During production on Avengers: Age of Ultron speculation was rife that Tom Hiddleston would be reprising his role as the God of Mischief for Joss Whedon’s superhero sequel but, as history tells us, those scenes ultimately remained on the cutting room floor.
Why, you ask? Because test audiences initially believed Loki, who was all set to appear in Thor’s dream sequence, was actually pulling the strings behind Ultron, leaving Whedon and Co. with little choice but to remove Hiddleston altogether. Indeed, it’s something that the actor himself has touched base on before, but in a recent interview with Variety, the High-Rise star shed some new light on the thinking process behind the scenes.
“It was a dream sequence. It was part of Thor’s nightmare. And there was a bit where – how does it work? – I think somewhere in that film Scarlet Witch shows all the Avengers their sort of worst case scenario. Thor has a dream and meets Loki, and it’s terrifying for him… As they were testing the film, the initial audiences were like ‘oh Loki is controlling Ultron!’ and Kevin Feige and all the guys at Marvel were like ‘um, no, he’s not’. So they just thought it was confusing.”
In hindsight, it made a lot of sense to leave Loki on the sidelines during Age of Ultron. Joss Whedon himself has spoke numerous times about the crippling stress of overseeing a juggernaut in the vein of Avengers 2, and adding another chess piece to the already crowded board would have only done more harm than good.
Beyond Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, we know that Hiddleston will be back as Loki when Thor: Ragnarok descends into theaters on November 3, 2017.
