Loki season 2 made a splash of a debut this week on Disney Plus, thanks to the Marvel show’s mind-bending if not slightly puzzling antics, all-around great performances, and cool visuals. However, there is one aspect of the first episode that is an absolute stand out: Ke Huy Quan’s Time Variance Authority agent Ouroboros, AKA, O.B. While it’s not entirely surprising an actor of his caliber would be a scene-stealer, we couldn’t help but notice the similarity to his Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Like Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere, O.B. deals with the technical aspects of keeping a burgeoning multiverse in check. In Waymond’s case, that has to do with his Alphaverse variant jumping into the main universe’s protagonist’s body to warn Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn that they must join together to fight Stephanie Hsu’s Jobu Tupaki. To do this, Waymond teaches Evelyn all of the tips and tricks he knows for absorbing the powers of her alternative dimension selves.
O.B. fulfills a somewhat similar role in Loki. He is a technician who works for the TVA and ends up creating a device to help Tom Hiddleston’s titular trickster god from time slipping uncontrollably. So while we’ve loved Quan’s performance in Loki so far, we must ask, is he on the verge of being typecast as a multiverse guy in the chair?
You might be tempted to believe the folks at Marvel saw Quan’s performance in Everything Everywhere and said to themselves, “Yeah, let’s get him to play the multiverse nerd who helps the main character navigate the world,” but you’d be wrong. You see, as the folks at Men’s Journal pointed out, “Marvel casting director Sarah Halley Finn and MCU mastermind Kevin Feige locked Quan into his role before Everything Everywhere was properly released.”
Burdened with Inglourious purpose
Regardless of whether the similarities were on purpose or an accident, it’s still arguably a precarious position for an actor to be in to play two back-to-back roles that seem familiar. With that said, we’re not ready to write Quan off just yet. The reason? There’s a very famous example of another actor who played two somewhat similar roles back-to-back that no one bashed an eyelash at, Christoph Waltz.
You see, in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, Waltz played the Nazi villain Hans Landa, nicknamed The Jew Hunter. You could consider him a bounty hunter of sorts, though he didn’t necessarily receive a monetary reward for each capture or kill, as the case may have been. Waltz’ follow-up role was that of another type of bounty hunter in Django Unchained, Dr. King Shultz. Shultz, an anti-racist, brought in traditional bounties of the Wild West variety while also helping Jamie Foxx’s Django, a former slave.
While you could consider the two characters by Waltz complete opposites, there is an argument to be made they have many similarities, too. That’s especially true when it comes to the functional role they are fulfilling within the narratives, albeit on opposite sides of the “good guy/bad guy” fence. Waltz was so good in each role that he won an Oscar for playing them both.
Quan but not forgotten
The point I am trying to make here is that even though Quan’s parts from Loki and Everything Everywhere fulfill similar narrative roles, that doesn’t make them the exact same character. Indeed, each one is fairly unique. Waymond Wang is something of a demure husband type, with his Alphaverse counterpart holding a much more confident demeanor who resembles a soldier, like Morpheus from The Matrix. On the other hand, O.B. is a consummate professional who is quirky in conversation but holds a quiet authority due to his intellect, similar to Doc Brown from Back to the Future, or even Q with his gadgets and sassiness from the James Bond franchise.
Given these stark differences, I am personally not exactly worried Quan’s back-to-back roles of Everything Everywhere and Loki will pigeonhole him into only certain parts right when his career is about to take off. On the other hand, I can certainly understand the concern people have raised. In fact, it isn’t Quan’s Everything Everywhere role that I am fearful of him duplicating, but another famous part.
Quan’s Data role as a child actor in The Goonies was also an inventor-type, just like O.B. The character was even a huge fan of Bond, harking to his similarity to Q once again. In fact, Quan even acknowledged O.B. as bearing a resemblance to “a grownup Data,” according to Loki producer Kevin Wright (via Yahoo Entertainment).
All we can say in the end is we wish Quan’s career the best because he has an absolutely delightful screen presence that we want to see more of. Whether that pans out to be playing a different variant of the same thing over and over again remains to be seen. However, we’ll show up regardless.
