorite films are detective thrillers from the past, Zodiac being one of those. I’ve always just loved shooting below the eyeline. Obviously there are moments in features I’ve shot where I want to be higher, because it’s more emotional or romantic or something. But in this kind of story, where you have these amazing spaces, and you have multiple characters you’re trying to frame, all facing off and being strong, I’m just a bigger fan of seeing a ceiling than a floor. It’s an appreciation I have, as far as it feeling more mysterious. When a character is looking more mysterious, and you’re not trusting them, you’re trying to figure them out, I love that kind of framing. It’s amazing.

EPISODE 3: FIGHTING TO REACH THE LAMENTIS-1 ARK

That sequence has a great backstory. I did a lot of prep with Kate. We started prep in Los Angeles before we ended up in Atlanta. We knew that sequence was coming up. but in the script, it just says “Okay, so they end up at Sharoo, and then go on.” The description of that sequence went through an evolution, with the filmmakers discussing things, building the set, and collaborating, so early on, we spitballed about what we thought that could be. Having the support of Marvel and being able to build, and being able to do great stunts, we went bigger.

With the sequence as it evolved, Children of Men was a big reference for us. Kate was really interested in that feeling. She wanted to be with the characters the whole way. We tried to figure out, should the camera be handheld? Should it be Steadicam? We ended up with Steadicam. We looked at some previous oners, because we wanted this sequence to feel like a oner to the audience. Obviously, there are cuts in there, but we seamed certain shots together so the audience wouldn’t feel as though we cut. The intention was to feel like you’re on the run with Loki and Sylvie, racing to the ark, building up tension. You’re there with them as they’re fighting.

My husband’s a DP, and he shot True Detective season 1. That oner in True Detective was something we looked at as well, because it’s just one of those great oners that feels real and has those kinds of textural elements. We did pre-viz, we did rehearsals in the space, prior to shooting there. We went there a couple times and did camera rehearsals. We had an amazing Steadicam operator who I’ve worked with on my last four projects and features. He’s very in tune with my eye, and he’s great with those kind of moves. Kasra understood that we needed certain paths to go down, to help us get from point A to point B, so it feels like a run, it doesn’t feel like people keep entering the same space. Obviously, it’s hard to build really big sets where you can go very far. So he did a great job of knowing what we needed, and then adding stunts, and figuring out how we could feel like we were turning corners whenever we’re moving into different spaces.

How big was the physical space? How much of what we’re seeing there is digital?

Shiroo was very different from Roxxcart. At Roxxcart, we had blue at the end of the aisles, so they look like they’re going on a lot longer than they are. But we traveled to that space. It wasn’t built. Shiroo was built on a backlot. That was a set we had full control over, to build to our liking. Above a certain point, as you’re looking up at the buildings, that’s VFX. But we built the actual buildings up to a certain height, and then beyond that is a digital extension. As far as the depth as well, beyond a certain part of the street, it’s a digital extension. Obviously, the ark is an extension, and we’re using the explosions as cues to do a lot of lighting cues. But it was a very big set, a gorgeous set. It has a lot of texture.

Kasra had the idea of painting a lot of the set in black-light paint, which I’d never seen before, and putting black lights everywhere. Also, we had a bunch of units on top that lit the set for the moon color and those sources, and we had VFX helping us stitch it all together. We had to shoot the sequences and look at the overlays on set to make sure we were creating matchups that would work in the final edit.

For me, that’s a very successful collaboration of in-camera elements — that whole set was real — and having explosions on set along with lighting cues, and then the effects to seam it together and do the extension above and the depth. So everyone really had to play like a good chunk of that. But they’d be effects overall, I think taking what we shot and making it feel like something that big, you know, the buildings are falling. Obviously, we didn’t drop buildings on people. There’s some foam stuff. That was really fun. We shot all that stuff at night.

The camera work in that sequence is some of the most dynamic movement in the series. What was the most difficult part about coordinating that sequence for you?

Though Marvel has a solid track record of spotting early talent, Kate Herron admits that her selection to direct and EP the first season of “Loki” surprised even her. “I knew I was a wild card,” says Herron. “I knew I wasn’t going to be the most experienced person in the room, but I could be the most passionate. I got my agents to call them every day until Marvel was finally like, ‘Fine, bring her in.’ I just tried to give them a big download of my brain and hoped they would be into it. And they were, and I’m forever grateful to them, because it has changed my life.”

In addition to her passion, what Herron had going for her was an impressive group of short films that showed her unique style and voice. The films, which did well on the festival circuit, helped her secure her first TV directing gigs, for Netflix’s “Sex Education” and “Daybreak” which led her to “Loki.” They also offered early encouragement when Herron was working as a temp for seven years. And several of them are available online for people to watch, including the three below, which offer a window into that brain that made Herron such a perfect fit for her current job.

