Tom Hiddleston was surprised when Marvel resurrected Loki

Tom Hiddleston says the God of Mischief’s death at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War felt “conclusive” to him, which is why he was just as surprised as the fans when Marvel resurrected him in Avengers: Endgame, and for a solo television outing in the form of Disney Plus’ Loki, no less.

Teasing what’s to come from his villain-turned-anti-hero in the next season of Loki, Tom Hiddleston recently sat down with The Playlist to talk about his initial reaction to the character’s resurrection in Endgame.

“Surprise and delight. What was my initial reaction? I had so many questions because it wasn’t long after I had finished my filming on Avengers: Infinity War and Loki’s demise felt conclusive and real. And he also wanted to honor the emotional catharsis of his sacrifice that Loki stands before Thanos and tries to save his brother and he calls himself an Odinson.”

But now that the character would definitely reprise his part in the MCU, how did Hiddleston retrace his steps and approach this younger unredeemed Loki?

“And so my question was how do we allow his redemption and the poignancy of that moment to stand and create something entirely new? It felt so important to me, to him, to everybody that we had to do something new here. And that to me was the most exciting aspect of the idea was to explore Loki in a different context.

Challenge the character, confront the character with his self-destructive and damaging patterns of behavior, and put him in an environment where he wasn’t in control. That by essentially stripping away what was familiar: Thor, Odin, Asgard, all the things that you’d seen before, something new would be revealed. He’s even stripped of his clothes, his status, his magical power. What’s left of Loki? Once you take all the bits of Loki that seem familiar, what’s left of him, what remains? And I thought just as a human element to the story, that’s a great starting point.”

Loki may have passed the character journey of a thousand miles again in the Disney Plus miniseries, but his MCU story and that of his female variant is still far from over.