“Open House”

Herron comes from an improv background, which she says continues to inform her art to this day. “It taught me so much about directing and working with people and life philosophy as well,” she says. “It taught me how valuable it is to say ‘yes.’ It’s in the core of my being.”

“Open House” was made as part of a 48-hour film challenge called “Smoke and Mirrors” in 2011; she and her collaborators Luke Wicker and Wilf Eddings were given prompts with which to build a story the cast improvised around. The result showcases Herron’s skill for creativity and unexpected humor. The film also stars Briony Redman, who went on to become Herron’s writing partner – they’ve been writing together for 11 years.

“Rest Stop”

Herron’s 2014 short also plays with time travel and shows how gripping a scene with two people sitting at a table talking can be … but to give anymore away would spoil the fun.

Herron recalls “Rest Stop” winning a top prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and finding out on the train ride home. “I was working as a medical secretary,” she notes. “And it was the encouragement I needed to keep going.” In fact, Herron says she was temping for around seven years – up until she landed the “Sex Education” job. “I’ve done every job you can think of,” notes Herron. “I was a waitress. I worked at a fire extinguisher company. I used to wash cars. I’ve worked in so many labs and offices. Obviously, I took these office experiences and incorporated them into the TVA on ‘Loki.’”

“Smear”

The filmmaker bids farewell to the hit Disney+ series and looks at some of the big swings she and the team took in the finale.

By Brian Davids, 17th July 2021

[This interview contains spoilers for Loki‘s season finale.]

When Kate Herron joined Loki as director, she knew she had an ace or two up her sleeve that would forever alter the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it. And in “For All Time. Always.” — the now season finale — Loki showed all its cards by revealing Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, a variant of Marvel supervillain Kang the Conqueror, who set the events in motion that would open up the multiverse. Since the character of Kang is a key player throughout phase four of the MCU, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige and his team, along with Herron, knew exactly what was at stake with this particular casting.

“Casting was a very surreal experience. When I joined the project, we always knew that Loki and Sylvie were going to go to He Who Remains, and the multiverse would be released,” Herron tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I already knew when I got the job that it was going to be a massive undertaking to do that and a big responsibility for Marvel to get it right. And Jonathan Majors is an actor that we were all just blown away by; I think everyone who knows his work is blown away by him. And when I knew we had Jonathan, he and I were solely focused on He Who Remains and this version of the character, this variant.”

At last December’s Disney Investor Day, Feige confirmed earlier reports that Majors would play Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But since Majors ultimately appeared first in Loki, Herron further clarified the timing of his casting.

“[The Quantumania casting] happened at the same time,” Herron shares. “So basically, [Ant-Man director] Peyton [Reed] and I were in that discussion with Kevin Feige and the team at Marvel. We knew he was gonna be in [Quantumania], and we knew that a version of him was going to be in [Loki].”

As Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie’s (Sophia Di Martino) doomed love story culminated in a passionate kiss, the latter repositioned Loki so she could grab He Who Remains’ futuristic TemPad and send the God of Mischief back to the TVA. Despite Sylvie’s guile, Herron still considers her side of the kiss to be authentic.

“Sylvie is sort of where our Loki was in Thor. She’s driven by revenge, pain and anger, and that’s what he’s saying to her,” Herron explains. “He’s like, ‘I’ve been where you are, and I just want you to be OK. You’re not going to get what you want.’ But on her journey of self-healing, she’s not where he is. So she’s not going to see it that way. So there was a sense that she was turning to get the TemPad, but I don’t think it meant the kiss wasn’t genuine. In my head, it was always a horrible goodbye, really, but the feelings were real.”

In a recent conversation with THR, Herron also discusses her own shocking goodbye to Loki following the surprise season-two announcement. She then offers her take on the final scene and the subsequent questions she hopes are answered in season two.

Brava, Kate. Loki season one was top-tier MCU as far as I’m concerned.

Thank you so much. I love Marvel, and I was just so excited to have a chance to direct for them. It’s been so nice to see everyone enjoying it.

In a complete tonal shift, Friday morning’s news about you not returning for season two makes this victory lap rather bittersweet. After one of Marvel Studios’ best pieces of storytelling, you’d think that getting the band back together would be automatic. So what else can you say about this?

I would say that when I joined Loki, it was always going to be those six episodes. We were treating it like a movie, and we were running it like a movie. We weren’t doing it in the showrunner system. So it was a lot to direct these six episodes, and I gave it all of my energy and everything I had in my soul and in my heart. I threw everything I loved about Marvel at it. So I always intended just to do these six. And it was such a massive compliment and a delight that as we got much later into production, Marvel and Disney were like, “Ah, man. This is excellent, and we want to keep going.” So I just feel like my part is done, but I’m really excited to see where it’s going to go next. So I gave it all that I have, and it came from a place of love. I really enjoyed working on it, and I hope to work with Marvel again in the future. They changed my life, and I just love Marvel as I’m sure people can tell from the amount of Easter eggs and references I did throughout it. But I just feel like I’ve done my part with Loki, at least for now, and I’m excited to see where it goes next as a fan.

Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains. How did this go down from casting to filming?

Ah, so casting was a very surreal experience. When I joined the project, we always knew that Loki and Sylvie were going to go to He Who Remains, and the multiverse would be released. So I already knew when I got the job that it was going to be a massive undertaking to do that and a big responsibility for Marvel to get it right. So when we were casting, it was basically me, Kevin R. Wright, my co-executive producer, Kevin [Feige], Lou [D’Esposito], Victoria [Alonso] and Peyton [Reed]. So we were all just talking about actors, and the amazing thing about Kevin Feige is that he’s so collaborative. He wants everyone at the table to have a voice, and he wants to see what they think and how that fits into his plans for the character. And Jonathan Majors is an actor that we were all just blown away by; I think everyone who knows his work is blown away by him. He’s an amazing actor, and the thing that I love about him is that he’s this chameleon. He’s so different in everything he does, and that’s exciting, obviously, when you’re asking an actor to play a character who’s going to have a lot of different versions of himself. So for us, that was a thrill. And when I knew we had Jonathan, he and I were solely focused on He Who Remains and this version of the character, this variant. It was just fun digging into him. We have this character who’s so lonely and isolated, and the only character he probably interacted with is Miss Minutes, which is what we imply. At the beginning, you see that he’s surrounded by all this noise in the universe, but he’s quiet and he’s alone. So how introverted or extraverted is a character like that? What makes that personality? So it was really fun digging into it with him.

So even though Jonathan’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania casting was announced first, your team technically cast him first, right?

[The Quantumania casting] happened at the same time. So basically, Peyton [Reed] and I were in that discussion with Kevin Feige and the team at Marvel. We knew he was gonna be in [Quantumania], and we knew that a version of him was going to be in [Loki].

So once a big movie or show is finally released, fans like to comb through trailers for any unused footage. So was that “King Loki” moment supposed to be a quick insert for when Loki is tempted with a throne by Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) and He Who Remains?

So that moment wasn’t actually King Loki. It was just meant to be a memory from our Loki’s past. It was basically going to be in episode one because we had a lot of memories in that episode. But it was honestly a tonal thing. The scene was actually quite a funny scene, and it was really beautifully written. But he was about to see his mother die, and it didn’t feel right to have something so comical next to a gut-wrenching moment like that. So it’s just the nature of making any film, really. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to kill your darlings. (Laughs.)

Did He Who Remains put a Time Twister on the edge of his desk, or a TemPad? Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) called it a TemPad even though it looked like a Time Twister.

(Laughs.) I love weaponry and technology so I’m just like, “The fun thing with this is…” So basically, it’s meant to be a futuristic version of the TVA tech. So that was the fun idea of it. When He Who Remains tells his story about his other variants meeting, you see bits of the TVA technology. So our idea was that it does both things. With the TVA technology, you see that the Time Twister hooks into the TemPad, but it’s these two separate, clunky things. But whereas with He Who Remains, he has more advanced technology than the TVA So it has both functions, basically, which we see him use. The difference is that he’s in control of the twist; it’s twisting him. Whereas when we see the TVA use the Time Twister, it’s with a Time Collar as they’re controlling a prisoner.

As Loki and Sylvie kissed, she repositioned him so she could grab the futuristic TemPad and eject him back to the TVA. So do you consider the kiss to be genuine on Sylvie’s part despite her calculation during it?

Honestly, the way I always read that kiss is that her feelings were genuine and that it was a goodbye. Sylvie is sort of where our Loki was in Thor. She’s driven by revenge, pain and anger, and that’s what he’s saying to her. He’s like, “I’ve been where you are, and I just want you to be OK. You’re not going to get what you want.” But she’s not there yet. On her journey of self-healing, she’s not where he is. So she’s not going to see it that way. So there was a sense that she was turning to get the TemPad, but I don’t think it meant the kiss wasn’t genuine. In my head, it was always a horrible goodbye, really, but the feelings were real.

Since the TVA resides outside of time, what can you say about the mechanics of the final scene?

So the way I see it in my head is that the TVA exists outside of space and time, but reality and everything as we understood it has completely changed in the last few minutes. With the multiverse branching, how do we know the TVA still exists in that way? We don’t know, and I suppose that’s a big question that will be answered as the show goes on. But in my head, the intention is that Sylvie thinks she’s sending him back to the TVA, but because of the way time and branches are crossing each other outside the window, Loki has unfortunately been sent back somewhere very different. So reality has shifted just by the nature of what He Who Remains said, and the idea is that he’s in this alternate TVA now.

We have to wrap, but is Eugene Cordero’s Casey OK? He went missing after episode two.

(Laughs.) Yes, Casey is fine! I love Casey, and I hope there will be more Casey to be enjoyed.

Well, congratulations once again, Kate. And if you do return to the MCU someday, please make a Miss Minutes slasher movie since she’s utterly terrifying.